Job (3 page)

A few days after her return, Deborah believed that the time had come to unfasten Menuchim's basket from the ceiling. Not without solemnity she handed the little one over to the older children. “You will take him walking!” said Deborah. “When he gets tired, you will carry him. Do not drop him, God forbid! The holy man has said he will grow healthy. Do him no harm.” From that point on began the children's torment.

They dragged Menuchim through the town like a misfortune, they left him unattended, they dropped him. They found it hard to endure the scorn of the other children their age, who followed them when they took Menuchim walking. The little one had to be held between two of them. He didn't put one foot in front of the other like a person. His legs wobbled like two broken wheels, he stopped, he collapsed. Finally Jonas and Shemariah left him unattended. They put him in a corner, in a sack. There he played with
dog excrement, horse dung, pebbles. He devoured everything. He scratched the lime from the walls and stuffed his mouth full, then coughed and turned blue in the face. A piece of rubbish, he lay in the corner. Sometimes he started to cry. The boys sent Miriam to console him. Delicate, coquettish, with thin skipping legs, an ugly and hateful disgust in her heart, she approached her ridiculous brother. The tenderness with which she stroked his ash-gray wrinkled face had something murderous about it. She looked around carefully, to the right and to the left, and then she pinched her brother's thighs. He howled out, neighbors looked out their windows. She contorted her face into a weepy grimace. Everyone took pity on her and asked what was wrong.

One rainy day in summer the children dragged Menuchim out of the house and stuck him in a tub in which rainwater had been collecting for half a year, worms were floating around, fruit scraps and moldy bread crusts. They held him by his crooked legs and plunged his broad gray head a dozen times into the water. Then they pulled him out, with pounding hearts, red cheeks, in the joyful and horrible expectation of holding a corpse. But Menuchim lived. His breath rattled, he spat up the water, the worms, the moldy bread, the fruit scraps, and lived. Nothing happened to him. Then the children carried him silently and anxiously back into the house. A great fear before God's little finger, which had just waved very softly, seized the two boys and the girl. All day they didn't speak to one another. Their tongues were stuck to the roofs of their mouths, their lips opened to form a word, but no sound
took shape in their throats. It stopped raining, the sun appeared, rivulets flowed cheerfully along the edges of the streets. It would have been time to launch paper boats and watch them float toward the canal. But nothing at all happened. The children crept back into the house like dogs. All afternoon they waited for Menuchim's death. Menuchim didn't die.

Menuchim didn't die, he stayed alive, a powerful cripple. From that point on, Deborah's womb was dry and infertile. Menuchim was the last, failed fruit of her body, it was as if her womb were refusing to bring forth still more misfortune. In fleeting moments she embraced her husband. They were brief as lightning, dry lightning on the distant summer horizon. Long, cruel and sleepless were Deborah's nights. A wall of cold glass separated her from her husband. Her breasts withered, her body swelled like a mockery of her infertility, her thighs became heavy, and lead clung to her feet.

One morning in summer she awoke earlier than Mendel. A chirping sparrow on the windowsill had roused her. Its whistle was still in her ear, the memory of something dreamed, something happy, like the voice of a sunbeam. The early warm dawn penetrated the pores and cracks of the wooden window shutters, and even though the edges of the furniture still dissolved in the shadow of the night, Deborah's eyes were already clear, her thoughts hard, her heart cool. She cast a glance at the sleeping man and discovered the first white hairs in his black beard. He cleared his throat in his sleep. He snored. Quickly she leaped in front of the murky mirror. She ran her cold, combing fingers
through her thin hair, pulled one strand after another over her forehead, and searched for white hairs. She thought she found one, grasped it with the hard pincers of two fingers, and tore it out. Then she opened her shirt before the mirror. She saw her sagging breasts, lifted them, let them fall, stroked her hand over her hollow and yet bulging body, saw the blue branching veins on her thighs, and decided to go back to bed. She turned around, and her frightened gaze met the open eye of her husband. “What are you looking at?” she cried. He didn't answer. It was as if the open eye did not belong to him, for he himself was still asleep. It had opened independently of him. It had become curious on its own. The white of the eye seemed whiter than usual. The pupil was tiny. The eye reminded Deborah of a frozen lake with a black spot in it. It could scarcely have been open for a minute, but to Deborah that minute felt like a decade. Mendel's eye closed again. He continued to breathe quietly, he was asleep, without a doubt. A distant trilling of a million larks arose outside, above the house, below the heavens. The dawning heat of the young day already penetrated the morning darkness of the room. Soon the clock would strike six, the hour in which Mendel Singer usually got up. Deborah didn't move. She remained where she had stood when she had turned to the bed, the mirror at her back. Never before had she stood thus, listening, without purpose, without need, without curiosity, without desire. She was waiting for nothing at all. But it seemed to her that she must have been waiting for something special. All
her senses were awake as never before, and a few unknown, new senses were aroused in support of the old ones. She saw, heard, felt a thousand times over. And nothing at all happened. Only a summer morning dawned, only larks trilled in the unreachable distance, only sunbeams forced their way through the cracks in the shutters with hot power, and the broad shadows at the edges of the furniture grew narrower and narrower, and the clock ticked and prepared to strike six, and the man breathed. Soundlessly the children lay in the corner next to the stove, visible to Deborah but far away, as if in another room. Nothing at all happened. Yet infinite things seemed to want to happen. The clock struck like a release. Mendel Singer awoke, sat up straight in bed and stared in astonishment at his wife. “Why aren't you in bed?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. He coughed and spat. Nothing at all about his words or his demeanor betrayed that his left eye had been open and had gazed on its own. Perhaps he didn't recall, or perhaps Deborah had been mistaken.

