Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (35 page)

“Him and his onions!” Mother furrowed her brow in contempt.

Itshe the doctor was no longer called in to see me. My leg healed without his leeches.

No one at home spoke about what had happened. Mother no longer dropped in at the prison guard’s house. I heard that Doctor Przyłucki was called in to see Janinka, who was running a fever, and that her father was looking for Yankl, to put him in jail.

But Yankl had vanished. Toybe said that Yankl was a mad dog, a criminal, a thief, and that he had bitten Janinka. What did he want from that little Gentile girl?

I also didn’t know why he had bitten Janinka, just like a mad dog. No wonder he had disappeared.

One day Mother came home and told us that Yarme the coachman had caught up with his scoundrel of a son. He had been hiding out in the house of a Gentile woman, in the non-Jewish part of town. She fed him sausages, bought him a navy-blue cap with a leather peak, and tried to talk him into becoming a Christian. When Yarme the coachman found out about this, he went straight to the woman’s house, gave Yankl two resounding slaps in the face, tore off his boots and navy-blue cap, bound him like a sheep, and in that fashion dragged him off to Warsaw.

Who knew if I would ever see Yankl again, especially since Mother was again thinking of moving.

By now my leg was completely healed. All that remained of the dog’s bite was a reddish-blue scar that grew fainter by the day.

It was on one of those days that Father came home before nightfall, all covered in sweat, and asked for a basin of water and some soap. He stripped off his vest and his shirt and, standing over the basin, hairy and still sweating, said that, God willing, after the Sabbath, all of us would be driving out to a village.

Mother stared at him in amazement, probably thinking that he was drunk, else why, on an ordinary weekday, would he be washing up like this? Moreover, what was all this talk about driving out to a village?

Father buried his face and beard in a long towel. He snorted into the room, displaying all of his teeth, and explained that the reason for the thorough wash was, first, because he had just returned from a long trip and it had been unbearably hot and dusty. Second, he had just concluded a business deal, an important one, which made it necessary for all of us to ride out to the village in question.

Mother didn’t understand what he was saying. Neither did Toybe and I. Father had never in his life transacted any important business deals, nor had we ever driven out to any villages.

Father explained that he, together with his partner Motl Straw, had leased for the summer the meadows adjacent to the village of Lenive, about seven miles away. They would mow the hay themselves and, later, harvest the crops. Their tenure would extend—they should live and be well—until the High Holidays. For business reasons, Motl Straw would be remaining in town, whereas Father would stay in Lenive. Why drive seven miles there, and seven miles back, every day? In short, we would all be moving to Lenive.

Mother listened to all this with an unbelieving look on her face. Toybe peered in through the open kitchen door. Nobody spoke. Mother finally broke the silence.

“And where exactly is that Lenive of yours?” she asked in a haughty voice.

“It’s in a wonderful area. There’s a forest, a river. There’s cheese, butter, eggs—all practically free.”

“And where will we live in that Lenive of yours?” Mother asked in that same haughty tone.

“We’ll find a place. There’s no need to worry.”

Mother wasn’t at all pleased and kept twisting her mouth.

“That Lenive of yours, it must be a two-bit, nothing of a place, a backwater.”

“What do you mean? It’s right off the highway, and from where we’d be, it’s only a mile or two to the village.”

“For a whole summer?” Mother asked with alarm.

“What do you think, for just one day? Besides, you’ll be in the fresh air.”

“You can have your fresh air. Big deal! Living among peasants!”

“What do you want?” Father was now angry. “I should run back and forth seven miles every day?”

“Who’s telling you to run? You ride on a horse and wagon, don’t you?”

Father didn’t answer. He was eating his leftover grits slowly and without relish. He looked distressed.

I was distressed, too. Summers were always very hot and there was nowhere to escape the heat. To ask Father to drive back and forth every day was simply inhuman. Besides, why shouldn’t we move to Lenive? There was a river there, Father said, and a forest. We’d mow the hay. It would be a whole different sort of life.

In any event, Yankl was no longer here. As for the chief prison guard and his family, it was forbidden even to look at their door. The blond Janinka no longer recognized me. Sime-Yoysef’s kheyder was cramped and dark. Sime-Yoysef himself lay in bed all day long, moaning. So why was Mother reluctant to move to Lenive?

