CHAPTER 2

THE 25TH OF ELEL

That idea! How exactly had it managed to lodge itself in my heart? When did it come to me? Was it born at the same time I was? Or had it slowly grown without my feeling it? I cannot recall.

What I do remember is that I was something of a strange child: quiet and sullen, tending to stay indoors by myself. I was pale, and prone to colds. I would lie with my swollen throat wrapped in a woolen sock filled with warm salt, and let my mind wander for hours. My sickly thoughts, young, lonely, and without form, drifted like a murky fog, without purpose, like the autumn clouds that drench the earth, day and night, without nourishing it. The clouds themselves don’t know why they make their way across the sky, why they drip cold water down onto the earth, and the earth does not know why it needs the water. And yet it accepts the rain, drinking it lazily, growing too soft and too damp, until it can do nothing but splatter with mud. Similarly, I did not know why I was compelled to think. What good was the endless drip-drop of ideas? But think I did.

The air in our silent, desolate house was always filled with cold shadows, the walls adorned with banal, faded pictures. The house was crammed full of old, bulky furniture, tasteless and chaotic, entirely lacking in coziness or warmth. “Bargains” the lot of it, the likes of which you find occasionally in special sales, sold off by homeowners who were leaving for America. It all stood there, aging, growing sepulchral in the shadows, leaving no space to breathe, all of which fed into my temperament. The house offered up its treasures for my sole benefit: its atmosphere, its odious walls, its tastelessness, tedium, and silence—all so I could think my gloomy thoughts, safe and undisturbed. Our derelict house, lonely and silent, was a part of my thoughts and my thoughts were a part of the house; each seemingly engendering and nourishing the other.

When my health improved somewhat, my father—a widower—and our elderly maid Brayne would talk to me, encouraging me to play and be more like other children. I’d return, lazy and dissatisfied, to my playthings, which I never really took care of and never really mistreated. And deep in my heart I yearned for the times when I was sick, for the warm woolen sock around my neck, for my blankets and for the strange musings that come from too much bed rest.

I did not like children of my own age, nor did I hate them. I regarded them with an unhealthy indifference bordering on disgust. Our maid, moved by my loneliness, would sometimes invite the neighbors’ children to the house to play with me. But I refused to go near them. I’d just sit there, staring sadly.

“Go on, play!” Brayne would encourage me, before resuming her work in the kitchen.

The children would look at me with curiosity at first, timidly gnawing on their fingers, as though I were an adult. Then they’d slowly approach—a step forward followed by a glance, another step, another glance—and cautiously begin to play with the toys that lay near me on the floor. I would not move an inch. They’d propose a game with my wooden horse or my little wagon and I would blurt out, half in shame, half in anger: “Leave me alone!” before falling silent once more.

The children would soon get bored, and frown at me with eyes full of childish scorn, pouting, as if I’d offended them somehow; then suddenly, for no reason, they’d burst into tears, crying aloud: “We want to go home … home … home.”

I have no memory of my mother because she died giving birth to me. She left no pictures of herself behind.

My father—a tall, not especially clever man with a soft ruddy beard—was affectionate in his way. But he was always occupied with his work as a grain-dealer. The burden of the business lay entirely on his shoulders; he had no employees. He did not go in for ledgers, books, notes, logs, or accounts. In place of double-entry bookkeeping he had only his tired brain, a mass of mobile wrinkles on his sunburned brow, and many, many scraps of paper covered in lists and pencil marks. The pockets of his vest, trousers, and coat were always stuffed with such papers in all imaginable formats, which came spilling out whenever he removed his handkerchief.

The town beyond the walls of our house, a provincial town in Lithuania, would swallow him up for the whole day. He would eat lunch in a hurry, slurping and gobbling, unable to sit still, before heading back out. He’d come home late at night when the shutters had long been lowered. I slept in my mother’s old bed, which had remained next to my father’s since her death. As soon as my father came in, he would approach my bed, his face pale, and ask in a soft, hoarse voice:

“Shloymke, are you asleep?”

As a sickly child all alone at home I’d long grown used to sleeping during the day, and so afterward I would not be able to fall asleep until late at night.

“No.”

I never succeeded in speaking much with my father; he was a difficult man to approach. And I found it hard to utter the word “father”; I avoided it whenever I could.