From that day on, the desire ceased between Mendel Singer and his wife. Like two people of the same sex they lay down, slept through the nights, awoke in the morning. They felt ashamed before each other and were silent, as in the first days of their marriage. Shame was at the beginning of their desire, and at the end of their desire was shame too.

Then it too was overcome. They talked again, their eyes no longer avoided each other, their faces and their bodies aged in
the same rhythm, like the faces and bodies of twins. The summer was languid and stifling and poor in rain. Door and window stood open. The children were rarely at home. Outside they grew quickly, invigorated by the sun.

Even Menuchim grew. Though his legs remained curved, they were unquestionably longer. His upper body stretched out too. Suddenly, one morning, he emitted a previously unheard, shrill cry. Then he was silent. Awhile later he said clearly and audibly: “Mama.”

Deborah flung herself upon him, and from her eyes, which had long been dry, flowed tears, hot, strong, large, salty, painful and sweet. “Say: Mama!” “Mama,” repeated the little one. A dozen times he repeated the word. A hundred times Deborah repeated it. Her prayers had not been in vain. Menuchim spoke. And this one word of the deformed child was sublime as a revelation, mighty as thunder, warm as love, gracious as heaven, wide as the earth, fertile as a field, sweet as a sweet fruit. It was more than the health of the healthy children. It meant that Menuchim would be strong and big, wise and kind, as the words of the blessing had said.

However: no other comprehensible sounds came from Menuchim's throat. For a long time this one word that he had produced after such terrible silence meant food and drink, sleep and love, pleasure and pain, heaven and earth. Though he said only this word at every occasion, he seemed to his mother Deborah as eloquent as a preacher and as rich in expression as a poet. She understood
every word that was hidden in this one. She neglected the older children. She turned away from them. She had but one son, her only son: Menuchim.

Perhaps blessings need a longer time for their fulfillment than curses. Ten years had passed since Menuchim had spoken his first and only word. He could still say nothing else.

Sometimes, when Deborah was alone in the house with her sick son, she bolted the door, sat down next to Menuchim on the floor, and stared into the little one's face. She remembered the frightful day in summer when the countess had driven up to the church. Deborah sees the open portal of the church. A golden glow of a thousand candles, of colorful pictures wreathed with light, of three priests in vestments standing deep and far at the altar, with black beards and white hovering hands, penetrates the white sunlit dusty square. Deborah is in her third month, Menuchim is stirring in her body, she is holding little, delicate Miriam firmly by the hand. Suddenly shouts ring out. They drown out the singing of the worshipers in the church. The staccato clatter of horses can be heard, a cloud of dust whirls up, the dark blue equipage of the countess stops in front of the church. The peasant children cheer. The beggars on the steps hobble toward the carriage
to kiss the countess's hand. All of a sudden Miriam breaks free. In no time she has disappeared. Deborah trembles, she's freezing, in the midst of the heat. Where is Miriam? She asks every peasant child. The countess has climbed out. Deborah comes very close to the carriage. The coachman with the silver buttons on his dark blue livery sits so high that he can look out over everything. “Did you see the little black girl running?” asks Deborah, craning her neck, her eyes blinded by the brightness of the sun and the liveried man. The coachman points with his white-gloved left hand into the church. Miriam has run in there. Deborah considers for a moment, then plunges into the church, into the golden glow, into the full singing, into the thunder of the organ. In the entrance stands Miriam. Deborah seizes the child, drags her into the square, runs down the white-hot steps, flees as if from a fire. She wants to strike the child, but she is afraid.

