Preparations for dinner have stalled. Mende is doing the exact opposite of what she should. She lights the fire too late, risking a deviation from Queen Sabbath’s schedule. She does not wrap the challah in its embroidered cover. The borscht is flavourless. The kartoshkes are undercooked. Fanny’s five children cavort and caper about, and refuse to obey their aunt when she urges them to wash and get dressed properly.
Throughout the house, pandemonium reigns. David is wearing his Sabbath clothes inside out, and Gavriellah is polishing the candlesticks even though she has already scrubbed her fingernails. Mende scurries around the house as the children fight, and Rivkah Keismann sits at the table and directs proceedings with her last-minute instructions. If only they had listened to her from the start, all would have been fine. But everything that could have gone wrong has done just that. Rivkah should have assumed that Mende is incapable of rational thought. Next time she will rehearse every last detail with her.
The chaos is topped off by an argument, because Mende will not stop defending her sister.
“It’s impossible to know what went through her head,” Mende says.
This enrages Rivkah. “It is of no importance what went through her head.”
“Don’t judge someone else until you are in their shoes,” Mende goes on.
Rivkah bangs her fist on the table. “If this was the case then no-one who committed a crime would ever face judgment.”
“‘Crime’ is an exaggeration.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“A mistake.”
“A crime.”
“A mistake.”
“Let me ask you this,” says Rivkah. “Would you leave? Never. Would you abandon your children? You know you wouldn’t. Well, then: is it a crime or a mistake?”
“The word is of no importance; it could be that my sister has been miserable for years.”
“And you, were you not miserable with Zvi-Meir?”
“I certainly was not,” Mende says, appalled by the mere suggestion. “There were challenging times, but I was never miserable.”
“And did you disappear from your home?”
“You go too far! I am not so wild.”
“A-ha!” The grandmother clasps her hands together. “Why, then, are you so protective of your rebellious sister?”
“That is not what I meant. Every case is different. Something may have happened to her. Perhaps she was abducted.”
“And the abductor wrote the note on her behalf?”
“That I do not know.”
“Then what do you know?”
“That she is my sister, and that I should help her.”
“No-one can argue with that.”
“Then we agree.”
“That your sister is wild? Absolutely!”
Nonetheless, in spite of these futile debates, and although the unruly children are rocking Rivkah Keismann’s chair like a boat on the high seas, a calm pervades her limbs. This is how it should always have been. If only Natan-Berl had married another woman, a woman like Mende Speismann, then Rivkah could have entrusted her son to her capable hands and joined the Creator. Instead, the worries that she has endured in recent years have prolonged her life against her will, and she fears that if she leaves her son this way she will become eternally trapped between this world and the next. Who is she living for? She would have been better off dead.
As Mende pricks a kartoshke with her fork to test its tenderness, and David puts his yarmulke back on his head, and Gavriellah combs Elisheva’s hair, and Mirl crawls underneath the table with a rag to help her mother clean the dining room, and Yankele and Mishka and Shmulke play with matches, the grandmother asks herself, why shouldn’t it always be this way? Fanny will not return, and even if she does, Natan-Berl will not take her back. Perhaps eloquence and vivacity are not among her son’s strengths. But there’s nothing he cares about more than dignity and propriety. A mother knows her son’s innermost thoughts, and Rivkah is confident that Natan-Berl has made up his mind to forget Fanny. Well, why should she not invert the practice of yibum, and replace the absent wife with her present sister? If Jewish men may marry their brothers’ widows, why not marry Mende to her widowed brother-in-law? Certainly, this matter should be discussed with Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin in the first instance. After all, she is not qualified to make halakhic rulings. Still, it is hard to imagine that the law would be opposed to a natural unification of the family.
With this in mind, when Mende absentmindedly pulls out the lamb shank she brought from Simcha-Zissel Resnick to place it in the oven for roasting, the grandmother stands up, lays her hands on Mende’s waist and explains that it would be better if Natan-Berl never knew that meat had entered his kitchen. Mende trembles all over: how could she have been so stupid? But the grandmother soothes her; luckily for her, Rivkah is here, otherwise who knows what would have happened? Natan-Berl might have upended the table in his rage and never looked at Mende’s pretty face ever again. But now that the disaster has been averted, Mende Speismann sighs with relief and starts to believe that her face has perhaps remained handsome despite its recently added poundage. Rivkah Keismann has said so herself. Upon hearing Natan-Berl’s voice calling to his goats near the house, she feels a fluttering in her stomach.
