Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (17 page)

“Go to sleep, Yoyne,” Mother said, tottering out of bed and fluffing her featherbed. She kicked off her slippers, laid her dress down on a stool, and, in her undergarments, threw herself back on the bed. This was her habit, never to lie down quietly, but to fling herself onto the bed.

“Yoyne, before you go to sleep,” said Mother, pulling off her undergarments from under the featherbed, “be sure to lock the door. Ite must have forgotten to do it.”

“Yes, Mother, I will.”

Mother fell asleep instantly. Yoyne still puttered about for a while. I didn’t hear him lock the door. He went over to the dresser, where a lamp still flickered dimly, and he blew out the flame with a single breath. The smell of kerosene wafted across the room, filling my throat with a nauseating, choking sensation.

“Are you asleep, Mendl?” Yoyne lifted the blanket that I had already warmed up for him.

“Almost. Why, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep. It’s late.”

Yoyne flung himself onto the bed, just like Mother. The bed shook from top to bottom.

“Aaah,” he drew a deep breath, “may there always be beds.”

He rolled over, with his face to the room. I cuddled up next to his back, the way I always did when I slept with Father. The odor of Father’s body was a familiar one, smelling of hay and cold air. Yoyne’s body was skinny and bony, and gave off a smell of scented soap, mingled with perspiration. To warm up next to him was not easy.

I rolled over to face the wall. Yoyne rolled over, too, now with his face to my back, and snuggled up to me.

This, presumably, is how we fell asleep, except that Yoyne didn’t fall asleep right away. He kept rolling over, this way and that, now facing the room, now my back. The bed never stopped shaking.

I could hear all this until my ears finally gave out, shutting off all sound. I wasn’t sure whether I had slept for a long time or had woken up from a dream. All I know is that suddenly I felt a chill down my back and sensed that I was uncovered. I began to pull the blanket over to my side and, while doing so, realized that the other side of the bed, though still warm, was empty. Where was Yoyne?

I opened my eyes. Father was snoring. The room was pitch-black. You couldn’t see a thing. In the total darkness the silence was so palpable that it echoed in my head and in my ears. But perhaps it wasn’t that silent after all. If I listened carefully, I could hear what sounded like rustling paper. I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, but obviously it wasn’t from far away. Then, I seemed to hear voices, whispering softly outside, behind the shutter.

Suddenly, in the utter darkness, there was a loud banging against the wardrobe. I knew what this meant. It was a sign that a dead person was walking around the room.

Could it be Moyshe?

I wasn’t afraid. Moyshe and I used to be fond of each other. Nevertheless, my skin was soon a mass of goose bumps. I pulled up the covers and waited with bated breath for Yoyne to come back to bed. The blanket was too short. When I pulled it over my head, my legs came uncovered. The banging started up again. The whispering behind the shutter continued … No! The voices weren’t coming from behind the shutter but from very close by. It began to sound like normal talking …

Father’s snoring resumed, a medley of whistlings and drawn-out exhalations of breath. Mother always slept soundlessly.

Yoyne still hadn’t come back to bed. Could he have gone outside? Before very long, it seemed to me, I heard Ite’s voice. Yes, I could have sworn it was Ite. I was reminded of Hodl. She often woke up in the middle of the night and started talking to herself. Mother said that Hodl couldn’t sleep because she was worried about her trunk. But what kept Ite from sleeping?

In the midst of all this I heard a thud, like the sound of a shoe dropping. It came from the direction of Mother’s and Father’s beds.

“Shoo! Shoo!” I heard Mother’s agitated voice, accompanied by another thud.

A cat must have gotten into the house with Yoyne at the time of his late return. Mother must have only now become aware of the cat’s presence, hence the hurling of the shoe. But who in this pitch-blackness could guess where the creature was hiding?

“Mama!” I called out. “I think the cat’s next to the window …”

“Go back to sleep!” she said, and suddenly, despite the dark, I saw her standing beside my bed, tall and white. I felt her breath on my face and her hands patting me.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she said sternly.

“Yoyne woke me up,” I replied.

She made a groaning noise. Now she looked even taller and whiter. She was on her way back to bed when we heard the sound of the kitchen door closing. Mother sat down heavily on the edge of my bed.

