Four Mothers

by Shifra Horn

  In the long days they spent together they would go for twilight walks in the fields surrounding the town. Sara would walk between them, clinging to their hands and sailing through the air with little shrieks of joy whenever she asked them to swing her. In the fields the women would pick flowers, anemones and cyclamens, and weave them into garlands for Sara’s fair head. Sometimes Mazal would leave them to amuse themselves and wander farther afield to pick the camomile flowers. When she returned with the straw basket in her hand full of tiny fragrant golden blooms and marjoram and sage leaves, they would lie under the ancient olive tree in the valley at the foot of the wall. The head of one resting on the belly of the other, they would stroke each other on the head and the cheek. Sara would run about near them, disturbing their tranquillity and filling their laps with bunches of flowers she had picked, red beetles with black-spotted wings, and glittering stones she had found.

  One day they were disturbed by an Arab shepherd from the village in the wadi. He chased away the sheep that surrounded him on every side, and unhesitatingly he approached the women sprawled under the ancient olive tree, fixed his smouldering dark eyes on Mazal’s spotted eyes, weighed her breasts in his imagination, and let his eyes wander to Geula’s red hair. Before he decided what to do with the double prize that had fallen to his lot, Geula scowled at him, stuck out her tongue, opened her eyes wide, and waved her thick hands in front of his face. The shepherd did not move. He stood before her as if paralyzed, as if he were carved in rock. When Geula saw that he had no intention of going away, she ruffled her red hair and screamed at him with loud, discordant sounds.

  Only then did the poor man flee panic-stricken back to his village, with stories of the white she-devil and the red-haired she-devil he had found in the field, their breasts exposed, their genitals dripping, fornicating and caressing each other, and between their loins the little girl they had given birth to, her body covered with a cascade of golden hair reaching to her ankles.

  When they returned to the field a week later they found the shepherd with a few dozen youths from his village waiting in tense expectation. When they saw the women and the little girl walking between them they made excited snorting noises, like stallions scenting a mare in heat. Geula examined the men through the slits of her eyes and whispered to Mazal, “Take the child and run for your life.” Then she walked up to them, rumpled her hair wildly, smeared her face with earth, exposed her immense breasts, which were covered with dark spots and armed with pointed orange nipples, and laughed loudly in their faces. With shrieks of fear like the squawking of abandoned chicks the youths fled to their village, looking over their shoulders at the bare-breasted red she-devil, who threw clods of earth and stones after them as they ran.

  A week later, when the women came back, there was no one waiting for them. Years after the incident, in the twilight hours of the short winter days, the shepherds would sit with their families in their narrow stone huts, listening to the bleating of the sheep, and tell of the crazy she-devil with the red hair and the giant breasts, who boded ill to men. Of the white she-devil, they said that when the sheep looked at her their babies dropped out of their wombs, and of the golden-haired child of the she-devils, they said that anyone who looked at her would be blinded and would never be able to look at another woman as long as he lived.

  * * *

  Sara grew up and her beauty was so great that its fame spread beyond the sea, and the pilgrims who came to see the holy places of Jerusalem made a habit of stopping at Yitzhak’s tiny shop, where Mazal now stood with the girl at her side, to feast their eyes on the great wonder. They came from many distant lands, some of them simple folk who came to worship at the graves of the saints, some of them wealthy men from rich countries who lodged in inns and were accompanied by guides. Like the waves of a stormy black river were the pilgrims from Russia: clad in black, felt boots on their feet, and in their mouths hymns of praise to their Lord Jesus Christ. Ship after ship anchored in the waters of the port of Jaffa and disgorged their human freight. Singing, the pilgrims marched through the fragrant orange groves of Jaffa, and glasses of tea poured from giant samovars cheered them on their way. The columns of dust raised by their feet brought all the beggars of the town running to meet them. They streamed in en masse, proudly exposing the deformities of their birth and the ravages left by the mutilations of leprosy. And the pilgrims would put their hands in their pockets and bring out small coins and loaves of black bread to revive the wretched creatures who fought like famished puppies over every crust thrown their way.

  After prostrating themselves on the graves of the saints and crawling on their bellies, crowned with crowns of thorns, on the last road of their beloved Jesus, they ascended in waves to Mazal’s shop to feast their eyes on the beauty of the Jewish madonna. Equipped with cameras standing on tripods and many photographic plates, and hidden beneath their black tents, the wealthy among them sought to capture her face in photographs. Those with no money in their pockets took out paper and quill, dipped the quill in ink, and sought to immortalize her radiant beauty on paper, in order to take the icon of the most beautiful of the daughters of Zion back with them to their homes. Others streamed to the shop of Rahamim the photographer. There, said the rumor that spread by word of mouth, her picture could be seen. It was a tradition that a picture of Sara on her last birthday hung in the window of his shop. Rahamim, smelling fat profits to be made, allowed them to look at her picture and draw her face for a fee. Like a policeman guarding a prisoner in his cell, he stood before them with his back hiding the picture, until they opened their bundles of money and dropped a coin in his hand. After they had finished drawing the picture, hands trembling with suppressed desire, he took them into the shop, opened a long wooden box, and sold them pictures of the Stations of the Cross. And when they had completed their purchases he guided them to the darkest corner in the depths of the shop, and fished from a painted tin zbox photographs of the most beautiful of women on her last birthday. In some of the pictures she was wearing a Bedouin robe and a chain of gold coins on her forehead; in others she appeared in her Sabbath best with her luxuriant hair falling loose around her and illuminating the whole picture in a halo of light. Then the purses would open again and many coins would drop into his hands.