“No?” he’d ask, with nothing particular in mind, his tall body looming over me, and pull the blanket up as far as my nose.

“Go to sleep!” he’d say, “sleep through the night.”

And for the next half hour I’d listen to him, pulling off his long boots in the darkness of the bedroom, throwing them under the bed as carefully as he could, and begin muttering distractedly to himself with half words:

“Hmm … It’s time I reckon … certainly time … he’s been sick so long … every indication … if you can’t, you can’t … promissory notes … and Epshteyn’s bills—unpaid? Not there yet? … can you fathom it? … If you say nothing, eh? Again … nothing to be done … aha … yes … it’s possible … quite possible …”

I loved to listen to these fragmentary utterances and picture him furrowing his brow in the darkness as he spoke.

Until finally, after a good while chattering to himself, he’d let out a sigh and lie down on his big mattress; his tired brain would suddenly sense someone listening. He would lift his head and ask as he usually did:

“Shloymke, are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Go to sleep!”

Often, some time after these brief exchanges, I’d be overcome by a childish fear. Where am I anyway?

I’d begin pleading quietly, still not daring to say the word “father”: “Light the lamp! Light the lamp!”

Instead of a reply, I’d hear my father’s tired, ragged snoring. Then I’d hide my head under the blanket, block my ears, and wouldn’t say another word.

♦

One evening, my father returned home earlier than usual. His face seemed different; the worried wrinkles on his brow had straightened. There was a small, hidden joy in his usually dispirited eyes. He paced back and forth through the house, his legs rubbing together as he walked, clasping his frozen hands together—though it was a cold, white winter outside, he seemed to do so out of distraction rather than on account of the chill.

I sat on my little chair, my cold throat wrapped in its habitual woolen sock. For several minutes all was quiet.

My heart told me that at any moment my father would speak. And suddenly, he did in fact walk up to me and ask me a question.

“Shloymele, do you remember what your mother’s name was?

I was taken aback and looked up at him with childish curiosity.

He seemed not to have anticipated such a look. He was disconcerted, and awkwardly raised his voice:

“Don’t you remember your mother’s name? Eh? No?”

His voice frightened me, and I burst into tears.

But he just bent down, and repeated confusedly:

“Come on now, Nekhome was her name, there’s no need to cry … Nekhome, Nekhome … you silly thing. It was Nekhome! …”

The name Nekhome stirred memories of large, kindly, blue eyes and a smooth gracious brow under a black wig with a white parting down the middle. Where had I seen that face? How did I know about it? Was it Nekhome, my mother? Who had described her to me? My father? The maid?

My childhood was not rich in impressions, in words or games, in images or sounds, so I’d developed a habit of repeating words and half words that appealed to me. After the conversation with my father, as I played with my little wooden soldier, I caressed its head, playfully flicking its painted nose, and attempted to mimic my father’s voice:

“Come on now, Nekhome, you silly thing, Nekhome … Nekhome I’m telling you. What are you crying about now?”

Late that same night, my father took me into his bed beside him—again: this was unusual—and spoke:

“Would you like to have a mother here? A new mother … like Nekhome … she will also be kind … she’ll buy you sweets … Would you like that, son?”

I said nothing.

“She’ll cook nice things. Our maid Brayne can’t cook the likes … she can’t. Ah, she’ll make good pudding, kugel with raisins … You like kugel with raisins?

“Kugel with raisins … ,” I repeated in a dull voice, pulling away from my father. And my little heart began telling prophecies in the dark.

“In summer she’ll take you for walks in the public gardens … You know, the park … you’d like that, eh? She’ll be a good mother, yeah?

“Yeah,” I echoed weakly. Then my father picked me up carefully in his arms, like a baby, carried me back to my bed, tucked me in, and said in his usual manner: “Go to sleep.”

But I lay there in the darkness for a long time, my eyes open, whispering to myself:

“Kugel with raisins … kugel with raisins … Nekhome … walks in the gardens … Nekhome … Nekhome …”

♦

A big-nosed Jewess, with large, drooping breasts, a fat, withered face with crude features, bloodshot eyes, and no eyebrows arrived and took up residence in our big empty house. She brought with her a wagon-load of cushions, quilts, and pillows, and by the time all the bedding had been taken in and added to our own ample supply the air in every room was thick with fine particles of down and feathers.

