Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (12 page)

Every few minutes, Mother appeared in the doorway, reminding Father, in a soft, solicitous voice, “Leyzer, maybe you should wash up. The food’s getting cold.”

But Father was still busy with the wardrobe, trying to put the cornice back into place. Supporting the cornice on one shoulder, he bent his head a little, making his tall, broad-shouldered figure appear squat and stolid. Suddenly, he removed his shoulder, bent over, and the cornice slid softly into place.

In the kitchen Mother was setting the table. Hot, white steam rose from the bowls of grits. A large loaf of bread, sprinkled with seeds, lay on the table. Mother cut off big slices, which Father broke into tiny morsels and ate only after dipping them in salt.

A few flies escaped from the bread and settled on the rims of the bowls.

From time to time Father put down his spoon and stared intently at the flies, wondering where they would land next. Mother kept chasing them away with her spoon, with her hand, all the while urging Father to eat.

I knew why she was rushing him. There was no greater sorrow in our house than Father finding—God forbid!—a fly in his food. No matter, it might be the tastiest capon, he might be ravenously hungry, but should a fly alight, he would no longer so much as touch the food.

But this time the flies flew off. Mother squashed one with a towel, the rest flew up to the ceiling where they remained, watching from on high as the grits disappeared from the bowls and the bread from the table.

In our new place, Mother decided, except for the Sabbath and festivals, during the week we would eat all our meals in the kitchen. She had already put things in order. She placed the table in the middle of the room, not near the window like in the old place. The table was covered with a splendid colored cloth, decorated with headless birds and large, embroidered flowers. Over the dresser, surrounding the greenish mirror, Mother hung photographs of her sons and only daughter, Tsipele, the one who just got engaged in Warsaw. She also spread on the dresser a crocheted cloth of thick, gray cotton with braided loops and fringes, to which she added a cut-glass bowl resembling a small boat. In it lay mother-of-pearl buttons, thimbles, pins, and above all, Mother’s white brooch, which, ever since her return from Warsaw, she wore every Sabbath under her soft double chin.

But nothing on the dresser took greater pride of place than the two greeting cards, standing upright, that Mother had received from her two sons living elsewhere. Both cards glittered with gold and silver. Both had little arched gates that opened to read, in gold German lettering: “
Hertzliche Glückwünsche zum Neuen Jahr
—Heartiest good wishes for the New Year.” Next to the gates, like watchmen standing guard outside the Garden of Eden, hovered two white doves, holding sealed letters in their beaks.

This was something new for Father. He had never laid eyes on these cards before. Now, after their sudden appearance on the dresser, Father first looked at them from a distance, wrinkling his forehead. Then, like someone holding a delicate glass object, he grasped the greeting cards in his two frozen hands.

“What’s this?” Father asked.

“Greeting cards,” Mother replied.

“Greeting cards? Who from?”

“From Yoyne and from Avromke.”

Father’s beard pressed down on his chest. He removed the spectacles from behind his ears with one hand and, with the other, put the greeting cards back on the dresser. He no longer looked at them. His mute, dreamy eyes went to the mirror and its collection of photographs of Mother’s children, searching for something. Apparently, Father was looking for the picture of his own son, Leybke, a soldier in Ekaterinoslav. He found it, hanging to the side, next to a photograph of a long, reclining figure, possibly a woman, unknown to anyone in the house.

Father didn’t mind that his son’s picture hung where it did, but later, during supper in the kitchen, he looked at me with his large, blue eyes and said, “Leybke never writes.”

Nobody responded. Father carefully cut up his bread into small pieces, slurped his soup, and remarked once again, “Ekaterinoslav … among Gentiles … you can’t find such greeting cards there.”

The daily routine in our new place was the same as in the old. Every morning, at the crack of dawn, the peasant would come and knock on the windowpane, “
Pan kupiec! Pan kupiec!
”

Before leaving the house, Father would leave money for the day’s household needs on the dresser, under the crocheted cover. Mother kept haggling over the amount, threatening not to prepare supper, but meals were always on time, and the house was warm and tidy.

Nevertheless, despite all these blessings, a sadness pervaded our new home. Could it be because of the excessive tidiness? Or because of the wooden porch hanging outside the windows, keeping out the sunlight? Or could it just be that our new dwelling was intrinsically sad?