  Because of the hunters of beauty who came to feast their eyes, Mazal’s business prospered and flourished. Those who failed to immortalize a touch of the beauty’s loveliness in drawings or photographs bought at her mother’s shop, while their eyes stared deep into Sara’s speckled eyes and glided secretly over her golden hair. When they returned to their countries of origin they told of the place of Christ’s birth, of his grave, of the shrines of the saints, and also of the girl whose mother never had to light a lamp in the darkness. All that was necessary was for her daughter to undo her braids and let down her hair for the whole house to be bathed in golden light. And in her sleep, so they said, her mother covered her hair with a dark blanket lest the light penetrate her eyes and keep her awake.

  And the child was not only beautiful. She was also very clever. In her mother’s shop she knew how to calculate large sums in her head, to give the exact change, to speak sensibly; and she even read books, so it was said. Sara learned the art of reading from the packages of haberdashery in the shop, poring over the words that described the contents of the package and learning the letters by heart. People said too that they had seen her peeping into the infants’ class of Menahem the melamed. And the little ones themselves described a radiance of gold suddenly bursting forth behind the windowsill, illuminating the dark classroom and dazzling their eyes with its brilliance. So Sara learned to read the Pentateuch from behind the windowpane, which was greasy from the foreheads of the infants pressed against it to see the street outside. When she finished the Pentateuch she climbed up the drainpipe to the second floor, and there she studied the Mishnah and the Talmud with the young boys. As incriminating evidence they found tangled knots of long golden hair wound around the rusty
nails attaching the pipe to the wall.

  “If she continues like this,” people predicted, “she’ll end up in the opening of the chimney, like Hillel the Righteous.”

  On the day Sara celebrated her fourteenth birthday, Mazal shampooed her hair with the mixture of eggs and oil she had previously prepared, rinsed it in the infusion of camomile, and sat outside with her, combing her hair and plaiting red silk ribbons into the halo of gold encirling her and enveloping her body. Then she busied herself with ironing her best dress with a coal iron and polishing her red Sabbath shoes, and they set out in all their finery for the photographer’s shop, where Rahamim was waiting impatiently to take the birthday photograph. Posed against the background of a painted curtain depicting foreign scenes of mountains and waterfalls, Sara was photographed by Rahamim every year, and the new picture was displayed in his window. “And since then they’ve never stopped coming to the shop,” he would say to anyone who asked the meaning of the custom. Every year, on Sara’s birthday, as if the rumor had spread through the town, dozens of young men and yeshiva students would gather round the shop and wait quietly and patiently to feast their eyes on the most beautiful of Jerusalem’s daughters. Every year they waited for her arrival, and when she appeared they crowded around her with bated breath, then cleared a path for her, and she would pass between the rows like a queen reviewing her guard of honor.

  Her fourteenth birthday was engraved in her memory because of the foreigner. Scores of yeshiva students in their black suits waited patiently for her arrival. Suddenly one young man detached himself from the press of bodies silently besieging her. He stood out among them, with his fair hair, his khaki suit, the puttees on his legs and the new pith helmet on his head. Excitedly he signaled her to stop, set up his tripod and camera opposite her, and asked her with gestures of his hands to stand still. Sara obeyed. The stranger wasted no time: He tucked his head under the black cloth and took a photograph. Quickly he extracted the plate, inserted another in its place, signaled her with his hand again, his head still under the curtain, and took another one. When he was done he bowed deeply, smiled his thanks, and his eyes caught hers. Sara was swallowed up in his blue eyes and refused to emerge from their warm lair. She bathed in the blue, drowned in it, drank it down in mouthfuls, wound it round her body like a sheet of silk, and snuggled into the tenderness of his gaze, as if he were enveloping her in a thick, airy down quilt. As the warmth spread through her body she felt her mother’s elbow digging into her, propelling her step by step into Rahamim’s shop, while her head turned back and her eyes remained fixed in the brilliant blue facing her.

  For a long time Rahamim photographed her, loading and unloading the plates upon which her features were engraved forever, and all this time the eyes of the stranger danced before her. For many days afterward his image disturbed her waking hours. She tried to conjure up other images, of green fields and red roofs, but to no avail. His gaze would return to invade her eyes and paint the scenes she saw in a deep blue.

  * * *

  When Sara came of age deputations of matchmakers came knocking at her mother’s door, but they were all turned away.

  “Sara will marry whomever she pleases,” said Mazal expressionlessly to the matchmakers, and the news spread through the town like fire through a field of thorns.

  “What can that Mazal be thinking of?” people said in surprise. “The most eligible bachelors of the town are interested in her daughter, and offers have even come from matchmakers beyond the sea. Why is she so stubborn?”

