In the days following Toybe’s wedding, it came time to cut the second crop of hay. By now the sun, cold and yellow, was beginning to set early in the afternoons. The smell of wet, rotting stubble rose up from the ground. The barns and granaries were filled to bursting with the harvested grain. What was there left for us to do in Lenive? So we packed up our bit of bedding and the pots and the pans, and, sun-browned and well-rested, drove back to the city.
Along the way, the peasants were already turning over the soil, readying it for the next year. Flocks of black crows trailed after the plows, like dark clouds. There was a smell in the air of ripe apples, of pickled cabbage and warm bran.
Again we stopped at the inn run by the tall Lozer, who congratulated Father on his return, inquired as to how we had fared, and asked whether there had been any profit. He also remarked, incidentally, that when Leybke came home from the Russian army, under no circumstances should Father forget to let him know.
Lozer’s daughter Sore, whose face had grown brighter over the summer, and her hips broader, served us bowls of garlic-flavored borsht with mashed potatoes, slices of rich cake, and, as a special treat, cherry brandy that she had made herself.
After the refreshment and when we were already seated back on the cart, Mother had a word to say about the innkeeper and his daughter. Sore, she allowed, appeared to be a great housekeeper, a wonderful mistress of the household, and Lozer must certainly have a pocketbook full of money. Leybke, when he returned from the Russian army, should maybe have a talk with him …
Father didn’t answer. He seemed despondent. I was sad myself. Missing from our company was Toybe. I could still see her husband lying on the floor, with foam on his lips. The horse was dragging itself against its will. Ravens screeched down from the poplar trees. This time, we didn’t stop by the bridge to feed the horse. We pushed on, aware, even here on the country road, of the approaching High Holidays, the Days of Awe, with all their dread and melancholy.
In the city, Jews were already walking about looking distracted. Theirs were the faces of people insufficiently slept out, people who had spent late nights in the synagogue reciting slikhes, the penitential prayers said during the days preceding the High Holidays through Yom Kippur, and who rose early the next morning to recite the prayers again. This was the season, soon to be upon us, of the Ten Days of Repentance, an anxious, preoccupied time.
I didn’t look forward to those particular days. I knew that Father would be shaking me awake early in the mornings and dragging me off to the dark synagogue alley for the slikhes, and that Moshke the cantor’s voice would grate on my ears. At home, everybody would be looking worried. I would be expected at the besmedresh, for early morning prayers, to hear the daily blowing of the shofar, the cold, weekday blasts of the ram’s horn, which always reminded me of death.
Whom would it have disturbed, I thought, if the summer were to last all year round? Wouldn’t it be more agreeable to recite the slikhes prayers when the wheat still waved in the fields? And wouldn’t the Almighty have preferred a young cantor with a pleasant voice leading the prayers, rather than Moshke with his croaks that sounded like the rasps of a blunt saw? Why did Jews altogether choose to have such sad, gloomy holidays?
By now we had driven into our big courtyard. Yarme the coachman’s omnibus wasn’t there, it must have been away in Warsaw. Nobody came out to greet us.
The orchard glistened wetly. When we opened our door, we were assaulted by a smell of mice and spiders. Worms crawled out from every corner, black worms, yellow worms, fattened up from who knows what. Mother, together with a hired Gentile woman, both with rolled-up sleeves, attacked the rooms with feather dusters and mops, cleaning and scrubbing in preparation for the holiday.
Meanwhile, I idled away my time. There was no kheyder in the period before the High Holidays, and besides, my teacher Sime-Yoysef had died while we were still in Lenive.
Yarme’s wife told us that not only did the town rabbi follow the funeral procession, but also Reb Aron of the religious court. No one knew that Sime-Yoysef had been so virtuous and respected. His body, she said, was taken to the synagogue, where the rabbi himself delivered the eulogy. The weeping and wailing had reached almost to heaven. Only his pupils, those good-for-nothing boys, didn’t shed any tears.
I probably would not have shed any tears, either. For Sime-Yoysef, that virtuous Jew, in life had a habit of pinching the soft flesh of his pupils’ bottoms. Sime-Yoysef, that respected Jew, also made it a habit to drive us out of the kheyder in the middle of the week with his handkerchief, the way one shoos chickens out of a coop, and then locking the door. Velvele goy, Velvele the Gentile, a fellow pupil who earned his nickname for already having eaten pork, said that the reason Sime-Yoysef chased us outside was because he wanted to go to bed with his wife. Velvele had seen this with his own eyes. And Sime-Yoysef had other habits. He would take his pupils’ lunches, also borrow money from them and never repay it.
