Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (33 page)

“At least take a look,” he said proudly, “at what a beautiful
shalakhmones
Naomi sent us.”

He raised the bottle of wine to the light, examined it from top to bottom, then set it down carefully, as he would a sick child.

“Expensive wine,” he pressed his lips together. “It must have cost a fortune.”

“Naturally,” Mother snickered. “The rich certainly know how to spend their money.”

“And I’m telling you,” Father again raised the bottle to the light, “that it’s a very expensive kind.”

“Go pickle with it …”

Father was preparing a new plate of
shalakhmones
. He chose two small figs, a slightly bruised orange, and a strip of strudel. I guessed that this is what I’d be taking over to Motl Straw, Father’s partner.

Mother tied a scarf around my neck.

“Was it nice at Aunt Naomi’s?” she asked.

“Very nice.”

“Lots of guests?”

“Lots.”

“What did Aunt Naomi say to you?”

“To send regards to everybody.”

“And that brat of theirs, Mendl, did you see him?”

“Yes. He was wearing a stiff white collar and necktie.”

“She dolls him up in white collars, does she! What is he? A girl?”

The
shalakhmones
for Motl Straw was ready. Mother accompanied me into the kitchen and told me that, for God’s sake, I should come right home, that I still had to go over to Aunt Miriam’s.

“Of course. You think I don’t know?”

I was about to leave. At that very moment the kitchen door opened and a shrouded head appeared in the doorway. It was dark in the kitchen and hard to tell to whom the head belonged. From all indications it was probably some poor beggar woman. Indeed, the figure remained standing in the doorway, as if she’d come to ask for alms.

I couldn’t leave, for the woman was blocking my way. Mother didn’t ask what she wanted but moved back several steps toward the window, from where she let out a moan and, in a quiet, choked voice, said, “Toybe … ?”

I grew hot all over, and almost dropped the plate with all the
shalakhmones
. Only now did I recognize Toybe’s face from under the wrapping. Once, that face was brown and pretty. Now it was black and gaunt. Toybe seemed to have grown taller. Her eyes were no longer bluish-green. In fact, one could scarcely see her eyes. Two deep, black circles looked out from under the head covering. Even her posture had changed. She was now bent over, unsteady.

Was Toybe sick, perhaps?

Mother seemed unwell herself, as if her hands and feet weren’t her own. She made a start toward the other room, then remained where she was. Her eyes darted across the kitchen as if searching for something, and finally came to rest on the kitchen chair. With her foot she shoved it over to where Toybe was standing and then leaned against the table, supporting herself with both hands. Thus she remained, facing the window.

Toybe stared at the chair, but didn’t sit down. I wanted to tell her to come inside, to rest. Toybe, however, pushed open the door and made as if to leave.

Mother realized what was happening. She turned around quickly, and ran to the door.

“Where are you going?” she called out warmly. “Come inside.”

Mother didn’t know what to do with her hands. She wanted to embrace Toybe but her arms missed their mark and fell upon the doorposts instead.

Old Gitele shuffled in from the other room. She looked around the dark kitchen nearsightedly and, in her drawling voice, asked, “Frimet?”

“What is it, Gitelshi?” Mother turned away from the door in confusion. “Do you want something?”

“No, my dear child. Whatever could I want from you? But it’s time for me to be going. Who is that standing at the door? Who?”

Mother didn’t reply. She planted herself in the doorway as if she wanted to conceal Toybe from Gitele’s tiny, lively eyes.

Father must have heard something going on, or maybe he wanted to get something from the kitchen. He walked in quickly, looking distracted and angry. I was the first one he saw.

“You haven’t gone yet?” he said, pointing his beard at me.

I was about to tell him what had happened when his head suddenly straightened. His eyes turned to the door, where Toybe was still standing. At first he said nothing, but then he began to shout.

“Out of my house, you Big Yuzhke, you!” he cried out in a voice not his own and, with raised fists, rushed to the door. “You have the nerve to come back to my house? Get out this minute!”

At that moment, Mother threw herself between Father’s raised fists and the broken-down Toybe.

“Leyzer!” she raised her hands high. “Don’t you dare! You hear?”

“Let her get out of my house! I don’t want to see a single bone of her body here!”

“Leyzer! I won’t allow it! She’s your very own child!”