“Yoyne?”

“It’s me, Mother.”

“Where were you?”

“I forgot to lock the door.”

Mother stood up. Yoyne flung himself onto the bed, next to me. This time I did not move closer to him. Nevertheless, I sensed a pungent smell of perspiration mixed with apples. Yoyne kicked the blanket over to his side.

The intermediate days came to an end. The next day—and the day thereafter, the last two days of Passover—the second round of festival activity would resume.

That holiday morning Ite rose early. Her face was puffy, as if she hadn’t slept enough. Silently and looking preoccupied, she began straightening up. This morning she wasn’t pretty at all, and the full extent of her ample girth was plain to see. Yoyne walked about like a stranger. He dressed slowly, whistled a bit, and then, prancing as usual, left the house, saying that he was going to the synagogue.

Mother also got up early. Her face looked tired, worried, and she seemed to have grown taller during the night. In the cool light of the sun, now poised over the roof of the opposite house, the pupils of Mother’s eyes took on a greenish coloring. She, too, was silent. The whole house was silent.

Ite spent quite a while cleaning and, it must be said, she did make the house look nicer than the day before. But that only seemed to intensify the sadness that filled every corner. The sunshine from the neighboring roof barely reached the top of our windows. The house lay deep in shadow. It didn’t look festive at all, but rather like an ordinary, weekday winter evening.

Father and I went to pray at our usual place, that is, the
besmedresh
, the small study house.

Today we were promised a special musical treat.

It was the custom in our town for synagogues to exchange cantors on the first two and last two days of the Passover holiday. Thus the cantor of the large synagogue—known simply as the
shul
, where Yoyne said he was going—accompanied by his choir boys, would be coming next door to our
besmedresh
. Our own prayer leader, Moshke the cook, who took leave to sing out the service to the tune of Polish military marches, would, in exchange, preside at the
shul
. Not surprisingly, the
shul
that morning stood cold and empty. On its ornately carved eastern wall, the reliefs of harps and clarinets, drums and trumpets, which always seemed to accompany the cantor, were now mute, struck dumb, like sheep before the rain.

In the
besmedresh
, on the other hand, you couldn’t squeeze in a pin. Half of the people from the
shul
and all of the regulars of the
besmedresh
, as well as visitors from the smaller prayer houses—all crowded inside to hear the gifted cantor and his choir boys.

This cantor, an old Lithuanian Jew, chanted the prayers so beautifully, with such feeling, that the memory of his performance lingered on well into the summer. The service lasted long past midday, but the worshipers were exalted and returned home feeling inspirited.

During the service, as the cantor’s voice soared, the congregation hummed along, tapped their feet, and urged him on with upturned thumbs. But no one was as masterful as the old Lithuanian cantor himself.

When Father and I returned from the
besmedresh
, the house was still steeped in silence. Everything was neat and tidy, but it felt cold and strange. We sat down to eat. The plates clattered with a loud, hollow ring. The knives and spoons, which had been so thoroughly boiled and cleansed for Passover, looked up at us from the table in their gray, everyday guise. Father reported on the cantor’s magnificent performance, but no one was listening.

“Is anything the matter?” Father asked.

He swept his eyes around the table, looking at everyone with his hard-of-hearing stare. He couldn’t understand. Wasn’t today a holiday? Didn’t we, thank God, have everything we needed to celebrate? So why was everyone looking so sad? Did a ship laden with chicken droppings sink in the ocean? Ite wasn’t at the table at all. After hurriedly serving the food, she hastened back to the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with Ite? Why isn’t she here with us?” asked Father.

“She’ll sit down in a minute. She still has a lot to do in the kitchen,” Mother replied.

Yoyne was freshly shaved, yet the green dusting that shadowed his face was more conspicuous than ever. His face was creased. His Adam’s apple, which overnight seemed to have become more pointy, kept bobbing up and down, like a scurrying mouse. He ate with his eyes glued to the plates. Between courses, he broke off pieces of matzo and chewed them absentmindedly.

Mother watched him out of the corner of her eye. He must have been aware of her anxious gaze because he lifted his head and began turning his neck from side to side, as if he were being choked by a tight collar.

