Small Worlds

by Allen Hoffman

  “Oh, I can imagine how lonely you must be out there, Barasch. I often think how much you need a companion to cook for you and to take care of you.”

  As Barasch’s breathing calmed, Malka’s was quickening. She made no effort to hide her growing excitement.

  It was dark, but Barasch knew what she looked like. He had seen her often enough as he passed by on his way to and from town. She had met his glances with a frank, welcoming gaze of her own that said, Yes, that’s right. If you’re interested, come right in. He would turn away and hurry on. He would have liked to come in.

  Malka was a large, powerful woman. She had dull brick-red hair and a large square face with a pug nose and a fleshy, lascivious mouth. The eyes were clear and crafty but too small for her large face. They laughed easily and communicated bold, unlicensed desires. They might have appeared weasel-like were the face any narrower, but in such a full face they appeared porcine, especially when Malka stood by the fence munching a loaf of bread. Even then, the craftiness never left her eyes. Although it was too dark to see them, he knew they were focused on him the way a cat stalks a bird with a broken wing.

  Yes, Barasch found Malka attractive. For all her strength and bestial coarseness, she was a woman. Stronger than most men—Barasch had seen her flinging pieces of metal from one pile to another that would make a teamster grunt —and yet for all her bovine bulk and power, there was something deeply and provocatively feminine about her. A lame, broken creature, Barasch was enticed by her well-knit, gross, beefy excess. Others were, too. When negotiating over bottles, rags, or some metal, a peasant might be tempted to paw at her abundant, unrestrained breasts or touch her large, boxy hips, only to be sent sprawling into the dirt with a swipe of her clublike arms.

  Malka would stand above him with laughter in her small eyes as if to say, Yes, you’re right, but it’s not for you and you’re not man enough to take it. And she could bargain, too. The peasants said she drove a harder bargain than her brother, but she lacked Boruch Levi’s fierce concentration. Her commercial instincts seemed to share a common source with her womanly passions: it was either feast or famine. Barasch understood that she had invited him into the yard to feast.

  Malka’s brother, Boruch Levi, however, unlike his sister, was very straitlaced and abstemious. When he chanced upon Malka and a customer involved in unorthodox negotiations, Boruch Levi would send the poor devil flying over the fence into the road. The one who incautiously remained conscious soon regretted his error. Boruch Levi wasn’t above giving his sister a good smack either. Although Malka must have weighed as much as he did, he was not beefy but muscular. She dared not raise a clublike arm to his steely sinews. What if Boruch Levi were to emerge and find Barasch with his sister?

  But Barasch had come for a reason. He needed witnesses for his alibi. Malka was just one, and a problematic one at that. Would she be willing to testify that Barasch had been with her all night? If she did compromise her honor, the police would think that she was doing so to protect her lover, whereas Boruch Levi would certainly believe her, and Barasch might be better off facing trial as a revolutionary. Boruch Levi had a temper, and his wrath was ferocious.

  “I came to see Boruch Levi,” Barasch said.

  “You should have come earlier. The dear boy is asleep now. They’re all asleep except for me. Why don’t you sit down here next to me? The rags make a very comfortable couch.”

  Barasch should have stepped back, but he hesitated, thinking that if he did live to be exiled, he would regret forever not having accepted Malka’s invitation to share the soft rag pile with her. In the still heat, her steamy female odors assaulted him; they were every bit as overpowering as her punch. If he did establish an alibi and save his freedom, he would come to get her.

  “Malka, it’s late,” he said rather weakly.

  “Not for us gypsies, Barasch dear,” she said.

  Malka correctly interpreted his hesitation. She reached up and yanked down on his belt. Barasch felt himself falling and grabbed the shed pole for dear life as she tugged on his pants. He tried to work away from her grip, and his long limp leg uselessly kicked into some empty bottles. They tinkled like a bell before one shattered in a hearty explosion of broken glass. Malka stopped pulling, and they both listened for a moment. To Barasch’s disappointment and Malka’s delight, they heard nothing in the house.

  Malka’s mother, Sarah, however, had not gone back to sleep. Instead, she had peeked out the window to discover Malka entertaining Soffer’s gimpy watchman. She was debating whether or not to awaken her hardworking son, Boruch Levi, who so richly deserved to rest. Having heard stories of Barasch’s associating with the gypsies, she did not believe that any good could come of this night’s romance. The bottle breaking seemed to symbolize the best she could expect.