A porter carried the things into our house while the portly Jewess, my new stepmother, raced around, exhausted and sweaty, shouting incessantly in a hoarse, ringing voice: “There are more cushions … that’s not the last of them … carry them in …” looking for all the world like a chicken about to be sacrificed for Yom Kippur.

I was sick, as usual, and that night I had strange dreams. I dreamt that our whole house was being entirely stuffed full of cushions and quilts until I began to drown under a sea of dust and feathers, unable to scream. From one minute to the next the cavity of our house was filled with bedding. Soon it reached the windows, then it covered our glass cabinets, before long it would reach the ceiling. And my stepmother, fat and sweaty, dancing over the cushions commanded in a shrill voice: “More cushions … that’s not the last of them … keep carrying them in …”

They removed my bed from the room I used to share with my father, and set me up in the dining room on the sofa. From that day forward my father’s relationship with me changed. When he came home late at night and walked past my bed, he would address me in the dark:

“Shloymke, are you asleep?”

“No.”

But he would no longer come over to tuck me in as he used to; he would merely tell me to go to sleep, more out of habit than out of love, and head straight to the bedroom.

In my childish heart I knew that she, she alone, whom I was now expected to call “aunt” or better still, “mother,” was responsible for the change in my father’s comportment.

In the cool darkness of our large quarters I often heard my father speaking to her as he removed his boots and threw them under the bed. In those moments I was so jealous of that ample woman; I yearned for my mother’s bed where I’d slept until now; for the way my father would gasp just before he drifted off to sleep; his gentle, gravelly voice, which would sometimes address me. Silently I grew to hate, truly to despise the woman who’d stolen it all away from me. She was so restrained, so apathetic; she never spoke to me, never exchanged a word.

But I had no opportunity to openly display my hatred toward this strange interloper; her behaviour toward me was neither cold nor warm. That amorphous bag, who would break into a sweat at even the slightest effort, barely noticed that I existed at all, seemingly oblivious to the pale child wandering around the house with a woolen sock tied around his neck. On those occasions when I met her watery gaze, it was lethargic and indifferent: the sort of gaze an earnest person usually reserves for household pets.

She would often forget to look at me at all, only remembering my existence when it was time to eat or sleep:

“Shloymke, food! Shloymke, bedtime! …”

That’s how one treats a cat too, you throw it a bone and call it over: here puss, puss, puss.

By that time, I was learning in kheyder and when one day the teacher dropped by to collect the tuition fees my father chatted with him while she lounged on the sofa, yawning with a wide, Withered mouth, not saying a single word.

If I happened to ask her something, she would slowly raise her red eyes, which expressed nothing at all, and respond with a yawn:

“Wh-ah-ah at? …”

Often whole days went by without either of us saying a word to each other. So it continued, for days, months, years, and our relationship, without an ounce of love or a drop of animosity, washed over me with coldness and the stench of the grave. My heart felt battered, darkened, neglected; it hid away somewhere in a corner of my breast, growing ever less capable of producing, or receiving, any genuine emotion.

The animosity I harbored toward her stagnated; starved of sustenance by her behavior, it became as though covered in rust. Eventually, I began to regard her with the same lack of feeling as she did me.

I’d return in the evening after a day at kheyder and sit in my old chair warming my hands by the stove. On one such evening I recall gazing into the burning wood and seeing fiery little men winking at me from inside, sticking out their tiny, hellish red and blue tongues. The fire cast fantastical shadows on the walls and on the old furniture, which danced along with the flames … The stale smell of tedium hung in the air, the odor of loneliness, of the humdrum, of aimlessness accompanied by another smell: the smell of my stepmother herself, her hazy negligence. My father had not yet returned from town. My stepmother was dozing right in the middle of the sofa, where her weight had broken several springs; her nose whistled. I was alone, all alone in the desolate, silent house, with nothing but my childish soul and dreary imagination. What thoughts passed through my mind! Nature abhors a vacuum, and so thoughts flowed into my mind, just as wild thorny weeds will grow in a field when one neglects to sow it.