Be all that as it may, Sime-Yoysef was now in the world beyond, and respect was due him. He was, after all, a Jew, and a pauper at that.
I still didn’t know which kheyder I would be attending. I myself would have preferred a Russian-Jewish school, particularly the Pomerants shkole, but only rich boys went there. Aunt Naomi’s Mendl was one of its students.
Meanwhile, I was just whiling away my time. Yankl was gone. No one ever spoke about him. Yarme the coachman’s wife walked around with a swollen belly.
“She must be pregnant,” Mother said. “At her age … can you believe it?”
The chief prison guard’s wife had also changed. She was now aloof and reserved, with a face full of yellow blotches. Mother never looked her way, and the Russian woman, for her part, turned her head away from Mother. The guard’s wife no longer chatted with any of the tenants in the courtyard. Her husband strode about, rattling his saber and never returning a “Good morning.”
That was unfortunate, for I would have liked to ask him about what was happening in the jail, how Szcepka and Sherman, the two murderers, were getting on, and had they already been sent to Siberia? I would also have liked to talk with the chief prison guard’s young daughter, Janinka. She had grown over the summer. Her eyes had turned dark blue, and her long, flaxen hair was braided with a blue silk ribbon.
But there was now no getting close to Janinka, sedately clad in a navy-blue dress with a black apron. Yarme the coachman’s wife said that Janinka was already attending the girls’ gymnasium. She had become a student in a school uniform.
I felt that I would never be able to approach her again. What could Janinka and I talk about? I knew little more than some bits of Bible with the Rashi commentary, and in Lenive I had forgotten even that much. It was a good thing, therefore, that the High Holidays were coming. This wasn’t a time for thinking about practical matters.
Our house was brightly lit in honor of the holidays. Mother had bought grapes, honey, and large, braided hallahs resembling birds. A live carp flopped about in a basin of water. The smell of boiled chicken filled the air. It was only a pity that this Rosh Hashanah there were no guests, neither from Warsaw nor from Lodz. Even Toybe was absent.
Despite all the cleaning and straightening up, and despite the tasty food, the house was cheerless. There were only the three of us at table. We ate in silence. We kept looking out the freshly washed windowpanes, as if awaiting someone’s arrival.
I consoled myself with the thought that in Lenive it must be even sadder now. There, long after the harvest, the fields lay deserted and the forest wrapped in darkness. There, in our former hut, a kerosene lamp or a candle must be burning with a dim light. Here, on the other hand, the room was brightly lit and an aroma of grapes and honey rose from the table. If you really thought about it, maybe things weren’t so cheerless after all.
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Father brought home a guest from the synagogue, a young soldier from Russia, short, with a little black mustache and red cheeks. Had his head not been closely cropped, like that of a thief, one might easily have taken him for my late brother, Moyshe. He spoke in a deep Litvak accent, rolling his r’s, and whenever he lacked the Yiddish word he helped himself to a Russian one.
Mother was happy to have someone to talk to. She asked where he came from, what he was doing here, and how long he still had to serve in the army. In the course of the conversation, her double chin swelled in its rich-lady way.
The young soldier said that he came from Kiev, where his father was a wealthy merchant, his sister a dentist, and an older brother an aptekar.
“A what?” said Father, wrinkling his face.
“An aptekar.”
“What’s that?”
“An aptekar,” the young soldier explained, “is someone who mixes medicines.”
“Maybe he means an ap-tey-ker?” Mother interjected.
“Da, da, yes, yes, an aptekar.”
The different accents were finally sorted out and it was determined that what was being referred to was a “pharmacist.”
“Can a Jew in Russia be a pharmacist?” Father asked.
“Of course.”
“Well, what do you know?” Father was surprised. “By us in Poland, such a thing is unthinkable.”
“Even in Warsaw there aren’t any Jewish pharmacists,” Mother added.
“How is that possible?” said the young soldier in Russian, stroking his mustache.
“Da, da,” said mother, also in Russian, and explained that she had once had some connection with pharmacists herself, since her former, late husband had been a feldsher, a barber-surgeon, and that an older son of hers was now studying to become a feldsher himself.
