Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (37 page)

Summer was different. I wanted Mother to see how I, together with Pieterke and Janek, spent our days in the field, how I rolled about in the stubble, how I climbed up on the haystacks and helped with the mowing.

Just then, as it happened, a peasant handed me a scythe to show me how to cut hay. The scythe was too big for me to hold easily and too heavy, but I went ahead anyway—and drove the sharp blade right into my foot. The grass I had so clumsily cut fell to the ground in a bloody heap.

Mother instantly looked up from her book and let out a wail. She had had enough of Lenive, she moaned. What did Father want of her young life? She had gone from being a rich housewife with brass handles on the door to becoming a peasant woman in Lenive. And to add to all her troubles, she had to stand by while I cut my foot, on the very leg that the dog had bitten on Shavuoth.

Father tried quietly to explain that Lenive wasn’t to blame, that the accident was my fault, because I kept crawling into places where I shouldn’t, and that she should stop screaming, because everyone was looking at us and laughing.

Actually, there was no reason for her to be carrying on like that, since my foot didn’t hurt at all. I merely hopped around on one foot for a little while, like a fettered horse, and as soon as I could walk straight, I jumped onto a small, yellow horse with no saddle, and galloped home with Pieterke and Janek.

No, Mother was all wrong. It was a lot more fun here in Lenive, in this backwater, than in Mother’s old town of Konskowola, the place with all the brass door handles.

It was only as the Sabbath approached that we were assailed by feelings of sadness and longing. Early on Friday mornings, even before Father and I were up, Toybe was already on her way to the village to buy a pound of fish, a piece of veal, and two to three small Sabbath loaves. But here, in Lenive, it wasn’t possible to prepare
tsholent
, the special Sabbath casserole that simmered overnight in the oven, and although Toybe was a wonderful cook, the food here didn’t have that special Sabbath taste and smell.

What was missing was the table covered with the white Sabbath cloth, the two silver-plated candlesticks, the yellow sand on the floor, and even old Pavlova, who came to light the kitchen stove.

Here in Lenive, Sabbath eves fell later than they did in town. One didn’t hear the noises of the stores shutting down, nor the footsteps of Jews hurrying home at the last minute from the baths, with wet side curls and freshly brushed beards.

Here in Lenive, on Friday evenings, like every other evening of the week, the bell of the church began to toll. The peasants, as they did every evening, would start for home, their scythes and rakes slung over their shoulders, singing their usual songs. The cows bellowed, just like every night of the year, and even the sun, which, back in town, on a Friday evening before candle-lighting time, blazed above the synagogue before setting, here dropped in a pale, cold descent.

We, the only Jews in Lenive, also felt a chill, despite the aroma of peppery fish and roast veal that filled the house, rising up to the picture of the Holy Mother, lit by its oil flame. But we didn’t observe the Sabbath at home.

First, sweaty and sunburnt from a week in the fields, we soaped ourselves thoroughly at our peasant-landlord’s pump. Then, cleansed and rid of six days of Gentile existence, we set out for the mowed meadow to celebrate the Sabbath. On one side, the growing wheat swayed gently, on the other, the woods were falling into dark slumber. Our Sabbath table was a patch of field, between forest and wheat.

Mother spread an old tablecloth on the ground and lit the Sabbath candles, tiny, thin ones, stuck into four hollowed potatoes, over which she recited the blessings, not standing up, as at home, but sitting on the ground, her feet tucked under her. In the open field, surrounded by a black, star-studded sky, Mother’s candle-lighting seemed even more special than at home.

Father’s prayers welcoming in the Sabbath also took on a different air. There he stood, tall and broad-shouldered, his waist girdled as befitting a pious Jew, his face turned to the dark forest, chanting into its depths, “O come let us sing before the Lord,” and “Come my friend, to meet the bride, let us welcome the Sabbath.”

He was no longer the Reb Leyzer of the city, with the dreamy gray eyes that never demanded more than their due, nor the same hay merchant who lived out his days on a horse-drawn wagon, nor the
Pan kupiec
who, barefoot, in a pair of cotton pants, toiled in the field.

Now, Father was one of God’s Jews, who, together with Moses our Teacher, went forth from the land of Egypt and stood at the foot of Mount Sinai.