I never had anyone with whom I could share my inner thoughts. In my imagination everything I’d ever seen, heard, learned, or understood took on exaggerated forms, ugly and dreadful. Everything around me felt immobile, paralyzed. The walls, the furniture, the very air in the rooms: it all pressed against me, everything conspiring to freeze my heart, and petrify my feelings. I longed with every limb, with my whole being for my stepmother to start nagging me, torturing me, scolding me, heaping every possible curse upon my head (as I’ve heard stepmothers are supposed to do according to the stories of my classmates) so that I could be permitted to hate her, to answer her back, to make her life miserable … I ached for her to beat me, to dole out punches, pull my hair, so that I could throw my old galoshes in her face. I could pour pitch into her new hat. I could tear up her quilts, as large and thick as she was, bigger even … our whole house would be filled with feathers. Afterward I would run off to the prayer house, and spend the night there on a bench.

Such vengeful thoughts brought me an especially sweet pain. Only the hungry—those who have not eaten for several days, fantasizing about a piece of fried goose, whose odor reaches them from afar—are familiar with such sweet suffering.

♦

I was about ten years old. We were learning Mishnah in kheyder one warm Shabbes afternoon when we came to the phrase: “Marbe boser marbe rime,”—“One who increases his flesh, increases worms.” The teacher was drinking tea. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a hairy chest. He was sweating, his face wrinkled with pleasure as he taught us the interpretation of the text, explaining that each worm that feeds on a corpse causes pain like a needle in living flesh. I brought my boyish hands under the table, pinched my skinny little knees, and immediately a thought flashed into my mind: I will die, it’s certain that I will die, but the worms will not sting me much. They won’t get much out of me: I’m too skinny … but my stepmother? Oho! She’s so big and fat … she’ll be a feast for many worms. It’s going to sting her all right, so many, many needles …

The thought transported me into such a frenzy that, as soon as the lesson was over, I hurried to confide in my friend Yosl.

“You know, the worms will only eat me a little, only a little, but my ‘Aunt’—Oho!”

Yosl, a crafty, cross-eyed lad, felt it necessary to embellish the image by adding: “Just like the carcass we saw that time in the hollow under the tree, remember?”

“Yes … but the worms won’t eat me.”

“Oh, but you might get fat yet; my father told me that can happen—you’ll be fat with a long beard.”

My mood darkened. I frowned at Yosl for stealing my joy. Yet I answered him with an inner confidence: “No, no, I’ll never get fat, never. You’ll see, never.”

My voice took on the clarity and authority of an adult’s. Yosl started; he looked at me in silent wonder. In that moment, my face must have expressed something that Yosl had never seen on the faces of boys his own age. I returned home, my head spinning with confused thoughts. I sat down in my habitual corner without asking for food and remained there, alone with my sad young thoughts.

The sun was beginning to set. Golden flecks of sunlight wandered across the walls, clambering over the furniture. The house was empty. My father had gone to afternoon prayers, leaving behind a still warm glass of tea on the table. The maid had gone out for some fresh air. Only my stepmother was left, drowsing on the sofa, her face so sweaty it was painful to behold. She did not glance at me as I entered, merely asked in a dazed stupor: “Who’s there?” before drifting back to sleep.

In addition to the endless boredom and solitude in the house, there now hung that sad, oppressive emptiness that creeps into the soul when one passes from the holy to the profane, from a holiday atmosphere to the everyday, that emptiness that one feels after a lengthy celebration, such as on the trip home after a wedding.

I always felt this melancholy as Shabbes was coming to an end. And in our home, full as it was of sloth and isolation, the melancholy flowed stronger, like a contagious disease, like bacteria that are fruitful and multiply in the filth on which they gladly feast.

The sadness merged with the creeping shadows, becoming one gray mass, steadily besieging my young heart, which cowered in a dark corner.

Yet suddenly the stillness in our house was shattered. The wretched, drawn-out clang of a church-bell rang out, splitting the cool silence in two. The melancholy burst into many smaller fragments, which twirled around me, crawling on my hair, dancing around my head:

Bim—bam, bim—bam …

The growling clang seemed bent on startling us, warning us: “All is not well, all is not well … watch out! watch out!”

From the other direction, the dirgeful, protracted melody of the psalms from the nearby prayer house could still be heard:

“Ashrey tmimey derekh hohoylkhim betoyres Adoynoy”

The incantation of the psalms and the ringing of the churchbells became unwittingly entangled. In harmonious yearning the sound poured into the darkening room, stealing its way into my heart, and all at once I felt the full burden of my profound solitude. Moved almost to the point of tears, I longed more than anything for a soft, warm lap to lay my head on, for a warm mother’s hand to caress my hair.