“A dog, that’s what she is, not my child! She’s just like Big Yuzhke! As if she hasn’t blackened my name enough!”

Toybe bent over lower and lower, as if she were being cut down by a saw. The door opened, seemingly of its own accord, and Gitele, Yosl the glazier’s widow, shuffled out with tiny, old steps. Toybe followed, her body bent double. Father was about to lock the door, but Mother stood in his way and grabbed the key from the lock.

“Give me the key!” he said, showing his white teeth.

“No, I won’t!”

“Give it to me, you hear?”

“Stop it, Ley zer!” Mother said firmly. “Stop it, I say. If not, I’m leaving, and you’ll never know where I’ve gone.”

Father’s white teeth disappeared from view. He went back to the other room, his hands hanging limply by his sides. On the way out, he hurled an obscene word at Toybe—a stone, not a word. My temples started throbbing. Mother drew in her shoulders, as if hit by a stabbing pain.

“Mendl,” she said, “run outside and tell her to wait.”

It was cold outside. Toybe was sitting on the threshold, her body crumpled. I sat down beside her.

“Toybe,” I said, “Mother wants you to wait.”

I felt Toybe’s hand on my face.

“Are you, maybe, hungry, Toybe?”

“No, I’m not hungry,” she answered in a dry, hollow voice.

“I’ve got
shalakhmones
here. Would you like some?”

“No, Mendl, but thank you very much.”

“I’ve got an orange. Here, take it.”

“I don’t need it, Mendl. But go on, go where you’re supposed to.”

A strong wind was blowing from the garden. The sky was black. A dog began barking in the prison guard’s place.

I didn’t take the
shalakhmones
over to Motl Straw, nor did I visit Aunt Miriam that Purim. I sat outside with Toybe for a long while, until the door opened quietly and I heard Mother’s voice.

“Mendl?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Where are you?”

“Here, with Toybe.”

Mother came over to us.

She leaned down to Toybe and said, “Come inside. He’s already asleep.”

“Thank you, Auntie,” Toybe sighed. “I’ll just wait here.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, you silly cow. Come inside. I’ll make up a bed for you in the kitchen.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You can thank me later. Nu, come inside. You must be hungry.”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“Nu, get up! It’s cold out here.”

Toybe remained seated. The guard’s dog began barking again.

“Get up, Toybe.” I stroked my sister’s upraised knees. “Eat something. It’s Purim today. Come inside, please.”

Toybe was weeping. I felt her tears on my hand. Then, after she finally came into the kitchen and Mother helped her off with her things, she fell on Mother’s hands to kiss them.

“Stop it!” Mother waved her hands in confusion. “You can kiss me later. Eat something …”

The door to the other room, where Father was sleeping, was closed. Mother turned up the lamp. Now I could see that Toybe’s pretty face had a greenish tinge. She looked haggard, with sharp cheekbones. Nothing remained of the former Toybe, except for her garnet hair, high on her head with a white part in the middle, like that of pious, well-to-do matrons.

Toybe stayed on at our house. Father’s head sank down to the ground. His shoulders grew pointier. I think that even his deafness became more pronounced. Mother had someone bring Toybe’s trunk from the wealthy home where she had been a maidservant. Toybe didn’t open it, she didn’t care to know what was in it. She walked around in total silence, thin and gaunt. At dawn, even before the peasant knocked on the window for Father, Toybe was already up to light the fire. One never heard her chopping wood, or striking a match. The fire seemed to light by itself. Likewise, Father’s breakfast, which Toybe cooked, seemed to prepare itself.

One morning, however, Father discovered how all this came about. That same morning he happened to get up before Toybe and, after saying his prayers, came into the kitchen with his folded prayer shawl hanging from one of his shoulders.

Toybe was blowing on the fire. A pot of water already stood on the burners. There was a bowl of peeled potatoes nearby.

“You unclean girl!” he growled. “I’m not going to eat your swinish food!”

The breakfast remained untouched, its gray steam settling on the windowpane. A fly crawled along the edge of the plate. That morning, Father left on an empty stomach and Toybe sat down on her bed and wept.

Ever since Toybe returned from the hospital, she wept a great deal. Mother was out of the house most of the time, either at Aunt Miriam’s or at Grandma Rokhl’s. All by herself, Toybe did all the cleaning and polishing, all the cooking, all the Sabbath preparations, weeping as she worked.

