In the middle of the week, Little Shoemaker raced over again. Sweat, grime-streaked, poured down his bony face. He had come to find out what was happening.
There was, he said, an opportunity to rent a place in the village, with a small garden. He also planned to buy a goat—milk from one’s own goat never did anyone harm. If he knew with certainty that his proposal was to be accepted, he would rent the house, lay in some furniture, and put down an advance payment on the goat.
Toybe, as usual, had her face stuck in the pots. She didn’t say a word, nor did she turn around to look in from the kitchen.
Mother heard him out to the end and then said that she didn’t understand why he was in such a hurry. Toybe wasn’t, God forbid, an old maid. Furthermore, a wedding requires proper preparation, new camisoles, new shoes. Her advice? To wait until the High Holidays, which weren’t that far off, were out of the way. Let him then come and stay with the family in town, during the intermediate days of the Sukkoth festival, when they could talk things over.
Little Shoemaker stood there, looking crestfallen.
“Not until the intermediate days of Sukkoth … ?”
“So what? How long is that?”
“If you count right, it’s a very long time.”
Naturally, he couldn’t understand why the long wait. Hadn’t he offered to take Toybe just as she was, without dowry or trousseau? And if, with God’s help, there was any money left over after renting the house and buying the goat, he himself would be responsible for everything Toybe needed to set up the house.
At supper, he continued trying to persuade Father. His sibilant Litvak s’s buzzed around the room like restless flies.
Father didn’t say anything, neither yes nor no. He gave Mother one of his deaf man’s looks, seeking her advice.
“Let’s ask Toybe herself,” Mother finally suggested. “She must have an opinion …”
But Toybe had no opinion on the matter. Sad, and showing no enthusiasm, she brought supper to the table. Little Shoemaker’s eyes followed her every step and move. Toybe never uttered a word.
So Father handed down his ruling—to wait a week, giving him time to find out who this Wolf was. Maybe he wasn’t even a bachelor?
Little Shoemaker smiled. Only now did one see that he had a sparse mouthful of black teeth. It could very well be that because of these teeth, Toybe held off on her answer.
“He’s not somebody after my own heart,” Toybe later confided to Mother, “but if Auntie insists …”
“Me insist?” Mother said hastily. “Wherever did you get that idea? It’s only that you have no dowry and the years aren’t standing still.”
“I know,” Toybe pulled a face, “but what am I to do?”
Mother looked around the room as though she were on the verge of imparting a secret, then bent over to Toybe.
“No!” Toybe said in a frightened, quivering voice. “No, Auntie, whatever has to be will be …”
And that was that. The match became a reality.
Mother went into the city and stayed there a whole day and night. She bought some bed linen, a few yards of material for two dresses, and some netting for a veil. She never went to see anyone, she told nobody, and returned to the village on a stranger’s wagon to prepare for Toybe’s wedding.
It was a time when the fields were already cut and stood bare, covered in stiff stubble, like the bristles of a brush. The granaries were stacked to the top with the harvested wheat. Smoke from the peasant huts settled on the ground. The evenings grew cool and damp, the sun mottled with red. One day, in the middle of the week, the storks were seen flying off to warmer lands.
That was when Toybe’s wedding took place.
On the day of the wedding, Mother had a long, quiet talk with Toybe. Toybe put on a new camisole edged in white embroidery. She also wore white shoes, a wedding present from Little Shoemaker. Mother had sewn the veil herself. It had a circlet of what looked like white cherries in front and trailed down the back.
When Toybe, pale, dry-lipped, tried on the veil, she looked not like the daughter of Leyzer the hay merchant, but rather like an important rabbi’s only child. Mother herself remarked that Toybe’s hands, the same hands that had spent a lifetime peeling potatoes and washing dishes, now, on her wedding day, looked white and small, like two delicate birds.
Father wore his cloth Sabbath kapote and new felt hat. Mother dressed up her black taffeta blouse with a fresh, white jabot. Toybe had on a long coat over her bridal dress. I was in a pair of new, stiff pants. Thus attired, we all climbed into a peasant cart and rode into the village, on our way to the nearby town where the wedding was to take place.
The villagers stood in the doorway to watch us go by. They doffed their caps and pronounced blessings. My friends Janek and Pieterke hopped onto the cart and rode a short distance with us. Tucked among the cart’s passengers were covered pots filled with food. Mother held a large, yellow, frosted cake on her lap. Its sweet aroma clung to the roofs of our mouths.
By the time we reached the forest, the sun was already setting. Scattered motes of sunlight danced on the horse’s back.
Father climbed down from the cart and positioned himself to recite the afternoon prayer. The same motes of sunlight also played on his Sabbath kapote. The peasant driver scattered some fodder for the horse. It was growing increasingly dark, the air more humid.
“Leyzer! Hurry up!” Mother called out. “It’ll soon be totally dark.”
Night in fact, had fallen. Unseen by the eye, the trees had merged one into the other. On all four sides, everything had turned black. Toybe took off her coat. She felt hot. In her white bridal dress, in the black forest, Toybe looked like a corpse.
