The Loves of Judith (11 page)

“Get down, Rabinovitch, get off the stage,” someone shouted.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” the Village Papish scolded him between clenched Siamese teeth.

But Tonya stared at him with the fearless eyes of the dead, came close to him until he backed off; she wiped her hands on her apron with that familiar gesture neither death nor time could erase, and said in a thick voice: “Right away, I’m going to call my Moshe and he’ll make mincemeat out of you.”

“Get off! Beast!” shouted the audience. There were also whistles and a few angry men came to the front of the auditorium.

Tonya dropped a few curtsies with a bearish grace and got off the stage. Like a heavy blade, she plowed through the audience and left the celebration, and the people immediately fell apart into small, grumbling groups, who also hurried off.

At home, Moshe didn’t take off his dead wife’s dress. He searched in closets, rummaged in corners, plucked the hair off the back of his neck, and shouted at the wooden walls. The children looked at him in fear and didn’t say a thing.

At last he went out to his rock, clasped it in his arms, and
picked it up, pressed to the woolen breasts and the mighty muscles underneath them, and paced with it in a circle of roars and growls, until he dropped it back in its place.

“What can I tell you, Zayde? That really was a great tragedy, because besides the mourning and the regrets, there’s also the pity they had for him here. And in human beings, the distance between pity and cruelty is very small, and so they started talking behind his back of how miserable he was, and from there to talking about how he was crazy is also very small, and here in the village everybody tries to act how the group thinks of him. So because of that I act today like a dummy and Rabinovitch acted then like a crazy man and we’ll wait and see how you’re gonna act, too, someday.”

And on one of the following nights, Rabinovitch went to the Village Papish’s yard, grabbed a goose by the neck, and carried it out of there. He wrung his victim’s neck, poured its blood on the ground, stripped off its skin, lit a bonfire of bark and twigs, which were always piled up at the trunk of the eucalyptus, and put Tonya’s big black pot on it. When the pot was heated, Moshe put the pieces of skin in it, turned them over and over, and now and then he poured the melted fat into a big bowl at the side. He did that until the strips of skin shriveled and turned a nice brown and then he sprinkled them in the bowl of hardening fat.

At dawn he ran to the bakery and brought a loaf of bread, tore pieces from it, and dipped them in the
shmaltz
, which hadn’t really hardened, and ate them like a maniac, with the scorched and brittle crusts of skin.

Not from hunger and not from revenge or repentance did he do what he did, but because of his grief, which refused to abate, and because of his flesh, which refused to be consoled.

The tears melted the lump in his throat, the fat mixed with the leaven of regrets in his guts, and he began wailing and vomiting. The sounds woke Naomi, who came and stood over him and she, too, began weeping with panic.

And when Oded also came, wet with urine and all stinking,
and said, “I made in my bed again, Father”—Moshe got up from the ground and shouted: “Why? Why? How much do I need to wash up all your stink?” And suddenly he swung his hand and slapped the little boy’s face.

The good smell of the
shmaltz
drew many of the villagers into Rabinovitch’s yard. They gathered around the big black kettle and understood where their dreams of the old country had come from and woke them up. Unfortunately, they also saw the awful blow Moshe had struck his son.

Everyone was astonished. Rabinovitch never raised his hand against anyone. Only once did he bring down a butcher, one of the coarse friends of Globerman the cattle trader. That butcher was known for being able to cut the thigh bone of a bull with one blow of his axe, and he came to challenge Moshe’s rock and pick it up from the ground. When he couldn’t do it, he was filled with wrath, and instead of kicking the rock and breaking his big toe, as people usually did, he tried to drag Moshe into a wrestling match and was immediately pinned to the ground.

Now that Oded was slumped against the trunk of the eucalyptus with his eyes rolled up and white and his body sagging, Moshe turned pale, hurried over to pick him up, and cradled him in his arms. But Naomi shrieked: “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him!” And Oded came to and wiggled out of his father’s arms and clung to his sister and to the eucalyptus in turn.

Beyond the fence, the people were whispering to one another, and Rabinovitch, wanting to get away from them and from the terrified eyes of his children, ran to the haystack, pounded it with his fists and kicked the bales of hay, rummaged around among them and threw them all over until they came undone into flying packs before the amazed eyes of the cows and he himself lay supine on the ground.

