Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (18 page)

What he wanted, I never did manage to find out. Just then, Mother stuck her head out the window, and let out a shriek.

“Why are you standing there like an idiot? Go somewhere, for heaven’s sake.”

The open window slammed shut with a bang. The pigeons flew in low circles around the roof. Mother’s angry words made me feel as if I’d just been scalded, driving me from the courtyard. I didn’t know whether Mother was coming after me or had remained inside. I looked around, no one was chasing me. Nevertheless, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. At that moment I was desperate to find someone, anyone, to shoot nuts with, to talk to, to do something with, anything.

I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I found myself standing in front of our former house, where Moyshe had died and from which we had long been gone. It seemed to me that I might find Jusza there. I had something to tell her. I felt my face growing hot, my fingers and hands as well.

I knew that Jusza no longer lived there. All the same, I peeked through our old window, now lined with flower pots. Gentiles must be living there now. It all seemed so strange, Gentiles in our old house. The door opened, our very door. A young shikse, a blond Gentile girl, appeared in the doorway, holding a piece of twisted white bread, like our Sabbath loaf, in her hand.

This wasn’t right. I couldn’t bear to look! How could anyone be eating bread so openly? After all, it was still Passover, when all leaven is forbidden!

The young girl bent her head to one side, took the bread from her mouth, and looked at me.

“Who are you looking for?”

“For Jusza.”

“I’m not Jusza. I’m Stasza. And what’s your name?”

“Mendl.”

“Do you want to play?

“Alright, but throw away that piece of bread, it’s
khomets
.”

“What? Today’s Easter, when you eat
kulich
, that’s what this is.”

“By us it’s Passover, when you can’t eat any bread.”

“My mother told me that you
zhidkes
, you Jews, mix your matzos with our blood.”

“Your mother’s an old fool!”

“And you’re a
zhidek
!”

“You’re a
shikse
!”

“And you’re a louse-head!”

“Louse-head yourself!”

The girl stepped backward into the doorway. I took a step forward.

We eyed each other warily, like two dogs. The entrance into the house was familiar to me; after all, we used to live here. I also knew the way to the attic, where, as I remembered, a Russian soldier would occasionally drop by to see Jusza, stomping up the stairs so heavily that it made our ceiling shake.

I wanted to tell Stasza all this. I wanted to tell her that we should go up to the attic. But she was already standing at the door, her hand on the handle.

“Scram, you
zhidek
!” She kicked her foot at me, turned, and yanked open the door.

I wasn’t sure, maybe I just imagined it. Maybe I wasn’t seeing right, but just then I had a vision of Jusza’s black, wooly head.

“Jusza!” I called out, in a voice not my own.

From inside the house a shrill echo resounded, “Mama, a
zhid
’s come here to murder us!”

I never got to see the particular mother, Jusza neither. I ran with all my might out of the courtyard, into the street, this way and that, wherever my legs carried me. Only when I reached the old park did I come to a halt. No one was chasing me.

Cold shafts of light filtered through the branches of the trees. Bridegrooms were strolling with their brides. All the brides were bedecked in gold trappings and walked with proud steps, their high heels clicking.

If only I could say to them … no, not say … shout, “Stop that clicking!”—a heavy stone would have rolled off my heart.

It took a long while before I stopped panting. I made no effort to understand all that had happened to me in so short a time. All I knew was that I ought to feel guilty, but I wasn’t sure to whom. I came home in a state of dread, feeling that I must somehow apologize.

Ite was no longer in the house. Father had gotten up from his nap. He was waiting for me.

“Where were you?” he asked the moment I crossed the threshold.

“In the old park.”

“Why the old park? What business do you have there?”

“I was shooting nuts.”

“Nuts, you say. A boy your age still playing with nuts?”

“I told him to,” Mother answered for me.

“In the old park, with all those hooligans?”

“There were no hooligans there,” I tried to get a word in edgewise.

“That you were there at all is enough for me!”

My face started burning afresh. Father had never spoken to me like that before. What did I do to deserve this?

“In my opinion,” Mother broke in, “you shouldn’t take him with you to Aunt Naomi’s today.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t you see how he’s dressed?”

“Well, he’s not, God forbid, in rags.”

