Flikt di mame federn,
federn un pukh,
zaydelen—a kishele
fun helln-roytn tukh.
I KNEW THAT SONG even before I understood what it means. It tells of a mother plucking feathers to make her son a down quilt with a pink cloth cover.
Many mothers, I imagine, sang that song to their children, and every one put in the name of her own child. “Zaydele” was me. That wasn’t a nickname that stuck to me, but my real name. “Zayde,” which means grandfather, is the name my mother gave me when I was born.
For years I’ve wanted to change it. But I don’t. At first I didn’t have the courage, then I didn’t find the strength, and finally we gave up, my name and I, and we’ve made peace with one another.
I was only a few months old when Mother sewed the cover and sang me the song, but even so, I seem to remember those nights well. Winters were cold in Moshe Rabinovitch’s cowshed, while in summer Mother negotiated with our neighbor Eliezer Papish, who raised geese, and in exchange for his goose down, she sewed down quilts for him and his whole family.
By the way, we called Eliezer Papish the “Village Papish” to distinguish him from his rich brother, who sold tools and building supplies in Haifa and was called the “City Papish,” and maybe I’ll tell about him, too, later on.
SO, MY NAME IS ZAYDE, Zayde Rabinovitch. My mother’s name is Judith, and in the village they called her Rabinovitch’s Judith. A good smell of lemon leaves wafted from her hands and a blue kerchief was always wound around her head. She was hard of hearing in her left ear and she got mad when anyone talked to her on that side.
My father’s name nobody knows. I am illegitimate, and three men claimed me as their son.
From Moshe Rabinovitch, I inherited a farm and a cowshed and yellow hair.
From Jacob Sheinfeld I inherited a fine house, fine furnishings, empty canary cages, and drooping shoulders.
And from Globerman the cattle dealer, I inherited a knipele of money and my gigantic feet.
And despite that complication, my name was crueler for me than the circumstances of my birth. I wasn’t the only child in the village or the Valley sired by a father who was unknown or a father that wasn’t his; but in the entire country, maybe even in the world, there wasn’t another child whose name was Zayde. In school they called me Methuselah and “Gramps,” and every time I came home and complained about that name she gave me and wanted to know why, Mother explained simply: “If the Angel of Death comes and sees a little boy named Zayde, Grandfather, he understands right away that there’s a mistake here and he goes to someplace else.”
Since I had no choice, I was convinced that my name protected me against death and I became a child who knew no fear. Even the primeval dreads that reside in the heart of every human being before he’s born were eradicated in me.
Fearlessly, I would hold out my hands to the snakes nesting in the crevices of the chicken coop, and they would watch me, winding their necks inquisitively, and didn’t hurt me.
Often I climbed up on the roof of the cowshed and ran along the steep slope of shingles with my eyes shut.
I engaged my heart to approach the village dogs who were always tied up and had become thirsty for blood and revenge, and they wagged their tails amiably at me and licked my hand.
And once, when I was an eight-year-old grandfather, a pair of crows attacked me as I climbed up to their nest. A hard black blow landed on my forehead and I spun around and lost my grip on the branch. Swooning with delight, I dropped down and down. Soft embraces of branches slowed my fall, and my landing was padded by the expected bed of leaves, the soft ground, and my mother’s superstition.
I got up and ran home and Mother applied iodine to my scratches.
“The Angel of Death is an orderly angel. He’s got a pencil, he’s got a notebook, and he writes down everything,” she laughed, the way she laughed whenever I was saved; “but you can’t count on the Malakh-funshlof. That Angel of Sleep never writes down anything and never remembers. Sometimes he comes and sometimes he falls asleep himself and forgets.”
THE ANGEL OF DEATH would always pass by me, and I felt only the hem of his cloak grazing the skin of my face. But once, in the autumn of 1949, a few months before my mother’s death, I also saw him face-to-face.
I was about ten years old. The Village Papish’s enormous mare was in heat, our stallion heard her neigh in her rutting and started running wild inside our fence. He was a good-natured chestnut-colored horse. Moshe Rabinovitch, who did everything “just right,” and therefore didn’t fraternize with his livestock more than was acceptable and proper, indulged him with caresses and carobs, and once I even saw him plaiting the horse’s tail into a thick yellow braid, with blue ribbons woven in as decoration.
He even refused to geld the stallion despite all demands and advice. “That’s cruelty to animals,” he said.
Sometimes the stallion would get an erection and bang his member against his belly. Hour after hour he would do that, with great and desperate persistence. “Poor soul,” Globerman the cattle dealer then said; “his balls they left to him. A female they don’t give to him. And hands he ain’t got. So what can he do?”
That night, the stallion leaped over the fence and mated with the mare, and in the morning, Moshe gave me his halter and sent me to bring him back.
“You’ll look him straight in the eyes,” he said, “and tell him c’mon-c’mon-c’mon-c’mon. But if he makes eyes at you, don’t have nothing to do with him—you hear me, Zayde? Leave him alone at once and call me.”