After Father finished his prayers, we drove on. The horse groped its way in the dark. Mother grew apprehensive, fearful of bandits. Nevertheless, nothing untoward happened and we arrived in town on time.
It was already well into night. Shadows sprouted from the darkness. A band struck up a lively greeting.
“The bride has arrived,” excited voices could be heard saying, sounding as if they were coming from under the wheels. A door burst open, releasing a cloud of steam. From a nearby store, someone came out carrying a lantern and raised it above our heads.
“Over here, over here!” voices shouted, directing the cart in the dark. The bass fiddle took gruff issue, “Over there, over there!”
I felt a strong desire to laugh. It seemed to me as if the trumpet wanted to spite the bass and was blaring defiantly, “Neither here, nor there …”
As the band played, we were led into a large, white-washed room, empty of beds and wardrobes. A bright lamp hung down from the center of the ceiling. Strange women and girls, all washed and combed, bustled about, like fatted geese.
Across from the whitewashed room and separated from it by a vestibule, steep stairs led up to an attic, where an open door revealed another room with bluish white walls and two dark beams on the ceiling. There the men had gathered to await the bridegroom.
Downstairs, flattened noses were pressed against windowpanes, as curious eyes looked in. Toybe, weary, with half-closed eyes, sat in an old armchair, the kind a judge in a religious court might occupy.
A short Jew, roly-poly and with a clipped beard, strummed angrily on the bass. A tall young man in short sleeves blew on a trumpet. Surpassing them both was a dark-skinned youth playing the fiddle so movingly that it made your heart stop.
The women and the girls were dancing, floating across the floor like ducks. They formed a circle, then separated, joined hands and let go, looking now like angry turkeys.
Mother, her skirts rustling and a lock of her wig tossed back, moved among the dancers, offering dried fruit and tea. She wished the young girls, God willing, a similar celebration, and for the women joyful get-togethers at circumcisions and bar mitzvahs. Mother conducted herself with all the refinement of which she was capable, pursing her lips and assuming her aristocratic airs to let people know that she had once lived in a house with brass handles on all the doors.
A little later, Mother requested the dark-skinned fiddler to play a “Warsaw waltz.”
Mother then danced with Toybe.
The girls and the women moved aside, and the men came down from the other room. The numbers of flattened noses pressed against the windowpanes increased, all wanting to get a look at a mother-by-marriage, no longer young, dancing with the bride. And indeed, there was something to see. With her head inclined to a side, her cheeks red, and with her haughty, big-city bearing, Mother led the bride in a dance, barely touching the floor, swaying from side to side with girlish coquetry. She twirled to the left, her silk skirt billowing, then turned her head this way and that, as if standing before a mirror to admire her charms.
Toybe didn’t stand still either. Taller than Mother, and holding the long, white train of her dress in one hand, she followed Mother’s lead and, on her high, hollow heels, swayed and turned in tandem. Her dark face was rather flushed, her hair a bit disheveled, her mouth partly open. She was neither laughing nor crying, but seemed to be calling out to someone.
After the waltz, the dark-skinned fiddler bowed to Mother and said that he had played in many a big city but never before had he seen anyone dance the way she did. The women pursed their lips, smiled, and shyly complimented Mother: “Not to tempt the evil eye, but you are certainly a fine dancer.”
Then Toybe and the judicial armchair were moved to the center of the room. The girls and the women arranged themselves around her. A short Jew, with more beard than face, called out hoarsely, “Musicians! Get ready to play!”
The bass thumped, the trumpet blared, and the fiddle broke out in a plaintive, Wallachian wail. The short Jew himself climbed onto a bench, from where he addressed the bride in a sing-song voice, in pompous, throaty tones.
“This is a day that compares to the Day of Atonement. This day, O bride, is your most beautiful day, as well as the bitterest, for on this day you stand before the Almighty, like a soldier before his king. And how does a soldier stand before his king? Filled with virtue and good deeds, humbly. That is why you must do penance today and pray to the Almighty, to find favor and grace in His eyes.”
In the middle of his address, the short Jew started to cough. His hairy face reddened, as if he were choking. Everyone waited until he caught his breath, wiped the sweat off his brow, and was ready to resume.
“This day,” he continued his charge to the bride, “you are like a tree which has just sprung up from the ground and not yet begun to bear fruit. But once the sun starts warming the roots of the tree, tiny leaves begin to sprout, tiny buds appear, and only later do the buds become fruit. O bride, that is what you are now. Today you are nothing, a speck of dust, mere chaff, but if God, may His name be blessed, so wills it, your leaves will begin to sprout and the buds will bear fruit.”
Toybe’s shoulders shuddered quietly. Mother wept, a handkerchief over her eyes.
The address to the bridegroom was shorter. The bridegroom himself, dressed in a cotton kapote, looking even smaller than usual, sat at the head of the table, his face hunched over the cloth. He was surrounded by Jews with heavy, thick, knotted beards, wearing their weekday garments.
The short, bushy-bearded Jew recited the El molei rahamim memorial prayer for the bridegroom’s late, sainted mother, and praised his father, the yeshiva head, to the sky.