“Come out now, come out!” The awful bleating was heard all over the village and brought all those who hadn’t been drawn by the smell.

Everyone stood at that distance where people stand when a
mad dog appears in a neighborhood or when an uncastrated bull breaks out of its fence. They didn’t come close, but they shouted soothing words to Moshe and asked him to get up and go back home.

At last, Oded, who had recovered, ran to the pile of straw, and when he grabbed his father’s hands and pulled his thick heavy body to him, Moshe became light as a feather and was lifted off the ground.

Moshe let his little son lead him home and there he dropped onto his bed and fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the next day, to the irritated cries of the cows. He got up to milk, sent the children to school, saddled the horse, and rode to the next village.

“Tell that woman of yours to come,” he said to Menahem without even getting off his horse.

“Wait a minute, Moshe, let the horse eat something, drink, sit down and let’s talk a little,” Menahem requested.

“Not today, Menahem.” Moshe drew his horse back. “Write fast and tell her that she should come.”

“It’s almost spring, Moshe,” laughed Menahem. “If we don’t talk today, we’ll have to wait until after Passover.”

“I’ll wait. Today, write to the woman. Let her come.”

He dug his heels into the horse’s belly and galloped back home.

M
ORE DESSERT
?”

“Yes,” I said.

Once again the water was boiled, the yolks were separated, the wine gave its fragrance, the finger was dipped.

“Every time it comes out a little different.” Jacob chuckled. “Maybe it still needs a little bit of fat from an old carcass, eh?”

He brought to the table a shining goblet transparent as a dragonfly’s wing, stuck a spoon in it, and pushed it over to me.

He didn’t tell me to do it, but I shut my eyes and opened my mouth wide. I heard him panting as he put the spoon on my tongue.

Words can’t describe that sweetness, which I haven’t managed to achieve again to this day. Many years have passed since that first meal, but the memory of the dessert still caresses my palate and is so strong and clear that sometimes, when I pick my teeth with a toothpick, I still extract from between my molars a sweet grain left there from back then.

“You know what you’re eating?” asked Jacob.

I shook my head no.

“It’s an Italian dessert.”

I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, the good yellowy taste would fly out.

“Once I had a lot of canaries,” said Jacob.

I nodded and shut my eyes again and Jacob poured another spoonful of bliss and amazement into my mouth.

He observed me as if he wanted to know what else I knew. I expected him to ask: “Why did you do that to me, Zayde?” But Jacob didn’t suspect and didn’t know and didn’t ask, not during that meal and not during the ones that came after, and he only said: “You like it?”

I had come to the moment when I’d have to swallow what was in my mouth. “Very much,” I said. “The best thing I ever ate.”

“Maybe you also want to hear some music?” asked Jacob. He dipped two fingers in the bowl and licked them with pleasure. “How strong the yolk is,” he said. “And so much life in it.”

It was late by now. From the wall the most beautiful woman in the village looked at me with her scary eyes. The treat Jacob put in my mouth made me drowsy.

“It’s good,” I said.

He put a record on his phonograph, guided the arm, and scratchy dance music spread through the room.

“That’s a tango,” said Jacob. “Here in the village, they don’t dance that. That’s a dance of love and weddings, of a man and a woman. Tango is touching. You know what that is, Zayde?”

He didn’t stand up, but his two fingers whirled like little legs on the table, leaving yellowy tracks of sweetness on the wood.

“If you want, Zayde,” he said, “I’ll teach you that dance.”

“Not now,” I said.

“This tango,” said Jacob, “it’s a dance not like no other dance. It’s the only dance for couples which a person can also dance alone, and even sitting down you can dance it, and even laying down, and even in your dreams. The Village Papish said that once, and I can’t forget his beautiful words: the dance where no one leads, the dance of repressed lust and inflated yearnings. Sometimes he talks so beautiful, Papish, that your heart really aches to hear him.”

Twelve years old I was, and now I was a little scared and I wanted to go home.

“I don’t want to learn how to dance now,” I announced, and stood up.