Father hung on every word, as the young soldier continued to speak, relating more about Kiev, and about a street called Kreshchatik. He said that Jews were forbidden to live in Kiev, but that the ban could be waived by obtaining special permission, which cost a fortune.
Father kept listening attentively, and then, rather hesitantly, interrupted him in the middle.
“Ekaterinoslav, is it far from Kiev?”
“Very far.”
“Really?” Father sounded let down. “I thought that it wasn’t.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I have a son in Ekaterinoslav.”
“Is he in military service there?”
“Yes, he’s a soldier.”
“A long time?”
“He should have been out by now.”
“When was his duty up?”
“By my reckoning, he should have been back by now.”
“He’ll probably come home after the holidays. The Russian army discharges soldiers only in October.”
“Is that so?”
“Da, that should be some time next month, in Heshvan.”
The Russian army, however, released Father’s son earlier, apparently to ensure that he be home in time for the Yom Kippur solemnities.
It was late afternoon, the eve of Yom Kippur. A long, withered candle, stuck into a mortar filled with sand, stood on the table. A cool, blue shadow stretched across the upper windowpanes. We were eating our meal of soup with noodles, boiled chicken, and baked apples. Father tasted only a bit of each course.
“The less one eats, the easier it is to fast,” he said.
Mother had already pinned the white jabot to her black taffeta blouse. I was helping clear the table. The long, dead-looking candle burned with a yellow flame against the mirror. In the reflection, the flame appeared whiter, the whole mirror yellow.
Father was searching for his special High Holiday skullcap, the one with the silver threads that had turned yellow over time.
Who would have imagined that just then the door would open and a stranger appear, carrying a small suitcase and wearing a short, black coat and a stiff, black hat? He looked like he might be a doctor.
On further inspection, it seemed to me that his coat hung too loosely on him and might not even have been his, and that his hat didn’t suit his face.
Father was still hunting for his skullcap. The stranger slowly put down his suitcase, looked at Father, who was still busy searching, and called out, a smile spreading across the sharp ends of his trimmed mustache: “Gut yontev! … Happy holiday!”
Father took a step back. He looked terrified. His voice, too, took on a frightened tone.
“Leybke?” he cried out with a half-suppressed groan.
“Yes, it’s me, Father,” said Leybke, as he took a bold step into the room.
Father wanted to say more, but grew short of breath. He just wiped his hand across his forehead, and groaned again, “Leybke?”
Mother, too, couldn’t believe her eyes. She stopped in her tracks, in total bewilderment. Only after hearing Father repeat his son’s name twice, did she herself speak, as if in echo.
“Leybke?” she said. “Come in, welcome. Look, we have a guest!”
Without thinking, and not even aware that I was doing so, I also let out a cry, “Leybke!”
The whole room resounded with Leybke’s name.
Father’s thick beard became entangled in Leybke’s trimmed mustache.
“Can you believe it?” Leybke’s voice quivered. “It was all so unexpected. And how are you, Father? Let’s take a look at you.”
Mother stood to a side, waiting for Father to let go of his son so that she, too, could rejoice in his return.
I didn’t know what to do, whether I should go over to Leybke and embrace him or kiss him. But Leybke himself took notice of Mother and me.
“Mume … Aunt,” he said, drawing out the m’s. “How are you, Mume?”
“Thank you for asking. And how are you?”
He kissed Mother’s hand. And even though I was already a grown boy, he folded me in his arms and planted a kiss right on my mouth, leaving a lingering smell of tobacco under my nose.
“Mendl!” he exclaimed. “How you’ve grown! You’re almost ready to get married.”
Leybke’s embrace filled me with warmth. I felt him to be a true brother, far more so than Yoyne, that one time he had come for Passover.
“You must be hungry,” Mother only now remembered to ask. “Sit down and have something to eat. It’s almost time to go to the synagogue for the Kol Nidre service.”
“Don’t bother, Mume. I’ve already eaten.”
“Where could you have eaten? You’ve only just arrived!”
“Actually, I’ve been here a few hours already. I went first to an inn, where I washed up and ate, and now I’m all ready for Yom Kippur.”
“Why did you do that? You don’t have a home?”
“Never mind, Mume. It was easier that way.”
“You’ll probably want to change clothes,” Father said. “So, hurry up, it’s getting late.”
“No, I don’t have to change.”
“Is that how you’re going to Kol Nidre?”
“Why not? This isn’t nice enough?”
