Whatever the reason, Mother lingered on in Warsaw. The freezing weather continued. Grandma’s high, soft bed, in which the special doctor used to poke my back every few days, was now suddenly empty and made up.
I was now able to drag myself around the room—small, skinny, my face green and gaunt—and to drink the goat’s milk which Grandma brought me, twice a day, all the way from St. Mary’s Street.
Grandpa had turned paler in the course of my illness, though his cheeks acquired a reddish, scorched glow, and his nose, a sharp point. In the morning, while I drank my goat’s milk, he would take a couple of swigs from a small bottle tucked away in a dark corner of the room. He would throw his head back, just like a Gentile, shape his mouth into a circle, and drain the contents down to the last drop.
It bothered me that Grandpa drank straight from the bottle. What then was the purpose of those little glasses standing in the cupboard?
He explained to me that drinking straight from the bottle was just like someone walking in the field on a hot day and chancing upon a cool spring. In those circumstances, would you go looking for a cup? You’d fall on your knees and lap up the water like a billy goat. After all, said Grandpa, show me the plant, the flower, or the animal that needs a cup to drink from. And wasn’t a human being also a kind of animal?
Well, there was some sense in what Grandpa said. Yes, it’s good to drink straight from the spring. Still, one thing puzzled me. Grandpa said that after draining the bottle, his head cleared up and he felt like a different man. He even had proof. If Moses, he said, hadn’t liked a decent drop of brandy, he’d never have been able to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
That same bit of wisdom he also passed on to my teacher, Sime-Yoysef, who had come to visit me during my illness.
Sime-Yoysef, a squat man with a large, hairy face and a pair of black, piercing eyes, pulled a face upon hearing this. Grandpa’s Moses didn’t appeal to him one bit, and he informed Grandpa that in Moses’ time whiskey hadn’t been invented yet.
“What do you mean, no whiskey?” Grandpa stuck his beard out at him. “How could that be? How could the Jews have left Egypt without a drink of whiskey?”
“I tell you, Reb Dovid, there simply wasn’t any!” Sime-Yoysef insisted.
“So what was there?”
“Who knows? Maybe wine.”
“And wine isn’t liquor?” said Grandpa gleefully. “What’s better than a little glass of wine, we should live so long, my wife Rokhl and I.”
“Oh, stop your yammering!” Grandma looked up from her sewing. “What sort of idle chatter is this?”
“What’s wrong with you, Rokhlshi?” said Grandpa. “Can’t a man speak in his own house? You know,” he shifted his small, white beard back to the teacher’s hairy face. “You know, my Rokhl—may she live and be well—likes to take a drop herself.”
“Your enemies should say such things! Look how he’s talking today! Don’t listen to him, Reb Sime-Yoysef. He’s crazy.”
“Only she does it on the sly,” Grandpa pretended not to have heard her. “She even helps herself to a drop in the middle of the night. It’s no sin. An old woman, why not?”
Yes, Grandpa seemed to have changed since I got down from that high, warm bed and the special doctor had stopped poking me on the back.
All day the white, neat room was now full of chatter and song. Grandma sewed her muslin nightcaps. From time to time, she would stick her face into the small pots cooking cozily away on the stove. Grandpa, rocking from side to side with every prick of the needle, would break into occasional song in his high-pitched voice:
If God were to grant me a life full of bliss,
Then wagging my backside would not be amiss.
At that Grandma would lift her steel-rimmed spectacles from the muslin nightcaps and shake her head scornfully.
“An old Jew like you! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
But Grandpa ignored this wifely reproach, sang the song to the end, and at once began another, with a mournful moan:
Believe me, I’m crazy about you,
And can’t live a moment without you,
You’re more precious to me than my own life,
But I can’t marry you and make you my wife.
“Of course,” Grandma shook her head into her nightcaps. “He loves her, but he can’t marry her. Who needs you to love me, anyway?”
“Foolish Rokhl!” said Grandpa, cocking one side of his beard to his shoulder. “It’s only a song, a sort of fable.”
“Oh, we know all about your fables!”
Often, Grandpa would station himself at the large table that stood in the center of the room and was stained brownish-black by the flatirons, and he would start cutting cloth for a new uniform. At such times, a great stillness would settle over the house and all one would hear would be the bubbling of the pots and the creak of the pendulum clock.
Grandpa would stand there in his unbuttoned vest, the tape measure slung over his shoulders. He would inspect the cloth that was spread across the entire table, stretch it, mark it with chalk, erase the mark, make another, and yet another, and then, softly, as if from nowhere, he would start humming under his nose, a long, drawn-out mournful humming. Little by little, the humming grew louder and louder, as this pale little Jew, my grandfather, let out a deep groan.
