Hodl must have been about forty years old, though she claimed—“May I live to a hundred and twenty”—to be only thirty. It was her wretched life and her miserable work that had turned her old and gray.
Hodl had been married once to a good-for-nothing who had a chronic illness to boot. So she said good riddance to him and married for the second time. What she wanted from both husbands were children. She went off and consulted wonder-working rabbis, visited doctors, and drank herbed potions, but to no avail. The two husbands, the first as well as the second, seemed to have been somewhat deaf and never heard what she asked of them.
In the large courtyard behind the synagogue, where Hodl used to live, women of all ages would gather around to hear the foul curses she heaped on the heads of her former husbands. She herself, she shrieked, was as healthy as a nut. Throughout Poland all the doctors, and all the wonder-working rabbis, had assured her of that. It was the husbands—may lightning strike them!—who were to blame.
Hodl’s second husband had been, in fact, a respectable man, a quiet man, even something of a scholar, well-spoken, and always welcome at all celebrations. But Hodl had given him such a hard time that it tore out his insides. He took to his bed, lingered a while, and never got up again.
Hodl had no intention of marrying a third time. If all that husbands were good for was dying, why should she take any more risks? So, pushing forty, plump, ruddy, with a squashed face, she remained, alas, a miserable widow for the rest of her life.
When one is widowed, it must be sad to live out one’s life alone, even for someone like Hodl. So she always boarded with strangers, dragging her battered blue trunk from place to place on its little wheels. The trunk grew heavier by the day, what with all the Sabbath candlesticks, pillows, and garments that poor people pawned with her and were never able to redeem.
This time, it seemed, it was thanks to Mother’s enterprise that Hodl and her trunk ended up in our kitchen. First of all, Mother said, Hodl would share the rent, and secondly, it would be more homey to have someone around.
Father wasn’t too pleased with this new arrangement. At that time, Father could easily have afforded to pay the entire rent by himself and, for the life of him, couldn’t understand why Mother needed someone else in the house to make it “homey.”
He looked at Hodl with a pair of unfriendly eyes, stared at her battered trunk, then looked at Mother, saying nothing, but with his eyes indicating, “What do you need this for?”
The meaning of his look wasn’t lost on Hodl. She opened her soft, moist lips and, in her high-pitched voice asked, “Why do you look at me like that, Reb Leyzer?”
“Why shouldn’t I look? At a beautiful woman, you look,” Father jested.
“Ha, ha, ha …” Hodl crinkled her plump face. “I’m still something to look at. Isn’t that so, Reb Leyzer?”
“Stop it, Hodl!” Mother interjected.
“Why should I stop it? You’re not jealous, are you?”
“I’m not jealous, but I don’t like such jokes.”
“He doesn’t hear what you say to him anyway.” Hodl dismissed the whole matter.
It could very well be that Father didn’t hear anything. But I took in every word from beginning to end. It pained me the way she made fun of Father’s deafness. Her loud, vulgar talk hurt me to the quick. I came to hate that plump, overfed creature, like I would a spider. She made us feel cramped, and her shrieks filled the house. After only a week, she wheeled her battered trunk from the kitchen into the other room. From day to day she grew wider and her face, shinier.
During that time Mother lost the pretty, soft double chin she had acquired in Warsaw. Her face became longer, pointy. In the mornings she no longer wore the black silk petticoat that Aunt Gitl-Hodes had given her, but a plain, striped housedress. It made her look taller and leaner.
Hodl, on the other hand, swung her big hips like a cow. She walked around the house with her puffy arms bared to the shoulders. She dressed her blond wig with some thick, greasy ointment, whose smell irritated the nose and penetrated the gums. She never stopped chewing—pieces of cake, oily chunks of halvah—smacking her lips like Wladek when he chomped on his crusts of bread.
Hodl always ate with her face turned to the wall, never talking to anyone. If someone happened to surprise her while she was eating, she would hastily put her hand to her mouth, as if hiding something, and wait for the unwelcome intruder to be gone.
