Once a week, Mende’s younger sister, Fanny Keismann, comes over from the village of Upiravah, a seven-verst ride from Motal, and takes Mirl’s place in the cleaning work, so that her niece can join her own daughters’ Hebrew and arithmetic lessons. Working as a charwoman is disgraceful, all the more so for a wife and mother. Mende is ridden with guilt for dragging her sister into her humiliating attempts to escape poverty. What is more, Mende does not know how to thank Fanny for her help, and is unkind to her instead. Everything that Fanny does or says is met with Mende’s rebuke: no-one cleans this way, and why did she forget to polish that window frame, and she must not use so much soap, lest they squander all their pay on suds.
Mende knows that her sister has no need for the meagre wage the cleaning earns her. Once, she saw Fanny slide into Mirl’s pocket the coins she had earned in her niece’s place. Although Mende said nothing, this infuriated her all the more. How dare she? Will she let this yishuvnikit, this rustic Jewess, come over from her village, flaunt her superiority, and give them handouts just to prove that she is better than they? And what will people say about Mende? That she borrows money from her younger sister? Heaven forfend!
Fanny had already gone too far when, not two months after Zvi-Meir went away, she suggested to her older sister that she come and live with her in the village. “You know that the children would love being together, sister, and we would enjoy it too.” Offended, Mende replied that village life was absolutely not for her, let alone for Yankele and Mirl, muttering to herself the word “weit”, which means remote, isolated, or even forsaken.
Fanny was silent, but Mende knew that her sister understood exactly what she meant. Why would any Jew live in a village these days? Whoever did so must be either mad or a recluse. Since when is what most Jews find agreeable not good enough for the Keismanns? What is wrong with a place like Motal, a proper town with a synagogue and a cemetery and a bathhouse and a mikveh? What could they possibly want among the goyim in the heartlands of fields and bogs? Who will protect their home from Jew-hating thugs?
“Weit,” Mende said again, and Fanny pretended not to hear.
Then Mende added, “Sometimes I do not understand Natan-Berl. Why does he insist on living in a village?”
Throwing Natan-Berl’s name into the conversation was a big mistake, an unnecessary tug on a rope that was overstretched as it was. Fanny sent back the cold, impregnable stare of a woman capable of beheading her sister without blinking. This alarmed Mende so much that she quickly glanced down to make sure that Fanny’s hands were where they should be, rather than on the hilt of her knife. Underneath her skirts, Mende knew, Fanny carried the knife gifted to her by their late father, who had raised them by himself after their mother had received an urgent summons from On High.
“Natan-Berl knows what he is doing,” Fanny said.
Mende had never managed to understand her younger sister’s shidduch, let alone its success. Natan-Berl Keismann was a burly hulk, more of a Goliath than a David, with a silent manner that was seen as a mark of wisdom by those who loved him and as feeble-mindedness by those who did not. He had the tan of a goy and the thick flesh of a drunk; black plumes of hair descended from his nape, growing thicker on his arms and curling around his fingers. Every day at dawn, he would rise to tend his geese and his sheep, using the sheep’s milk to make the fine cheeses that had earned him a reputation throughout the region. Whenever Mende and Zvi-Meir visited Upiravah, they could hardly wait for the moment when Natan-Berl would produce the triangular wooden tray with wedges of cheese that melted in the mouth and weakened the mind. Yellow, green and blue, bitter and spicy, greasy and fermented, too delicious to be of this world, too fine for a Jewish palate.
Mende does not dare tell Fanny the rumours she hears about the Keismanns. On Shabbat and holidays the Keismanns arrive at the Motal synagogue, come rain or hail or snow, and although they receive a cold welcome from the rest of the congregation, they always ask after their acquaintances with unwavering smiles on their faces. But still the rumours abound. It is said that the unfortunate Keismanns befriend goyim, and not just for commercial purposes either: they visit the gentiles with their children, feast on wine and cheese, and chat in a mixture of Yiddish, Polish and Russian. People say that their house is made of bricks and that it is only covered with wood to fool jealous eyes. People say that the Keismanns have money coming out of their ears. People say that they set up a lavatory in their courtyard, with five openings for ventilation and a barrel dug into the ground, which they take out once a year to fertilise their vegetable patch. People say that Fanny has already learned the native languages and speaks fluent Polish and Russian, and her husband, so they say, does not know a word of Hebrew, swaying at shul like a wheat stalk in the wind – a true golem. People say . . .