  Although she firmly shook her son’s shoulder, Boruch Levi was very slow in getting up. He was having a strange, troubling dream in which cats were burning.

  “Check the yard, son.”

  “You heard something, Ma? Did Thunder neigh?” he asked. He respectfully never referred to his horse by any other name in front of his mother.

  “She’s out there with someone.”

  “On Tisha B’Av? ... The slut,” he said, putting on his pants.

  “Take a candle,” she said.

  “Ma, I had a dream of burning cats.”

  “Pooh, pooh, pooh,” she spat. He did, too.

  “That’s not good. Throw some salt on your way out and don’t say anything else till you do.”

  He threw the salt and went into the yard with the candle, to find Barasch clinging naked to the pole and Malka sitting on the rag pile with his pants in her hand. The cripple’s naked legs were quivering like leaves in a storm, but the knees couldn’t knock since one was so much higher than the other. He could see from Malka’s sullen disappointment that nothing had happened.

  “Ma wants you in the house, quick,” he ordered his sister.

  She let go of Barasch’s pants and stood up. She knew better than to say anything when Boruch Levi acted on their mother’s authority. Pouting with no sense of shame, she went into the house.

  Barasch let go of the pole to pull up his pants and fell over onto the rag pile. He floundered around trying to hitch up his trousers until Boruch Levi lifted him to his feet.

  “Barasch, if I catch you here again, I’m going to straighten out your legs,” Boruch Levi said quietly.

  “Boruch Levi, it’s not the way it looks,” Barasch whined, twisting his long face into a simpering smile.

  Had Barasch not been a cripple, Boruch Levi would have wiped that smile off with his left hand, breaking the jaw in the process.

  “Get going, Barasch!”

  “I came to be sociable. I just wanted to say hello to you,” Barasch pleaded.

  “You said hello, and if you want to be sociable, try the Waksmans next door. They’re very sociable. Froika will even play the violin for you.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. I think I’ll do that.” Buttoning Beryl’s old pants, Barasch hobbled out as fast as he could.

  Boruch Levi stood alone in the yard, contemplating his dream of burning cats. What could it possibly mean? He remembered that the holy rebbe had told him that the Evil Inclination would try anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  GITTEL WAKSMAN HAD TAKEN HER SON FROIKA HOME AT once when she heard that Grannie Zara had died. The witch had been one of the polestars by which Krimsk had charted its course, and it was as if the heavens had changed. Good or bad, no such fundamental change could be anything but frightening. Gittel, like most of Krimsk, believed in the witch’s powers and had always felt it wise to consult the cat lady before beginning any serious undertakings.

  When she decided that Froika should study the violin, Gittel took the instrument in its felt-lined carrying case to Krimichak. She opened the case, explaining that she desired her son to become a great violinist who would play for the tsar. The witch plucked feebly at the
strings and asked, “What is it?” Gittel replied that it was a violin. The witch repeated her question, and Gittel replied that it was her son’s future. The witch cryptically responded, “For heaven’s sakes, make up your mind!” and then added, “Whatever it is, keep it shiny. Such things look better when you can see your face in them.”

  Since then Gittel had polished the violin until it gleamed. Had she discovered a way for Froika to play it without touching it, she would have been ecstatic. So would Froika. Had he ceased playing altogether, all of Krimsk’s living creatures with the exception of Gittel and the deaf cemetery attendant would have said psalms of thanksgiving. Froika was tone-deaf. Putting a violin, even a shiny one, into his hands was as sensible as putting a Talmud into Itzik Dribble’s. That boor Boruch Levi once approached the house and shouted that he didn’t care about himself, his sister, or his aged mother, but his poor horse Piffle Fart couldn’t sleep and the Waksmans should take pity on a dumb beast at least. His foulmouthed sister Malka was heard to remark in the marketplace that Gittel should not have been so cheap: she should have taken the violin to Grannie Zara herself and not settled for the caterwauling cats.

  Froika hated the violin more passionately than any Jew hates Haman on Purim, but he played it, and he practiced on it. His father, Menachem the shoemaker, considered piercing his ears with an awl. Menachem said that he envied the dumb shoes around him that had tongues but no ears. He confided his little joke to Froika, who laughed heartily. Froika’s tone deafness spared him part of the misery, but he stood closer than anyone else, and as they say, you don’t have to be a hen to tell a rotten egg.