Natan-Berl does not enter the house in his usual way. Perhaps Mende’s cart parked outside raises his suspicion, or perhaps it’s the commotion inside the house. It might be the unfamiliar smells coming from the kitchen – there’s no knowing how Natan-Berl’s mind works or how far his keen senses might stretch. In any event, as he stands on the threshold he peeks inside, counts the number of people and realises that it is higher than usual. Raising his eyes hopefully, he sees his sister-in-law, Mende. Embarrassed, Mende begins to explain why she is here, but the grandmother pinches her arm, as if to say: Natan-Berl’s silence is a good sign. There’s no need to ruin the moment with words.
The children immediately jump on the back of their bear-like father, and even Yankele and Mirl are happy to see him. David and Mishka are already arguing about who will go out with the shepherds on Sunday, and Gavriellah is angry with both of them, as they have broken a bowl of cabbage in their rush for their father. Young Elisheva slips in between everyone to hang around her father’s neck, “Me! Me!”, and the sudden relief in his face tells them all that he has made up his mind. Somehow, under their very noses, in a brief moment of inattention, the father and his youngest daughter have made a pact with a single glance. It is decided that Sunday will be Elisheva’s day to go out with the flock.
But their envy does not turn to bitterness. Elisheva’s siblings know that she needs their father more than they do. For the past three nights she has been calling for their mother without getting a reply, and although her grandmother has tried comforting her – “There there, Bubbe is here” – the little girl will not stop sobbing, falling back asleep only after yielding to her fatigue. The children do not talk about this among themselves, and yet they understand that this is not the time to act spoiled when they don’t get their way. Their mother would have wanted them to be generous with their baby sister. After two weeks’ absence, the memory of Fanny has blended with anger and resentment. Her soft voice still echoes in their minds, and their painful longing for her only grows stronger. Defying all logic, their inability to understand why she has disappeared doesn’t shake their confidence that she will return. They will settle their accounts with her in due course.
And as for Natan-Berl, there is no knowing what goes on in his mind. He blesses the wine and then ritually washes his hands. Sitting down at the head of the table, he appears not to remember why they are gathered, or realise that he should pass around the challah after the hamotzi blessing over the bread. The grandmother clears her throat and Natan-Berl sits up, surprised. If someone had told him that today is Tuesday, he would have said, “so much the better”, and started eating. Mende notes to herself that this household does not greet the Sabbath as extravagantly as Zvi-Meir and she once did in their home.
The adults do not exchange a single word during the meal, although they do turn to the children every now and again. The grandmother with reprimands, Mende with requests and Natan-Berl with the occasional nod. Mende thinks to herself that if Natan-Berl returned home and found the three Patriarchs and the four Matriarchs seated at his table, he would lower his head, sit down and gruffly chew his food. Can anyone blame her sister for running away from such boredom? If these were distant relatives, she would have thanked them at the end of Shabbat and gladly returned home. But these children, God help them, they are her nephews and nieces, her own flesh and blood. How can she leave them to their own devices, without a mother to teach them right from wrong? She is not free to choose. She has been commanded to help them. If she leaves when the Sabbath ends, she will never be able to look herself in the mirror again.
At the same time, she thinks that silence might have its advantages, too. She recalls a Friday night when she was very tired and Zvi-Meir had come home in a state of great agitation, wanting to discuss with her an issue that no Torah sage had ever contemplated before: how could Adam and Eve have grasped God’s prohibition before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that endowed them with reason?
“See how great this paradox is?” he had said.
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”
“Later,” Mende had sighed.
“This cannot wait. Why can’t you understand?”
The exhausted Mende had been forced to stretch the limits of her comprehension, and nod throughout Zvi-Meir’s chaotic lecture that had lasted the entire meal. He saw that she was tired, and asked her to repeat the last thing he had said; she asked him to let the matter go, admitting to her fatigue. Zvi-Meir had risen from his chair and slapped the table. “Exhausted? You are simply stupid!” He’d sucked in his cheeks, which were reddened by alcohol, and hissed, “Why am I even discussing matters of Torah with a woman?”
Now, as she sits quietly, Mende thinks to herself that there is nothing wrong with flowing silences. And in any event, her experience has taught her that people can talk to one another endlessly without really communicating anything. Yet when Natan-Berl leaves the table without even gracing her with a sideways glance, she knows that her days here are numbered. Rivkah touches her foot and whispers in her ear, “Can you see how glad Natan-Berl is that you are here? I haven’t seen him this happy for a long time.”