The first to sense this melancholy was Mother herself. She was like the swallow that has a premonition, at the first rainfall, that the summer is over. She grew restive. From day to day she became less punctilious about cleaning the house. Sometimes she forgot to get the soup on the table on time.

But no one took Mother to task for this. Indeed, what could she have done? There were hardly any neighbors around. I was away the entire day at Sime-Yoysef’s
kheyder
. Father was roaming around the villages, buying hay. So she simply left things in God’s hands. She would while away her days at Aunt Miriam’s or at Grandma Rokhl’s. Once again, the saucepans on the stove stared out into the room with dark, empty mouths.

Only after Father came home in the evening did Mother start preparing supper. Father would get angry at her, sometimes hurling a curse, sometimes even going to bed without supper. Yes, things were sad, very sad.

Until, one winter evening, there was an angry knocking on the door and in burst a pocked-face boy wearing a short, padded coat. An iron folding bed was slung over one shoulder, and in one hand he clutched a bundle of bedding.

“Where shall I put it?” he growled.

“Over there, if you please,” Mother pointed to a spot between the kitchen cabinet and the water barrel.

The young man dropped his burden, panting heavily. A few moments later, he burst in again, this time pushing a large blue trunk on little wheels, secured by iron bands and two padlocks on either side.

“Where’s Hodl?” Mother looked at the boy.

“She was walking right behind me.”

But the boy was mistaken. Hodl didn’t walk, she skipped. She danced into the room, round and plump, and trilled, “Good evening, Frimet!”

“Good evening, Hodlshi. How come you’re so late?”

“Why? What did I miss?”

Hodl, wearing a long brown coat with a worn fur collar, looked curiously around our kitchen, set down a man’s umbrella next to the door, and took a deep breath.

“N-n-a … It was quite a distance!”

“It wasn’t that far.”

“Far enough,” said Hodl, unwrapping her shawl from around her head and extending a moist, shiny double chin to the tall boy.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Two gilden, Auntie,” said the boy, wiping his sleeve across his forehead.

“I’m not your Auntie!” Hodl crinkled her little snub nose, which looked like a tiny shoe. “Why suddenly two gilden when we agreed on forty groshen?”

“Forty groshen for such a long way?”

“If you don’t like it, you can go jump in the lake.”

“Auntie, stop acting so high and mighty and pay up!”

“Once more! I’m not your Auntie, you peasant, you!”

“What’s the matter? I’m not good enough for you?”

“You most certainly are not.”

“In that case, you can do me the honor and kiss …”

“I’ll give you such a bash in the face that you’ll be seeing your great-grandmother!” said Hodl, making a move toward the boy.

“Go ahead! Let’s see what kind of lady you are!”

Hodl was a loudmouth, and strong-minded to boot. Had Mother, whose hands trembled at any hint of a fight, not intervened by offering to add another ten groshen, Hodl and the boy would surely have come to blows.

The boy let loose a final curse and left. Hodl, not to be outdone, shot another back. Then, still in a huff, she started unbuttoning the long, tight-fitting coat that reached down to her ankles.

“Help me off with my coat, Frimet,” she appealed with a little sigh.

Mother obliged and laid the coat across a chair. Hodl twisted her mouth.

“Why on a chair? Why don’t you hang it in your wardrobe?”

“There isn’t much room there,” Mother excused herself.

“If there’s no room in your wardrobe, then perhaps you shouldn’t be taking in boarders. What’s wrong with my coat? It doesn’t belong there?”

“Who said so? God forbid … Let me take a look. Maybe I’ll find some room, after all.”

“No maybe. It’s only my coat that I want to hang in the wardrobe.”

And that’s what happened. Hodl’s brown coat went into the wardrobe.

Hodl then pulled off a knitted jacket, as well as a quilted waistcoat, and once she was down to nothing but a thin cotton blouse, she again took a look around the kitchen.

“Is this where I’ll be?”

“Yes, Hodlshi.”

“Is it going to be as warm here as you said?”

“As warm as in a stove.”

“And where’s the toilet?”

“Outside, just two steps from the door.”