That wasn’t the way things were last year at our holiday table. Today, after we finished eating and hastily mumbled the Grace after Meals, everyone got up abruptly from the table. Last year, I remembered, we didn’t move from our places. Father began humming a familiar, plaintive melody, and Mother quietly joined in, humming along in her clear, pearly voice. Today, immediately after the meal, Yoyne picked up his cane, tugged at his tie, and went out.

“A cane on the holiday?” Father called after him. “It’s forbidden to carry on the holiday.”

But Yoyne was already outside. Through the window I caught a glimpse of him as he pranced out of the courtyard, twirling his cane in the air.

Ite was washing up. Seething with rage, she seemed to put all her furious energies into the dogged scrubbing of the pots and pans. The house was filled with aromas—chopped onions and eggs, put-away borsht, fried matzo pancakes—inducing a drowsiness that was hard to resist. Eyelids kept drooping. Father didn’t wait long to surrender and lay down, fully dressed, under the featherbed. His thick beard, which all Passover week had retained its trim, well-mannered look, now pointed every which way at the ceiling. In less than two minutes, the room resounded with the gasps of Father’s heavy breathing.

Mother paced restlessly around the room. I knew why. She wanted either to conceal something or else to blurt it out. She picked up an object from the dresser and put it right back. She pulled out a drawer and pushed it back in again. She opened the window.

“It’s so stuffy in here,” she said, fixing her eyes on me. “Mendl,” she swept her hand across the table, “why don’t you go for a walk?”

“Where should I go?”

“Do I have to tell you where to go? Don’t you have any friends?”

“Of course, I have. Who says I haven’t?”

“So why don’t you go find them? A young boy like you should be out shooting nuts. Isn’t that what boys do on Passover?”

“I don’t have any nuts for any games.”

“Is that all that’s the matter? Here, now you have nuts.”

Mother produced a large paper bag and filled my pocket with nuts until it bulged. When did Mother ever give me so many nuts? And if that wasn’t enough, she added two macaroons and a piece of candied orange peel.

“Nu, get going!” she placed her hands on my shoulders.

“I have nowhere to go,” I said, “I’ll wait for Father to wake up and go with him to visit Aunt Naomi.”

“Aunt Naomi can wait,” Mother said angrily. “It’s such a beautiful day, and all you can think of is to stay home!”

Mother must have been deeply troubled, otherwise she wouldn’t have spoken to me like that. Even in the most difficult of times, on cold winter evenings, when there was no wood in the house for the stove, Mother never spoke to me in this way. She must really be in the grip of some terrible sorrow. I think that’s why I was so reluctant to go out. I didn’t want to leave Mother alone.

But eventually Mother had her way, that is, she simply pushed me outside. Ite never said a word. She kept on scrubbing the pots and pans even more doggedly, with even greater vigor and fury.

Only when I was out the door did it dawn on me why Mother was so eager to be rid of me. She wanted to be alone with Ite to find out more. I stationed myself between the open window and the door. Presumably, no one could see me.

On the roof across the way, pigeons were strutting proudly to and fro, their puffed-up breasts jiggling steadily. From time to time, one of the pigeons spread its wings, flew around the roof, and swooped back down again. Suddenly, all the little heads quivered in unison, each pigeon’s eyes fixed on its fellows’, and, as if by royal command, the entire flock took to the air with a great flapping of wings, like a swirl of snowflakes glinting in the sun.

I looked up to follow their flight. They circled about in one spot, up and down, like members of a devoted, close-knit family. If one pigeon happened to get separated from its companions, it immediately flew back to rejoin the flock, quivering with joy. How different, I thought, was all this from what was going on at home. At a time when we should have been at our happiest, on Passover, the most beautiful holiday of the year, our joy was disturbed.

While I was watching the pigeons, I heard Ite’s choked voice through the open window.

“Auntie, dear Auntie! I swear on my life!”

“You don’t have to swear, Ite!” I heard Mother say, her voice deep and heavy. “I want to know the truth.”

“It’s the whole truth, Auntie. That’s what happened. We arranged to meet at a spot in the woods, he and I. We were only going for a walk … We talked about Warsaw, about Lodz, but later, when it got dark, he wanted to …”