Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (49 page)

Now, in the distance, on the sidewalk of the Russian church, I discerned a large, blue-white blotch, bisected every now and then, by a pair of black legs. The little garden surrounding the prison concealed me. I could see everything. Nobody could see me.

And what I saw, clearly, emerging from the blotch in the sidewalk, was a pair of long legs. Nobody else in town, other than Oyzer, had such long legs.

He stood there, peering in all directions. When I moved a bit away from the garden, I could even see Oyzer’s face, raised skyward. He resembled a large bird on the lookout, standing on a mountaintop.

For the first time since I’d known him, Oyzer was carrying a small cane. He twirled it in the air, walked back and forth on the sidewalk, and stretched his face even higher toward the moon.

I looked up, too. Surely, from way up there, is where Rukhtshe would be descending to earth.

Oyzer himself no longer bothered me. At that moment, I didn’t even hate him. I only felt a burning under my heart because of that stylish little cane of his and the way he twirled it in the air.

Rukhtshe, it would seem, had failed to show up. But then, why should she have come? To the prison, of all places?

I now had my revenge on Oyzer. So much for his daring to talk about marrying Rukhtshe and about reciting all those stikhi to her by heart after the wedding!

My revenge, however, was short-lived. Rukhtshe showed up after all.

There she was, crossing Warsaw Street, not walking but running.

She didn’t see me, though she walked right past the little prison garden. Oyzer was no longer standing in the middle of the blotch, but had moved a bit aside. He was no longer waving his little cane.

It seemed to me that the closer Rukhtshe approached, the further he moved away, as though walking backward.

I crept along behind Rukhtshe’s back. She came to a halt within the blue-white blotch where Oyzer had been standing not long before. He was now turning to go into the promenade, and Rukhtshe followed him there.

However, all of a sudden, Oyzer turned his back on Rukhtshe, flung his little cane into the middle of the street, and began to run as fast as he could into the nearby park. Either he saw somebody there, or else he’d gone completely mad.

I must have gone mad, too, otherwise I wouldn’t have run after him, shouting with such alarm, “Oyzer! Oyzer!”

“Stop! Where are you running to?” Rukhtshe caught me by the collar and began to shake me like a palm branch on Sukkoth.

She was running herself.

The spot where Rukhtshe had grabbed me was pitch black. I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her hot fury.

“Stop running,” she said, breathing heavily. “He’s a lousy rat, that friend of yours. You don’t have to run away. You like me, don’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say. Her words made my feet swelter. As God is my witness, I wanted to run off, too.

“Come, walk with me a bit,” she said, putting her hand under my arm.

Now my head was beginning to turn hot as well. I walked beside her, thinking that I would never get home that night, that, for sure, some calamity was about to befall.

“Why did he run away, that shithead?” she hissed angrily through her teeth.

I didn’t know myself. He must have caught sight of his father, or maybe somebody from the gymnasium.

“What was he afraid of, that rat?” Rukhtshe persisted, still furious.

I wanted to ask her whether Oyzer had really said he would marry her and take her away with him to far-off lands. I also wanted to know if they were having a love affair. In the midst of these musings, Rukhtshe stopped short, let go of my arm, and asked, “How old is that friend of yours?”

“He already puts on phylacteries.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll soon be doing the same.”

The moon rose from behind the high prison fence. The entire promenade turned blue.

“Let’s sit down,” Rukhtshe said and led me to the German church.

A blanket of blue-lit snow lay all around. We sat down on the broad steps leading into the church. Rukhtshe put her arm around my shoulders and leaned her cheek against mine.

I was frightened and didn’t know what to do. But I fervently wished that Oyzer would pass by to see what was happening.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Rukhtshe asked.

“No.”

“Would you like to kiss me?”

I don’t know if I answered. Actually, there was no time for an answer. Rukhtshe had already put her warm mouth on my lips, or maybe it was the other way round. Nor was I aware of any particular thoughts. My head fell back and I heard only a soft, urgent voice saying, “Go slow. Don’t bite, you little bastard. Who taught you to kiss like that?”

Nobody had taught me. This was the first time in my life that I had ever kissed a girl.