“Of course not now, Zayde.” Jacob laughed. “See, you’re only a child. Someday, if you get married, I’ll teach you. A man’s got to know how to dance the tango at his own wedding. I’ll teach you all you got to know before you get married.”

“I won’t get married. I mustn’t!” I said firmly as my legs were already leading me to the door.

We went out into the little garden. The big poppies were already withered. The high yellowing grass tickled my legs with its slow wind dances. Jacob Sheinfeld put his hand on my shoulder and bent down to me until his cheek grazed mine. I felt his lips seeking an answer and rest, barely touching my temple, and when he felt my recoil, he also recoiled, straightened up immediately, and took his hand off my shoulder.

“You don’t got to visit me, Zayde,” he said. “You don’t even got to say hello to me in the street. I’m used to it by now. Ever since Rebecca left, ever since Judith died, I’m alone. But in a few
more years, when I’ll invite you to another meal, you’re gonna come.”

The thin white scar that could be seen on his brow despite the darkness suddenly vanished, and I knew that he was blushing.

“All right,” I said.

I went home. A warm early summer night enveloped my body, and the feeling was so pleasant I imagined I was swimming. A sweetness of wine and sugar and egg yolk reigned in my mouth and I knew it would never evaporate from there, not even after it was erased from my memory.

A smell of smoke and scorching rose in the air. In the distance, bonfires gleamed, and black and red silhouettes circled around them.

I ran there. It was my classmates dancing and burning the larvae of the locusts.

“You’ll come?” Jacob shouted behind me.

“I’ll come,” I shouted back.

I smoothed my tongue over my teeth, from right to left and from left to right, back and forth, over and over. I ran from there. I pressed my tongue to my palate, and swallowed the sweet saliva that came into my mouth.

T
HE SECOND MEAL
Jacob cooked for me about ten years later, after I got out of the army.

I didn’t have a distinguished career in the army. My name gave me trouble in every drill and my immunity from death didn’t make me a brave fighter, but rather a lazy, quarrelsome fellow who didn’t accept authority.

The night before I was inducted, Jacob lay in wait for me next to the tree where the crows gathered and suggested we go together to my mother’s grave.

“Don’t bother me, Sheinfeld,” I said.

I was no longer a child and I could recognize an expression of pain and offense, but I wasn’t yet grown up enough to change my mind and apologize.

Jacob recoiled as if I had smacked his face, and then he said: “Just watch out, Zayde, and don’t tell the officers there what your name means, because then they’ll send you across the border for all kinds of dangerous things.”

I laughed and told him he worried too much, but I did take his advice. I didn’t tell anyone what my name meant, not even after the traffic accident I survived intact, as usual: I was sleeping in the backseat of a jeep that turned over. The driver, a gray-haired reserve officer with a potbelly, who showed me a picture of his granddaughters when we’d started out, was crushed and killed. I was thrown into the nearby ditch and walked away without a scratch.

As a recruit, I revealed a talent for target shooting which I
didn’t know I was graced with. I was sent to a course for sharpshooters, and afterward I stayed there as an instructor.

The training base was a small camp, with straight angles and whitewashed stones. Eucalyptus trees surrounded it, and their strong smell evoked memories, depressed me. Ancient abandoned crows’ nests were turning black in their crests, and when I asked why the birds had deserted the place, one of the instructors told me: “If you were a bird, would you live next to a sniper base?”

My days passed with blocked ears, stolid isolation, and constant shooting at thousands of cardboard enemies and not one single live human. I spent hours endlessly setting sights, endlessly shooting bullets into the same hole, and endlessly writing letters, some I sent to Naomi in Jerusalem and some I kept. I have the ability to write backward and forward, using regular writing and mirror writing, and because of this strange talent, Globerman once told me that maybe I wasn’t the son of any of my three fathers, but of some fourth man. One way or another, I especially love the writing that Meir, Naomi’s husband, once told me is called “Bostropeidon,” meaning “the ox’s gait”: one line in regular writing and the next line in mirror writing, just as the ox plows the field, back and forth on his traces along the previous rut. And I was so devoted to that writing that Naomi complained she was fed up with standing at the mirror to read my letters.