Mende militantly wards off these malicious stories about her sister: how could a Jew’s soul ever mix with the soul of a gentile? But this is what people say: the Keismanns have split loyalties, they are chameleons through and through. And had they lived in Berlin or Minsk, they would have long since followed the descendants of Moses Mendelssohn and become Christians.
Mende knows that what is said is sometimes more important than what is true, and so she politely declined Fanny’s invitation to live in the village with her family.
“Zvi-Meir,” she told her younger sister, with wholehearted faith, “will return to his home, sure enough. You know what he is like. He will not settle for anything less than the best. Even if he is doomed to be a trader rather than a scholar, it is only natural that he would want to expand his business. What would he say if he heard that his children had wandered off to the village and become yishuvnikim?”
A strange, pleasurable sensation spread through Mende’s limbs as she expressed her confidence in her husband. And even now, ten months after Zvi-Meir’s departure, it does not feel like such a long time has gone by. She has read in Hamagid of married women who had waited more than five years and lost all hope, when finally, without any warning at all, their husbands came home.
Today, with perfect timing, Mende is in for a surprise. Having been caught up in the humdrum of daily life, she has forgotten that today is the fifteenth day of the month of Sivan, in the year 5654. She will mark twenty-six springs today, and behind her back her sister and daughter have been scheming how best to celebrate. Today, Fanny is coming to replace not Mirl, but Mende, to allow her sister to take a day off and do whatever she pleases. They have already worked out all the details, these co-conspirators, and Providence has played along gamely and thrown in wonderful weather. After work, sister and daughter will go to the market to buy delicacies and prepare a royal banquet for Mende. They have even obtained Reb Moishe-Lazer’s promise to give her a blessing. In the meantime, Mende can rest at home, or perhaps she would like to leave the noise of the town and go for a walk in the forest across the river. Reb Moishe-Lazer bade them tell her that one’s birthday is an opportunity to be reborn.
Mende is uneasy about this rebirth business. Doubt begins to gnaw at her mind: how can she rest and let them work so hard? And why did the Blessed Holy One create Heaven and Earth in six days, and not seven? After all, she already has one day of rest every week. But Fanny and Mirl counter all of her misgivings.
“Shabbat is the Queen, it is for celebrating the sacred; a birthday is for celebrating the mundane.”
“But why celebrate my birthday as though it is a kind of achievement? And what is there to find in the forest?”
“Fresh air! Blackberries! Blueberries! Blackcurrants! Go out and enjoy this world a little.”
Mende scoffs.
“This world? This world is . . .” She wants to say: terrible, damned, but finds herself stuttering before her daughter. “And besides,” she goes on, “I have no way of crossing the river.”
Fanny and Mirl giggle.
“We knew you would invent obstacles. We have already thought everything through and talked to Zizek.”
“Cross the river in the same boat as a gentile rogue?”
“Zizek is not a goy.”
“Poor Zizek doesn’t know what he is, God help him,” says Mende.
Fanny and Mirl tease her. “Everybody is poor and miserable in Mende’s eyes.”
Mende gives her sister a cross look and turns to scold her daughter.
“And what about your lessons?”
Mirl’s eyes fill with tears, but Fanny whispers in Mende’s ear, “Let her, sister, this was her idea. We will help her catch up with her study later, I’ll see to it.”
And Mende is annoyed that every time Fanny turns to her, she calls her “sister” – as if their relationship were not obvious and had to be underlined each time anew. In the end, she concedes that the two of them have pushed her into a corner and now she has to celebrate, not on her account, but on theirs. The matter is settled.