The Loves of Judith (28 page)

The thread seared its way in the flesh, the edges of the wound shook until they were fastened to one another and tightened. The awful pain pierced Jacob’s brain, made his bones shudder, and poured a stream of tears from his eyes.

From now on, he decided, lying and shaking in his empty bed in his empty house, he would give up the exhausting stages of conversation, bouqets of flowers, embellishments, remonstrances, jests, and beautiful words, because he didn’t have any special talent for them anyway. From now on he would challenge Fate. He would grasp it by the horns, bend it to his will, or be gored to death.

•  •  •

“N
OW
I
’M GONNA
tell you something about Fate, Zayde. I’m gonna tell you something about Fate and you’re gonna eat and you’ll listen. Back home, there was a rich Jew who played with fate. His name was Haim, but everybody called him L’Haim, because he liked to make toasts banging glass against glass. Globerman used to raise a glass with your mother in a refined way, they’d clink the crystal and he’d say: ‘May Lady Judith’s ears also enjoy.’ But this Jew would bang it real hard, and then he’d lick the blood and wine off his own fingers and off the woman’s fingers until both of them together would melt with pleasure. A person like L’Haim I never saw in my life. One day he came to us in town, a Jew sixty years old, without a wife, with two carts and two children, and nobody knew who it was or what it was, where he came from or where he was going. Money he had like water and all his cases was full of silk and furs, and in a loud voice he announced so everybody should hear: ‘When I die, these children won’t be left to ask for charity. Each one of them is gonna have something to start life with.’ And so it happened what always happens, that family and money get mixed up—the children grew up and started waiting for L’Haim to die already and L’Haim started hating the children, and so much he hated them that he finally decided to stop working and to use up all his money to the very end of his life, so there wouldn’t be one red cent left for the children. That’s how it is, when somebody’s crazy, he can’t stop. All he can do is move his craziness in another direction, but crazy he’ll stay. He sold his big house and his most beautiful furniture, and for himself he left only one little house and two horses to go from place to place and one maid, and he figured he had another seventeen years left to live, and he figured out how much he’d need for clothes to wear and food to eat: so many pounds of meat, so many pounds of flour and salt and sugar, and so many quarts of liquor and so much wood for heating, and so many crystal glasses to drink a toast with more women and to cut more fingers. And he was so precise he even figured the secret charity a Jew should
give, and the tithe for the rabbi, and Sabbath and holiday feasts, and from the seventeen years he had left, he remembered to subtract the food for the Fast of Gedalia and Yom Kippur, and Ten Teveth and Ta’anit Esther, and Seventeen Tamuz and Tesha B’Av, and since he was a firstborn son, he also had to fast on the eve of Passover. You never even heard of all those little fasts, Zayde? All that together was seven fasts times seventeen years, altogether take away a hundred and nineteen days of eating, and that’s also quite a bit of money and a little more life. And how many bars of soap he’ll need and all kinds of other little things, ’cause here and there sometimes a button falls off a garment and rolls God knows where and you’ve got to buy a new one ’cause no matter how hard you look for it, it don’t help. And he also figured out how much it would cost him to feed the horses, and he left enough money to buy new horses after he’ll send the old ones to be skinned, and even snuff and milk for the cat and seeds for the bird L’Haim took into account. And then, when the children understood he was serious, they started hollering: Father is stealing our inheritance! And they went to the rabbi, but the rabbi said: There’s nothing to do. A man’s money is his own and his will is to be respected. The sons said: And what if Father lives longer than the money and will be old and won’t have anything and will fall on our shoulders? And L’Haim said: I won’t live long. With me, everything is numbered and measured, when the money runs out, I’m gonna die, and when I die, the money’s gonna run out. And to make doubly sure, he went and ordered himself a big hourglass in the city of Makarov, with the amount of sand and the width of the hole for seventeen years on the dot. I remember how they brought that hourglass on a wagon, upside down and tied to boards and wrapped in cotton. They put it in the yard and L’Haim saw that everybody already came to see, and then he lifted up his hand and he brought it down and he shouted, ‘
Itzt
, now!’ and two special men turned the hourglass over so everybody would see how the time started running to the end of L’Haim. ’Cause that’s what’s beautiful about an hourglass, that it don’t measure the time of the
world. It measures its own time and ain’t interested in what happened before and what’s gonna happen after. And so many people came to look and he talked so much and was so proud of the accounts of his life and of his hourglass and of all the money he left for himself, and he told how before the end he’s gonna sit next to the hourglass and watch the last grains of his soul leaving his body, until all around that’s the only thing people were talking about. And one evening, nine months and one week after L’Haim stopped working, he was sitting on his money box and eating his herring and smiling at his sand, and all of a sudden, two robbers came into his house and broke his head in one blow with an iron pole, and they broke the hourglass with one blow, too, and all the money they took with one blow, too. And so everybody saw that L’Haim was right. His time and his money and his life all ran out in the same moment, and as L’Haim himself said, nothing was left for his sons after him. ’Cause when Fate decides to take a hand in some game, Zayde, even if you made up that game, then he sets all the laws and all the rules. And Fate and Luck and Chance, you should know, Zayde, they’re not where people look for them, in cards and dice, not at all! I’m telling you, Zayde, they’re in life itself. And that’s why I’m also telling you: never ever play cards or dice! Only chess you play, ’cause we’ve got enough dice in life when somebody else is throwing and we’ve got to make a move. And enough in life there’s somebody else shuffling the cards for us. So you don’t need that in games, too.”