  Gittel made all the decisions. Menachem considered himself fortunate that Gittel focused her attention on the children. Before their arrival, Gittel had been toying with the idea that she and Menachem should open an inn. This idea expired graciously with the birth of their first child. This was Menachem’s great reward in fathering them. To his dismay, Froika, their fifth, was also their last. If they could not produce number six soon, Gittel might turn the force of her unbridled ambition back onto Menachem himself. His specific fear was that Froika would run away and that he himself would be forced to play the violin for Gittel and Nicholas II. Since this melodic specter dwelt with Menachem on his workbench, he did not intervene in Froika’s musical education. Although Menachem did not expect Froika to blossom into a musical prodigy overnight, he prayed sincerely that the gradual process would begin. He had a similar attitude toward the messianic redemption. At any rate, the shoemaker feared the shiny violin and did not intercede on his son’s behalf.

  Surprisingly, Froika tolerated his violin lessons. A clever, headstrong boy in addition to being youngest and really quite spoiled, he rarely did things that he did not enjoy. He realized very early, however, that in certain matters he was no match for his mother. Few were. Gittel, a small, well-proportioned woman, appeared calm, reasonable, and affable. Froika knew that she had a remarkable power to gather all the chaos and confusion in her life—the very stuff that drove others to distraction—compress it into a single thread, and follow it with maniacal dedication wherever it led. In his case, to the throne room of the tsar. He understood that her mad projects were designed to improve his and his family’s lot. He appreciated that, but ultimately the generosity of her motivation was irrelevant. With his perceptive maturity and common sense, he knew that the path of least resistance was his only option.

  He had no choice, but he did learn a valuable lesson—that every simple human being contains the potential for madness, strength, and purpose that his mother had. The only other person he knew who seemed to realize some of his potential power was the Krimsker Rebbe. As Froika sawed on the shiny violin, he wondered what great things he might be capable of some day. If he could unlock the power that he possessed, he might reach anywhere—even into the tsar’s court, although that held no attraction for him. Especially tonight.

  Froika had been pleased to return home. He had grown weary of repeating the pond story. Next time they might not be so lucky. The more he thought about what had happened, the more he became depressed. He sat by himself and thought. His mother came over to hug him periodically. His father said “Thank God” every time Froika caught his eye.

  The incident at the pond was over and had ended very satisfactorily, but Froika was frightened about the future. The Krimichak boys might easily have drowned Alexander Bornstein and gone unpunished; killing a Jew was no crime. Froika had heard how Grannie Zara had saved Krimsk from a pogrom with her upraised broom, but now she was dead, and her protection had been incomplete anyway. The goyim were known to beat, maim, rape, even kill Jews, and the Jews accepted this as if it were in the nature of things—“our unfortunate but fated perils.” The Jew could run away, but there was nowhere to run. Nothing changed: in Krimichak the goyim were still goyim, and in Krimsk the Jews were still Jews, and sooner or later there was sure to be another murderous assault.

  Froika had read a newspaper account of the Kishinever pogrom, which had occurred in the spring. Thousands and thousands of Jews had been murdered. He was sure that nothing had changed in Kishinev either. The goyim would go unpunished, the Jews would not learn to protect themselves, and it would all happen again. There would be the usual blood libel, and it would be Jewish blood that would flow. Froika had read in the same article that the goyim believed that the Jews needed the blood of a Christian child to make the Passover unleavened bread. Initially he was incredulous at such an obscene absurdity; every schoolboy knew that the Torah called the blood the soul of the creature and forbade it. Even the blood of a kosher cow or chicken was not permitted. The only person he had ever seen drink blood was a Krimichak farmer who had slaughtered a pig and poked his cup into the dark red stream pouring forth from the creature’s neck. The goy saw the Jewish boys and laughingly offered them some; Froika was revolted. As they ran off to the woods, he thought to himself, the goyim will eat anything. How could the Jews refute such foolishness if the goyim willingly believed it? Facts and reason were simply irrelevant, so there was no possible way to educate anyone to the truth. That murderous fool Casimir believed that Grannie Zara was a Jew. Froika found that laughable, too, but he had an uneasy feeling in his stomach that no good would come of that nonsense. Yesterday Kishinev, tomorrow Krimsk?

