The Loves of Judith (12 page)

She would send me packages from Jerusalem, with funny drawings, terrific poppyseed cakes, and stories that didn’t interest me about her husband Meir and their little son.

Jacob also sent me letters—short and rare, in a twisted handwriting and with spelling mistakes that suited the way he talked. Globerman, as usual, sent money, and on every bill, next to the signature of the bank director, he added his own signature and a word or two. And Moshe didn’t send me anything, but always went with me to the dairy on Saturday night when I left to go back to the base. Now I was much taller than him. He hugged
me when he parted, shook my hand in his rough bear paw, and I climbed into the heights of Oded’s truck and went off.

I
N
1961 I
FINISHED
my service, returned the snipers’ Mauser to the arsenal along with my telescopic sight, came back to the village, and turned down Globerman’s offer to come study cattle dealing.

“It’s good work, Zayde,” he told me. “And it was always a profession passed down from father to son. You’ll learn from me everything you need to know, you’ll be a
finer soykher
, a fine dealer, just like somebody born on the
Klots
.”

With all my affection for Globerman, it was good enough for me to be born on the floor of the cowshed. Being born on a butcher block didn’t seem to me to be an improvement in family pedigree. But Globerman was a generous father, a fascinating conversationalist, and an unfailing source of tales, diagnoses, and opinions, and now and then I’d accompany him for a day or two of work and stories.

“My mother would turn over in her grave,” I told him, “if she knew that I was with you in the slaughterhouse.”

At the time, we were riding in his ancient green pickup truck on the dirt roads of the Valley and the dealer was imparting moral lessons and memories to me.

“
Gib a kook
, Zayde—take a look,” he said. “The camp for the Italian prisoners of war used to be here. Here, right where the little hill is, they had their own kitchen, and those red bricks is all that’s left of the chimney of the oven. All day long they’d sing here and cook and dance, and the best smell in the world would come out of that chimney of theirs, and in the fence there was a big hole everybody knew about, where the prisoners of war could leave quietly and return quietly without bothering the guards.

“Ask Sheinfeld sometime,” he added. “He knew those Italians better than I did.”

There was some cunning mixed into his voice. I understood what it meant, but I knew that Globerman was testing me and I didn’t respond.

The pickup circled and shifted on its worn-out shock absorbers and the poor cow standing in the back was hurtled between the wooden sides. The cattle dealer was a terrifying driver, who kept swerving out of the lane and bumping into stones, trees, and animals who weren’t quick enough to get out of the way. Oded, who had taught him how to drive years before, told me more than once: “Be careful when you drive with him. Globerman’s sure the gearshift is a stick for stirring the oil.”

The dealer asked me if I had had “all kinds of
tsatskes
” in the army.

“I don’t like
tsatskes
very much,” I said.

“In the end everybody gets the woman he deserves. How did they used to say back home? Reuben gets the
tsatske
and Simon gets the
klavte
, and Levi gets the
balabuste
. Maybe the time has come for me to look for some decent
tsatske
for you, a woman with power, Zayde. With flesh like the
kishre
of a year-old calf. A woman who, when she closes her legs on you and laughs, your whole body sings like a bird. Someday, when you understand flesh, you’ll also understand what I’m talking about now. Meanwhile, wait until luck introduces us to such a woman.”

“And if we don’t have any luck?”

“The world is full of radish women and potato women and hardboiled egg women,” said Globerman. “And I already told you, Zayde, everybody gets what he deserves, period.”

His proximity to blood and money made the dealer very dogmatic about certain aspects of life, especially in relation to gluttony and flirting.

“Everybody’s wrong!” he declared. “A beautiful woman, when she’s dumb, she’s the dumbest, and when she’s smart, she’s the smartest. Because in a woman beauty goes together with sense and in a man beauty comes together with stupidity.”

He looked at me and smiled, I smiled back, and the old pickup,
which was only waiting for such an opportunity, burst into the nearby orchard and broke an apple tree.