A
LL THAT TIME
Judith kept on milking Rachel’s empty udders, and one day Bloch’s miracle happened and milk appeared. At first in a thin dripping and then in jets that grew stronger from day to day.

“Like a real milk cow she’ll never give,” said Moshe.

“The main thing is she’ll pay for the food you give her,” said Judith. “That’s what’s so important to you, isn’t it?”

“Calves she won’t ever give, either,” Moshe persisted.

When the rumor of Rachel’s milk reached Globerman’s ears, he wrote it down in his notebook, but he didn’t give up hope. He knew that Moshe couldn’t bear the weird cow, and he guessed correctly that he was a bit afraid of it, and he never passed up an opportunity to mention to him his wish to buy her.

He was a wise man, and years of trading had endowed him with a subtle understanding of the human soul. He deciphered the minuscule signs of distress in a person’s neck, discerned the hidden spasms of the diaphragm, and read the cloud maps of the forehead.

Those were hard times, and whenever he came to buy a cow, the livestock dealer also looked at the owner’s children. He saw the patches in their clothes and noticed the toes of their worn-out shoes cut out with a knife so that the growing child could wear them another season. He pulled a cookie out of his pocket and assessed the eagerness in their held-out hand.

“Look,” he’d say, “all kinds of things they say about Globerman in the village, but what after all does Globerman do? Hocus-pocus I do. You look and see, here’s a cow, hocus-pocus, what comes from the cow? Three ten-pound notes.”

Now, as winter approached, Globerman started commenting about the weather and about the heavy mud of the Valley and oy-oy-oy what rain and cold are in store for us this year, Rabinovitch, oy-oy-oy how much coats and boots for the kids cost.

He talked about his own children, children no one had ever seen and no one knew if they really did exist, but all he had to say was the phrase “coats for the kids” and worry appeared on the farmer’s brow. Globerman saw it before the farmer felt it, and knew this was the time to pull out the
knippl
, hold it out, and riffle the bills.

But Moshe feared Judith’s anger and she kept on milking Rachel’s
parched udders and trying to get her in heat. On Uncle Menahem’s advice she brought her carobs to sweeten her food, and on Samson Bloch’s advice she even caressed her immodestly with a warm damp rag, on her rump and under her tail—in vain.

“Bring her to Gordon for a few days,” Bloch finally suggested. “Let her look a little bit at my
Krasovitch
and maybe she’ll feel like it.”

W
HEN THE TWO
of them arrived in his yard, Bloch came out of the shed in his rubber boots, smiling happily.

“To me or to the bull?” he asked ingenuously.

Mother couldn’t help smiling. “Is Shoshana at home?” she asked.

“She’s in the hatchery.”

“I’ll go to the kitchen and put on the kettle.”

By the time Shoshana returned from the hatchery, Judith had already poured two cups of tea.

“Did you ever see such beautiful chicks?” asked Shoshana. “We bought Sheinfeld’s incubators. All of a sudden he up and sold them.”

Judith didn’t answer.