Father thought Leybke’s dress improper. Before he left to serve in the Russian army, Leybke still wore a long kapote and the same soft cap all Jews wore. Now here he was, back from the army, in a black, stiff hat, looking, for all the world, like a German. How could Father show up in the besmedresh, with his son looking like that?
Nevertheless, Father walked with Leybke in the street, arm in arm. I myself snuggled up against Leybke’s black coat. After all, he had just returned from Ekaterinoslav, and I wanted everybody to see what my brother looked like.
On the way, Father stopped every so often to greet this one and that with the holiday salutation—“May you be sealed in the Book of Life”—and to show off his son.
“This is my Leybke, just released from the Russian army,” he kept repeating.
“Is that so?” came the reply. “Welcome home. What’s new there?”
Everybody shook his hand, looked him in the face, looked him over, and looked all of us over, too.
Even at the besmedresh, which was packed to overflowing, all eyes were on Leybke. He was the only one, among all the white robes and prayer shawls, who was wearing a stiff, black hat.
Maybe it wasn’t right for Leybke to have come to the besmedresh dressed like a German. He would have been better off across the way, in the main synagogue, the shul, where there were many such stiff, black hats. But how could Father deny himself the great pleasure of showing off his only son from his first wife, the son who, this very day, had returned from Ekaterinoslav?
Reb Aron, the head of the religious court, summoned the worshipers to prayer. In the solemn spirit of the occasion, he intoned in a tremulous, fear-filled voice: “By the authority of the heavenly court, and by the authority of the earthly court … we declare it lawful to pray with sinners.” Then, as the congregation stood, Moshke the cantor began to chant the Kol Nidre, and the service proceeded apace. Leybke’s stiff, black hat didn’t stop Moshke from losing his place in the many-versed ya’ale hymn—“O let our prayer ascend at sunset”—and veering off into a sidetrack.
Leybke smiled into his mustache and said that in the synagogue in Ekaterinoslav a mistake like Moshke’s couldn’t have happened.
“Nyevozmozhno … impossible,” Leybke later pronounced. “In the synagogue in Ekaterinoslav everything was like in the army. Everybody marched in step, nobody went off on his own. You couldn’t lose your place. You prayed like you were taking orders from the sergeant major. Yes, the prayers were different there, life was different there.”
Leybke was telling us all this after we had returned home from the service, as he talked late into the night.
Father had taken off his shirt and was sitting on the edge of the bed in his fringed undergarment, treating his sick leg. Mother was on the other bed, wearing a white, ruffled nightcap. I was sitting next to Leybke. We all learned that in Ekaterinoslav there were many landowners, men and women, and that Jews could be landowners, too. They wore big fur coats and Persian-lamb hats. Their stores were open on the Sabbath and they prayed only on the High Holidays.
“And what about you? You didn’t pray, either?” Father asked, raising his head from his sick foot.
“When there was time, we prayed.”
Father sighed deeply. “A wild country that, a swinish land.”
“It’s not wild at all, Father. The people there are rich merchants, upper crust, high society.”
“And how did you manage there?”
“Khorosho … just fine,” Leybke said in a self-satisfied tone. “The battalion commander couldn’t have gotten along without me. ‘Lyovka,’ he’d say, ‘run and fetch me another bottle of vodka.’ That commander was sure fond of his glass. And I was especially pals with the field sergeant major. All you had to do was slip him ten groshen and you could get him to do anything for you.”
“And did you eat from the common cauldron?” Father asked, with sorrow in his voice.
“What cauldron? The Russian soldiers gorged themselves from the cauldron. I took my meals in town.”
“Did you at least make any money in the army?”
“Who needed money? Of what use would money have been?”
Leybke kept up his boasting even after Mother had turned toward the wall and Father was done with his treatment. He was still talking when he lay down next to me on the iron cot that we shared. His body gave off an odor of wagon grease, the same odor as the soldier who had been our guest on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
I slept badly. The grease smell settled in my mouth. Leybke’s commander, the landowners, all whirled around in my imagination and got mixed up with Leybke and with Mother and Father.
The next morning my head felt as if it was made of glass. In the besmedresh, the air was heavy with the close, hot smell of burnt-out candles. The hunchbacked Gentile attendant was crawling around the tables, scraping off the wax drippings and straightening the candles, deaf to all the sobbing and supplication the worshipers were pouring into their prayer books.
Fishl, the son of the ritual slaughterer, who was already studying the Talmud with advanced commentaries, led the morning service. He sang more beautifully than Mendl, Aunt Naomi’s son, and with greater feeling.