Hodl feared the evil eye. Twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, on Hodl’s instructions, Mother would fill a glass of water, drop a hot ember into it, dip her fingers into the water, and run them over Hodl’s face, while repeating, “Over all the desolate forests, over all the empty fields,” an incantation designed to drive away the evil eye.
My nose often tickled from the sweet smell of the oranges that Hodl nibbled on, or from the preserves she kept under her bed. And even though I didn’t like her, I still couldn’t resist stealing an occasional glance at her and the way she smacked her lips.
One time Hodl called me over, looked me in the eye, and offered me a piece of cake.
“Here, you rascal,” she said, “and if you’re a good boy, there’ll be more.”
Whether I was a good boy or not, I couldn’t say, but several days later Hodl called me over again, looked at me steadily, and offered me a piece of halvah.
“Eat it, boy,” she winked roguishly, pinching my arm. “Tasty, no?”
The halvah was indeed tasty, but did she have to pinch my arm? It hurt and left a bluish mark, which in time turned black. I was afraid Mother would notice it. I would gladly have forgone the pieces of cake and the halvah, if only to be spared her pinches.
It happened one Sabbath morning. The house hadn’t been straightened out yet. The wet, yellow sand, sprinkled on the floor the night before, by now had dried and turned white. Cold plates, with even colder portions of fish, stood on the window sill. Mother was away, having rushed off to Aunt Miriam’s. Somebody there had taken sick. There was no hot tea in the house. Old Pavlova, who came to the house on Sabbaths to light the stove, was late that morning. F ather, who had already finished going over the Torah portion of the week, wanted a glass of hot tea. Maybe because his mouth was so dry, he kept calling me t get up.
“It’s time for synagogue.”
It was warm and cozy under the featherbed, but the house was so chilly that I didn’t want to get out of bed.
“Soon, Father,” I answered. “In just a minute.”
But Father wouldn’t wait, neither for me nor for old Pavlova. He threw his prayer shawl over his kapote, pulled on his coat over the prayer shawl, ordered me, in God’s name, to follow him to the synagogue without delay, and left by himself.
I still didn’t feel like getting up. I started counting to a hundred and decided that I would jump out of bed at a hundred and one. But I kept on counting, and when I reached two hundred … I was still under the featherbed.
In the midst of my counting, I heard someone moving in the kitchen and the lock to the door snapping shut. What was going on? What did Hodl have in mind there? Before very long, there was Hodl, standing in the big room, probably unaware of how she looked. She wasn’t wearing a petticoat. All she had on was a pair of wide, white, ruffled bloomers whose billowing expanses resembled the pantaloons worn by the magicians I had seen at the fair. I also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a nightcap. Her uncovered hair was thin and gray.
What was Hodl up to? She ran her eyes quickly over the room, went to the windows, and drew the curtains.
What did all this mean? Why draw the curtains?
But Hodl clearly had something in mind. Before I could think things through, she slid toward my bed and sat herself down.
I broke into a feverish sweat. It was a shameful thing for me to have a strange woman sitting on my bed.
I still didn’t know what Hodl intended, but I quickly pulled the featherbed over my head and hid in its sweaty warmth.
“Why are you hiding?” Hodl pulled the featherbed back. “Here,” she said, “have a candy.”
“I don’t want any candies! Let me get up!”
“Stop screaming! You know, I once choked a boy who screamed like that,” she said in a voice suddenly turned hoarse.
For a moment I imagined that I was that boy and that Hodl had already choked me to death. Otherwise, I couldn’t understand what was happening.
My tongue was paralyzed and my toes grew so cold that they began to tingle.
“You little fool,” Hodl bent over me. “I’ve got oranges for you, and grapes, and walnuts. And what do you think I want from you?”
She never told me what she wanted but, without warning, grabbed my mouth between her thick, swollen lips.