She runs, pulling the child behind her, into a side street. Now she is calmer. “You must tell your father nothing of this,” she gasps. “Do you hear, Miriam?”

From this day on, Deborah knows that a misfortune is approaching. She is carrying a misfortune in her womb. She knows it and is silent. She unbolts the door, there's a knock, Mendel is home.

His beard is prematurely gray. Prematurely withered were also Deborah's face, body and hands. Strong and slow as a bear was the oldest son Jonas, sly and quick as a fox the younger son Shemariah, coquettish and thoughtless as a gazelle the sister
Miriam. When she glided through the streets to run errands, svelte and thin, a shimmering shadow, a brown face, a big red mouth, a golden-yellow shawl knotted under her chin in two fluttering wings, and the two old eyes in the midst of the brown youth of her face, she caught the attention of the officers of the garrison and stuck in their carefree, pleasure-craving minds. Occasionally some of them chased her. She noticed nothing about her hunters but what she could take in directly through the outer gates of her senses: a silver clanking and rattling of spurs and weapons, an enveloping fragrance of pomade and shaving soap, a glaring shimmer of golden buttons, silver braids and blood-red reins of Russian leather. It was little, it was enough. Just behind the outer gates of Miriam's senses lurked curiosity, the sister of youth, the herald of desire. In sweet and hot fear the girl fled her pursuers. Only so as to savor the painful exciting pleasure of the fear, she fled through several side streets, many minutes longer. She fled by a roundabout route. Only so as to be able to flee again, Miriam left the house more often than necessary. On street corners she stopped and cast glances back, bait for the hunters. These were Miriam's only pleasures. Even if there had been someone who understood her, her mouth would have remained closed. For pleasures are stronger so long as they remain secret.

Miriam did not yet know what a threatening relationship she would have to the strange and terrible world of the military and how heavy the fates were that were already beginning to gather over the heads of Mendel Singer, his wife and his children. For
Jonas and Shemariah were already at the age when according to the law they were supposed to become soldiers and according to the tradition of their fathers they had to escape from service. A gracious and provident God had given other youths a physical affliction that didn't disable them much and protected them from the evil. Some were one-eyed, some limped, this one had a hernia, that one jerked his arms and legs for no reason, several had weak lungs, others weak hearts, one was hard of hearing and another stuttered and a third quite simply had general physical weakness. But in Mendel Singer's family it seemed as if little Menuchim had taken on himself the sum total of human agonies, which a kind nature might otherwise have distributed little by little among all the members. Mendel's older sons were healthy, no defect could be discovered on their bodies, and they had to begin to torment themselves, to fast and drink black coffee and hope for at least a temporary heart condition, though the war against Japan was already over.

And thus began their torments. They didn't eat, they didn't sleep, they staggered weak and trembling through days and nights. Their eyes were reddened and swollen, their necks thin, and their heads heavy. Deborah loved them again. To pray for the older sons, she again made pilgrimages to the cemetery. This time she prayed for an illness for Jonas and Shemariah, as she had once begged for Menuchim's health. The military rose before her troubled eyes like a heavy mountain of smooth iron and clanking torture. Corpses she saw, nothing but corpses. High and gleaming,
his spurred feet in red blood, sat the Tsar, waiting for the sacrifice of her sons. They went on maneuvers, this alone was for her already the greatest terror, she didn't even think of a new war. She was angry with her husband. Mendel Singer, what was he? A teacher, a stupid teacher of stupid children. She'd had something else in mind when she was still a young girl. Mendel Singer meanwhile found the distress no easier to bear than his wife did. On the Sabbath in the synagogue, when the legally prescribed prayer for the Tsar was held, Mendel thought about his sons' imminent future. He could already see them in the detested khaki uniforms of fresh recruits. They ate pork and were lashed by officers with riding whips. They carried rifles and bayonets. He often sighed for no conceivable reason, in the midst of praying, in the midst of instruction, in the midst of silence. Even strangers gave him concerned looks. About his sick son no one had ever asked him, but about his healthy sons everyone inquired.