But then Moshke the cantor took over and I lost interest. He hacked away at the Hebrew, like a Gentile. I wanted to go over to the main synagogue, the shul, and listen to the old Lithuanian cantor. Above all, I wanted to be with Leybke, for that was where he had gone to pray.
When the Torah scrolls were being taken out of the ark, I ran over to the shul. They were reading from the Torah there, too, but I didn’t see Leybke. Outside, sweat-drenched Jews, all in white, sat groaning. Others went to relieve themselves against the opposite wall. Children were eating large hunks of hallah dipped in honey. But there was no sign of Leybke.
Father later asked me whether I’d seen Leybke in the shul.
“Of course I saw him. What do you think, I didn’t see him?”
I was desolate as I said this, heart-stricken over having to lie to Father on Yom Kippur.
Toward dusk, for the concluding ne’ilah service, I went back to the shul. This time, too, Leybke was nowhere to be seen.
I was sorry he wasn’t there, because for ne’ilah the rabbi himself took over, without a choir, without musical frills of any kind. He merely recited. But what a recitation! The lions and the deer, the flutes and the fiddles, the drums and the trumpets that were carved on the eastern wall—all stepped down to join the Jews gathered in prayer. Had Leybke seen this, he wouldn’t have said that the service in the Ekaterinoslav synagogue, with its military precision, was better.
I looked around again, but still no Leybke. It wasn’t until we got home from the synagogue to break the fast that I finally saw him. Who knew if he had prayed at all that day, or if he had fasted? He began by eating one prune after another. Who eats prunes on an empty stomach? And after we finished our meal, he again took to the prunes.
This bothered me. Why was he eating so many prunes? Even when guests showed up, he didn’t stop chewing on the prunes. The new arrivals were our sister Beyle and her tall, blond husband, Wolf, and Yarme the coachman and his pregnant wife. Leybke kissed his brother-in-law and embraced his sister, who stroked his shoulder the way one would an animal. He then snatched another prune from the table.
Our brother-in-law and Yarme the coachman were sitting with legs spread apart, listening open-mouthed to Leybke’s tales of the wonders of Ekaterinoslav. They kept asking him whether he’d made any money during his time in the army, but Leybke didn’t respond. Either he felt there wasn’t enough time to talk about it, or maybe he just didn’t want to give away the secret. And what was the point of talking with those simple people when there were now more interesting visitors who had suddenly come knocking, the chief prison guard and his beautiful Russian wife.
Our Gentile neighbors had evidently forgotten that they weren’t speaking to Mother. They showed up uninvited, smiling uncertainly.
“Good evening,” they said, and remained standing at the door.
Mother seemed happier with these visitors, who had been snubbing her, than with her own guests, even Leybke. She welcomed them like beloved in-laws, drew up a pair of chairs, and, with the same embarrassment displayed by the Gentile neighbors, said, as if to herself and to no one in particular, “Well, what do you know? Such a surprise, such welcome guests!”
“Nichevo … There’s no need,” said the prison guard, flicking his hand in a gesture to make light of the situation, and sat himself down, legs apart like the others.
The Jewish visitors fell silent. They began to fidget in their chairs.
Leybke sensed that the new arrivals were people of his own sort. In an instant, he forgot all about his own sister, her husband, and Mother, and, speaking now in Russian, launched into his stories, addressed not to us, but to the prison guard and his beautiful wife.
He began afresh to tell about his company commander, who used to call him “Lyovka,” and what a brilliant fellow he was. This prompted the prison guard to recall his own sergeant major, and the general whose wife had run off with a lover.
Then the Russian woman asked Leybke if, perchance, he knew of her native village on the Don River.
“Of course I know it. What do you mean? I was there on maneuvers,” Leybke replied.
“Really?” she said, settling deeper into her chair. “So what’s doing there? Did you ever come across the local priest?”
“Of course I did. How could I have missed him? He’s an old man, that priest.”
“An old man, you say? How could he be old? When I left home he still had a black beard.”
“No, Madam, he’s an old man already and has a white beard now.”
“Maybe it’s not the same one …”
“No, Madam, it’s the same one.”
Yarme the coachman and my brother-in-law Wolf wanted to get in a word of their own. After all, they too had once served in the Russian army. But the prison guard’s wife and Leybke rattled on in Russian, so fast that who could keep up with them? Only Father was finding satisfaction in the exchange. If you provide hay for Russian horses, then you understand some of their language.
