Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (32 page)

And I heard God say, “I’ll make you shine.”

Whereupon, your sheaves bowed down to mine.

When the brothers heard this, Simeon, the one wearing the wagon-driver’s jacket, stepped forward and, in an angry voice, retorted:

Now you listen to us!

Away with your dreams, enough!

What good will the divine promise do you,

Since we intend to put a finish to you?

The audience, I among them, held their breath. It was clear to us that Joseph, alas, was done for. The righteous Joseph rose up from the footstool and, hands outstretched to his brothers, sang:

The angels will weep to see one brother

Laying a murderous hand on another.

But Simeon was evil. He pounded his staff and, in a murderous fury, like an emperor, commanded:

Brothers, dear brothers, let’s do what we must,

Strip his silk shirt, turn him to dust.

Quick, brothers, let’s dig a pit

And toss that braggart right into it.

Joseph raised his hands to Heaven and implored God to shut closed the mouths of all the snakes and scorpions that must be lurking in the pit and to keep him from harm.

Now the brothers grabbed hold of Joseph, threw him into the lion’s pit that lay just behind Mother Rachel’s tombstone, and then sat themselves down to eat and drink. While they were gorging, a group of Ishmaelites, seven in all, emerged from the other room. They were all tall, with flaxen beards and big, red noses, their heads wrapped in white towels.

Once again it was Simeon who stood up, bowed to the slave-traders, and addressed them as follows:

O, masters from a foreign land,

We want to sell you Joseph, here at hand.

The asking price, if you agree,

Is twenty silver pieces, clear and free.

The Ishmaelites didn’t haggle and straightaway the exchange was concluded.

Joseph, from within the lion’s pit, must have overheard what was going on, for he soon broke out into song, wailing and weeping:

Mother, O Mother, listen as I moan,

For I am helpless and alone.

I beg you, run to save me

From my brothers, run to free me.

The tombstone began to shake and I felt cold all over, along with, no doubt, everybody else in the hall.

A white figure stepped out from behind the tombstone, wearing a long robe with a veil over the face, like that of a bride. The white-clad figure trembled like a leaf.
It was obvious to everybody that this was Sheve the seamstress, who was known for her songs about love, about orphans, and about “a rose that fell by the wayside.”

A profound hush now fell over the room. It grew so quiet you could hear a fly fluttering.

Sheve, looking taller than usual, rested one hand on her own tombstone, and began singing in a broken voice:

Joseph, Joseph, my dear saint,

I hear your cry, I hear your plaint.

O pain and woe, woe and pain!

Those murderers would have you slain.

Father Joseph’s sons slowly began to slink away, one behind the other, like a file of geese, leaving Mother Rachel—for that is who the white-clad figure was—alone with the Ishmaelites. She then extended her hands to them, pleading in a tearful mother’s voice:

Ah, woe is me! Dear people,

Take pity on Joseph, my darling child.

See my tears, hear my plea.

He is flesh and blood, like you and me.

But the Ishmaelites didn’t understand Yiddish, and Joseph was sold into slavery. Anyway they had already paid out twenty silver pieces for him, so why should they feel pity for poor Mother Rachel? The brothers returned home to Father Jacob, and told him that a wild beast had devoured Joseph.

While Mother Rachel was singing and pleading, the Ishmaelites bound Joseph hand and foot and dragged him, as one would a sheep.

It wasn’t clear what was happening, but all of a sudden, while Sheve the seamstress was sinking back into her grave, the entire hall broke out into an uproar. People were stamping their feet, pushing their way to the door. Down front, where a sea of women’s wigs and men’s hats had collected, a girl’s desperate voice cried out, “Help! Help! Woe is me!”

I broke into a cold sweat. This was the same cry I had heard coming from Toybe, when she lay in the snow.

Mother must have been affected the same way, for she began to elbow her way through the crowd, in an attempt to leave the hall.

“Let me pass!” she pleaded. “I don’t feel well. Let me pass!”

The crowd somehow moved aside and made way for Mother. Everybody was looking at her, in the same way they did when Toybe lay torn in two in the synagogue lane.

True, this time the girl in distress wasn’t Toybe, but it recalled that black Sabbath day, when Toybe was rushed to the hospital.