Toybe was also in favor of our moving. She knew what it was like to live in a village. But she said nothing, being under orders not to speak when Father was at home. But from the look in her eyes you could see that she was ready to pack up at once.

“Nu, and you, Mendl?” Father turned to me. “Do you also think it’s a backwater?”

“No, Father,” I said, “I want to go there.”

“You’re asking him?” Mother scoffed. “He won’t have to go to the
kheyder
!”

“Sime-Yoysef isn’t teaching anyway,” I said, growing bolder. “He lies in bed all day long.”

“Well, the rest of you can go. Who’s stopping you?” Mother shook her head angrily. “I also have a place to go to. Warsaw is as nice as Lenive.”

“Again, Warsaw?”

“Yes, again Warsaw. After all, I have a child there.”

“And Mendl?” said Father, with a full toss of his beard. “He’s not your child?”

“But why Lenive, of all places? If it were at least Gorbatka.”

“Gorbatka is for rich people, for the high and mighty. Leyzer the hay merchant doesn’t belong in Gorbatka.”

That was the end of that, at least for a while. Mother walked around seething with resentment. Toybe made up Father’s bed and served his meals. Father said nothing.

I stopped going to the
kheyder
altogether. Doctor Fiedler was called to my teacher Sime-Yoysef’s bedside. People said that Sime-Yoysef was in dire need of everyone’s mercy.

I, along with the other boys, wandered idly around the peasant carts, squeezing bags of wheat and cracking nuts. At home the question remained unresolved as to whether we were staying or moving away. That Sabbath afternoon, following the meal, Father took a short nap and then went off to his partner. Toybe was sitting in the courtyard. Mother was also planning to go out, when an unexpected Sabbath guest showed up—Grandma Rokhl.

That’s all Mother needed. She unloosed a torrent of tears and complaints—that Father intended to exile her to some godforsaken backwater for the whole summer, that he had no compassion for her youth, that he was a murderer, not a husband, and that she might even be driven to desperate measures.

Grandma Rokhl had never gotten along with Father. They had never—God forbid!—quarreled, but each nursed a grudge against the other. Every now and then Father would remark that whatever bad traits mother had were inherited from Grandma. Grandma, on the other hand, maintained that, after the brass door handles her daughter had enjoyed with her first husband, she’d made a mistake in marrying my father. Now that Mother was complaining so openly to her about Father, it was obvious to me that Grandma, too, would advise against the proposed move.

It turned out, however, that I’d been altogether mistaken about Grandma.

“You should thank God,” she said after Mother had cried herself out. “You should thank God that such an opportunity has come about.”

Mother looked utterly bewildered.

“You too, Mother?” she said.

“What do you mean? Who would even think of passing up such an opportunity?”

“But to move to that backwater?”

“It’s perfect for the summer. What do you have here? Besides,” Grandma turned to me, “take a look at how pale he is. And you? Do you look any better?”

“But I don’t want to move to a village.”

“What do you mean, you don’t want. Is it only about what
you
want?”

Mother lapsed into angry silence. Grandma continued talking. She praised Father and said that it had never once occurred to
her
husband, Grandpa that is, to send
his
wife to the country for a breath of fresh air. As she was leaving, Grandma warned Mother—for God’s sake!—not to act foolishly.

That evening, after the
havdole
prayer ushering in the new week, Father spoke up.

“Nu, Frimet,” he asked, “what have you decided?”

“I’ll think about it. Where’s the fire?”

The following day, Sunday, we still didn’t know what Mother had decided. She busied herself all day long, washing, sewing, mending. Toybe stood bent over a tub full of dirty laundry, flushed and disheveled. Mother took down two dusty bottles of blackberry juice from the top of the wardrobe and posed a question to Toybe.

“So, what do you think? Should I take these with us?”

“I think you’d better,” Toybe replied. “It’s summer, and there are all kinds of sicknesses going around.”

It wasn’t until Wednesday morning, after several nights of sleeping on pillows stripped of their covers, that a peasant cart drew up in front of our house and a young Gentile, tall as a tree and holding a whip, came inside.

“Are we going or not?” he called out.

