Only Yesterday (54 page)

The moon still stood in the firmament. But the footsteps were already heard of people rising early for prayer and going to the study house. Said Shammai, We should envy them, now that we’ve emptied all the wine, the Sabbath blessing of the wine is in store for them. Said Sonya, Did you hear, Yael, he lies in your arms and envies others. Yael glared at her. Sonya thought to herself, Too bad Hemdat doesn’t see those eyes that make her face ugly. Yarkoni looked at Sonya and grimaced. Isaac thought to himself, Now when I’m having a good time, Shifra is sitting alone and forlorn. He resolved to return to Jerusalem right after the Sabbath. But not every trip we plan on the Sabbath comes to pass. Thus this trip. He thought of going right after the Sabbath and the Sabbath went out and he didn’t go.

In the House of Reb Fayesh

1
I

In the house of Reb Fayesh there is quiet and silence. In the house, there is no one but Reb Fayesh and Reb Fayesh’s wife and Reb Fayesh’s daughter. Gone were the days when the Guardians of the Walls would gather in Reb Fayesh’s home and Reb Fayesh would sit at the head with his head leaning on his left arm and his eyes sleeping and seeing everything in the heart of every single one of them, and when he opened his mouth everyone shrank without a word in awe and trembling and sweat, and the house of Reb Fayesh was so full they would sit on Reb Fayesh’s bed. Now Reb Fayesh himself lies on that bed and everyone stays away from the house of Reb Fayesh, for Reb Fayesh has already abandoned the world and the world has abandoned Reb Fayesh.

Rebecca sits at the window and knits a white Kippa, which she meant at first to make for her father, for all he has are black vel-vet Kippas and he looks strange in them, for everyone here wears white Kippas. But before she could finish her work, her father had gone to Safed, and Reb Fayesh got sick and all his Kippas have be-come tattered from lying down in them. She went back to knitting the Kippa for her husband. Rebecca sits with her work. Sometimes she wipes her eyes and sometimes she wipes her eyelids. Across from her sits Shifra, and polishes the Etrog box, which is about to be pawned, for ever since the day Reb Fayesh got sick, a curse fell on in-come, and expenses increased, and Isaac, who used to ease their needs, had gone to Jaffa and didn’t come back.

There they sit, the mother and the daughter, one busy at her work and her grief and the other busy at her work and her grief. And

440
I

even though they should have gotten used to their grief because it is old, they can’t resign themselves to getting used to it. They both turn their head to the sick man and their eyes encounter one another. A groan rises from their heart and they sigh and complain, this one sighs and complains about that one and that one sighs and complains about this one, that the time has come to get used to troubles, so why does she rouse the heart with her moans.

Reb Fayesh lies on his bed and doesn’t notice. His ascetic face had grown fat and his eyes were sunk in their orbits, and two lines of encrusted fat were hanging under his eyes. The wrath of his eyes had vanished, and a kind of mute panic lay on his face, and his whole being was like a dumb, mindless creature. Rebecca raises her eyes and looks at the husband of her youth. How did he change so much, and how did he come to that? Rebecca represses the moan in her heart, so as not to stir her daughter’s anger, and she doesn’t know that a moan already rose from her heart. She complains about Shifra as if she started moaning first. If I moan, she moans, and if I don’t moan she moans. In either case, alas. At that moment, Shifra is pondering and saying to herself, If I moan she moans, and if I don’t moan she moans. This one raises her head to the sick man, and that one raises her head to the sick man, a moan blurts out of the heart of this one and a moan from the heart of that one. The women look re-proachfully at one another, Once again you moaned, once again you moaned, the time has come to get accustomed and not to stir the heart every once in a while. As they looked at one another, Shifra stood up and went to her mother and put her head on her heart and said, Good mother, good mother, let me weep with you, and they weep on one another, as this one wipes the tears of that one, and that one wipes the tears of this one, until their tears dry up and they have no more strength to weep. This one returns to her work to make a Kippa for her husband, for all his Kippas have become tattered from lying down, and that one returns to polishing the Etrog box, which is about to be pawned. Rebecca thinks to herself, A person gets older every day and every day a person comes closer to his end. Not as he was yesterday is he today, and not as he is today will he be tomorrow. Yesterday he was like a wet garden and today even the stick he leans

on is dry in his hand. Yesterday they rocked him in a cradle, and today he goes to get himself a grave. Today he walks around on his feet, and tomorrow he will be carried on their shoulders. She looks at her husband and is shocked at her thoughts.