It was early in the morning. The bleating of hungry, impatient calves was borne on the air. The scolding of farmers at their dreamy milking was heard. The Village Papish was already running around the pen, shouting and cursing, but the couple didn’t pay any attention to anything. Their eyes were misty with love, their loins were dripping, their horse smell was enriched with new tones.
“You came to take the stallion?” exclaimed the Village Papish. “Rabinovitch has maybe lost his marbles? To send a little boy?”
“He’s milking,” I said.
“Milking? I could be milking now, too!” the Village Papish’s voice was loud enough to reach our yard so Moshe would hear it.
I went into the pen.
“Get out of there fast!” cried the Village Papish. “It’s very dangerous when they’re together.”
But I had already lifted the halter and was intoning the magic words.
“C’mon-c’mon-c’mon-c’mon …” And the stallion approached and even let me put the straps on his muzzle.
“He’s gonna go nuts right away, Zayde,” called Papish. “Leave him right now!”
Just as we were leaving the yard, the mare whinnied. The stallion stopped and pushed me to the ground. His eyes bulged and turned red. A loud snort erupted from the depths of his chest.
“Drop the rope, Zayde!” shouted the Village Papish. “Drop it and roll out of the way fast!”
But I didn’t let go.
The stallion rose up on his hind legs, the rope grew taut, and I was lifted up and dropped supine on the ground. His front hooves kicked the air and tamped the dirt next to me. A heap of dust rose and beyond it I saw the Angel of Death, his notebook in his hand, his eyes fixed on me.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“Zayde,” I answered, not letting go of the rope.
The Angel of Death recoiled as if stunned by an invisible slap. He moistened his fingertip and leafed through the notebook.
“Zayde?” he fumed. “How can you call a little boy Zayde?”
My body was shaken and beaten; the awful hooves whistled by me like the axes circus performers toss at their blindfolded girls. My hand grasping the rope was almost pulled out of my shoulders and my skin was flayed off on clods of dirt, but my heart was serene and confident.
“Zayde,” I said once again to the Angel of Death. “My name is Zayde.”
In the shining white light, I saw him lick his pencil, examine his notebook once more, and understand that there was some mistake here.
His jaws gnashed in rage, and with a gasp of wrath and menace, he went somewhere else.
The loud whinnying and the yells of the Village Papish rushed Moshe Rabinovitch to me. He ran heavily across the ten meters between the two yards, and what I saw then I shall never forget.
With his left hand, Rabinovitch grabbed the stallion’s halter and pulled him down until their heads were level, and with his right fist he struck the white star in the center of the horse’s forehead one blow, and no more.
The stallion jerked back, stunned and surprised, and the majesty of his virility fell as if it were lopped off. He dropped his head, his eyes sank back, and with a moderate, ashamed pace he returned to our yard and went inside his fence.
The whole thing lasted no more than thirty seconds. But when I stood up, safe and sound, my other two fathers were already there: Jacob Sheinfeld had run up from his house and the dealer Globerman came in his green pickup truck, collided, as he always did, with the big eucalyptus tree, and jumped out, yelling and waving the nail-studded bastinado.
And Mother came tranquilly, stripped off my shirt, shook the dust off it, washed and disinfected the scratches on my back, and laughed. “A little boy named Zayde, nothing will happen to him.”
SO IT’S NO WONDER that as time went on, I became convinced that my mother was right and I came to believe in the power of the name she gave me, and so I take the precautionary measures it entails. Once I lived with a woman, but she ran away from me, amazed and despairing, after a few months of abstinence.
“A son will bring a grandson, and the grandson will bring the Angel of Death,” I told her.
At first she laughed, then she got angry, and in the end she left. I heard she married somebody else and that she’s barren, but by that time I knew all the jokes and mockery of fate, and my heart was inured to it.
THAT’S HOW MY name saved me both from death and from love. But this has nothing to do with the story of my mother’s life and her death, and stories, unlike reality, have to be preserved from all excess and addition.
A slight melancholy may be woven into my way of talking, but it isn’t evident in my life. Like every person, I create moments of grief for myself, but the pleasures of life aren’t alien to me, my time is my own, and as I said before, three fathers showered their benefits on me.
I’ve got a knipele of money and a green pickup truck bequeathed to me by Globerman the cattle dealer.
I’ve got a big beautiful house on Oak Street in Tivon, the house bequeathed to me by the canary breeder, Jacob Sheinfeld.
And I’ve got a farm in the village, Moshe Rabinovitch’s farm. Moshe Rabinovitch still lives there, but he’s already registered it in my name. He lives in his old dwelling, facing the street, and I live in the pretty little house in the yard, the house that was once a cowshed, where bougainvillea twine around its cheeks like colorful sideburns, where swallows flutter yearnings at its windows, and a soft smell of milk still rises from the cracks in its walls.
In bygone days, doves hummed in it and cows gave milk. Dew collected on the covers of the jugs, dust in dances of gold. Once a woman lived in it, laughed and dreamed, worked and wept, and in it she brought me into her world.
That, in fact, is the whole story. Or, as practical people say in their deep, loathsome voices: that’s the bottom line. And everything that will sneak in above it from now on are details with no purpose but to satisfy that pair of small, hungry beasts—curiosity and nosiness—who nest in all our souls.