  * * *

  The answer to these questions Mazal locked in her heart, and it acted inside her like poison consuming her body. The more the girl grew and bloomed the more her mother wilted and withered, as if a worm were gnawing at her body and devouring her flesh. A terrible secret gave her no rest, and she tossed and turned on her bed at night and groaned in her sleep. Only she knew the secret: The inside of her daughter Sara did not match the outside. One day she found her bathing in the tub, and discovered to her horror a patch of black hair growing on her groin. And with the passing of the days the patch grew larger, blacker and denser; it grew like a wild bushy plant, it grew like a weed. And the infusion of camomile flowers Mazal gave her to make the hair lighter did no good. Sara’s pubic hair remained dark, glossy, and tangled, a memorial to the dark, black days of her infancy.

  “This is my punishment for defying fate,” Mazal said to herself, tortured with bitter thoughts. “And if she marries, her husband will see black, and know that the gold of her hair is a deception, and divorce her, and her end will be like mine.” Therefore she decided that Sara would choose her own husband; please God she would be lucky in her choice, and her husband would pay no heed to the blackness of her mound.

  Sara had no girlfriends, and her mother discouraged any attempts on her part to approach the neighbors’ daughters.

  “All you need is here in the house with me. I forbid you to make friends with unsuitable girls, for no good will come of it,” she would say to her, afraid of the evil eye of her neighbors and of the discovery of the secret she was at such pains to keep. And the obedient little girl submitted willingly to her mother’s wishes and did not protest.

  One day, when Mazal was washing herself in the tub and Geula was helping her and scrubbing her back with the loofah, Sara noticed the gold half napoleon hanging round her mother’s neck on a black velvet ribbon.

  “One day I’ll tell you about it,” Mazal promised her, “and the day this napoleon finds its twin brother and unites with my half coin will be the happiest day of your life and perhaps of my life too. Pray God I live to see that day,” she added, lowering her eyes before Geula’s penetrating gaze. Sara had never seen her mother’s face so radiant as when she told her about the coin.

  “And who has the other half?” she pressed her.

  “The man who will make you happy,” she answered enigmatically.

  “And how will that other half be found?” she asked again.

  “It will find us even though we hide at the bottom of the sea,” she replied. “Harder with the loofah! Don’t spare me! I want you to peel my skin,” Mazal said to Geula, who scrubbed at her skin. Sara looked at the half coin dangling between her mother’s breasts, and she tried to imagine the happiness that would flood her if its twin half were found, but she was unable to imagine anything.

  * * *

  Until the arrival of the winter that was recorded in the annals of the town as the winter when the sky split open, Sara never heard a man’s name mentioned in the house. That winter the rain fell without stopping on the town and the mud houses of the Arab quarters almost dissolved. The houses of the Jewish quarter leaked burning tears of lime, and the householders were obliged to walk between buckets full of the muddy rainwater that penetrated the domed ceilings and formed shapes of damp roses on the walls. After the rain came the snow, and after the snow hail, and the sun was not seen in the town for two or three months. That same year, even before the coming of the spring, the roses of dampness on the walls turned into black roses of mold. Their smell wafted into the distance and penetrated every corner, afflicted the clothes stored in chests and wardrobes with black spots of old age, greedily devoured the leather shoes, and damaged the joints of men, women, and children. The whitewash peeled off the walls, exposing layers of paint in all the colors of the rainbow.

  That year brought death to the homes of the Jews. First it smote the babies and the toothless old. Then it struck at the young and the mature in years. The first to fall ill was oddly the strapping, sturdy Geula, though it seemed as if the Angel of Death himself would shrink from visiting her, with her red hair and her sharp tongue. Her flesh dwindled, her face fell, and all the rusty freckles covering her body faded and turned into white spots dotting her gray skin. Mazal never left her bedside, and she fed her, washed her, and begged her in an imploring voice to get well, “for without you my life means nothing to me.”

  From the day Geula fell ill Mazal would ask
Sara to bring her bunches of fragrant sage from the fields. She would lay the leaves in rows on an iron tray, which she placed on the tin of smouldering embers in the room, in order to warm the flesh of the dying woman. The perfumed smell would spread through the room and somewhat dispel the stink of approaching death. She was afraid to fall asleep beside the patient’s bed, lest death should come and take her unawares, and when her weariness increased she would put wet compresses on her head, to keep her eyes open and her mind clear.

  One morning her weariness overcame her and her head dropped on her chest. She woke up suddenly because of the glaring white light penetrating her eyelids. Alarmed, she sought the source of the light. The blinds were closed and the door was shut, and the room was shrouded in darkness again. She went up to straighten Geula’s bedclothes and when she plumped up the pillow the sick woman’s head wobbled like a heavy flower on a slender, fragile stem. Mazal tucked the blankets round her body and went to the kitchen to brew tea. At noon Sara arrived with a fresh bunch of sage leaves, and food and medicines. She went up to Mazal’s bed to greet her and recoiled. The sick woman’s eyes were open; her dry mouth gaped, surrounded by a narrow band of spittle upon which rested the messenger of death, a green fly washing his hairy feet.