by Shifra Horn
“How do you know what big Yitzhak and little Yitzhak want?” they would ask her.
“They speak to me,” she said simply.
One day Pnina-Mazal tugged at Sara’s skirt and announced: “Little Yitzhak says he wants to go home.”
“This is our home,” said Avraham.
“Little Yitzhak says that it isn’t his home. He wants to return to the home where he was born.”
Avraham and Sara looked at her in amazement. They had never told her of their lives in another country, and how could she know? When little Yitzhak’s wishes were repeated via his sister’s mouth, Sara knew that the time had come. They had to go back. That night, after she had whispered words of love in her husband’s ear and begged him to visit her thirsty body, as she did every night, and after he had rejected her as usual, she asked him to take them back to the land of her birth.
“You go back with the children,” he replied. “I can’t leave my father and mother in their present state, and I have to take care of the shop. I’ll send you money, and very soon, when things improve, I’ll join you.”
* * *
When Pnina-Mazal turned three Sara packed her bags. On the eve of the journey she forced herself on her husband, whispering words that in days gone by would have sufficed to make him stiffen and penetrate her with no more ado. Now she touched his groin. He averted his face and removed her hand from the flabby piece of flesh that refused to stiffen. With tears in her eyes she returned to her bed. Early in the morning, enflamed by lust, she got into his bed again and took hold of his private parts as he slept. To her surprise she found herself with a stiff, erect member in her hands. Unhesitatingly she mounted him and pushed it inside her. As soon as she felt his flesh in hers she began to ride him as if he were a galloping horse, raising and lowering her backside. He reached his climax at once in a strong stream, saturating her groin with a milky liquid. Carefully she dismounted, pressing her legs together to prevent the precious liquid from escaping, and returned to her bed.
Avraham turned his face to the wall.
In the morning she tried to look him in the eye and spoke to him in terms of endearment, but he pretended not to hear, averting his eyes from her calm and radiant look.
* * *
Seen off by her husband and her weeping mother-in-law, Sara embarked on the ship with her children. When she looked at little Yitzhak it seemed to her that she could see a hint of a smile in his eyes. Pnina-Mazal held his hand and explained to him where they were going: “Home, we’re going to our home.”
On the quay Sara offered her yearning lips to her husband. Unlike his habit in recent years Avraham did not turn his face away, and he gave her a light peck on the lips as a farewell kiss.
“I’ll send you money. Don’t worry. When things improve I’ll come back,” he promised again. Then he kissed the children and walked away.
The way back seemed to Sara to pass too quickly. She stood on the deck and looked at the black, rocky outcrops of land suddenly looming up from the sea. Their names in the mouths of the sailors sounded like a soft, melodious love song in her ears: Khios, Sámos, Patmos, Kos, Rhodos, Mersin, and Alexandretta in the Gulf of Iskenderun. Every morning of the voyage she made it a habit to go up to the deck and bask in the warm rays of the sun. Whenever she did so, the passengers would gather round her and feast their eyes on the golden hair tumbling down her back like tumultuous waves. When the sun vanished from the spot where she was sitting and twilight shadows took its place, she went up to the higher deck in order to absorb the last rays of the sun, her children clinging to her sides.
On the third day of the voyage a young man followed her. Elegantly dressed and flourishing a cane decorated with a bronze knob, he accompanied her as she pursued the sun from deck to deck. The next morning he preceded her and usurped her regular daily seat on the lower deck, stationing a black camera stand next to him. The surprised Sara looked about for an alternative seat, but the stranger stood up and offered her his place, and when she sat down he made haste to sit down beside her. He took off his pith helmet and introduced himself with a smile as Edward. Sara looked into his eyes and was caught in the soft blue sparks radiating from them. Weakness spread through her limbs. She had seen those eyes before. Blushing she told him her name and explained with her hands that she did not understand a word he said.
