Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (6 page)

As to Father’s question, she dropped her head, blew her nose once more, and left his question unanswered.

Father was no great talker. A heavy silence clouded his half-closed eyes. When spoken to, he never looked you straight in the eye but always at your mouth, as though he put little trust in what he was hearing. Indeed, Mother considered him to be somewhat deaf and always raised her voice when speaking to him. Father liked puttering around the room in his warm, padded vest, fixing a broken chair, winding the clock, or cutting up squares of paper for use in the privy. Whenever Mother would speak to him in a louder than usual voice, he’d stop in his tracks, raise his large, black-bearded face, and look at her out of his sleepy eyes.

“Why are you shouting at me like that? Am I deaf?”

“What then are you? Sharp-eared?” Mother answered back, barely admitting to herself that Father might not be deaf after all.

Now, holding Leybke’s photograph in his hand, Father shifted his face from the table to the bed where Mother was sitting and looked at her dubiously, as if wondering whether he knew that person or not.

“You’re speaking rather softly today,” he said.

“Who’s speaking? Who says I’m speaking!”

“So what was it you were saying just now?”

“Nothing. Leave me alone!”

Father looked at Mother’s mouth. The heavy silence in his eyes grew shadowed. Mother suddenly seemed like a stranger, an outsider.

Father then turned to me and, furrowing one side of his brow, said, “We must write to Leybke, to Ekaterinoslav.”

What he really meant to say was that had he been able to do so himself, he would have written a few words that very day. But when it came to writing letters, he always depended on Mother, and now, with no other alternative, he simply had to wait for her to cheer up a little.

Meanwhile, Father put Leybke’s photograph into a drawer of the wardrobe among the clean linen. Now and then, on a Saturday night, after the
havdole
prayer, marking the conclusion of the Sabbath, he would take the photograph out of the drawer, gaze at it once again, and mutter something about writing a few lines to Ekaterinoslav. But Mother’s mood didn’t improve, and she had no time to spare, either for him or his son Leybke.

Winter that year was long and bitter. Icicles hung from the pump in the yard, like molten glass. Overnight, the slops tossed into the gutters froze into a dirty, icy mass. The lock on the door glistened with a thin coating of ice. The mildewed walls of the kitchen, where Jusza slept, at night gleamed with a greenish-blue glow, as did the wall alongside Father’s bed. Nothing could keep out the cold, not the little iron stove in the center of the room, with its rusty tin pipes running across the low ceiling, nor the clay plastered over the cracks of the window frames. Even the cotton wool, stuffed between the windowpanes, turned to ice.

None of this troubled Father, who, worn out from his day, always fell into a deep sleep. But around four in the morning he would wake up, ready to get going.

The reason for this was because lately he had gone into partnership with someone called Motl Straw, a tall, lanky Jew with a bobbing Adam’s apple, a pointy wisp of beard, and long, slender hands that couldn’t keep still for a moment. All his life Motl had bustled among peasant carts, pinching sacks of grain, chewing on a wisp of straw between his teeth, now and then running into Mordkhe’s soup kitchen to grab some leftover goose, and, between one thing and another, stuffing banknotes into a long leather purse. While thus engaged, one day he ran into Father and suggested they become partners.

“There’s a chance to buy up a big load of hay,” he said. “First-class hay.”

He, Motl, would supply the cash, and Father his expertise, since that was all that Father had to offer.

Father, you see, before he moved to the city, had grown up in a small village, where there were large stretches of sun-warmed fields surrounded by blue, dark forests, and huts of rough-hewn planks, thatched roofs, and earthen floors. In the village people drank sour milk from large clay jugs and baked flat loaves of bread. In the summer they bathed in the river, slept behind haystacks, and gazed across the broad expanse of fields. There, in the village, is where Father had acquired his knowledge of hay that he brought with him to the city.

Thus, after Moyshe’s death, life at home took a new turn.

Night still hung sleepily over the frozen windowpanes when Father began to stir. From time to time, his protracted, hollow yawn cut through the cold dark room. I turned to the darkly glistening wall, waiting impatiently for Father to drop his legs to the floor so I could have the whole bed to myself. But Father was waiting for the signal that would rouse him from under the warm featherbed.