I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was choking and tore my mouth from her lips. But Hodl was strong. She gripped my head with her hands, like a pair of tongs, and held me down. Within seconds I felt Hodl’s plump, forty-year-old body lying beside me.
“Darling,” she croaked, her voice now a rattle, “I’ll give you money … I have lots … I’ll even give you a watch. After all, you’re almost a young man … you should have a watch.”
I recalled, as if in a delirium, that Jusza had also talked to me in that same hoarse voice. But Jusza had warmed me when I’d come home, chilled to the bone, from the funeral. What was it Hodl wanted of me? I felt a tightness in my chest. I was now completely in Hodl’s hands, a mere speck of dust.
She hoisted me up. I couldn’t resist.
“Whatever I want, you’ll do!” she said, gnashing her teeth, as she tried to pull me on top of her.
Just then, as if by some miracle, I felt my own strength returning. I didn’t end up in the position that Hodl wanted me to be in. Somehow I slid over to the edge of the bed and from there rolled down onto the floor.
“Help! Help!” I gasped.
“Stop that yelling!”
Hodl rolled off the bed herself and, as I was crawling on all fours on the floor, she leaped on me and set a heavy foot down on my neck. There was no doubt, she was going to choke me, like that other unfortunate boy.
I didn’t know what gave me the idea. It must have been God Himself! I turned my head and sank my teeth into Hodl’s leg.
“Thief!” she shrieked. “Murderer!”
I let go of Hodl’s leg. She hopped up and down on one foot, like a bound goose.
“May you burn in hell, you dirty son of a bitch!” she screamed. “You wait! I’ll get even with you yet! A little bastard like you, and already you’re playing around with women, may the cholera strike you!”
She grabbed a candlestick from the table and hurled it toward where I was now standing, hastily pulling on my pants. The candlestick landed on the soft featherbed and lay there like a corpse. Hodl hopped into the kitchen on one foot. I must have looked like a corpse myself.
I got dressed in a split second, but I couldn’t leave through the kitchen. Hodl was sitting there. So I unlatched the window and, climbing over the plates of cold fish and the bowl of fish jelly, I jumped out the window.
“May you break your hands and feet and every bone in your body!” I heard Hodl say, her departing blessing to me.
Outside, I stumbled into a crowd of people and I must have gotten lost. What was the way to the synagogue? I strayed so far in the wrong direction that I ended up in the old park. Woe is me! What would Father say, and what would I tell him?
I finally found my way to the synagogue, where they were already halfway through the prayers. Father, wrapped in his prayer shawl over his head, gave me a sideways look, his eyes blazing with anger. He didn’t say a word. He just put his big hand on my shoulder and indicated the place in the prayer book where the service had reached.
I buried my face in the tattered, yellowed pages, but I couldn’t make out even the shape of a letter. Father’s heavy gaze lay burning on my back. Hodl’s outstretched body loomed between the lines. I had no idea when to turn the page, nor could I follow Moshke the cantor’s lead. Every few minutes Father poked out his face from behind the prayer shawl and growled at me, “Nu, ah …”
There was no talking in the synagogue, but Father managed a growl, more from his nose than his mouth.
“What took you so long? Why aren’t you praying? Why do you look so upset?”
It was an agony to get through the prayers, sheer hell. I kept praying to God for the service to be over already, so we could go home. But the walk home wasn’t any easier.
“What’s wrong with you, Mendl?” Father’s voice cut into my brain like a chisel.
“Nothing. Why should anything be wrong?”
“Why didn’t you come to the synagogue right after me?”
“I didn’t have a clean shirt,” I quickly made up a lie.
“What do you mean? Mother laid out a clean shirt for you on the chair.”
“I couldn’t find it.”
“Nu … ah … Mother wasn’t back yet?”
“No.”
“You look upset, Mendl. What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?”
“I have a bad headache.”
This time I wasn’t lying. My head hurt, my temples were throbbing. I felt a wave of nausea rising from the pit of my stomach. Father gave me a prolonged look. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. But he no longer pestered me with questions.