  Froika could no longer sit still. He jumped up and began pacing.

  “You are safe at home. Relax,” his father said.

  But Froika could not relax. He was at home, all right, but he was not safe. Jews were never safe.

  “We have to leave Krimsk,” he said with certainty.

  “You had a fright this evening. It will pass,” his father answered.

  “We have to leave Krimsk. There’s no other way. We have to leave Krimsk,” he repeated.

  His mother came to him and took his hand. “Yes, we must leave Krimsk,” she agreed with even greater passion.

  Froika was delighted that someone had understood.

  “Do you know how to leave Krimsk?” she asked her son.

  “No,” he answered. That was the problem.

  She led him to the crude sideboard and pointed.

  “Do you know what that is, Froika?”

  Froika stared in disappointment at the bumpy, grainy black case. “A violin,” he said.

  “No, make up your mind, Froika. It is a means of conveyance,” she said with deep satisfaction that she had finally answered Grannie Zara’s riddle. “It must become your vehicle, Froika. You must see your face in it, traveling to St. Petersburg.”

  “It’s a violin,” Froika repeated.

  “No, it is a magic chariot if you wish,” she said excitedly.

  Froika stared at her in frustration.

  “Look, I’ll show you something no one else has.”

  She opened the case and reverently removed two small stones from beneath the felt lining.

  “Grannie Zara gave me these just last week. I went and told her that you were not progressing as rapidly as
you should. She told me to put them inside the violin case. Now that she is no more, we have the last of such magic. You must practice harder than ever, Froika. With these in the case, we cannot fail. Look at them.”

  His mother carefully placed the stones in his open hand. Froika examined the small, ordinary, smoothly rounded objects that had come from the streambed. He returned them to his excited mother.

  “These are plain rocks, and that’s a violin,” Froika said.

  Before Gittel could answer, they heard a knock at the door. Menachem opened it, and Barasch Limp Legs hobbled into the room.

  “Good evening, I was strolling around and thought I would be sociable,” he said. He saw that the Waksmans were surprised and not very pleased by his entrance. “Actually, I was visiting my dear friend and business associate, Boruch Levi, next door, but he’s exhausted after a long day. He suggested that I drop in on all of you. I saw the light and heard voices. Here I am, a good neighbor.”

  His equine, obsequious smile was no more successful on the Waksmans than it had been on Boruch Levi. Menachem wondered whether Barasch had been drinking. One couldn’t tell from the way he walked; he was perpetually off-balance and staggering. He did not know Barasch to be a drinker, but he had no other explanation for his oddly affected behavior, and all that nonsense about Boruch Levi was tipsy talk.

  “It’s late,” Gittel said curtly. She wanted Barasch to leave so she could deal with Froika’s heresies. The boy must understand what was at stake—everyone’s future.

  “Oh, no, we’re just talking. Please come in and sit down,” Froika said effusively.

  Seizing the invitation, Barasch awkwardly lowered his ungainly frame to the floor to join the Tisha B’Av mourners. He tried various positions, but he could not find a comfortable one. Taking pity, Menachem handed him his own cushion. Somewhat apologetically, Barasch accepted it and thanked him.

  Froika started to speak, but Gittel directed an ominous look at him that told him he dare not discuss sacred familial subjects with a stranger. In fact, Froika had no desire even to think about the instrument of torture on the sideboard; he was searching for information. While prowling around Yudel the Litvak’s lumberyard, he had fished a Yiddish newspaper out of a trash barrel. A grisly picture of corpses from the Kishinever pogrom caught his attention. Froika furtively read the article. Captivated by the journal, he snuck it home where he hid it under his mattress and subsequently read it all. He discovered another article about a subject rarely discussed in Krimsk, the return of Jews to the Holy Land of Israel. This whetted his young appetite, but he had no way of satisfying it. Repeated forays to the trash barrel proved disappointingly futile. Preparing for bed on the long summer evenings, Froika had often noticed Yudel on his way to Barasch’s and had conjectured that the two good friends might be planning their return to the land of Israel. The hasidim talked of both Barasch and the Zionist settlers on communal farms in the Holy Land as heretics. Perhaps Barasch could answer some of his questions.