Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (38 page)

Why was I twisting and turning? My mind kept churning and I thought that Little Shoemaker, asleep in the tiny room, must be one of the Thirty-Six Righteous Men, the hidden saints who sustain the world. He looked like he might be. Thunder and lightning had brought him here, and his father was the head of a yeshiva. What shoemaker had a father who was a yeshiva head? Moreover, why was everybody in the house so restless? Why did Toybe keep tossing in her bed? All of this didn’t just happen without some reason.

Early the next morning, after Father had poured water over his fingernails, and as Mother looked out sleepily from her bed, Little Shoemaker was already making ready to leave.

He was standing with yesterday’s waterlogged boots slung across one shoulder. He thanked us again for the supper and for the night’s lodging. Added to the boots on his shoulder were a pair of Mother’s shoes, which she had given him last evening to repair.

Toybe’s face was stuck into the pots. She was dressed, not in her usual red, short skirt but in a long dress. She wasn’t barefoot, but was wearing her laced-up Sabbath shoes. She stood there, tall and compact as a tree.

Little Shoemaker spoke in a sleep-rested voice, now to Mother, now to Father, but his eyes were turned to the kitchen, where Toybe was fixing breakfast. Actually, he was looking at Toybe’s shoes, for, as he was about to leave, he addressed her.

“Did you buy those shoes, or did you have them made?” he asked, speaking slowly.

Toybe lowered her face even deeper into her cooking and then took to blowing on the fire.

“You could certainly use a new pair of slippers.” Little Shoemaker offered his expert opinion.

“Who has money for new slippers?” Toybe replied somewhat angrily, and pushed her puffed-up cheeks even closer to the glowing embers.

“You don’t need money. I’ll make you a pair of slippers for no money at all.”

Toybe didn’t respond. Little Shoemaker took his leave for a third and a fourth time and finally left, one shoulder pointing upward, looking smaller than the day before.

The echo of his clipped, Litvak Yiddish lingered in the room. Toybe straightened up. Father was rushing to get to the field. Little Shoemaker must by now have been some distance away, when Mother suddenly broke the silence.

“Leyzer,” she said, “maybe we should ask him over for the Sabbath?”

Father didn’t hear her. His head was already in the field, among the haystacks. But since I was already dressed, I volunteered to run after him and tell him to come for the Sabbath.

“Don’t,” said Father, his hearing suddenly restored. “There’s no need to.”

“Why not?”

“He’s just a shoemaker.”

“And a shoemaker isn’t a human being? You yourself heard that his father is the head of a yeshiva.”

“Big deal! So he’s head of a yeshiva. In Leipzig somewhere? Where is Leipzig anyway?”

“Wherever it is, that’s where it is. But we should invite him for the Sabbath as our guest.”

“As far as I’m concerned, invite him.”

“What do you say, Toybe?”

“What should I say?”

Outside, the air smelled of burnt cinders. Little Shoemaker had already reached the large wooden cross, where the road divided.

“Hey!” I called after him. “You there!”

The boots on his shoulder turned toward the cross and Little Shoemaker looked at me with a thoughtful, sunken face. I told him that Mother was inviting him to be our guest this coming Sabbath.

His bony face broke out in dimples. Only now did it strike me that he wasn’t as ugly as he had seemed back in the house.

“Your guest, you say?”

“Yes, our guest.”

“How old are you, young man?”

“What’s the difference?”

“It makes a difference to me.”

“I’m as old as I am. Anyhow, Mother asked me to invite you.”

“And what’s your name?”

“What do you care?”

“I do care.”

“My name’s Mendl.”

“Is that so? And the girl back there, is she your sister?”

“Yes, my sister from my father.”

“And your mother isn’t her mother?”

“No, an aunt.”

“Do you have any more sisters?”

“What’s it to you?”

He burst into deep laughter, not at all like a little Litvak shoemaker. He said that he’d be glad to come for the Sabbath, God willing, and asked me to give his regards to my sister, to Father, and especially to Mother.

The Sabbath was still a few days away. Toybe, however, was already busy. Each morning she put on her heavy, laced boots and took them off again. Many times, toward evening, Mother and Toybe walked out far into the field and returned after the peasants had already slung their scythes and rakes onto their shoulders. Toybe was silent and went to bed soon after supper.