I was in awe of Father. I chanted and prayed along with him, in the same passionate manner, and although my peasant friends Pieterke and Janek were quietly laughing at us, I now felt bigger and stronger than they.

I could see that Toybe was also in awe of Father. Here, in the village, his attitude toward her had changed completely. He no longer was angry with her or shouted at her. He gladly ate her cooking and often threw her long, warm looks.

Toybe herself had undergone a change. She always smelled of fresh air and sun.

“Papa,” she’d say, as he stood perspiring in the middle of the field, “I’ve brought you something to eat.”

Father would then drop whatever he was doing, walk over to the woods with his daughter, taking note of her strong, brown legs and sturdy figure. One Sabbath afternoon, after the meal, while resting at the edge of the forest and quietly going over the Sayings of the Sages, he turned to Mother.

“What do you say about Toybe?” he asked.

Mother never lifted her spectacles from her book, only shaking her nose.

“What’s there to say?”

“A girl as strong as a tree, God bless her …” he said, and a short while later, added, “If only there could be a proper match.”

“Here, in Lenive, you expect to find a match, a proper one yet?”

“It’s the same world everywhere, Frimet.”

“Here in Lenive, there are only
shkotsim
, Gentiles.”

Father didn’t reply. He mumbled another verse of the Sayings of the Sages and, several minutes later, returned to the topic.

“I feel sorry for her.”

“Who asked her to do what she did?” Mother said quietly.

Just then, Toybe came out of the woods, dressed in her Sabbath best, well rested, a flowered kerchief thrown across a shoulder, pretty, in full bloom, but suffused with sadness. She had no one here in the village. The young Gentile men stole looks at her from beneath the visors of their caps, but she kept away from them. All week long she drudged in the house and slept soundly at night, with deep, healthy breaths. Only on the Sabbath, especially then, when her work was done, did she toss in bed, often talking in her sleep. After the Sabbath meal, she would wander about aimlessly in the forest or in the wheat field, as if searching for someone or waiting for someone.

Maybe that someone would actually turn up.

It was the beginning of the new week. Toybe was home cooking supper. A light breeze, scarcely noticeable, was blowing across the field, where the work was in full sway. Far off on the horizon, above the last little white hut, a cloud crested, so tiny that, if one didn’t look up, one wouldn’t even have noticed it.

The peasants crinkled their faces at the sky and said that they should work quicker, because a storm was brewing.

They swung their scythes at a frantic pace, their overheated bodies giving off a strong odor of perspiration. Meanwhile, the little white cloud moved over to another hut. Hardly visible to the eye, it began to turn blue. The sun dipped several times behind a large, wide shadow, like under a cool sheet.

A restless humming drifted in from the forest. Birds flew in confused circles over the wheat field. A horse started neighing. A peasant woman stepped out from her hut, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and hurriedly pulled the few pieces of wash that had been hung to dry on the fence.

The blue dimness, behind which the sun had been hiding earlier, now settled on the haystacks. Clouds of dust from the unpaved road rose up in the air, mingling with the fallen leaves that were blowing about. The peasants, grabbing their scythes and rakes, let the mown grass lay where it had fallen, leaving it to God’s mercy, and headed either for the nearby church or for home.

Mother, with her open parasol, ran home at the first gust of wind. Only Father and I remained in the field, reckoning that the storm would pass quickly.

All of a sudden, a flaming blue flash of lightning streaked across the sky from one corner to the other, followed within seconds by the first clap of thunder, rumbling out of the woods.

There was no point in lingering any longer. Father and I grabbed hold of whatever we could and began to run. We were chased by a second round of thunder, short, sharp bursts that seemed to come from close by. A smell of sulfur settled on the roof of our mouths.

I ran, praying all the way. Suddenly, as we were approaching our hut, a torrent of rain came down over our heads, pelting us at an angle, like the lash of a whip. Toybe ran toward us with a sack. She quickly threw it over my head, grabbed my hand, and, that way, dragged me into the house. Father followed, thoroughly drenched, his beard dripping and his shirt clinging to his skin.