I had witnessed such a scene in Yosl’s house: his mother was caressing his head in that gloomy twilight that coincides with the end of Shabbes, singing with a soft, weak voice before lighting a match: “Got fun Avrom, fun Yitskhokn un fun Yankevn …”

Oh, how I would love my stepmother if she held my head in her lap like that … If Nekhome were still alive, the real Nekhome, that’s what she would do … but I’d also be contented with my step-mother’s lap.

There she lay, my stepmother, on the sofa: fat, drenched in sweat, her limbs hanging limp and motionless.

I could not hold myself back and approached her, not knowing what I was going to say.

“Mother … ? Aunt … ?”

I pictured Nekhome, two blue eyes under a matt wig with a part down the middle …

My aunt did not budge, did not so much as glance in my direction, only asked: “Are you hungry? Is that it?”

“No, no, never mind.”

I took a step backward with a heavy heart, unsure of what to do next. Then I approached again, right up close; my face was aflame, my lips trembled.

“I know it’s a lie …” I said. “A big lie … my father tricked me … you’re nothing like a mother!”

“Hmm?”

“You’re nothing like … like Nekhome!”

Her hairless brows rose, and her cold, beady eyes peered out with a watery shine.

“So what if I’m not?”

A wave of insolence and rage caught in my throat, bursting out in an unnatural, childish voice:

“You’re an abomination! An abomination! You’ll be eaten by worms … Abomination! …”

“Hush now, what is it? Are you hungry? Just a minute …”

And she clambered to her feet with a deep sigh, heading toward the kitchen to prepare me something to eat. She had not understood a thing. I felt ashamed, and for several days I could not bring myself to look her in the eye. Whenever she addressed me my cheeks turned red.

That was to be my first and last protest against the cold monotony and emptiness, my sole rebellion against the gray life in our home; a life that contained neither love, nor hate, nor purpose. My protest, as futile as it had been spontaneous, came to naught. Once again I was oppressed by the silence and tedium in the house which was only interrupted by the periodic clatter of knives and forks. Our tepid relationship continued to darken, settling on me, slow, constant, and thick, like a layer of dust.

My hatred grew stale, and I once again became as indifferent to my stepmother as she was to me.

♦

Then, one day, the rains came, bringing to a close several months of illness and terrible pain for my father.

He lay on the floor, surrounded by a group of women—no strangers to the work of weeping—moaning with jutting lips and hanging noses. Their lamentations were deafening and they blew into their handkerchiefs with hyperbolic vigor. I stood there, pale and cold, but I did not cry. The sound of the wailing pained my ears, but it did not surprise me; it was as though I’d been born and raised in such an environment. I was numb to the keening, and lost in my own thoughts. The long, cold body seemed so alien, new, and interesting to me: the sunken cheeks, the reddish-gray hair, and the wrinkles. I stared with intense, private fascination at the candles, which were burning near the dead man’s head. By their flickering, yellow shine his blue lips appeared to move and speak … I was disappointed when they wrapped the dead man’s head in a black shroud … it was all so strangely captivating! … Why are the women shrieking like that? It would be better if they were quiet; if it were still … Candles burning straight, slender, and white; yellow flames, with bluish tongues in the center, dead blue lips trembling in their shine … Why have they covered all the mirrors? What about all the cold, abandoned pots in the kitchen? It’s all so excessive, so needless …

An old woman approached me and whispered in my ear:

“Cry, you silly thing! … It’s your father after all … your father is dead.”

But I did not cry, I only blushed violently and hid myself away in a corner until the shame subsided. I turned around again and observed the wailing, the mourners, my father’s bearded face with the drooping brow, which I could feel under the black sheet, and I could not understand why I did not weep.

That night after the burial, as I lay down to sleep, my imagination could not shake the smell of death, the smell of medicines, carbolic acid, ice-packs which had been piling up in every room for months on end. Then suddenly a lucid thought took form in my weary brain: I too will die, but not with a beard and moustache like my father had … I won’t have furniture or a house … no women will cry for me; they will not blow their hanging noses in their handkerchiefs … Of course I will die, I’ll die.

Even now I’m certain that was the precise moment when my childish thoughts, which had hitherto wandered in my mind like a sparse, inchoate mist, began to acquire their first characteristic traits.