2
I

Shifra sees all that grief and doesn’t complain about her mother any-more, but she does complain about Isaac, for until Isaac came, they lived serenely, and she behaved like all other modest daughters of Is-rael, but when Isaac came, her mind was distracted. If she wants to turn her mind to her mother or her father or her Father in Heaven, this one comes and reduces that love, which exalted and elevated her. Why did he come, Shifra complains and grumbles, why did he come, Shifra growls in her heart. And since she knows that he did well to come, she complains and protests, If he did come, why did he go? And if he went, why doesn’t he come back? She removed her anger from him and then went back to being angry at him, for he was the cause of all those effects. She was appeased about him a little, and she complained about herself, for she caused that herself, and in the end she places all that blame on him. For if she hadn’t paid attention to him, he wouldn’t have had a pretext to approach her. And when she realized that, she grumbled about him again, for just because she paid attention to him, just for that it was his fault.

The cares of her soul paralyzed her hands. Now all the household affairs are cast onto her mother. She turns Father over and washes him, she makes the fire and cooks and runs to the market to get a tiny bit of meat from the butcher, and if she happens to buy a chicken, she runs by herself to the ritual slaughterer to slaughter the chicken. Aside from those jobs, she roasts coffee for her neighbors for a small profit. If Shifra has any free time to do something, she does what isn’t necessary or what isn’t necessary at the time. And even those things, she abandons before they are done. As Shifra treated housework, so she treated her body in dressing and feeding it. She didn’t comb her hair and she didn’t change her dress and she didn’t eat at mealtimes, and when she noticed that, she changed one dress for another and then another, and she combed her hair several times

a day, and she ate more than usual. If she noticed that she would glare straight ahead, as if to show the one who stands over her, to tell him, See what I have come to because of you. And when she saw that he wasn’t here, she would look into the void and wipe her eyes, like someone wiping his eyes to prepare them to see, but she saw nothing except her fingers wet with tears. Once she thought she saw him in a crowd of people. She wanted to turn her face away from him. But what was he doing, wherever she turned he was standing and chuckling, like that crowd whose faces look like one another and he looks like them too.

Shifra got up from her chair and sneaked out so he wouldn’t hear and wouldn’t follow her. She came and sat at the cistern. She lowered her head and put her hands on the mouth of the cistern. A tepid wetness rose from the water and a kind of dizziness took hold of her. She was startled and shouted in a hoarse voice, He’s bathing in the sea, and she shut her eyes so as not to look at him. She saw a reflection of a man and heard the sound of footsteps. That reflection donned flesh and took on a voice and said, Did you hear, Mendel Tokay, the upholsterer, is divorcing his wife. Why? Because he found another one more beautiful than she. He went to Jaffa to get seaweed and there he saw a woman and is getting rid of his wife to marry her. You’re shaking, Shifra, you have a cold. Go inside and don’t sit on the cistern.

Shifra returned home and sat perplexed. In her limbs, she noticed neither cold nor heat, but her heart oppressed and weighed on her like a kind of harsh dream that weighs and presses. She woke with a start and saw that there was nothing here but a dream. She regretted that there was nothing here but a dream. She raised her hands and looked at her fingers as if Isaac’s hands still held them. She shrieked from her heart, Why don’t you come? Says her heart inside her, He’s in Jaffa now, among Zionists who have forgotten God, and surely he has also forgotten me. Father in Heaven, how is it possible to forget You? She sat down and wept for him and for herself and for the whole world who have forgotten God. Shifra said to herself, I won’t forget my God, who in His mercy for me gave me a mind to return as long as I have not sunk into the abyss of sin. I shall repent,

I shall repent, and when Yom Kippur comes, I won’t move from the synagogue and I shall pray all the prayers in the prayer book, those I usually pray and those every Saint and Hasid prays, and if it is Your will, Master of the Universe, and You send me my mate, I shall fast on my wedding day, and You in Your great mercy, do not remember the thoughts I thought ever since the day I met the fellow and do act as if I hadn’t thought any thoughts. As she talks to her Father in Heaven, she gets up and goes to her father. She caresses his brow and wipes his mouth, Reb Fayesh moves his lips. Said Shifra, Father, did you say something to me? Her father looks at her with frozen eyes. She is shocked and shouts, Woe is me, Father, that this befell you for my sins.