And there it was. At the crack of dawn, at almost the same time every morning, fingers could be heard drumming on the glass, and a raw, frozen voice called out, “
Pan kupiec
! Mr. merchant!”

This was old Maczei, the peasant who drove Father in his wagon all over the villages where Father bought up hay from the landowners.

Father groaned and stepped into the chilly room. He turned up the lamp. In the reflection of the flame, which blinked like an awakened eye, Father attended to an old injury on one of his shins. By now it had turned into a red-and-blue scar, and Father applied his remedy, the green shoots of spring onions growing in a clay pot on our window sill.

After treating his leg, and more groaning and more yawning, Father remembered old Maczei, still waiting outside, and he opened the door to let him in.

Maczei entered, frozen blue. Tall, wrapped in a reeking sheepskin and holding a whip, he stood there like a scarecrow, waiting for
Pan kupiec
to get ready.

Pan kupiec
washed himself noisily over the basin at the back of the room, and then moved to the front, where, even more noisily, he set about his morning prayers.

Mother squirmed in her bed like a worm, moaning into the pillows, “That blasted business of his! A person can’t even close an eye!”

But Father didn’t hear her.

Jusza stuck her black, woolly head out from under the covers, stretched a pair of naked arms, and, in a lazy drawl, asked Maczei, “Hey Daddy, got a son?”

“Sure,” the peasant replied.

“Is he young?”

“Sure, he’s young.”

“Then send him over here, Daddy.”

“He’s already got a wife. No need to look for another.”

“So what! I can be a wife too.”

Father paced about the room, praying loudly. The exchange between Jusza and the peasant mingled with Father’s prayers. Mother’s bed started creaking violently.

“Leyzer!” she called out. “Leyzer! Keep your voice down!”

But Father didn’t hear that either. By the time the door shut behind them, Mother had turned over in her bed several times and several times called out the name of her first husband—may his soul rest in peace—with whom she had shared a house with brass handles on all the doors.

After Father left, a peaceful calm spread over the room, like the quiet following the clattering passage of a wagon over cobblestones. The lamp remained lit. Mother heaved a final sign of relief, and I, half-asleep, still heard an echoing voice, “A young one, you say. Bring him over, Daddy.”

I understood very well what Jusza meant. My thoughts turned to that night when she had warmed me. Some time had passed since then, and it seemed as though Jusza had forgotten all about me. I often returned home frozen to the bone. Very often, neither Mother nor Father was at home. Jusza would be sitting at a corner of the table, staring with unseeing eyes at the flickering lamp. I had to pull off my heavy overcoat all by myself, scrounge on the stove for something to eat, and even make up my own bed. Jusza paid no attention to me.

But it happened once more—actually, it was the last time—that Jusza called me over to her.

“Come here, little one,” she said, turning her gaze away from the flame and taking me into the folds of her skirt.

She raised her face, rubbed her nose against mine, and asked hoarsely, “You didn’t tell your mother, did you?”

I felt cold all over.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

“You swear?”

“May I drop dead.”

My face was between both her hands.

“Do you want a kiss?”

I couldn’t answer. Once again I felt that cramped sensation.

“Do you want to do it again, like before?”

She didn’t wait for my answer but suddenly turned down the lamp. In the dark, Jusza tore off my clothes. I understood that I ought to keep very still.

“There, down there.” Jusza’s voice became huskier, her hands warmer. “Come here, little one. It’s for the last time. I’m leaving today. Are you sure you didn’t tell anybody?”

“I’m sure,” I said in a voice smothered by Jusza’s flesh.

“Your mother’s told me to move out. Are you sure you never told on me?”

“I swear.”

“So why did she tell me to go?”

“I don’t know.”

I couldn’t speak any more. My body was on fire. I felt a pain shooting through me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.

“Don’t bite!” Jusza breathed, chuckling into my face. “Hey, you’re a big one now, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t figure out what was happening, except that I wanted the pain to last as long as possible. But suddenly I felt a deep emptiness, a void enveloping me, like something had been taken away from me.

There was a burning sensation in my chest. It seemed as if a piece of living flesh had been torn from my body.