“It’s very hard for him now, ever since his wife left.”

Judith stirred the tea. Her eye was caught by the black leaves spinning in the cup.

“And what’s with you, Judith?” asked Shoshana Bloch.

“Everything’s fine,” said Judith.

“Still in the cowshed?”

“I feel good there.”

“It’s not good for you,” said Shoshana. “And it’s not good for Rabinovitch, and it’s not good for the whole village.” She put her hand on my mother’s. “It’s not good, Judith. You’re not a young girl anymore. How much longer will you live alone in the cowshed?”

“I feel good there,” repeated Judith.

“Now you’re still strong and healthy. But what about in ten or twenty years from now? And the heart, Judith? And the womb? What about them?”

“A nafka mina,”
said Judith. “The heart is empty now, and the womb is used to it.”

She drank another cup of tea, hugged Rachel’s neck in parting, told her she’d come back to get her in a week, and went to pay a brief courtesy call at Uncle Menahem’s.

From there she returned home, her feet treading fast, to keep her from thinking.

F
OR A WEEK
Rachel stayed with Gordon, and didn’t get in heat. Once she wanted to break through to his fence, and Bloch, who was sure his plot had worked, quickly let her in there. But Rachel’s heart wasn’t set on love. She just wanted to spar with Gordon and almost brought him down. Only with jets of cold water did Bloch manage to get her out of there.

“A waste of work and money,” he told Judith. “Boys don’t interest that girl. Take her back home and try milking a little more.”

It was a winter day. There was no rain, but a flat gray rind covered the sky. Strong smells of crushed grass rose from the treading of the boots and the trampling of the hooves. Angry pairs of lapwings flew above them, rising and falling, splendid and violent at the sight of their black-and-white passing, with their hidden stilettos and their horrible, shrill shrieks.

They crossed the wadi. The cow gulped the water, gasped with all her big, male body, and her nostrils exhaled steam into the cold air. Now and then she gently butted Judith’s thighs and back, as if prodding her to play, and Judith responded to her, tapped her on the neck, laughed, and ran beside her, but a stone
lay in her chest and tears of cold and worry gathered in the corners of her eyes.

Panting, they came to Sheinfeld’s row of walnut trees. The naked branches painted a delicate picture on the sheet of the sky, and the dark blocks of the crows’ nests were visible in them like brush drippings on the canvas. Beyond them appeared the tall figure of Globerman, striding along and singing in a loud, confident voice.

The dealer noticed them, stopping singing, waved his baston, lopping off the purple head of a brier. He smiled because he knew that nothing would prevent the encounter.

Judith, who was furious for the very same reason, stood still. All her old loathing stirred in her. Outside the framework of the weekly drinking in the cowshed, Globerman was still as dangerous and as filthy to her as always.

The dealer approached until a dozen steps separated them, and then he stopped, peeled the filthy beret off his head, pasted it onto his chest, and bowed.

“Lady Judith … the calf Rachel … what a surprise … what an honor for a poor dealer.”

“Were you following me, Globerman? Who told you I was here?”

“A little bird told me.” Globerman smiled. “When Lady Judith leaves the village, the wind stops blowing, the birds stop singing, men stop breathing.…”

He pulled a little package out of his pocket and held it out to her: “A little something for you. For two lovely ears.
Oyringlakh
of pure gold.”

“I never asked you for anything and I don’t like your gifts,” said Judith. “I’m willing only to drink with you, Globerman, once a week, and that’s all.”

Rachel swayed her thick neck, snorted, and dug her hoof in.

“Never does any lady have to ask Globerman for anything. Globerman always knows himself, all by himself, and from the start, what suits every lady, period.”

He bent over, and with his outstretched hand, held the earrings to her, but Judith didn’t stretch out her hand to take them and Globerman smiled to himself. “Where is Lady Judith going? Did you take the calf for a walk?”

“She’s in heat.”

“She’s in heat?” sneered the dealer. “She’s in heat? That cow isn’t in heat and won’t be in heat. Just look at her, Lady Judith. She’s got the body of a male calf and the
punim
of a male calf and the
feeslakh
of a male calf. In the end, they’ll still have to call Globerman, God forbid, eh? And then you’ll see, after we slaughter her and take her apart, that inside her she’s also got two balls of a male calf.”