Globerman cursed long and leisurely, turned off the motor, and in the silence that prevailed, he said: “And besides that, Zayde, with every woman there’s some secrets that only the eye and hand of a
fleysh handler
can know. The time has come for you to know that, Zayde, ’cause you’re twenty-two years old now, and if you would work like you should, with the flesh of the cow and not with her milk, you’d already have known all these things a long time ago. A normal person looks at nonsense in a woman, at lips and eyes, and if he’s a little bolder, he also watches how her
tukhis
moves when she walks and how her udders dance when she works. But a person who was born on the
Klots
knows, for instance, that at the end of her back, right where if she had a tail it would grow, there every woman’s got like a little hill of fat. The first chance you get, let’s say, when you’re dancing with her, you give her a tap there, Zayde, here, tappen like this.”

He stretched out a nimble hand and tapped the place where I don’t have a tail.

“Right here. Men ain’t got nothing there. But in a woman, from her little hill here you can tell about her other little hill, the one she’s got in her Paradise in front. There she should have a fat and beautiful and happy hill. A
ziesskayt
of flesh. If she ain’t got a hill there, the whole body is very sad, period.”

He got out to check the damage.

“This truck’s got a bumper like a bull’s forehead,” he declared proudly.

G
LOBERMAN
’
S WORLD
was clear and sure, the letters and signs were unequivocal, the hints broad and decisive, periods bellowed at the ends of sentences.

“And one more thing you can learn now from your father, that if she’s also got a little hair on her upper lip, not a real mustache, God forbid, Zayde, only like a shadow of grass, that’s also
a good sign that that woman is a warm woman with a beautiful forest on her beautiful hill.”

He took a bill out of his pocket and nailed it to the trunk of the broken apple tree.

“That’ll be enough,” he said. “So they shouldn’t say Globerman ain’t honest and don’t pay for damages in cash. You understood what I told you about the hill? So, even before she takes off her clothes, you already know important things about her that even her own mother don’t know.”

The pickup went back onto the dirt road, its belly raking the thorny spine between the banks, and we started across the eucalyptus forest. The lane, where the dealer and his victims used to leave traces of hooves and boots, had already been expanded from the width of a cow to the width of the pickup, and only the rings of the tires were visible in it now.

“Already the thief’s standing there,” the dealer said to me when we emerged from the forest and saw the butcher waiting at the gate of the slaughterhouse. “Don’t you say a word, Zayde, you just look and learn. That dog is a big swindler, and who do you think he learned to be a swindler from? Like all of us, he learned from his father. And how do I know they’re a family of swindlers? From my father, who taught me who I should watch out for. In their butcher shop, when some pious jerk would come in to buy kosher meat, his father would stick his hand behind his back deep into his pants and put it on his own
tukhis
like that. The customer would look at the meat and ask: ‘
Dos iz glatt?
It’s smooth kosher?’ And he’d stroke his
tukhis
in his pants and say: ‘
Yo, yo, dos iz glatt
.’ And if you asked him later why he lied, right away he’d pull down his pants without no shame, turn around, and say: ‘Is that
glatt
or isn’t it? Touch it and feel how smooth it is.’ ”

Satisfied with my hoot of laughter, Globerman parked the pickup truck and led the cow out of it.

“Right away you’ll hear the same thing,” he whispered to me through clenched jaws. “He
fanfatehs
. Talks through his nose.
That’s also a sign you should know, Zayde: anybody who talks through his nose is a swindler, period. But we’ll do everything honest and faithful, right? Just remember, don’t mix in. And especially don’t tell him how much we bought it for.”

The butcher who talked with a nasal twang observed the cow, made her walk, tapped the points of her spine, felt her rump and the nodes in her neck, the whole examination Globerman used to do at our village.

“How much do you want for this carcass?” he asked at last, and they grasped each other’s wrist and the ceremony began.

“Seventy pounds?” shouted Globerman, and hit the butcher’s hand hard.

“Thirty-five!” twanged the butcher, and hit Globerman’s hand.

“Sixty-eight!” exclaimed Globerman, and struck the butcher’s hand.

“Forty!” exclaimed the butcher, and his hand whipped the dealer’s hand.

“Sixty-five!” replied the dealer with a loud smack.

Those sounds were very loud. Small grimaces of pain crossed the faces of the two hagglers.