We walked on in silence. The snow crunched familiarly under our feet. At any other time I would have taken a slide in the frozen gutter, or slipped away from Father’s measured Sabbath pace to join a group of kids I knew, building a snowman. Today, however, the white Sabbath street looked totally black. I felt chilled. The snow crunching under my feet seemed to proclaim my sin. I was ashamed to walk beside Father, as if afraid of defiling his Sabbath garments with my unclean body.
By the time we reached home, the burners on the stove were white-hot. The pots were simmering under their lids. There was an aroma of goose fat, sweet cabbage, and burning wood.
By now Mother had returned from Aunt Miriam’s and told us what had happened. Uncle Shmuel had had too much to eat the night before and—it shouldn’t happen to us!—fell over on his stomach. Tuvye the doctor had to be called and treated him with leeches. Mother then proceeded to attend to the beds, going slowly from one bed to the other, plumping the pillows, straightening out the featherbeds. For just a moment, it seemed to me that Mother was lingering over Father’s bed. My heart skipped a beat. Did she notice something unusual? But she merely turned over the featherbed, folded it in two, and ran her hand lightly over its top.
Hodl was standing in the room, facing the window, wearing a black dress and a long gold chain around her neck. She was saying her Sabbath prayers. Prayer book in hand, she rocked her bulky girth lightly back and forth.
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, certain she would, at any moment, turn around and scream out why I was so late getting to the synagogue. I was preparing my answer. After all, I too had something to tell.
But Hodl never said a word. She went about her business, angry, sullen, not raising her head nor looking anyone in the face.
“Hodl,” Mother tried to probe her, “you seem upset. God forbid, is something wrong?”
Hodl didn’t answer. Shortly after we finished eating, she went out and stayed away the entire Sabbath day, and didn’t return until late that night, when Father was already sitting on the bed, pulling off his boots.
I made up my mind to keep my distance from Hodl. I now knew full well what all those pieces of cake and chunks of halvah meant. On Sabbath mornings I no longer dawdled in bed. In fact, I was often up even before Father himself.
Ever since that fateful Sabbath, Hodl stopped speaking not only to me, but to everyone else in the house. She pretended not to know anyone, she never asked anyone anything. For the better part of the day, she walked about the house, openly, in a sleeveless blouse, her arms bare. Again and again she would open her trunk and then bang it shut. She cooked for herself in Mother’s pots and pans, and would often break a glass. She seemed to have gone mad. Mother looked on, but kept silent.
Father, who left the house early in the mornings, never saw Hodl in this state. No sooner than he shut the door behind him, Hodl turned over in bed. By the time he returned, late in the evening, she had already tired herself out from carrying the burden of her anger all day long.
One day, when Mother—it should never happen again—was laid up in bed, Father stayed home, and that’s when he saw what was going on.
Hodl kept wandering around the house, from the kitchen to the big room, from the big room to the kitchen, dressed in her sleeveless blouse. That day she was very busy with her trunk, putting things in and taking them out, locking the lid and unlocking it, over and over again. Father was standing in a corner, in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, quietly saying his morning prayers. It was hard to know whether his eyes lingered on Hodl, but suddenly he began to pray louder and faster.
Mother was lying in bed, too weak to say anything. But when she got better and was able, with God’s help, to get out of bed, the next time she saw Hodl walking around in her sleeveless blouse, she asked her, “Aren’t you cold, Hodl?”
Hodl stuck her large head into a small saucepan that was bubbling on the stove, and answered back with questions of her own.
“Why should I be cold? Isn’t the stove on full blast?”
“But how can you go around like that all day long?”
“How am I going around? How?”
“Well, maybe you should put something on … it’s not proper.”
“Proper you say! What have I got to be ashamed of? Aren’t these my own clothes?”
“But Hodlshi, at your age … after all, there’s a young boy in the house.”
“Look who’s worried about that little boy of hers!” Hodl pointed her chin in the direction of the other room. “That little boy of yours, that little sissy, he knows more than you and I put together.”