“Do you love me?” Rukhtshe asked, as she wrapped her hands around my neck and face.

She now seemed to have not just two hands but a hundred. These hands were everywhere.

“I love you,” I blurted out.

“Will you marry me?”

“I’ll marry you.”

“What will we do after we get married?

“We’ll go away to a far-off land,” I parroted Oyzer’s words. “We’ll go to America, and I’ll recite
stikhi
to you by heart …”

“What? You’ll do what?”

“I’ll work,” I at once caught myself. “I’ll rent us a place to live. You won’t have to do anything but eat, drink, and enjoy.”

Rukhtshe inched away from me, like a cat, slowly and indolently.

I tried to pull her back, to give her one more kiss. But within a split second, a strange change had come over her. She stood up abruptly. When I tried to pull her back to me, she pushed me away and, in a harsh, angry voice, like that of some old peasant woman, snarled at me, “Scram, you bastard!”

I didn’t understand. To this day it’s not clear to me what all this was about. Maybe it was the accursed word stikhi that had shattered my dream of Rukhtshe forever.

She never even said goodbye. She ran away from me, just as Oyzer had done.

I was now the only person on the promenade. Behind me stood the dark church. Before me lay the sleepy prison, across which the moon moved in a veil of haze.

All that night long, Rukhtshe kept kissing me in my dreams. In the morning Mother inspected my eyes and worriedly asked me why I had cried out in my sleep and why I had cursed Oyzer.

I went on cursing Oyzer, not only in my dreams, but awake as well. I no longer wanted to see him. The only thing that that mattered to me was Rukhtshe. I even ran over to the German church, hoping that she might be there.

On the following Sabbath, when I went to fetch the boiled water, it wasn’t Rukhtshe who filled the kettle. She wandered around the tea shop, her hair disheveled, her arms bare. She went right by me, without seeming to see me.

Over the summer, a great change took place in the tea shop itself.

Without explanation, fewer and fewer young men and their girls started showing up at Khantshe the widow’s establishment. Khantshe herself stopped baking honey cake and no longer took care to see to it that the pitchers and glasses were glistening. There was no more singing, and no freshly pressed cloths on the tables.

It seemed to me that Khantshe and Rukhtshe had had a falling out. I noticed that young Felek, the one with the curling, upturned mustache, no longer sat with Khantshe behind the flowered curtain. He now sat at the table with Rukhtshe and looked into her eyes like at a precious stone.

I was aware that something out of the ordinary was going on. The hatred that not long before I had borne Oyzer was now transferred to that swarthy young man. I hated him a thousand times more. Also, he didn’t know any
stikhi
. So where did he get the nerve to look at Rukhtshe like that? He was eating her up with his eyes.

Khantshe the widow must also have hated him. In my presence she called him a freeloading
shnorer
and a louse-ridden wastrel.

“Go to work,” she berated him. “The devil take you!”

The young man laughed with his mouth wide open. He didn’t get angry, didn’t curse back, and said only that if she didn’t stop it, he’d make mincemeat out of her.

In the courtyard it was common knowledge that Khantshe and Felek were at odds. One could hear them screaming and shouting at each other. My mother, however, was of the opinion that, despite their bickering, swarthy Felek would soon be marrying Khantshe.

Mother was right. Early one bright morning, Khantshe went over to Zishe the scribe’s and bought a prayer shawl with a blue silk collar. She made more purchases on Warsaw Street, where there were shops selling lengths of linen for bedclothes. In that same street, she rented a place with a kitchen. After the wedding, she certainly wasn’t going to continue living in the tea shop.

Avreml the furniture dealer installed two pinewood beds and an oaken, mirrored wardrobe.

Khantshe herself, although she was busier than ever, nevertheless seemed calmer in those days, her face beaming.

She had a new suit of clothes made up for her young man, ordered him another pair of gaiters, agreed on a price with Simek the musician, and sent out wedding invitations to all the little soldiers, and to all the young men and their girls who used to frequent the tea shop.

However, suddenly, a day or two before the wedding, after Khantshe had already baked two large, sugar-frosted cakes, and while live carp splashed about in a tub, a calamity occurred.