He actually sat there with a big smile on his face, and every few minutes gave Mother a look and remarked, “Heh, Frimet? What do you say about my Leybke? Who would have thought?”
Mother said nothing. With the same intensity with which she had welcomed her Gentile neighbors, Mother now remained utterly silent. It wasn’t her nature to let others talk and for her to keep quiet. She liked being noticed, with people listening to what she had to say. Now others were doing all the talking and ignoring her.
The next morning, when Leybke was away, Mother several times remarked that he talked and talked about Ekaterinoslav as if he’d come back from across an ocean. And what was the big deal about his commander calling him “Lyovka”?
“Don’t be foolish,” Father replied. “Isn’t what he has to tell interesting?”
“Once maybe. But over and over? My regiment this, my regiment that. You can get tired even of too much of a good thing.”
“I never get tired of listening to him,” Father replied, smiling into his beard.
“Then good for you. Whoever doesn’t begrudge you this pleasure shouldn’t know from pleasure.”
Mother was out of sorts. She felt Leybke’s presence pressing on her. He wasn’t her son. He never called her Mumeshi, Auntie, the way Toybe did, but simply Mume, Aunt. He never tried to endear himself to her, like Toybe had. That must have been the reason why she complained about his snoring at night and his not coming home on time for meals. After all, she wasn’t obliged to keep his supper warm.
However, all that was totally set aside when a postcard arrived from Warsaw, informing us that Tsipe, Mother’s one and only daughter, from her first husband, was coming to visit for the Sukkoth holiday. From the card one couldn’t make out whether she was coming by herself or with her intended groom, the brush-maker. Altogether, Mother didn’t know what had become of Tsipe’s engagement. But, whatever the case, one had to prepare, and prepare some more.
Mother set to work, even though the house had been thoroughly gone over for the High Holidays. As if starting fresh, she cleaned and she polished. The hands that once had grasped brass door handles were now scouring the floors.
When Father left her the money for the holiday provisions, Mother complained without even counting the amount.
“How much are you leaving me?”
“How much should I leave?”
“You forget that Leybke is here, too.”
“I didn’t forget anything. I actually left you more than usual.”
Mother quickly counted the copper coins that had been knotted in a kerchief, and, before Father even managed to pull on his kapote, she threw the unwrapped clump at him, scattering the coins.
“What are you leaving me? What am I to buy first?”
“Why are you getting so worked up? How much do you want me to leave you?”
“What do you mean? Don’t you know that everything for the holiday is very expensive? Your Leybke likes to eat the best, and my Tsipe, God bless her, is also coming for the holiday.”
“Your Tsipe?” Father asked, as if he hadn’t heard properly. “What’s this?”
“Why not? She’s not my child?”
“I’m not, God forbid, taking her away from you. Let her come. Why not? But where will you put her up?”
“Where, you say? You think there won’t be room for her in her mother’s house?”
“I’m not saying no. Nevertheless, we have to think about where she’ll sleep.”
“I’ve already thought about it. She’ll sleep in Mendl’s bed.”
“And what about Mendl?”
“He’ll sleep with you.”
Father was silent for a moment. He looked down at the scattered coins and asked through a clenched mouth, “And what about Leybke?”
“Leybke can sleep at your sister’s, at Naomi’s.”
“Why at Naomi’s? Hasn’t he got a father? Why can’t your Tsipe sleep at your sister Miriam’s?”
“Are you driving her out? She’s not even here yet, and already you’re driving her out?”
“I’m not driving her out, but my Leybke is as dear to me as your Tsipe is to you.”
“Leybke is a man. He can sleep wherever he wants. And my Tsipe is not your Toybe.”
Father’s hand missed its way into the sleeve of his kapote. As he stood there, tall and broad-shouldered, it was clear that Mother’s words had struck home. He asked no more questions. Groaning wearily, he slipped on his kapote, drew another wrapped clump of coins from deep inside his trouser pocket, left half of it on the table, and went out, stooped, heavy-footed, a deep silence burdening his sagging shoulders.
After he left, Mother resumed her cleaning, working even more furiously and in an embittered mood. She blew her nose often and noisily. Her head was buried in the objects she was polishing. She wept.
In the end, it turned out that all the squabbling had been for nothing. Leybke himself suggested that a bed be made up for him in the kitchen on benches, and that Tsipe be given his bed.