I myself didn’t feel like going to Aunt Naomi’s that day. I wasn’t my usual self. Suddenly, I was overcome by a feeling of terrible laziness. All I wanted to do was to lie down and get warm.

True, if we didn’t go to Aunt Naomi’s today, we’d have to wait another whole half-year, until the Sukkoth holiday. I would have preferred that rather than letting them see my flushed and guilty face. But Father insisted.

“What do you mean not go visit Aunt Naomi?” he said. “What would she say?”

“Go alone,” mother suggested.

“No, I won’t go alone.”

So, we went there again, Father and I, as we had done the year before.

When my face wasn’t flushed, and no heavy stone weighed on my heart, visiting Aunt Naomi wasn’t so terrible. She was unlike all my other aunts, and so was her way of life.

Aunt Naomi lived in a two-story brick structure with a wide iron staircase. There were two other residents in the building, Doctor Pryzłencki and a Gentile teacher.

When you climbed up the iron staircase and entered the cold, dimly lit hall, you heard a strange, hollow echo. The door to Aunt Naomi’s place was tall and brown, with a brass handle. It must have been because of that brass handle that Mother so disliked her sister-in-law, for she rarely ever visited her over the holidays.

“I had brass door handles once, too,” Mother often reminded us, “but I certainly didn’t give myself airs like Naomi.”

I don’t know whether, in Mother’s old house with those brass door handles, you also had to press a button before being admitted. At Aunt Naomi’s you had to wait a while at the wide front door. Someone would first ask, “Who is it?” and only then did they let you in.

Whenever we set out to visit Father’s only, and exalted, sister, on the way over he would hum a little melody, with different variations from half-year to half-year. As soon as he arrived at her door, he’d blow his nose, cough, and only then slowly press the button. When the door finally opened, he would walk in, taking big strides as if to say, “I may not be a rich man, but I’m your brother, and I’m as good as you are, my dear sister.”

That was certainly the case. As youngsters, both he and Naomi used to run around together, naked and barefoot in their village’s dairy and feast on rye bread and cottage cheese. Both had looked across to the same faraway, sunlit fields. Both had bathed in the same river. It was only now that things were different. Now Father lived in one room and a kitchen, whereas Naomi was blessed with many rooms. Father spent a few paltry groshen for Sabbath needs, while Aunt Naomi thought nothing of spending three or four rubles.

Aunt Naomi was tall, dark-skinned, with black, prominent eyebrows, like those of a learned Jew. I disliked her eyes. They were pale, melancholy, shifty. Nor did I like Aunt Naomi’s way of speaking. Her words didn’t flow readily but were doled out sparingly. They were filtered slowly through her thin lips, in a kind of drawl.

“Ley-ze-e-er …” she said, “a good holiday to you and a good year … How are you? … Is that so? … Mmm … Blessed be His dear name … And is that really your Mendl?”

As she drawled out the words, “Blessed be His dear name,” she half-closed her eyes in an expression of bliss and shook her head the way a rabbi’s wife might.

Her dark figure, her pointy chin, her very height, all fit well with the spacious, cool rooms, where human voices bounced from corner to corner before coming to a resolution. It seemed that only such walls, such dark tables and chests of drawers, suited a person like Aunt Naomi. Anywhere else, under a low ceiling, for instance, or within warmer walls, Aunt Naomi would have been out of place. However, it was somewhat of a mystery how her husband, Uncle Bentsien, fitted in with the surroundings.

He himself was short, round, and fat. The feet God had given him were tiny, not very manly, and his hands were small and pudgy. His only distinguished feature was a white beard. His ample paunch protruded with a rich man’s audacity.

Uncle Bentsien never wore boots but black, highly polished shoes with elastic sides. His trousers, too, were black, always pressed and with sharp creases down the front. When it came to choosing a
kapote
, he pondered long and hard, discussing the matter with his wife, and finally picked one that was a bit shorter and trimmer than the usual such garment. That is to say, it could be regarded as suitable for someone who considered himself to be both somewhat enlightened and still somewhat pious. Why “somewhat pious”? Because he couldn’t yet pluck up the courage to sally forth wearing the fedora of the fully enlightened. At home, therefore, he wore a silk, eight-sided skullcap, and when he went out he put on a felt hat with a narrow crown and a brim edged in silk braid.