Pnina-Mazal came to her rescue. “He’s talking English,” she said to her mother, “and he says that he’s already photographed you once when you were a girl, and with your permission, he would like to photograph you again.”
Sara was prevented from replying to his request by the friendly conversation into which he immediately entered with her daughter, in a language Sara did not understand.
At the end of the conversation, Pnina-Mazal informed her mother: “Edward loves you.”
“Did he tell you to tell me that?” Sara asked, a blush spreading over her face and a feeling of warmth through her body.
“He didn’t tell me,” the little girl replied, “but he loves you.”
From that day on Edward accompanied Sara like a shadow. He followed in her footsteps, looked deep into her amber eyes, and in his imagination stroked her long golden hair. Then they no longer needed Pnina-Mazal’s mediation: when they looked into the fathomless depths of each other’s eyes they knew and sensed everything they needed to know.
From the moment her mother no longer needed her services, Pnina-Mazal was free to amuse herself, and she ran about the deck, engaging the passengers in conversation and learning new languages and old dialects. She spoke Russian to the pilgrims embarking at Odessa, Turkish to the government officials who came aboard at Constantinople, Greek to the passengers who embarked with them at Salonika, Ladino with the old Sephardic Jews making the voyage to die on the soil of the Holy Land, German to the representatives of the Austrian-Palestine Bank, and English to Edward, who never left her mother’s side. And when she caught a Hungarian in her net, she wore her mother’s ears out at night by endlessly repeating the unpronounceable new words he taught her. “A language collector” Sara called her in her heart, wondering what profit the child would derive from the knowledge of so many tongues, and afraid they would scramble her brain and lead her to speak Turkish to the Englishman, Greek to the Hungarian, and German to the Jews. But Pnina-Mazal did not become confused, and she spoke to each one in his own language, as fluently as if she had spent all her short life in the city of his birth.
Her brother Yitzhak clung to her skirts and tagged along behind her, and while she was busy learning a new language he would express his wordless wishes and requests, which she would translate to the passengers in their languages. Sometimes Sara suspected that some of the wishes Pnina-Mazal expressed in her brother’s name she had made up herself. Every evening when Sara put the children to bed their pockets would spill forth treasures of chocolate, pistachio nuts, sugared almonds, silver coins from remote countries, and brightly colored packets of sweets.
Night brought Sara’s finest hours. She waited for nightfall with an expectation that sent sweet shivers through her flesh and turned her knees to water. As soon as she had put the children to bed and sent them to sleep with her mother’s lullaby, she would loosen her hair, comb it, enjoying the feel of the brush on her locks, tie a kerchief round her head to dim the radiance of her hair, dress herself in her best clothes, and slip out of the cabin to the lower deck. There, between sea and sky, waited the boat suspended from great iron hooks, with the rope ladder dangling down to it from the deck. Once she was safely inside it, she undid her kerchief, took off her shoes, and spread the scratchy woolen blanket she had hidden underneath the wooden bench. With a sigh of relief she lay down on her back, spread-eagled her limbs, and looked up at the stars, her luminous eyes shining with expectation in the dark like those of a suddenly dazzled cat.
Edward would lie in wait for her like a nocturnal bird of prey. Stealthily he would descend the rope ladder, and like a thief in the night he would leap into
her, encouraged by her cries of fear and delight, rocking the little boat as if it were being tossed on a stormy sea. Afterward Sara would gather up her hair and make room for him, and he would lie down beside her, his hands under his head, and count the stars with her and tell her about the signs of the zodiac in a language she did not understand. And when the air grew chilly and little drops of water formed on the sides of the boat and in Sara’s hair, frizzing it slightly, he would tell her of his love for her in a language she understood. Then the storm would break and the boat would rock above the calm water, threatening to fling the lovers into the sea. When the sun rose and the storm in their bodies subsided the boat would steady. With weary limbs Sara would tidy her clothes and slip into her cabin without a backward glance.
