Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (5 page)

Father pressed his face closer against the frozen pane. The good people grabbed whatever they could, stripping the wardrobe almost bare.

Then Mother, her palms extended, as if she were carrying a child to its circumcision, ran out of the house.

The open wardrobe gaped hollow and dark. Father stepped back from the window and lowered the flame of the lamp.

Suddenly, Jusza stood beside me, took me into her big, warm arms, and sobbed into my ear, “My poor, poor boy!”

The strangers in the room slipped out one by one. The sour smell of empty bellies hung in the air. Father sat down, as he did every morning, to recite Psalms, except that this morning his head kept swaying nervously back and forth as he repeated a word several times over, making it sound like the buzzing of a fly against the windowpane. On the low ceiling, the shadow of Father’s head kept swaying up and down, like the distorted shape of some outlandish being.

But God did not revoke the evil decree and Moyshe, unfortunately, died.

I ran to the hospital, but by the time I got there its black gate was already locked. Two tall, thick-bearded Jews were arguing about something with a Gentile. Several women stood about, stamping their feet in the snow. A shaggy, mangy dog sniffed around the hems of the men’s long overcoats.

Shortly thereafter, Uncle Shmuel, Aunt Miriam’s husband, appeared on the scene. He stepped up to the tall Jews and, spreading his hands, said in his oily voice, “Died, just like that! Can you believe it?”

The two Jews turned their beards to Uncle Shmuel and gave him a surprised look. I was about to kick the dog when Uncle Shmuel set eyes on me and, smacking his thick, wet lips, said, “You’re here too? Who sent for you?”

And who had sent for
him
? Who needed him here, with that oily voice of his, running back and forth along the black gate, spitting into the snow, stopping the carts of passing peasants to poke the bags of grain they were hauling, asking what the grain cost, though he himself had never dealt in grain and hadn’t the foggiest idea whether grain grew in the fields or on trees in the wood.

Meanwhile, Father arrived, treading slowly and heavily, and soon after him, Aunt Naomi and Uncle Bentsien pulled up in a public carriage, a droshky. Bentsien, round and squat like a stuffed pillow, had difficulty getting out. So Aunt Naomi, she of the thin lips and pretensions to learning, held a shoulder up to him and Uncle Bentsien, leaning on it, finally managed to heave himself down.

There he stood, with his protruding paunch, panting laboriously. Then, looking about him and blowing air through his fleshy red lips, said, “It’s ice cold … a real frost … any idea what the temperature might be?”

No one answered. The mangy dog lowered his head to Uncle Bentsien’s galoshes. He drew back.

“Beat it!” Uncle Bentsien snarled.

The dog hung his head meekly and padded over to me. He looked at me with his mild, moist eyes, wagged his tail sadly and, had he been able to talk, would probably have said, “Your brother died, and all your Uncle Bentsien can talk about is the weather?”

Night had fallen imperceptibly. A flock of ravens flew up somewhere into the clouds. On both sides of the road the snow lay in patchy strips, here black, here blue, and here rusty white. Across from the hospital, on the porch of the tavern, two buxom girls in fur coats talked in loud voices to the stooping shadows of two men.

Only then did the black hospital gate open. Two weary, black-eared horses, their heads bobbing, were pulling a narrow black cart behind their scraggly tails. Father’s big hands lay on the cart’s burden as he followed along. All at once, a line of men formed, their black coattails flapping in the wind, looking like birds abruptly roused from sleep. Women came rushing up, shoving one another aside and tugging at the woolen shawls that kept sliding from their shoulders. Both Mother and Aunt Miriam followed close on the heels of the men, their heads tossed back, their mouths agape, like freshly slaughtered cattle. Uncle Bentsien and Aunt Naomi, riding in their droshky, brought up the rear.

The dog trotted beside me, looking down at his own steps and, from time to time, releasing angry snorts through the moist nostrils of his snout. A woman, a stranger, leaned down to me and, in a kindly voice, said that young boys whose parents were still alive—and may they live to be a hundred and twenty—were not allowed in the cemetery. So I went only as far as the inn, the Three Trees, about halfway to the cemetery. The cart and its company merged into a single black mass, as all wended their way to the final resting place.