While Father was eating, Toybe always left the house and sat on the threshold. Only after Father had finished reciting the after-meal blessings and gone to sleep, did Toybe come back in, clear the dishes from the table, and sit down to eat, by herself.

Ever since Toybe had come back, the Sabbath days were sad and tearful. Father sang the Sabbath hymns in a tearful voice. Mother, even more tearfully, read aloud from her women ’s Bible. Toybe never sat at the table with us. She passed her Sabbath days in the kitchen on her iron bed.

Not even at Passover did Toybe sit with us at the seder table, though it was she who had readied the house for Passover, cleaning and cooking, toiling like the Hebrew slaves who built the store cities of Pithom and Rameses in ancient Egypt.

However, it was Mother who served the food and brought the four prescribed cups of wine into the kitchen for Toybe to partake, to fulfill the ritual. During the course of the seder, when the prayer “Pour out Thy wrath” was recited—which this year Father spat out with a fury—and it was time to open the door for Elijah the Prophet, it was not Toybe who did the honors, as in previous years, but Mother.

Toybe stared wide-eyed at the dark, open door. Only now did her eyes seem to have recovered their double colors, green and blue. She stood at the open door, as if hoping that the portal would bring her salvation. But when the door closed again, and salvation failed to come, Toybe wept. Mother wept, too. Only Father continued to read the Haggadah, continuing with the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

If one didn’t know that the reason for Father’s low voice was his deafness, one would have thought that he, too, was choking with tears.

After Passover the reddish-white blossoms on the chestnut trees made their appearance, the branches outstretched like the arms of a menorah. Clusters of purple and white lilacs hung over fences, like live, colorful birds. Our large, disordered courtyard, with Yarme’s omnibus and its shuttered windows, was all bathed in greenery and sunlight. I would return home from the kheyder while the rooftops still gleamed golden in the sun. The air buzzed with swarms of honeybees.

Yankl and I had made many new friends, boys from other courtyards with strange-sounding names. They would come over to us in the evenings to listen to the wonderful stories that Yankl could tell. I had no idea that freckle-faced Yankl, whose stepmother called him “thief,” had such a treasure trove of stories. No wonder he was chosen to play the righteous Joseph.

Not only did our new friends listen to Yankl’s stories, but so did Janinka, little Janina, the chief prison guard’s daughter, as well as my sister Toybe, who by now could have had a child of her own.

Yankl’s stories were about calves and goats, which weren’t really calves and goats, but disguised demons and evil spirits. He also told about a wandering Jew who crossed rivers and oceans on foot without ever wetting the skirts of his kapote. Another of Yankl’s stories dealt with a murderous thief, who had a gold belt and a gold sword. That same murderous thief abducted seven royal maidens and made all seven his concubines. He slaughtered their fathers, the kings, and became emperor of the entire world. Each of the seven concubines bore him seven children, both male and female, and each of those seven children brought forth, in turn, seven times seven offspring, until the whole world was filled with the murderous thief ’s children and grandchildren. Even our own fathers and mothers, so Yankl said, and our grandmothers, were all descended from that same murderous thief. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a world in existence today.

Yankl told stories, half in Yiddish, half in Polish, so that Janinka would understand.

Janinka had grown over the winter. She had acquired two dimples in her cheeks and a warm, milky-pink skin. It probably didn’t occur to anyone else, but I couldn’t help feeling that Yankl was telling his stories not for my sake or for that of our new friends, but solely for Janinka’s benefit.

She sat at Yankl’s feet and looked up at him with rapt eyes. The moment Yankl finished a story, she shook his knee and begged, “Yankl, tell another story … please … Janinka begs you.”

Several times, I saw Yankl and Janinka sitting on the shaft of his father’s omnibus, eating out of the same paper bag. Yankl himself once told me that Janinka tried to persuade him to become a Gentile, a goy, not now, but later, when he grew up. Her father, she said, would make him a prison guard. They’d get married and live on the promenade, where all the Gentiles lived.

Yankl told me this in utter secrecy. He said that he’d never convert, that he had no wish to become a goy, that he disliked Gentiles, and was even afraid of them. But he’d definitely marry Janinka.