Now, too, a girl was in the throes of a miscarriage. Women pinched their cheeks, men made jokes. Mother and I hurried home. Mother didn’t say a word. That night, she got out of bed several times to make sure that the door was properly locked.

The next morning she applied grated horseradish to her forehead. She kept complaining that she regretted having been talked into going to see
The Sale of Joseph
.

“It wasn’t worth it,” she said. “It wasn’t anything like the way the Brody Singers played it.”

In town people gossiped about the girl who had miscarried inside Yosl-Tsalel’s hall. They mentioned the name of our own Toybe. Women spat and said that the girl who interrupted the Purim play, that whore, would come to a bad end, just like Toybe. Wasn’t it a fact that Doctor Koszicki had cut her to pieces and that she had died at his hands?

Inevitably, the ugly gossip found its way into our house. Father didn’t hear it, but Mother did. The malicious talk bowed her down, like a bush bending in the wind.

On the morning of Purim, Father didn’t leave for his usual rounds. After breakfast he put on his Sabbath
kapote
and cloth cap, took up his cane, and stepped out jauntily into the street, just like a regular merchant. Mother plucked a feather off his shoulder and told him not to forget—for Heaven’s sake!—to come home on time, and returned to her holiday baking.

The house was redolent of cinnamon and oil. The
homentashen
, large and three-cornered, emerged from the oven the color of oranges. Father returned, bearing real oranges, oozing with blood-red juice, as well as half a dozen decorated confections, twisted into shapes of Polish letters, made out of cornstarch and sugar. He placed a sparkling bottle of wine from the Holy Land on the table, along with a small bag of raisins and some hard nuts, which nobody in the whole, wide world could crack.

That night, in honor of the Purim feast, the house looked especially tidy and bright. The red floor, which Mother had polished several times that day, shone like the Holy Land wine. The glistening lamp and the flickering lights from the two silver candlesticks lent an affluent air to the room. Father’s beard, clean and combed, took up the entire head of the table. Were it not for his tired-looking eyes, which had become even more dreamy since Toybe’s misfortune, one might have thought that Father had suddenly struck it rich.

Who knows? Maybe he had.

Mother had invited old Gitele, Yosl the glazier’s widow, for the holiday feast. This tiny woman, poor soul, always wore, summer and winter, a long black coat, like a man’s, and never let go of her little tattered parasol. This parasol, said Mother, served her better than her own legs. Mother also considered Gitele a scholar, for she knew how to study the weekly portion of the Torah, including the Rashi commentary, and even a page of Talmud. Poor though old Gitele was, Mother felt honored that she had deigned to accept the invitation.

Gitele now sat at the table in her long black coat, with a red band on her head that shook like an angry rooster’s comb. Her wrinkled, emaciated face trembled along. Her thin, shrunken lips had all but receded into her mouth. So tiny was she that she filled only half her chair. But her little black eyes looked alert and shone with lively fire.

Mother’s face was flushed. She looked like a real lady in her black taffeta blouse, with the soft jabot at the neck. She warmly greeted all the masked revelers who stopped by briefly, in accordance with Purim custom, to serenade us with holiday song.

Next, Mother cut some pieces of strudel, took down from the cupboard one of her best
homentashen
, added one of the sugary Polish letters that Father had picked up in town, and brought them over to our Gentile neighbor, the Polish chief prison guard, who, poor man, knew nothing of Purim and its custom of
shalakhmones
, the exchange of foodstuffs among friends and neighbors.

Father made up a plate containing an orange, a small cluster of raisins, two hard nuts, and a piece of strudel. He covered everything with a white cloth, handed me the single bottle of wine in the house, the Holy Land wine, and told me to take it all over to Uncle Bentsien as a
shalakhmones
offering.

Mother took offense.

“How many bottles of wine do you have that you can give one away?” she admonished Father.

“What should I do? Not send it along?”

“Bentsien will manage without your wine.”

“Don’t worry,” Father said pleasantly. “Bentsien will send back another bottle, an even better one.”

This latest development bothered me. I had been waiting all this while for the bottle to be uncorked, so I could have a taste of the contents. Now Father decided to give it away to Bentsien, the community secretary! As if he didn’t already have plenty of wine. But if Father ordered it, I could hardly refuse. So, with a heavy heart, I proceeded to take the offering over to Father’s brother-in-law.