“And, although you yourself,” he intoned, “are only a shoemaker, you are dearer to the Master of the Universe than the richest man, for the ancient Rabbi Yohanan was also a shoemaker. Therefore, bridegroom, take as your example Rabbi Yohanan the sandal-maker, and you will prosper—and a redeemer cometh to Zion. Amen.”
However, when the time arrived for the marital blessings, before stepping under the wedding canopy, while Father laid his large hands on Toybe’s head, there was no one to bless the little, scrawny shoemaker.
He stood, looking crushed, under the four poles of the canopy, in a borrowed overcoat thrown over his white, linen wedding robe. He pronounced the vows—“Be thou consecrated unto me …”—in a clear, eager voice, but at the conclusion of the ceremony managed to break the glass that was placed underfoot only after several attempts. His withered, hollow-cheeked face turned a sickly green.
The musicians struck up a congratulatory march. Mother danced in from the vestibule, holding a large, brown, braided hallah high in her hands. She waved the loaf back and forth over everyone’s head, in a movement such as one might make when dancing with a young child.
Everyone was taken with Mother. She no longer appeared haughty or aristocratic, but caring and generous, a kindhearted woman come to bring joy to the poor groom and bride, thus earning for herself a mitzvah, a good deed.
That was also how she appeared in the customary mitzvah dance with the bride. Holding a white handkerchief by one corner, and with Toybe holding it by another, Mother and she dipped their heads forward, like into a basin of water. With heads bent, they turned each other around and then, abruptly, straightened up, as if coming up from the water.
Mother’s actions indicated that she was acting in good faith on Toybe’s behalf, with a full heart, not as Toybe’s stepmother, but as if she were her actual mother.
Father’s performance of the mitzvah dance with his beautiful daughter Toybe was altogether different. He didn’t look at her, he didn’t dip his head but, bending slightly, held his corner of the handkerchief tentatively. With heavy steps, slowly and wearily, he turned himself around a few times, shuffling uncertainly in obvious embarrassment. It seemed to me that if Father hadn’t felt so ashamed, he probably would have said: “Toybe, my daughter, if I have ever caused you any pain, please forgive me. I am, after all, your father and I only sought your well-being. Nothing more. But you are the one who has sinned.”
If he didn’t say this, the fiddle said it for him. I don’t know how, but the young fiddler expressed the words that were in my heart and might have been on Father’s tongue.
Toybe was weeping. Her white bridal dress was spotted with large, moist stains. Maybe she also heard the words unreeling from the fiddle of the young musician, or maybe she didn’t feel well.
It was beginning to get light outside. A delicate blue tinge appeared on the windowpanes. The women and the girls sat with drooping lids, yawning loudly. The promised gifts for the couple had already been called out and the after-meal blessings were in progress, when there was a sudden commotion. The bridegroom—it shouldn’t happen to us!—had fainted.
Mother, even though she was in the other room, was the first to leap from her seat. Holding her silk skirt, she rushed into the room where the men were. The women and the girls pushed after her like a flock of sheep, crowding the two doorways. People kept shouting over each other’s heads, “Water! Somebody go get a doctor!”
But nobody went to find a doctor and nobody brought any water. Word was quickly passed that the bridegroom had been smoking cigarette after cigarette during the meal, and those sitting close by had seen him turn green, very green.
Somebody, it was reported, was about to ask him what was wrong, when the cigarette dropped from his mouth, and he slid off his chair to the floor, face up. Somebody shouted into his deathly, green face. Somebody else, in a short kapote, pressed his temples, tried to wrench open his mouth, but to no avail.
But it wasn’t the smoking that had caused him to faint. It was something else. Both his upturned knees were shaking, his arms stretched out, like a crucifix. His head kept turning back and forth, and his mouth was frothing, spewing white foam.
“Don’t,” said a man, grabbing hold of the hand of the person who finally had come running with water. “Can’t you see that it’s that terrible affliction? Put a key under his head.”
It was Father who placed the key. He bent over his son-in-law as if seeking his forgiveness. To me it seemed that from that day on, Father would never be able to raise his head again and look people in the face.
Mother’s shoulders also slumped. She shuffled outside. It was daylight. From the whitewashed room, where they had danced all night long, now came the sound of Toybe’s weeping and wailing. She tore off her veil, buried her lovely, black head in both hands, and began to rock from side to side.
“What did you want from me?” she called out to Father, to Mother, to all who had gathered. “Why do I deserve such shame? An epileptic for a husband! I’d rather be a servant again, and scrub floors, but I’m not going to live with him …”
But Toybe didn’t go back into service. Hadn’t she scrubbed enough floors in her life, cooked and baked for refined, Hasidic Jews with ivory-knobbed canes? She remained in the town.
Wolf, her husband, suffered his epileptic fits from time to time, and Toybe placed keys under his head. She brought into the world a son with a large head of blond hair, and another with a large head of black hair. After that, she bore a daughter, whose eyes were blue by day and green by night. These used to be Toybe’s eyes, which lost their color over all the time that she spent placing keys under her husband’s head.