We became aware of the misfortune in the early hours of the morning. We had just gotten up. Father was at his prayers. The windows revealed a gold band of sky. Mother was walking about in her nightcap, sighing softly under her breath. She wasn’t feeling too well and wanted only to prepare breakfast so she could return to bed.

All was quiet. Suddenly, there was the sound of running on the stairs and of loud voices.

“Who talks that loud so early in the morning?” Mother asked, and took a step toward the door.

But the door burst open by itself, and a woman, a stranger, wearing a kerchief, appeared in the doorway.

“Frimet,” she sputtered in one breath into the room, “go downstairs. Some misfortune has happened to her.”

She didn’t say whose misfortune it was, there didn’t seem to be time. Having delivered her news, the woman ran back down the stairs.

Mother began to wave her hands in the air, like a goose flapping its wings when being chased.

“Woe is me! It shouldn’t happen to us!” she cried out, running around the room in search of something to put on. “Mendl, Leyzer, run downstairs and see what’s happened there.”

Father passed his uncomprehending eyes across an agitated Mother. Either he didn’t hear, or didn’t grasp, what she had said. I, half-dressed, started buttoning my boots quickly and pulling up my suspenders, but, as if to spite me, everything kept falling from my hands.

There was screaming and weeping rising from the courtyard. For certain someone, God forbid, must have died. However, I managed to get dressed and, in a single leap, jumped onto the banister and slid downstairs.

The courtyard was crowded with people. Women and children came pouring out from all the balconies and staircases. Everyone was talking at the same time, asking questions, and pushing into the open doorway of the tea shop.

Khantshe the widow, all disheveled, in a short, white underdress and red slippers with little pompons, rushed about as if she were on fire.

“People! Jews! Have mercy on me!” she wailed, wringing her hands. “They’ve left me with only one undershirt, that thief and his whore. They’ve reduced me to poverty. Woe is me and woe is my life … People, what shall I do?”

She tore at her cheeks, flung open the oaken, mirrored wardrobe, lifted the top of the trunk, and pointed into it.

“All my hard work,” she moaned, “all my bitter toil! Not sleeping nights, not eating, not drinking! That bastard!” She stamped her feet. “That cheap whore! What did you do to your own mother?”

The women and young girls poked their noses into the open trunk, into the empty wardrobe, and asked how such a thing could have happened. Didn’t she have any idea what was going on?

How could she have known, when she was so busy preparing for a wedding? How could it have crossed her mind that that little daughter of hers, that whore, was carrying on with that son of a bitch? Who would have expected such wrath, such a dire decree from heaven?

Khantshe’s face swelled up from all the weeping. She had no strength left to cry out. She sat over the empty trunk, like someone in mourning. Strangers ran to get the police. But before the police arrived, Khantshe tore herself away from the empty trunk and began smashing the white pitchers, the teapots, and the glasses. She tore down the flowered curtain from the alcove and pointed to a rumpled iron cot.

“This is where she slept, that bastard,” Khantshe gasped, as she grabbed hold of the featherbed and ripped it to pieces.

The entire tea shop turned white with feathers. The feathers floated through the open windows into the courtyard, settling on the pump, the balconies, the people. By the time the police arrived, Khantshe lay stretched out on the floor among the feathers and the shards, grieving into it, as one would into a grave.

Poor Khantshe certainly had a lot to grieve about. People said that it wasn’t enough that the swarthy Felek had robbed her and run off with Rukhtshe, but that he had left the widow with a belly as well.

Not a trace remained of the tea shop. Khantshe ran to the chief of police of the district, she even complained to the provincial governor’s office, but the pair had simply vanished into thin air.

There were rumors that they had gone off to Paris. My mother even learned that Felek had sold Rukhtshe into white slavery in Buenos Aires. But Khantshe still couldn’t rest. She wrote petitions to Warsaw, ran to lawyers, until the little building in the courtyard closed down for good.

Nobody wanted to rent it. The clear, polished windows slowly acquired a film of black dust. Someone had torn the handle from the door. Cats crouched upon the roof. Khantshe herself went back to Warsaw.