The street was filled with boys. All were carrying covered plates, with cloths concealing little humps. There were also older Jews walking about. Coming toward me was a group wearing masks with false faces and red, bulbous noses.

At our house the door was wide open to the revelers. Not so at Uncle Bentsien’s. There the door was locked, and though I wasn’t in Purim disguise, I had to shout out that I was Leyzer the hay merchant’s son, and that I’d come with
shalakhmones
.

The maidservant peeked out through a crack in the door and asked me again who I was, what was I bringing, and who was it I wanted. Didn’t that fool of a maid know who I was?

“I want Uncle Bentsien!”

Only then did she let me in and lead me to the living room.

This time, unlike on the Sukkoth and Passover visits, Aunt Naomi’s house wasn’t dark. Now the table stood in the center of the room, a large table it was, covered with a white cloth. There were two bright lamps, one hanging from the ceiling, the other standing on the table, next to two heavier, silver candlesticks, real silver, ornately embossed. The candles were taller than ours and much thicker. On the table sat a dazzling, colorful array of baskets, filled with oranges, dates, and all sorts of candies. There were also numerous bottles of wine on the table, so many it was impossible to count them.

Bentsien was sitting at the head of the table, sprawled in an armchair. He wore a new, eight-cornered silk skullcap, and his beard seemed whiter than it did the rest of the year. He looked languid and sated. His son Mendl was dressed in a stiff white collar and a black necktie. He was sitting spread out like his Father. His face was serene, though a bit flushed, his hands white and clean. Only his lips were squeezed tightly together as if he were in pain.

Mendl didn’t give me a single glance. After all, he had paid no attention to any of the other boys who had been dropping off the
shalakhmones
offerings.

Aunt Naomi sat upright, her black silk dress, with its many folds and puffed sleeves, making soft, rustling noises. Like a coiled snake, the braided chain of a gold brooch gleamed at her throat. Her dark, pious face with its prominent eyebrows smiled at me.

“Ah,
shalakhmones
,” she said. “Praised be the Almighty. And how is your father … ? Ah, good … Praised be His name … And how is your mother … ? Really … ? Is that so?”

I remained standing in the middle of the room, maybe out of shame, or maybe because of fear of all the strangers who were sitting around the table and staring at me. I felt as if my entire body was burning. I wanted to flee from there. It just didn’t seem right to be there.

Aunt Naomi took the offerings from our plate and replaced them with two small oranges, a few figs, and two or three fair-sized almonds. Then, as I was about to leave, she handed me a large dust-covered bottle of wine from the table and shoved a coin into my hand.

I could feel that it was a twenty-kopek piece. This made me happy. But I was even happier to be rid of this particular
shalakhmones
obligation and of all those strange eyes staring at me. I hurried home for I still had to take
shalakhmones
over to Grandpa and to Aunt Miriam. I was especially looking forward to going to Aunt Miriam’s, for I knew that I wouldn’t be going home from there. Aunt Miriam would take off my coat with her own little warm hands, seat me down at the table, and make sure that I spent the night.

At Aunt Miriam’s Purim was always more jolly than anywhere else. Khaiml, Aunt Miriam’s only son, danced around the room like a bear, imitated a monkey carrying water, a crowing rooster, and a cat waiting in ambush to catch a mouse. Leye, Aunt Miriam’s youngest daughter, recited poetry in Polish and sang a song about the beautiful Wanda who, rather than marry a German, threw herself into the Vistula. In addition to all this, Aunt Miriam’s strudel was more delicious than any other in town, all the more reason for me to hurry over there.

When I returned from Uncle Bentsien’s, everybody was waiting for me. By then the candles had burnt down halfway. Gitele, Yosl the glazier’s widow, had dropped off to sleep. I put down Aunt Naomi’s
shalakhmones
and quietly told mother about the twenty kopeks Aunt Naomi had given me. Mother crinkled her nose.

“You had to take it, didn’t you!” she said, looking at Father out of the corner of her eye, as he carefully removed the cover from his sister’s
shalakhmones
.