Crosses appeared at the neighboring windows. At the blacksmith’s, the fence was suddenly ripped from its moorings and flew into the air like a stick of kindling, before falling to the ground. No one came out to set it right. It seemed as if the whole village had fallen victim to a sudden death.

Then, as if from nowhere, a living soul appeared, a solitary figure in the midst of the downpour. He was running with bent head and fell into our vestibule. He must have dropped from the sky along with the rain. He was barefoot and thin, dressed in a long, soaked kapote, which glistened like black tin. Across one shoulder he held onto a pair of waterlogged boots. All shriveled up, he looked like an old boot himself.

“God be praised,” he said, in the Polish spoken by the peasants.

“For ever and ever after,” Father answered back, in the same peasant speech.

Our unexpected visitor lifted his head, revealing a shrunken, bony face. We all looked closely at him and Father said softly, “I think it’s a Jew.”

“Of course a Jew. What else?” the man said, straightening up and shaking himself free of water, like a dog emerging from a river.

“
Sholem aleykhem
.” Father stretched out his hand.

“
Aleykhem sholem
. Who knew that Jews lived here?”

“Where are you from?”

“From Brzozowa.”

“Where is that?”

“Some four miles from here.”

“You’re not by any chance a
klezmer
, a musician?”

“God forbid! How can I be a
klezmer
?”

Father smiled. He had always considered musicians to be losers and fools.

“Nu, come in. Take off your
kapote
. You’re dripping wet.”

“Who expected this downpour? When I set out early this morning, it was already hot and the sun was shining.”

He threw down his boots from his shoulder. Water poured out, like from a bucket. With some effort he took off the soaked
kapote
and remained standing in an old, threadbare, unbuttoned vest.

“What’s your trade?” Father asked.

“A shoemaker.”

“A shoemaker, of all things. How does a shoemaker happen to come here in such a downpour?”

“This isn’t the first time that I’m here. I make the rounds of the villages doing repairs. But go be a prophet and know that a Jew lives here now. Honestly, you can’t imagine how happy this makes me.”

The shoemaker had a sparse beard and thin, veined hands, and spoke Yiddish with a Litvak—that is, Lithuanian—accent, accompanied by a little smile and a hesitant cough.

Toybe lit the lamp. Warm shadows sprawled across the room. Mother sat with a furrowed brow, casting side glances at the stranger, as if she couldn’t believe that someone had actually turned up here and that all he was saying was indeed true. The thundering outside the window had stopped. The shoemaker dried off a bit and was getting ready to leave, when Mother asked him to stay and join us for supper.

Sitting at the table, he told us that he wasn’t born in this part of the country but in Brisk, and that he was still a bachelor. He had no mother. In fact, he had no one in Poland, only in Leipzig, in Germany, where he had a father, the head of a yeshiva.

“Is that so? How does the head of a yeshiva come to have a son who’s a shoemaker?”

Our visitor himself had no idea, but said that there were many children at home—may they be spared the evil eye—boys and girls, and not enough income to provide for all. So his stepmother had apprenticed him to a shoemaker.

Mother unfurrowed her brow and stopped casting side glances at him. Now she listened with interest.

“What’s your father’s name?” she asked in a warm voice.

“Yankev-Yitzkhok.”

“If he lives in Germany,” she went on, “your father must speak German.”

“Of course, he speaks German.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Wolf.”

Wolf! Of all the names! Why, I marveled, Father has two sons-in-law, both of them called Wolf. One was a butcher, and the other a mender of wheels, who also knew how to shoe horses.

That this shoemaker, with his Litvak Yiddish and his little crooked smile, should also be called Wolf seemed a great wonder to me. But Mother, it appeared, didn’t fancy the name “Wolf” and started calling him “Little Shoemaker”—and so he would remain for eternity.

That night Little Shoemaker stayed over. A bed was set up for him in a tiny room, which held a barrel of pickled cabbage and was where the hens roosted. Before turning in, he thanked us profusely. He looked down at our bare feet and asked if we didn’t need any shoe repairs. He was a good craftsman, he said, and had even worked in Warsaw once.

That night, Toybe tossed in bed. Mother called out to Father several times, “Leyzer, are you asleep?” But father was snoring away, deeply and loudly. I think that he was the only one who slept soundly that night.