* * *
On their last night the boat rocked as it never had before, not even in the worst storms at sea. It creaked and shuddered under their writhing, sweating bodies until it seemed that the strong iron hooks were about to straighten and drop the little boat into the calm water below. And when it steadied, their tousled heads peeped over its side. The lights of Jaffa port twinkled at them in the distance and the sea was as smooth as a mirror.
“Where were you?” demanded Pnina-Mazal. “Yitzhak woke up and asked for you,” she added rebukingly.
Sara did not answer her question. “Come up on deck with me, the shore is in view,” she said and pulled Yitzhak out of bed, draping his amulet coat over his shoulders.
Swaying like drunks the passengers disembarked at Jaffa port, where the air was thick with the smell of donkey and camel turds and the commotion of the Arab stevedores. Edward accompanied Sara and her children with his eyes and walked toward the magnificent carriage awaiting him at the exit from the port. A woman with short red hair was sitting inside it, and when she saw Edward approaching she jumped out and fell upon his neck as if she hadn’t seen him for years.
“That’s his wife,” Pnina-Mazal explained to her mother. “But it’s you he loves,” she added, catching Edward’s eye through the glass of the carriage window.
The stevedores unloaded her baggage, and Sara stood on the quay, with all her belongings scattered round her and her two children holding her hands. A skinny Arab boy suddenly put his hand on one of her iron trunks. Sara pulled it away from him in alarm.
“Hotel?” he asked.
Sara nodded, and the boy stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Three more ragged boys popped up as if from the bowels of the earth. Weighed down by her trunks and carrying her bundles on their heads, their backs, and under their arms, they led Sara and her children out of the port. Sara hurried in the wake of Edward’s receding carriage, dragging her children behind her, and the Arab boys laden with her luggage ran panting in the rear. In the back window of the carriage she saw Edward’s face, entwined in the thick arms of the redhead, and his eyes were fixed on Sara’s eyes. The carriage disappeared round a bend in the road, and Sara sat down panting for breath on a stone.
The Arab boy said something and Pnina-Mazal made haste to translate. “He said that the yellow-haired foreigner lives in the American quarter,” she said to her mother. Sara straightened her back and stood up, shook out her clothes, and asked Pnina-Mazal to tell the boy to take them quickly to the nearest hotel, since evening had already fallen and they needed to rest before the long journey to Jerusalem.
The hotel manager received them draped in a black velvet dress ornamented with tassles and fastened round her waist by a purple sash, a felt hat boasting a moth-eaten peacock feather perched on her abundant, piled-up black hair. Her eyes opened wide in surprise at the sight of the beautiful Jewess in foreign clothes holding a fat little boy encased in amulets by one hand and a skinny little girl by the other. Plump women in fancy dresses decked with frills and furbelows, their breasts half-exposed, waited in the lobby, exchanging admiring whispers at the sight of the strange woman coming to join them.
“I have a room for you,” said the hotel manager with a wink, “but not for the children.”
“The children will share my bed,” replied Sara.
“You won’t like the room I have to offer you,” said the manager, inspecting Yitzhak’s amulets and Sara’s luggage and appraising the curves of her body beneath her rich attire with an eagle eye.
“I have nowhere to lay my head,” said Sara humbly. “We’re tired, and we only need the room for one night.”
At the sight of the weary children the woman took pity on them at last, and led them to a room.
“This is a place where bad women stay,” said Pnina-Mazal to Sara.
“We have nowhere else to go, and we’re staying here,” Sara said firmly.
A small, stinking room greeted them. In their exhaustion they fell on the bed with its stained sheets and were soon sound asleep.
* * *
The next morning Sara woke up with an unpleasant itching in her scalp. When she combed her hair next to the open window she tried to get rid of the itch with the help of the close-set teeth of the comb. She looked at the comb in the faint light coming through the window and felt faint. It was full of gray lice caught between the teeth and swarming all over them. When the itch grew worse she went to the nearby public baths to wash her hair with boiling water, but to no avail. It seemed to her that the itching was getting worse.