Mother spoke meekly to Hodl, with a pinched smile, as if she owed her something.

“And where’s your husband?” Hodl demanded.

“He’ll be back soon.”

“Who’ll set up my bed?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll get done.”

“Do you have a chamber pot?”

“Of course, how could we not have a chamber pot?”

“And is that your kid?” Hodl suddenly set her big cat’s-eyes on me and shaped her lips into a moist smile.

“Yes, that’s my Mendl, my youngest, he should stay in good health.”

“You had other children with your husband?”

“We had a little girl too, my husband and I, may he have long life …” Mother said sorrowfully and bowed her head.

“That’s a fine boy, bright like a light, may the evil eye not befall him.” Hodl beckoned me over with a nod of her head.

I stayed where I was. I didn’t like that strange woman one bit.

“Where do you go to
kheyder
?”

“By Sime-Yoysef,” Mother answered for me.

“And do you already piss like a grown man?”

I saw Mother’s face turn deep red.

Hodl’s mouth widened in a grin from ear to ear. I didn’t know what to do or where to look. That woman had stormed into our house, like a chill wind. She cared nothing about my bewilderment or about Mother’s flaming face. She smiled right into my eyes, snorted, took some candies from her purse, and, sucking loudly, asked Mother, “When does that husband of yours get up?”

“At dawn.”

“If that’s the case, I won’t be able to close an eye.”

“God forbid! He never wakes me up, and I’m a light sleeper, like a hen.”

From all that talk I surmised that Hodl was to move in with us into the kitchen. Mother wouldn’t be so sad anymore. There would be another person living with us, just like Jusza in the old place.

That night I had a hard time falling asleep. Through half-closed eyes I could see the strange woman walking about the room, plump, soft as a featherbed. I heard the steady creaking of her iron cot, her snorting, the smacking of her lips, and several times I even heard the sound of someone pissing into a tin pot.

Hodl must have been about forty years old, though she claimed—“May I live to a hundred and twenty”—to be only thirty. It was her wretched life and her miserable work that had turned her old and gray.

Hodl had been married once to a good-for-nothing who had a chronic illness to boot. So she said good riddance to him and married for the second time. What she wanted from both husbands were children. She went off and consulted wonder-working rabbis, visited doctors, and drank herbed potions, but to no avail. The two husbands, the first as well as the second, seemed to have been somewhat deaf and never heard what she asked of them.

In the large courtyard behind the synagogue, where Hodl used to live, women of all ages would gather around to hear the foul curses she heaped on the heads of her former husbands. She herself, she shrieked, was as healthy as a nut. Throughout Poland all the doctors, and all the wonder-working rabbis, had assured her of that. It was the husbands—may lightning strike them!—who were to blame.

Hodl’s second husband had been, in fact, a respectable man, a quiet man, even something of a scholar, well-spoken, and always welcome at all celebrations. But Hodl had given him such a hard time that it tore out his insides. He took to his bed, lingered a while, and never got up again.

Hodl had no intention of marrying a third time. If all that husbands were good for was dying, why should she take any more risks? So, pushing forty, plump, ruddy, with a squashed face, she remained, alas, a miserable widow for the rest of her life.

When one is widowed, it must be sad to live out one’s life alone, even for someone like Hodl. So she always boarded with strangers, dragging her battered blue trunk from place to place on its little wheels. The trunk grew heavier by the day, what with all the Sabbath candlesticks, pillows, and garments that poor people pawned with her and were never able to redeem.

This time, it seemed, it was thanks to Mother’s enterprise that Hodl and her trunk ended up in our kitchen. First of all, Mother said, Hodl would share the rent, and secondly, it would be more homey to have someone around.

Father wasn’t too pleased with this new arrangement. At that time, Father could easily have afforded to pay the entire rent by himself and, for the life of him, couldn’t understand why Mother needed someone else in the house to make it “homey.”

He looked at Hodl with a pair of unfriendly eyes, stared at her battered trunk, then looked at Mother, saying nothing, but with his eyes indicating, “What do you need this for?”

The meaning of his look wasn’t lost on Hodl. She opened her soft, moist lips and, in her high-pitched voice asked, “Why do you look at me like that, Reb Leyzer?”