Uncle Bentsien waddled on his short legs like a duck, taking tiny, womanish steps. Jews, seeing him in the street, would greet him with a “Good morning.” Whenever he passed a Gentile acquaintance, he would doff his hat. Uncle Bentsien was a respected personage in the town. He knew what was going on in every Jewish household, who was getting married, which woman was in labor, which husband and wife were divorcing, who had died. Uncle Bentsien knew everything.

It was only to be expected, therefore, that Uncle Bentsien should be a leader in the Jewish community, serving as secretary of the community council. Who, for instance, could be seen going into the office of the city administrator, stepping with such confidence? Bentsien, the secretary of the Jewish community. Who could be found running every Monday and Thursday to the district governor or to the military commander? Uncle Bentsien. And who walked in such brotherly closeness on the street with the rabbi, if not Uncle Bentsien?

It was a matter of great honor for Father and me that Bentsien, the secretary of the Jewish community, was my uncle and Father’s own brother-in-law. It was also a matter of pride for me that Uncle Bentsien occupied a place of honor in the main synagogue, praying at the eastern wall with all the other dignitaries, next to the rabbi, and that, after the service, he walked home with the cantor, with the synagogue trustee Ruvele Beckerman and other worthies.

Father and I prayed in the study house, the
besmedresh
, and walked home afterward with Motl Straw or with Moyshele the hatmaker. It therefore gave us much pleasure when Uncle Bentsien would suddenly show up in our little study house, just before the reading of Torah, on one of the holidays or on a Sabbath marking the new month.

When these visits occurred, everyone knew that there had to be a purpose, that Bentsien wouldn’t just drop in to the
besmedresh
for no reason at all. Surely, he was bringing us some important news from the greater world. So, of course, people took notice and pricked up their ears. Prayer shawls came off shrouded heads, little boys were lifted onto window sills and tables.

Bentsien’s rich-man’s paunch pushed its way to the pulpit. His white, well-trimmed beard gazed down on the expectant, sober faces. Yekhiel-Sane, the elderly sexton, banged on the table with abandon, “
Sha-a
! Silence!”

A hush fell over the
besmedresh
. I, too, climbed up on a table. After all, this was my Uncle Bentsien!

Uncle Bentsien looked around slowly, taking in all four sides of the room, and, even more ponderously, delivered the world news he had brought with him.

“I am here to announce, on behalf of the rabbi and on behalf of the community council,” he declaimed in a grating voice, “that you can now register your children in the Talmud Torah elementary school every day from noon until evening, except Fridays and Saturdays.”

So, it wasn’t such big world news after all. The little boys were soon being lifted back down from the tables. Someone at the eastern wall tossed his prayer shawl back over his head and mumbled into his open prayer book, “N-n-a … some news indeed!”

Be all that as may, the news that Uncle Bentsien announced was important and people listened attentively. It meant that poor mothers, widows, alas, and abandoned wives were given notification about enrolling their children in the tuition-free elementary school maintained by the community.

Now, on the last days of the Passover holiday, here I was sitting in the high-ceilinged, dark rooms of that same Uncle Bentsien. Aunt Naomi sat close by Father’s side. She knew that her brother was somewhat hard of hearing. Uncle Bentsien didn’t know this, or else pretended not to know. He sat at the other end of the room, his small barrel of a body squeezed into a soft armchair, from which his short legs dangled like little logs of wood. He was wearing his eight-sided, silk skullcap, cracking nuts, dipping fruit pits into a glass of mead, and peeling oranges. All the while, he kept looking at me.

What had Uncle Bentsien noticed about me? Why was he smacking his lips after every sip of mead? And, above all, why was he crinkling his nose like that? Was it because Father couldn’t afford to buy me new clothes for Passover and that I had come here in my weekday
kapote
? Mother was right. How could I show myself at Uncle Bentsien’s in such a worn garment? I was ashamed in front of my uncle and aunt, ashamed to be sitting in that beautiful, rich house. But most of all, I was ashamed because of Mendl.

My aunt and uncle had a Mendl too, both of us having been named after the same grandfather. Only this Mendl was older and better looking than me. He took after Aunt Naomi and had the same small, narrow mouth. When he talked, his mouth crinkled to one side, like his mother’s. I always felt that the reason he crinkled his mouth was because he thought himself to be so high and mighty.