“Why are you crying, you foolish calf?” Jusza’s voice boomed out of the dark. “Big boys like you shouldn’t cry. Come on over here, you puppy.”

But I clenched my teeth, tore myself from her arms, rolled off the bed, and, lying on the floor, began to sob loudly.

Jusza quickly turned up the lamp. Her woolly head looked twice its usual size. Unkempt, plump, she stood over me, pulling on her skirt, tying the strings of her blouse, and spoke into the darkness.

“I won’t play with you anymore. You’re a fool, a snotty kid! Get up!” she said, and yanked me to my feet. “Don’t you dare tell anybody, you hear!”

She raised a threatening fist under my nose. I sniveled and shook my head.

Mother came home late that night. I couldn’t eat any supper, but Mother was too preoccupied with herself to notice and didn’t ask why I wasn’t eating. She didn’t seem to see me. The burners on the stove were cold, empty, black.

Father came home even later, bringing with him a biting cold in the flaps of his coat. It took him a long time to pull off his boots, and, twisting his mouth, he let out a deep sigh. My heart was still full of suppressed, unfinished sobs. Mother must have noticed something after all. She sat down next to me on the bed. My eyelids were drooping drowsily, but I still heard her say to Father, “I think Mendl’s a little hot.”

“Hot?” Father asked, busy attending to his foot. “If it feels hot, then there must be an infection. Bring me the onions.”

I didn’t hear any more. But when Father came to bed, I woke up and turned to the wall, as if I were afraid he would sense the change that had come over my feverish body.

There was a reason, apparently, why Mother hardly seemed to take notice of me the other night, why she never asked me why I wasn’t eating. As I soon discovered, Mother was preoccupied with her own affairs. You could see it in her clenched mouth and in her eyes, in the uncertain way she looked at everything and everybody.

I wasn’t mistaken. A week later, what was agitating Mother floated to the surface, like oil on water.

It was snowing outside. That evening, Father came home earlier than usual. He was blanketed in white, covered in down like a featherbed. Clumps of snow clung to his beard, his whiskers, the crease in his plush cap, his shoulders. Mother wasn’t home. Ever since Moyshe’s death, something seemed to drive her out of the house. Most days and entire evenings she’d spend at the neighbors’ or at Aunt Miriam’s, talking about Moyshe, recounting what a wonderful son he had been.

That evening, when Father came home, he found nothing but a cold stove, empty pots, and me, who, having myself just come home, was still struggling with my coat. He swept his weary, dreamy eyes across the dark, damp walls, caught sight of Jusza kneeling over an open suitcase, and in a dry, hollow voice asked her, “Where’s my wife?”

“Madam Frimet’s not home,” said Jusza into the suitcase.

“I can see that for myself. Where did she go?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Maybe she’s in the other room?”

“No, she left early in the morning.”

“Early in the morning? Where could she have gone?”

“No idea,” Jusza said gruffly.

“N-n-a!” Father shook his head and, with some difficulty, pulled off his coat. “And you, Mendl, have you had your supper?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not particularly.”

“And where’s Mother?”

“Probably at Aunt Miriam’s.”

“Could you maybe run over there and get her?”

That was easier said than done. Aunt Miriam lived at the other end of town, near the kosher butcher shops. You had to cross the central market, turn into Cobblers Lane, walk the entire length of Warsaw Street right up to the Gentile hospital, and only then did you reach Aunt Miriam’s place. But I always liked going there.

She lived in a wooden cottage surrounded on all four sides by wind and sky. The floor of her house was bleached yellow from being scrubbed three times a week. Copper pots gleamed on the walls, their bottoms sparkling like mirrors. The white kitchen cupboard bulged with plump rolls, dried noodles, tasty cheese, all for the taking by anyone happening to drop by.

Small wonder that I bundled myself up again and set out for Aunt Miriam’s to look for Mother.

The snow lay deep and soft. You had to step carefully, quietly, as if you were afraid of waking somebody who was very sick.

The way led through Cobblers Lane. But Cobblers Lane was narrow and crooked, with cracked pavement. Along one side low roofs hung over broken-down, humpbacked hovels, and along the other ran a stone wall with peeling patches of lime.