“Forty-three and a half!”

“Sixty-four!”

“Forty-six!”

There was a brief silence. The two of them looked at one another; their hands were red by now and wanted to part.

“Benemones Parnussa?”
asked Globerman.

“Benemones Parnussa,”
the butcher agreed.

They dropped their hands and rubbed their tormented palms.

“Fine,” said the butcher. “May you have seven pounds from it, you thief.”

“Fifty-nine pounds,” said Globerman.

The butcher paid, Globerman took his rope off the cow and put it back in its regular place on his shoulder, and said to me:
“The minute he said ‘and a half,’ I knew it would end with
Benemones Parnussa
,” and we left.

“You understood what happened here?” he went on. “You know what
Benemones Parnussa
is?”

“No.”

The
soykher
nodded his head at me: “Listen.
Benemones Parnussa
means a decent living. If the butcher and I can’t agree on the price, he says how much I deserve to make on the cow. If I bought it for fifty-two pounds, and he says
Benemones Parnussa
, seven pounds, then he’s got to give me fifty-nine pounds.”

“So why didn’t you tell him you bought it for fifty-five?”

“No. Lying is forbidden.”

“Lying is forbidden? That’s what your father taught you back then and you’re teaching me now?”

“
Fleysh handler un fish handler un ferd handler
, those are professions without much honor, but they are passed down from father to son,” said Globerman. “And if you want to be a dealer, you should know that we also have principles in life. You can lie about everything. Cheat about the weight, cheat about the health, cheat about the age. We give it water and feed it salt and starve it and fatten it and loosen its bowels and stick a nail in its leg and make it
glatt
on our own
tukhis
. But with
Benemones Parnussa
we are forbidden to lie, period.”

I
ENJOYED THOSE LESSONS
and stories and trips, but I didn’t want to be a cattle dealer.

I read books, I worked on the farm with Moshe Rabinovitch, I went back to observing the crows, and I struck up an affectionate relation with a girl from the nearby agricultural school, who
worked at fattening geese for the Village Papish and looked so fertile and dangerous that I didn’t let her touch me below the belt.

In those days, I started to suffer from insomnia. I didn’t understand where it came from, from inside my body or from outside it, but I did remember what Mother used to say—that the Angel of Death is orderly and very careful, and the
Malakh-fun-shlof
, the Angel of Sleep, is forgetful and lying and you can’t count on his promises.

I took advantage of the insomnia to prepare for the university. I spent many nights lying and reading and reciting—my yellow wooden bird hanging over me, hovering eternally, and a small lamp at the head of my bed.

And at dawn, when at last the book dropped onto my face and I fell asleep, Rabinovitch would come into my room, grope in the dark, explore and seek, and I would wake up.

He paid no heed to me, peeped in the closets, rummaged in the kitchen shelves, opened cans and jars.

“What are you looking for there, Moshe?” I finally asked him, even though I knew what the answer would be.

“Der tsop,”
he replied. “The braid.”

In his voice, the force repressed in the hard fibers of his flesh and the feeblemindedness that was to attack him in old age were embroidered together, and even then were twined in his voice like a thin prophecy.

“Der tsop,”
he repeated in that voice which was many years older than its owner’s body. “Where is the braid Mother cut off me? My Tonychka didn’t tell you where it is?”

I shuddered. I knew, of course, that the living miss their dead, converse with them, and weep for their loss, but I didn’t know that the dead also act like that with their live loved ones.

Even today, when the braid has been found, he again comes to me at night and again I am terrified by his words. Nothing has changed: I am still lying there and reading, and the
Malakh-fun-shlof
still tarries, and Rabinovitch still comes in, mutters,
“Der tsop … der tsop …”
and seeks the braid that “Mother cut off me.”

I
T
’
S STRANGE TO SEE
such an old man saying “mother.” But I don’t tell him that and I don’t remind him that I didn’t know his mother and that I was born years after his Tonychka died. He’s an old man, and why should I disturb his last days with inane details? So old that I don’t bother to hide the braid from him. First his mother hid it, then his wife, and now, when it is out in the open, it’s his own forgetting that conceals it from him.