“Oy, oy, hineni … Here in Your presence …”
He threw back his head, his beard pointing sharply upward. The piece of chalk seemed to glide along the cloth of its own accord, and Grandpa’s groan turned into a tearful little melody.
“Hineni he-oni mi-ma’as … oy yoy … Father in Heaven,” he continued in Yiddish, translating the cantor’s High Holy day plea, “I, a poor man who bows down in the dust at Your feet, have come to plead with You on behalf of Your people Israel …”
Grandma tucked in her small head, like a hen. The white piece of muslin remained suspended, motionless, between her fingers, her needle rested, even the bubbling in the pots seemed to subside. The pendulum, too, appeared to have come to a rest, no longer swaying to and fro, having surrendered that motion to Grandma, who shook her head back and forth. Her nose sniffed involuntarily, and she delivered herself of a faint, womanly sigh: “Oy, Merciful Father in Heaven, take pity on Your poor orphans …”—though who those “poor orphans” were wasn’t at all clear to me. But when Grandpa continued with his hineni, Grandma launched into a tale, beginning her account right in the middle.
“When my mother, of blessed memory, was about to give birth to Rivke, there was no water in the house. So Father, may his soul rest in peace, grabbed the pail and …”
“I’ve heard that story a thousand times!” Grandpa cut in, driving the scissors through the cloth.
“See, he doesn’t let you say a word, that Haman!”
“How many times did your mother give birth to Rivke?”
“May your mouth grow backward!”
“Tri-li-li, tra-la-la …” Grandpa burst into a new tune.
Grandma couldn’t forgive Grandpa for not letting her tell her story to the end and was waiting for an opportunity to get even with him. The opportunity wasn’t long in coming, provided by the arrival of Crazy Wladek, whom Grandpa used to like to tease and who was not only an intimate of the household but a regular visitor.
At about nine in the evening, when Grandpa was almost ready to call it a day, the door would open very quietly and in would sidle a short, hairy figure, with a rumpled yellow beard and a pair of smacking lips, as though chewing a cud. That was Wladek.
His feet were wrapped in old pieces of sackcloth. His jacket was full of holes, stuffed with dirty tufts of cotton wool and held in place by a rope. Wladek reeked of kerosene and chicken droppings. Slung across one shoulder of his jacket was a long, heavy sack, like those carried by peddlers.
Wladek always entered quietly, softly, slid his sack off his shoulder, and placed it carefully in a corner of the room. Then, picking up two empty pails, he went down to the Bernardine church and returned with the pails filled with drinking water. He went out and returned several times, pouring the water into Grandma’s barrel until it was filled to the brim.
Only then, without raising his eyes from his worktable, did Grandpa ask, “You’re here already?”
“Mmm, mmm,” Wladek murmured, still holding the two pails and nodding his head like a horse harnessed between two wagon shafts.
“So, what’s new, Wladek? Poured lots of water into the rich folks’ barrels?”
Wladek sat down on the floor not far from the warm oven and folded his legs under him, Turkish fashion. He opened his sack and began shoving into his mouth, straight from the sack’s dark hole, horseshoe-shaped crusts of bread missing their soft, doughy centers. He munched on the crusts and sucked on some large, crooked bones that still had scraps of meat clinging to them. Sometimes, Wladek would augment his supper with an oversized onion, half an apple, or a squashed pickled cucumber, chewing slowly, sluggishly, like a cow.
By now Grandma was familiar with Wladek’s habits and knew that until he’d emptied his entire sack, there was no talking to him. So she waited for the sack to flatten and for Wladek to take a deep breath. Only then would she ask, “Will you have some tea, Wladek?”
“Mmm … mmm …” he’d mumble in his characteristic way, his mouth still full.
Grandma handed him his tea in a small, dark pot. He held it between his hands and slurped noisily. Drops of tea settled on his whiskers. Wladek either licked them away, or wiped them on his beard.
“So, Wladek, what’s new in the world?” Grandpa began again. “Those rich folks of yours, did they guzzle a lot of water?”
“Aha, aha,” said Wladek in a different mumble. “Pan krawiec”—Mr. tailor—“is making a joke … Pan krawiec likes to have a laugh …”
“I’m not laughing. I’m simply curious to know how much water you poured into those rich barrels of yours.”
“Ah, lots of water, Pan krawiec, lots.”
“Then you should have a pocketful of money.”
“What money! All they pay me is two kopeks a barrel!”
“That’s all? Only two?”