The blood curdled in my veins. Now it would happen! Hodl was finally going to tell everything. Where could I hide? What could I say?
“Nu, hush …” Mother suddenly drew back and raised her two hands to fend off Hodl’s bitter words.
“Tell me, Frimet,” Hodl planted herself smack in the middle of the room and put her hands on her hips, “since when have you become so pious?”
Mother’s face seemed at that moment twice longer than usual. She looked alarmed, as if she’d lost her way.
“It’s not that I’ve become more pious,” she said, “but there are men in the house.”
“You don’t say … such men!” Hodl scoffed. “I bet your own Leyzer likes the same things other men do … ha, ha … !”
She said it with such a smug, victorious smile on her face, with such haughty malevolence, that Mother’s lips suddenly closed, as if she were swallowing not a mouthful of air but a mouthful of blood.
Mother’s distress nagged at me. I might have forgiven myself for my sinning, but Mother’s pain just tore me apart. If only I could have jumped up and given Hodl a punch in the stomach, I would have been happy.
Mother must have noticed something, and looked at me dreamily through half-closed eyes. She seemed to be demanding an accounting from me, asking me to speak up.
I wanted to speak up, to tell everything. But wouldn’t that make matters worse?
For many days following, Mother walked around the house silently, her body hunched over, as though Hodl was bombarding her, not with words but with stones.
The evenings at home turned gray and gloomy, not homelike at all. Mother would be busy mending, darning, patching. Hodl attended to her pots and then sat down to eat, slurping her soup with its chicken wings, her face to the wall, as usual.
In those days we never had meat in the middle of the week. In the morning Mother would make grits, and for supper, borsht and boiled potatoes. The heady aroma of Hodl’s mouthwatering chicken soup taunted our palates. Before going to bed, she chewed on pieces of orange, with her mouth closed.
So, how could anybody like Hodl? Enough that she nibbled on oranges, while we went to bed, our bellies filled only with potatoes. But what did she want from me? And what did she have against Father?
For a long while Mother said nothing, keeping a pained silence. Then, late one evening, while Father was leisurely mashing his potatoes with a spoon, Mother, who had been sewing a patch on a shirt, suddenly stopped what she was doing, moved closer to Father, and in a quiet, contained voice said, “Leyzer!”
The door to the kitchen was closed. I was on the verge of dropping off to sleep. In my dreamy state I somehow sensed that Mother was about to talk to Father about things not meant for my ears. Maybe it was the urgency of her tone, or perhaps the fact of her bitter silence, that made me prick up my ears and eavesdrop on their conversation.
“Leyzer,” Mother repeated, moving closer.
“Hah?” Father’s spoon stopped in its tracks.
“Tell me the truth, Leyzer …”
Father, his curiosity aroused, turned his face to Mother.
“What?” he asked.
“You know, Leyzer,” Mother said, seeming to choke on every word.
“Hodl …”
“What about Hodl?”
“Hodl says … not in so many words …”
Mother placed a hand on Father’s shoulder. Father was apparently getting a little irritated. He pushed aside his plate and looked at Mother with a half-opened mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Frimet. What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying …” Mother’s voice was low and deep. “I’m only asking you to tell me the truth … you and Hodl …”
“What!”
Father and Mother were seated facing the bed where I slept. For a while they said nothing, only looking silently at each other. Mother’s tearful, pleading voice still hung in the air. Father’s face turned pale.
“Frimet,” he finally broke the silence and in a choked voice said, “what made you think of such a thing?”
“She … Hodl herself.”
“What about Hodl herself?”
“She said that you and she …”
It didn’t take more than a moment for Father to decide on action. He stood up at once, pushed back his chair, and took a step toward the closed kitchen door.
“Leyzer!” Mother stood up too and tried to bar his way. “What are you going to do?”
“Just let me at her!”