On Friday, Toybe’s face glowed all day long. She baked large, yellow Sabbath loaves, perfumed with saffron. She went to the village and returned carrying a big, flat fish. Prior to the lighting of the Sabbath candles, she washed up at the pump with scented soap and changed her clothes. What with her freshly washed hair and her freshly starched garments, she looked like she was the one who should be lighting the candles, not Mother.

Little Shoemaker arrived after the candles had already been lit. He brought back Mother’s shoes beautifully repaired, and shined. He shone, too, no longer wearing an old cap with a greasy brim, but a smart, black cloth cap, a kapote with a slit down the back reaching to his ankles, and a pair of shoes with patent-leather tops. This was no longer Little Shoemaker, but a well-dressed young man, a respected father’s son.

That Friday evening, out in the field, the Sabbath was ushered in by three generations of Jews—a father, a young man, and me, a young boy. This time, Father swayed back and forth even more devoutly than the week before. Little Shoemaker stood up straight, reciting the prayers in a loud, clear voice, pronouncing each word separately, each word dropping like a shelled nut.

Mother listened along with full comprehension, her lips compressed, as if she were tasting something fine on her palate and didn’t want it to escape.

Toybe had a faraway look on her face. It was difficult to tell whether she was carried away by the dark murmurings of the forest or the clipped, Litvak-accented Hebrew of the prayers. When it came time for
kiddush
, the sanctification of the wine, Little Shoemaker recited the blessing, also in the Litvak manner. At the introductory words,
maranan verabanan
—my masters, my teachers—he so stressed the n’s that they rolled off his tongue, sounding like double
n
’s.

The next day, we ate our Sabbath meal in the forest. The peasants were at work in the meadows under a white-hot sun. The cows, plagued by the heat and the flies, wandered into the forest. Little Shoemaker sang the Sabbath hymns in a deep, breathy voice. Father hummed them under his nose. Large, blue flies buzzed on the tablecloth. Blackspotted orange ladybugs crawled across. No one chased them away, so intent were we on the beautiful Litvak renditions of the hymns.

After the meal, after Toybe had cleared everything away, Little Shoemaker again spoke about his father, the head of the yeshiva. He said that his father wrote him letters in the holy tongue and in every letter asked him why he was still unmarried, and how long did he intend to wait?

He himself didn’t know, only that no proper match seemed to offer itself. He was a good craftsman. He’d even saved up some money. But shoemaking, he said, was looked down upon.

“Aren’t you afraid of being taken into the army?” asked Mother, looking up from her storybook.

“I don’t worry about the army. I’ve been exempted,” he replied.

That was all. No one asked him any further questions and he said nothing more.

On Saturday night, after the brief
havdole
service, he asked Toybe to let him measure her for a pair of shoes. The High Holy Days were coming, he said, and it was hardly fitting that she should be walking around town in those shabby boots of hers.

Toybe stood there blushing, her eyes downcast. It was a puzzle to me why she was so shy and why she hadn’t spoken a word to Little Shoemaker the whole Sabbath.

“Fine,” Mother said. “Go ahead and measure her.”

Toybe put out her right foot, and Little Shoemaker measured it from all sides. No other shoemaker in the world took such a long time measuring. Little Shoemaker said that the only other foot as graceful as Toybe’s belonged to his own mother—may she rest in peace—and that the pair of slippers he would make for such pretty feet could be worn by the Emperor’s consort.

He proved as good as his word. In addition to his skill at praying and singing Sabbath hymns, that Litvak also knew how to make a pair of slippers fit for a queen. They were black, with pointy, patent-leather toes, beautifully sewn and shaped, and with high, hollow heels, light as a feather.

In them, Toybe looked taller and slimmer. In fact, her whole demeanor changed. She wore her new shoes the following Sabbath, when she went for a stroll with Little Shoemaker.

They stayed away for a long time. The sky over the fields was slowing dropping. Swallows, like blue arrows, pierced the cool air. The last swishes of the scythes, completing their work for the day, rang out. And still Toybe and Little Shoemaker hadn’t returned.

Mother closed her book and asked me whether I’d like to go for a walk with her. We walked along the same path that Toybe and Little Shoemaker had taken earlier.