“We’re going, we’re going,” Father replied joyfully, and nodded in Toybe’s direction. “Nu, start taking the things outside.”

It was the first time since her return from the hospital that Father had addressed her directly.

The red, feather-strewn bedclothes were loaded onto the wagon. We packed the kneading board and the rolling pin. Mother stuck the bottles of blackberry juice inside a tub. Plates and bowls were shoved into the bedding and … goodbye to the big courtyard and the orchard and Yarme the coachman’s omnibus.

Father still had to run over to see his partner and told us to wait for him at the barrier gate. Mother refused to sit on the wagon. She wasn’t going to rattle through the whole town on top of a peasant cart. She, too, would meet us at the barrier gate.

So be it. Meanwhile, Toybe and I were sitting on the soft bedding, she with her back to the driver, and I in front, near the horse.

A blue mist hung over the courtyard. The roofs were shimmering with dew. The sun filtered thinly through the trees in the orchard. The window of the prison guard’s place was covered with a sheet. Janinka was probably still asleep. Yankl, too, was gone. There was no one for me to say goodbye to. I should have been happy. Weren’t we moving to a village? I don’t know why, but I wasn’t happy at all.

Yarme the coachman and his wife came out to bid us farewell. He wiped his hand on a bunch of straw, wished us a good journey, and told me to be a fine, decent person, not like that bastard of a son of his, Yankl. Yarme’s wife hugged and kissed Mother, wished us all a good journey, too, and said that we should meet only at celebrations.

The cart began to move. The streets lay cool and half-empty. The shops were shuttered, secure behind their locked iron bars.

A boy from Sime-Yoysef’s
kheyder
sprang out of a house and shouted up at me, “Mendl, where are you off to?”

“To Lenive,” I shouted back and stood up, so he could get a better look at me, “to the fresh air!”

The boy looked a bit foolish, standing there. If I’d had any say in the matter, and if his mother had packed him some provisions, I would have tried to talk Father into taking him along with us to Lenive.

The town receded behind us. Of all the houses and roofs, only the Gentile hospital remained in clear view, its stand of trees merging into a single mass.

The sun, a dense ball, already stood over the cross of the Bernardine church. The shadows of the poplars along the highway crept toward the fields. Open expanses stretched in all directions.

Father was already waiting at the barrier gate. Mother hadn’t arrived yet. Father poked the bedding and examined the cart from all sides. Once again he checked the ropes, and he told me to take off my coat. It was going to be a hot day, he said, and I’d melt otherwise.

We waited some time for Mother to show up. At last she arrived, gasping for breath and perspiring. She would have been earlier, she said, but she had to go get a parasol.

Now we were on our way. Mother sat in the very middle. Under her open parasol, which cast a blue-green reflection, Mother resembled a mushroom. Wooden huts with thatched roofs, also looking like mushrooms, were scattered across the fields. The wheat was beginning to sprout, sending up green shoots. Now the Jewish cemetery swam into view. Just over there, among that group of trees, our Moyshe lay buried. Mother shut her parasol and looked in that direction. As we drove on, she turned around several times for yet another look, until the fence of the cemetery became ever smaller and dissolved into the heat.

We reached a wooden bridge spanning a river. Barefoot peasant women, their skirts hitched up, were beating their wash with paddles.

Our wagon pulled to a halt. The driver unharnessed the horse and led it down to the river for a drink, We also loosened ourselves from our harnesses, so to speak, and climbed down from the wagon. Mother had brought along hot tea, bread and butter, hard-boiled eggs, and even a bottle of liquor.

We sat down at the bank of the river, under the only tree, to take our refreshment. Father helped himself to several small sips of the whiskey. Our young peasant driver threw back his head and drained his glass to the dregs. Mother dunked a piece of white bread into a small glass, and Toybe and I downed half a glassful. All of us now sated and satisfied, including the horse, we set out once again on our journey.

It was midday. Dappled cows moved wearily across the meadows. A peasant put a hand to his forehead and looked up at the sun, big and white, burning down on our shoulders.

The road was empty. It was an ordinary weekday and no one was driving into town. We passed an old woman carrying a bundle, trudging with tired steps. Further along, we came across a blond Jew, bathed in sweat, who was twisting the tail of a stubborn, yellow-flecked calf.