Her long hair clean but swarming with lice, she went into the Arab barber’s shop next to the hotel.
“Shave it all off,” she requested.
The barber, who had a dirty apron round his waist, recoiled. The handful of effendis waiting to be shaved held their breath.
“Heaven forbid that you should shave off such hair. It’s a gift from God,” they chorused.
But Sara stood her ground. “Cut it first and then shave it, and if not, I’ll go to another barber,” she said.
Pale-faced, the barber tied a long sheet round her neck and brought his scissors to her head with trembling hands. He tried to open the blades of the scissors with his right hand but it was trembling so much that he failed to do so. Then he transferred the scissors to his left hand and held them next to Sara’s hair. The scissors made a snipping noise, but when the customers and Sara looked at the floor they saw not a single lock of hair.
“I can’t do it,” said the barber at last, and buried his face in his hands as if to shield his eyes from the light shining from her hair. The effendis waiting to be shaved breathed again when he put the scissors down and removed the sheet from Sara’s neck. At home they would tell their black-haired wives about the crazy Jewess with the golden hair who asked the barber to shave it off.
Sara did not give up. Dragging Yitzhak and Pnina-Mazal behind her she went into the next barbershop. This time the barber was ready and willing to shear off her locks, and even gave her a price. He plaited her hair into a thick braid and tried to lop it off with his scissors. The thick braid resisted his attempts. When he exerted all his strength, the blades of the scissors bent out of shape. For a moment or two he stood and stared in confusion at the braid in front of him, but immediately recovered and began to sharpen the razor on the leather strap attached to the chair. He tested the edge of the blade on his finger and brought it to her hair. A few strands of hair fell off her braid. But the braid was as thick and as strong as a sailor’s rope, and before he managed to shear off more of her hair the razor blade blunted and he was unable to continue cutting. Then he undid the braid he had plaited and the silken waves of gold released from the confines of the braid flooded her nape and poured down her back, covered her waist and her thighs, flowed down her legs, and coiled tightly round her ankles, as if refusing to part from her. Then the barber took fine tresses of her hair between his thick fingers and passed them under the razor one by one. Soon the filthy floor of the barbershop was covered with piles of golden silk. Strand by strand Sara’s shorn hair surrounded her. With every tress of hair she shed Sara felt as if a weight had fallen from her head and her heart. After laboring long and hard the barber conclud
ed his work, leaving Sara’s head covered by a stubble as hard as the bristles of a brush.
“And now shave it off,” she demanded.
The barber soaped her head, sharpened his razor, and shaved her round head, stretching the skin and passing the blade over it as carefully as if he were shaving the cheeks of a man. With a sigh of relief Sara passed her hand over her smooth, shining scalp. The lice had vanished without a trace, the itching had stopped, and a pleasant coolness spread through her from her head right down to her toes.
“Bring me a mirror,” she commanded.
A piece of broken mirror spotted with black mold was hesitantly offered her.
Sara stared at her new image. Her head was smooth and gleaming and her eyes swam large and prominent in the nakedness of her face.
Yitzhak, who had been busy all this time banging his head against the peeling blue wall, stopped abruptly. He looked at her as if he were suddenly seeing her for the first time in his life. Sara felt his gaze sliding over her bald head and penetrating her eyes. For the first time in her life she was able to look straight into the eyes of her son, which rounded in surprise.
“Yitzhak says that you’re much more beautiful now,” Pnina-Mazal suddenly said, after standing by her mother’s side without saying a word during the entire operation.
“And what do you think?” asked Sara.
“I think so too,” lied the child. “You’re more beautiful without your hair.”
Laughing, Sara embraced her children, paid the barber, and with a light heart and a hairless head hurried out of the shop. A cool wind blowing from the sea chilled her shaved scalp and sent an agreeable frisson through her body.