Nobody accompanied me as I returned home, except for the stray dog trotting beside me, panting to the beat of his own steps.

The dog stopped at our door a step ahead of me. Did he know that this was where I lived? Why did his ears poke up like that?

I stopped too and shouted into his ears, “What’s your name? Burek?”

The dog shook his head from side to side, as if objecting to being called by such a common name.

I called out other dogs’ names, Lapke, Buket, but no, he went on shaking his head.

I felt cold. My heavy overcoat kept dragging at my shoulders. Finally I shouted into the dog’s ear, “Good night dog!”

He snorted and trotted off, then lay down on the snow, his paws stretched out toward the door of our house.

When I came into the house, Jusza was sitting alone in the kitchen, her elbows propped up on the small table, beside the kerosene lamp, her chin cupped in both hands, staring blankly into the reddish-blue flame. At my entrance, her hands dropped from her chin and she rose abruptly.

“The funeral’s over already?”

“No, not yet.”

“You didn’t go?”

“Only as far as the Three Trees.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“You look frozen to the bone. Come here and sit down.”

She hugged me as if I were a sack of cotton wool or feathers and sat me down close beside her. Then, folding me into her large warm arms, she spoke right into my face.

“That’ll warm you up fine.”

She blew onto my stiff fingers, took them into her mouth, and rubbed them between her hands.

“Maybe you should lie down for a while, hah?”

I don’t know if I answered her or not. She left me sitting in the kitchen and went into the other room to make up Father’s bed. Then she undressed me, led me into the other room, tucked me in up to my chin beneath the featherbed, and seated herself at my feet like Mother used to do when I was sick with scarlet fever.

“Will they be back soon?” Jusza asked.

“As soon as the funeral’s over.”

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know.”

Jusza went into the kitchen for a moment, where I heard her fussing with the lock on the door. It was very dark in the room by now. Only a narrow streak of light filtered in from the kitchen but stopped halfway across the floor.

Jusza returned from the kitchen and sat down once again on the bed, but not at my feet. Her body gave off a sweaty warmth, exuding a sweetness that clung to the roof of my mouth and filled my nose—an odor unlike any other person’s I had know.

“You feel warmer now, don’t you?” she said, bending her large face over mine.

“A little,” I said, feeling Jusza’s odor seep into my throat and from there deep into my veins.

“You’ll soon feel warm all over,” she said.

I heard two dull thuds on the floor. Jusza must have kicked off first one shoe, then the other.

“Soon, soon,” she said hoarsely.

Drowsy, frozen, exhausted, I saw Jusza take off her red bodice and undo her blouse. Its laces must have gotten knotted, for Jusza’s breath turned into heavy panting as she sent forth a curse into the darkness: “Damn it! What the hell!” Then the featherbed heaved and I felt Jusza’s large, warm body beside me. My throat constricted, whether from fright or surprise I couldn’t say, and I snuggled up against the wall.

“Come here, come closer,” Jusza whispered and pulled me back to herself. “Now you’ll get really warm. Give me your hands. Well, how does that feel?”

“Warm.”

“Put your head over here. Isn’t that warm?”

“Warm.”

“Poor thing. Your mouth’s so cold. It’s frozen.”

I pulled up my legs. The bed suddenly seemed too narrow for me. I couldn’t figure out why. Sleeping with Father I never felt so cramped, and Father’s body never gave off such heat. Why? Was it because her lips never stopped warming mine?

I had no idea how I fell asleep. I didn’t hear Jusza leave the room, nor did I hear Mother and Father come home.

By the time I opened my eyes, Father was sitting on the bed with his feet on the floor, pulling on his boots. Mother, her head wrapped in a kerchief, sat hunched on a low stool, like a child, rocking from side to side. In the kitchen, Jusza was chopping wood. The blows were sharp and quick, as if she were letting her anger out at some unseen antagonist.

Now I remembered! Jusza! What had happened with Jusza? Why was she now chopping wood? How long since she’d been warming my lips? And there was Father sitting on the bed, his back to me, while Mother sat rocking on the low stool. The gray walls that hadn’t been whitewashed in ages were tinged with a greenish, sleepy, early-morning light.

A small glass, with fingerlike impressions on its sides, stood on the window sill. A tiny, blue flame flickered inside it.