“That’s right, no more. And that Danzig lady, she’s got a big barrel!” said Wladek, pointing to the wide, brown wardrobe standing between Grandma and Grandpa’s beds.
“Ooh, aah! So what else is new?”
“The Danzig lady’s got such a big barrel. Such a big barrel!” Wladek didn’t hear Grandpa’s second question.
“I know she’s got a big barrel. Such a big barrel!”
The Danzig lady’s barrel was a sore point with Wladek. It disturbed his sleep. Even when he dropped off after eating his supper, he never stopped mumbling: “U Danzigerowej beczka duża. Beczka duża! … That Danzig lady has a big barrel. Big barrel …”
For half the day he’d be busy pouring tens of pails of water into her barrel, running up and down the stairs. And for all this, for all those pailfuls, to say nothing of the stairs, all he got were two measly, copper coins.
“They should burn, those rich folks, right Wladek?” Grandpa thumped the flatiron down on the lapel of a uniform.
“Mmm, mmm …”
“Don’t worry, Wladek, a time will come when they’ll be pouring water into your barrels.”
“Aha, aha …”
“Get yourself a big barrel now, Wladek, bigger than the Danzig lady’s.”
At that point Grandma saw her opportunity and entered the fray. Now was the time to get back at Grandpa.
“Maybe you should stop yapping with that Gentile, that goy!” she snapped.
“What’s the matter? Isn’t a goy a human being too?”
“Who says he’s not a human being? But with your jokes you’re worse than a goy!”
“And what about your foolish stories?”
“So I tell stories, so what! Whoever doesn’t want to hear them can stop up their ears.”
Wladek was still chewing his cud. He looked Grandma straight in the mouth and, shaking his head, said, “Ja, ja. U Danzigerowej beczka duża!”
“Stop moaning over that Danzig woman,” said Grandma, removing the steel-rimmed spectacles from the tip of her nose. “Go and lie down, you foolish goy!”
“Don’t rush him,” said Grandpa. “Why does it bother you if we have a little conversation?”
“Look with whom he sits down to have conversations.”
“If you have an idiot for a wife, then you have to talk with Wladek.”
Grandma flicked her hand contemptuously, as if to say, “It’s hopeless,” and Grandpa fell silent.
The room grew quiet. Grandma busied herself with the beds, removed the pillows, and placed them on the stools. A cricket chirped under the stove.
Grandpa couldn’t keep quiet for long. “Tell me, Wladekshi,” he said, “What’s the matter with you? What do you want with those girls?”
Wladek, who only an instant before had yawned loudly and widely, blinked his eyes and gave Grandpa an innocent look, like a calf.
“So, it’s true what they say, that you go around lifting the girls’ skirts in the middle of the street?”
A small thread of drool began to trickle down from the right corner of Wladek’s mouth.
“That’s good, Pan krawiec,” he muttered hoarsely.
“Good, is it?”
“Pan krawiec,” the hairy, Gentile face splintered into slanting wrinkles. “They, the girls …”
“Enough with that nonsense!” Grandma sputtered angrily from beside the bed. “I’ll kick you down the stairs, together with my stupid husband!”
“Pani Rokhlina, what am I to do? … They, the girls …”
“So, it’s the girls …” Grandpa turned his face away from the table. “And you like that, hah?”
“Yes, Pani krawcowa, Madam Tailor, I like it. It’s good to sleep with the girls.”
“Stop it!” Grandma Rokhl lunged at Wladek with a small, raised fist. “Get out of here, you filthy man! And you, you old goat of a tailor,” she turned furiously on Grandpa, “stop it this minute!”
Wladek rose awkwardly from the floor. He picked up his empty sack and, muttering under his nose, wandered into the tiny room where he sometimes spent the night.
“That was some talk!” said Grandma, giving the pillows an angry shake.
“I only wanted to know if it’s true what they say about him,” Grandpa replied guiltily.
“If that’s all you’ve got on your mind, then you’re no better than him. And you, you don’t go looking at every girl on the street?”
“If one has a wife …”
“If you don’t like it, you can lump it.”
Grandpa didn’t respond. Grandma kept mumbling to herself that if it hadn’t been such a bad winter, she would have run off where her eyes took her, and if it weren’t for the fact that that fool of a Wladek brought her drinking water from the Bernardine church, she would have tossed him down all the stairs.
The tiny room where Wladek had gone was shut tight. I kept looking at the low, yellow door, which now seemed to mask some great concealment. I had a strong desire to go in there and ask Wladek whether he had also lifted the skirt of Jusza, the cooper’s daughter.