What happened next is really not proper to tell, so let’s hope Mama never finds out about it. We were in some kind of pub, Uncle and the Hungarian were quite drunk, and there were three women too. One of them, I have to admit, a very pretty girl, strong and white—she looked to me like a Hungarian peasant—kept pouring this Viennese heurige in my glass, young wine that takes the wrong road—not to your stomach, but straight to your head, and I was drinking and drinking it like the last fool. On the small stage a performance was taking place, girls were singing ditties that were not quite decent, lifting up their skirts and showing that thing at the front, and then that thing at the back. And the whole pub was singing, and people were embracing each other, and swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the song—just the way it’s done all over our great empire. There were a lot of soldiers and I was feeling sick from the heavy stink of cigars and wine. After all, you know how it is at home in Kolodetz—the Poles were the ones who drank a bit more, whereas Dad would open a bottle of wine for Pesach and what was left of it he’d carefully cork up until Hanukkah.
Uncle hugged me and kissed me tenderly on the cheek. Then he announced to everyone: “My nephew’s a soldier! My dear boy’s going to war and he’ll have his baptism by fire. A consecration! A second bar mitzvah!”
Bar mitzvah, as I told you, marks one’s religious coming-of-age. I don’t know who invented it—Moses, or King Solomon, or King David, but if you ask me, I don’t think thirteen-year-old boys are mature. Anyway, my second bar mitzvah was supposed to make me ultimately mature, I guessed—I’m no fool. Miklos said something in Hungarian to my companion, she grabbed my hand, and dragged me after her, laughing.
“Where are we going?” I asked in confusion, even though, as I said, I could guess, it’s just that I was shy in front of Uncle Chaimle.
“Go on, go on, my boy,” he said.
The Hungarian woman sneaked me in somewhere behind the stage into a small room crammed with furniture, a mirror, wigs, and all kinds of theatrical stuff. She locked the door and sank into the sofa, giggling. It smelled of paint, glue, and perfume.
“It’s warm,” she said. Flushed and stimulated by the alcohol, she unbuttoned her velvet shirt as if her breasts had been waiting just for that.
She caught my eyes staring at those white, luscious peasant boobs, took my hand, and put it right there. I was drowning in sweat, and drunk, and my breathing was heavy. Everything in my sight was going double—the girl, the dim lamp at the mirror. I closed my eyes, hugged her, and said, “I love you, Sarah.”
“I’m not Sarah, I’m Ilona,” she corrected me.
I looked at her, laughed foolishly, and then the smile left my face. Closing my eyes again and relaxing, I saw Sarah, the greenish-gray sparkle of her eyes, Sarah behind a veil, unless it was the smoke of cigars. She was looking at me reproachfully.
“Hey, are you feeling sick?” said the Hungarian woman, pushing me slightly.
I opened my eyes again, they were full of tears, which must have been from the drinking. During the course of my life I’ve noticed that every time I get drunk, I tend to cry.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked the girl, and slipped her hand down my trousers. She said: “You’re not here, are you?”
I smiled guiltily, and shrugged my shoulders. By now I really wasn’t there. My soul was away with Sarah.