By now, Father had pulled on his boots. His yellowed prayer shawl hung down his back, crumpled like a page torn from an old Bible. He turned his beard to me, still lying in bed.

“Get up,” he said, “it’s time for the morning prayers.”

He pulled on his
kapote
, his shabby gaberdine, and left the house. But not for long. He returned with two little men who looked around with great curiosity at the unfamiliar room. Father left them there and went out again, coming and going several times, until our room filled up with the unkempt beards of strangers in threadbare, weekday
kapotes
.

From the window to the wall and from the wall to the window, here and there, one could hear the hollow rumblings of an empty stomach. On the dresser and the wardrobe patches of shadow climbed up the ceiling, as though the room was too crowded to contain them.

Mother moved her stool over to the stove. From time to time, Jusza appeared in the doorway, holding a chunk of wood in her hand. I pressed in deeper among the cold
kapotes
of the strangers, scared to look at Jusza. The fringes of the men’s prayer shawls trailed along the floor like white worms. One of the worshipers, a man with a choked voice, was swaying back and forth over the table, swallowing every word.

Father, who was standing beside me, put his hand on my shoulder and pointed with his head to the prayer book, “Nu … nu …”

After the praying was done, the strangers began drifting out of the room. Their heavy, mud-caked boots shuffled across the floor, as they filed past Mother, crouched on her low stool, and mumbled some words to her.

A musty smell of old wadding and soiled clothing lingered in the room. Two rumpled prayer shawls with yellowed fringes lay on the table. Father slowly unwound the stiff, shriveled leather straps of the phylacteries from his blue frozen hand.

And this is the way it was throughout the whole week of
shivah
, the seven days of mourning. Mother rarely rose from her stool, and Jusza, after chopping some more wood and attending to the fire in the stove, would seat herself on another low stool and, like Mother, begin rocking from side to side.

In the evening the aunts and uncles would come by to offer their condolences, bringing with them the silence of the snow outside. They sat there, in their overcoats, glum-faced, never saying a word, neither on entering nor on leaving. They stayed for a short while, shrugged their shoulders, and returned to homes where no one had died and no one was in mourning.

Only two of the uncles saw fit to break the silence. Uncle Shmuel, he of the restless hands, couldn’t forgive Moyshe for having died, just like that! And Uncle Bentsien kept rubbing his chubby hands together, protesting to God about the weather.

“Can you believe what a winter it’s been? Coal cost the price of gold! So I said to my wife …”

Just then Aunt Naomi half closed her sleepy eyes and, in her nasal singsong said, “Shouldn’t we be going, Bentsien? Heh, Bentsien?”

People no longer came by to pay their condolences. Now, a photograph of Moyshe which Mother had framed graced the top of the dresser. Here Moyshe’s face wasn’t round any more and his cheeks weren’t dimpled. The flat surface showed a young man with a pale, scared face, one hand white, the other black, as though covered with a dark glove. He looked stiffly to one side, not seeming to recognize anyone in the room.

At that time, another photograph arrived at our house, from faraway Ekaterinoslav, where Leybke, Father’s son from his first wife, was serving as a soldier in the Tsar’s army. It was nothing at all like Moyshe’s photograph. It pictured an altogether different type of person, with a completely different look. Tall, with a clipped mustache, wearing a round, visorless cap, a jacket with epaulets and buttons, Leybke sat sprawled alongside a little table, a grim expression on his face and a defiant look in his alert, wide-open eyes, as if he’d just caught sight of an enemy approaching with drawn swords and rifles.

Father moved the kerosene lamp closer and began studying Leybke’s picture. In the light, his thick, black beard and whiskers divided into two shades, lighter and darker, and between them the tip of his tongue, extended in fierce concentration, moved slowly from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Well, what do you think of my Leybke?” said Father to the photograph, holding it at arm’s length and bringing it closer again.
“A real officer in the Tsar’s army!”

Father wanted Mother to hear what he was saying. He wanted her to agree with him that his Leybke had indeed become a somebody to be reckoned with. But Mother had already looked at the photograph earlier in the day, and then had turned to the sad picture of her own son and had burst into tears. She had blown her nose and sighed, “And my Moyshe, alas, lies in the ground.”