The sun shone straight into our faces, bright and big. Mother had a worried look on her face. She squinted up at the sun and wiped her forehead, as if she’d broken into a sweat. I felt that Mother was very worried about Toybe.

Just then we caught sight of Toybe and Little Shoemaker. They weren’t coming from the forest or from behind the haystacks, but from the road leading to the highway.

Toybe was walking along, looking down at the toes of her new, shiny slippers. She was chewing on a flower. Little Shoemaker, a short, puny creature, was holding Toybe by the arm, taking slow, dainty steps. When they spoke, he had to call up to her, like to someone in a high window.

As we were coming toward them, Little Shoemaker snatched his hand from Toybe’s arm, a foolish grin on his thin face. Toybe straightened her head, spat out the flower, and in a too bright voice asked, “Where are you going, Auntie?”

“Just taking a walk,” said Mother, giving Toybe a sharp look.

“We were in the village,” Toybe said in a halting voice, as thought she doubted her own words.

“Why so far?”

“It isn’t far at all,” Little Shoemaker smiled foolishly, “just a short stroll there and back.”

We went home together. Little Shoemaker walked beside me. His
kapote
with the slit down the back gave off a smell of leather and apple peels. He asked me how I was doing, whether I liked it here in Lenive, whether I knew how to assemble a haystack by myself, whether it didn’t bother me not having any Jewish friends.

No, it didn’t bother me at all. However, what did irk me was that he talked too much. Mother and Toybe walked on in silence. It might very well have been that he, too, wanted to remain silent but didn’t know how to stop talking.

Little Shoemaker, that Litvak, now seemed to me rather foolish. I wondered about Toybe. Why did she let him take her by the arm? After all, who was he to her? He wasn’t her bridegroom-to-be, he wasn’t a relative.

Later, he stopped talking altogether. He listened attentively as Father chanted the call to the
shaleshudes
, the late-afternoon Sabbath meal, in a mournful voice that fell on the wet fields like a heavy sigh.

The air was filled with the smell of moisture, mingled with herring. Mother didn’t read her women’s prayers, which she usually did at this time. A wind blew from the forest. Father rushed through the havdole service, marking the end of the Sabbath, and then we all went back into the house—that is, not all of us. Toybe remained outside. She sat down on the threshold, propped her elbows on her knees and gave herself up to thought.

The house exuded a pleasant warmth, as if autumn were approaching. Little Shoemaker was getting ready to leave. Today he had nothing to take with him, no boots or shoes. Nevertheless, it appeared as if he were looking for something.

There was no kerosene in the house. Only a single wax candle burned on the table. The small, red flame under the picture of the Holy Mother was about to die out. A colored butterfly fluttered around the flame of the candle, flying toward the light and then away. All eyes were fixed on the foolish creature, which was sure to be consumed by the flame.

We heard a long, drawn-out whistle coming from outside the house. It might have been some kind of signal, or maybe just some young fellow in high spirits. Whatever it was, it served to loosen Little Shoemaker’s tongue.

“Frimet,” he turned to Mother, speaking in an embarrassed voice, “maybe you have a minute?”

Mother wasn’t doing anything at that moment. Of course she could spare a moment.

“What is it?”

“I would like to talk to you about something.”

“With me? What about?”

“I would also like,” Little Shoemaker stammered, “Reb Leyzer to hear what I have to say.”

“If so, you’ll have to speak a little louder.”

“Alright.”

Father was looking down into his prayer book over his steel-rimmed spectacles.

Little Shoemaker coughed, a dry, hard cough.

“Maybe you caught cold?” Mother asked him anxiously.

“No, no.”

He only wanted to say—the words tumbled out—that he was not, God forbid, as poor as he looked. He owned another brand-new
kapote
as well as two pairs of gaiters, almost new, and only recently he had also acquired some new underwear. No lie, he also had a bank book. And he was no mean craftsman, witness Toybe’s new shoes.

“Her shoes are certainly not ugly,” Mother inclined her head to a side, with a look on her face that wasn’t Mother’s at all, but rather that of a lady of the highest breeding in the world.

“Well, if Frimet herself says so,” Little Shoemaker picked up Mother’s cue, and continued. “Now that the subject’s come up, I’d like to say that I like Toybe a lot, and I think she likes me, too. I am ready to marry her, just as she is, without one groshen of dowry.”