“Leyzer!” Mother threw her hands on Father’s shoulders. “I implore you, you hear … I swear … I won’t live through this!”
“Don’t swear … Stop talking like that, Frimet! Once and for all, I have to teach that witch a lesson!”
“Don’t go in there!” Mother clung to Father’s neck. “I believe you, Leyzer. If I didn’t I wouldn’t stay another minute longer in this house. Stop it already. Come here, sit down at the table.”
“No, Frimet, I want her out of the house. That cheap piece of filth! That slut!”
“Leyzer, don’t go in there! Don’t do her the honor. Sit down at the table, I beg you.”
Mother managed to get Father to sit down. Still, he kept turning his head toward the closed door. Mother finally prevailed, but Father didn’t touch another morsel.
I was in a turmoil. This was the first and only time I had ever seen Mother throw her arms around Father’s neck.
They talked a while longer, their conversation creeping along the walls like tired, drunken flies. Sleep stopped up my hearing. I fell asleep with the image of Mother’s raised arms, which, in my imagination, looked like a pair of fluttering, snow-white birds.
I woke up in the middle of the night. The inside of my mouth felt as if someone was drilling a hole there with an awl. The place in bed next to me was empty. Father must already have gone off with the peasant to their villages. But what was that unbearable throbbing inside my mouth? Could it be a toothache? And not just one tooth, my whole mouth was on fire! The pain shot from my brain to my back and from there to the tips of my toes.
I was afraid to cry out. I didn’t want to wake anyone. But Mother could hear that I wasn’t asleep.
“Mendlshi,” she said, in a worried voice that suddenly lost all traces of sleep. “Why are you groaning like that? God forbid, is anything wrong?”
“Oy, Mama,” I moaned, “my teeth!”
“Woe is me! Where did you get a toothache?”
She got out of bed and, in the darkness, started fumbling around.
“The matches! Where are the matches?”
The room seemed darker than ever. One could have cut the blackness with a knife. My pain grew worse. I felt piercing stabs down my back. By the time Mother found the matches and lit the lamp, I was writhing in bed like a snake.
“Show me, Mendlshi my darling,” Mother bent over me. “Show me where it hurts.”
She stuck a long finger inside my mouth and began to poke around.
I almost choked, and spittle ran down my chin. I sat up and then lay down again. I rocked from side to side, I cuddled myself. But the pain wouldn’t go away.
Mother searched frantically for alcohol, garlic, pepper. She quickly heated up some sand. The entire room, the dresser, the wardrobe, the clock, everything was whirling around me. Only Hodl kept snoring away, loudly, without restraint, until she too woke up.
“What’s going on out there? What’s all that racket?” her frightened voice called out from the kitchen.
“Oy, Hodlshi.” Mother forgot that she wasn’t speaking to that witch. “It’s his tooth. Poor child! He’s in agony! I don’t know what to do! I don’t have any alcohol. Maybe you have some, Hodl?”
“No, I don’t. Why should I have alcohol?”
“What can I do?” Mother flitted about the room like a frightened bird.
“What can you do?” Hodl shrieked in her high voice. “Look who she’s asking! You can go choke him in butter, that’s what you can do! That kid of yours, he never lets you get a minute’s sleep!”
Mother didn’t ask Hodl for anything more. She kept searching and finally found some alcohol. She made me rub some on my sore tooth, placed the hot sand against my cheek, held me tight in her warm, trembling arms, and in this way managed to relieve some of my pain.
But Hodl didn’t go back to sleep again. Her complaints still echoed in the room, her voice scratchy like a rusty nail.
“Can’t get a decent night’s sleep here! Half the night she keeps whispering with that husband of hers. Petshe-metshe, petshe-metshe! If you’re going to whisper all night with your husband, you shouldn’t take in boarders. As for that bastard of yours and his teeth, I would have choked him, big as he is!”
“You should choke yourself. Dear God in heaven!” Mother said in the most heartfelt of tones as she cradled my aching head even more tightly in her warm, deep arms.