She began to make an accounting of the days. When did she meet Isaac, before or after her father got sick? And it turned out that Isaac already came and went in their house before her father got sick. Shifra raised her hands and said, My God, my God, do good to me, and don’t bring down this man for all the evil he has brought on us. The Lord did good to her and spoke with her from her heart and said to her, Don’t be a fool, Shifra, all that is done is done from My mind and My will, and you mustn’t complain either about yourself or about Isaac. Shifra replied, If only it were so. She went back to her work as she was taught and took up the yoke of the house and didn’t let her mother do anything. Her mother noticed that and the eyes of her mercy accompanied her movements and she prayed for her. God heard her prayer and gave her her heart’s desire. Whether for good or for bad will be clarified in the following chapters.

On the Sabbath Day

1
I

Isaac returned to his hotel. That air prevailed in the house that prevails in new hotels on the Sabbath morning. The hotel owners hadn’t yet gotten out of bed because the guests get up late, and the guests get up late because today is the Sabbath and they don’t have anything to do. But it isn’t like that in other inns, where everyone gets up early on the Sabbath, Hasidim to immerse at dawn and Mitnagdim for prayer, and average people sit over a cup of hot tea and read Scrip-ture, twice in the original and once in the Aramaic Targum.

On the table in the corridor stood a sooty lamp with over-turned glasses and empty bottles and almond shells and date pits left over from the little girl’s birthday party, and buttons that dropped off and flowers that withered were scattered on the floor and a smell of dampness came from the sea and a smell of burned kerosene bubbled up from the kitchen. The hotel owners didn’t abstain from light-ing the samovar on the Sabbath, but they also put a kettle on the stove from the Sabbath eve, either for a guest who was used to Sabbath tea or because everybody does that. At that moment, Isaac longed for two things, for a cup of tea and for a bed. Since they hadn’t yet set the table, he went into his room and stretched out on his bed.

He found someone lying in his bed. Isaac took pity and didn’t make him get up and was afraid to take another bed lest the owner of that bed would come and make him get out of it. The sleeping man woke with a start and looked around in alarm like a baby. Isaac, too, was scared that he had woken a sleeping man out of his sleep. That man said to Isaac, Is this your bed? My horse took sick and I went to get doctors and I was tired and lay down. Isaac recognized

I
445

him as fat Victor, whom he had seen in the market of Petach Tikva when he went with his comrade Rabinovitch to look for work. Said Isaac, Lie down, sir, lie down. Victor turned his face to the wall and started snoring, his hands clenched like a sleeping baby, the smell of the stable and the smell of soap emanating from him. Tears came to Isaac’s eyes and he thought in his heart, Everyone needs pity, and a person needs to pity his fellow man. Too bad a person doesn’t see his fellow man at a time when he needs pity. That day when I went out with Rabinovitch to look for work, Victor didn’t notice us because he didn’t look at us. If he had looked at us, he would have hired us, and I would have stood on the ground, and Rabinovitch wouldn’t have left the Land and would have married Sonya, and I would have looked at the world with proper eyes. He left the room and went back to the dining hall. They are still sleeping, whispered Isaac, and went into the kitchen to pour himself tea. He saw that the water had evap-orated. So, he went out. And so, mumbled Isaac, today is Lydia’s birthday, and she was born on the ship to the Land of Israel, and some of the passengers of that ship came to congratulate her parents, and Lordswill’s two ex-wives danced in her honor, and afterward we went to Levi Isaac’s and we found Michael Heilperin dancing because he had made himself new clothes. Afterward we drank wine at Hem-dat’s, and the wine needs to be blended, and they haven’t yet lit the samovar. He left and went on his way.

The sun wasn’t yet at its height and a quiet light illuminated the firmament. And within the silence, the voice of the sea was heard, and a kind of blue reflection fluttered in the air. No one was outside. Those who got up in the morning were sitting in the prayer house, and those who hadn’t yet gotten up were lying in their bed. What Bible chapter are they reading today? Here is an Arab coffeehouse. Those Arabs know how to make coffee, I’ll go in and drink a cup of coffee. As he is about to go in, he considers and goes to Sweet Foot.