Four Mothers

by Shifra Horn

  Every day she walked to the Austrian Post Office and asked if there was a letter from her daughter. The postal clerk, an elegantly dressed Jew who always wore a red tie shaped like a butterfly without feelers around his neck, which was as rough and coarse as orange peel, would hurry toward her.

  “It hasn’t arrived yet,” he would murmur apologetically in his slow, heavy accent, looking straight into her eyes. “Come again tomorrow,” he always added invitingly, whispering into her blushing ear, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

  “I haven’t received a letter either, and I’m not worried,” Edward said as he studied the fingernails on her right hand, which were bitten to the quick.

  “If anything bad happens to my daughter, her blood is on your head,” she said in a sudden burst of hostility.

  Edward took her rigid body in his arms and rocked her gently, like a father calming his baby daughter.

  The next day the clerk was waiting for her in a state of solemn excitement. Sara stared at him. It seemed to her that the butterfly clinging to his throat was spreading its red wings dotted with yellow pollen, about to flap them in the air, take flight from the clerk’s coarse neck, and wrap itself about her own. As she went on gazing at the spotted wings she felt the pollen penetrating her mouth and blocking her throat.

  Before her eyes filled with the butterfly’s wings the envelope waved. A refined white envelope, embellished with pink foreign stamps. Abruptly she detached herself from the sight of the butterfly, and with a hoarse cry tore the envelope open, tearing a bit of the letter too in her impatience. Overcome by weakness she leaned against the post office wall, ignoring the commotion of the hawkers and the noise around her as she read. The clerk glided back to the counter with his butterfly and watched her furtively out of the corner of his eye.

  The voyage had been difficult for all of them, wrote Pnina-Mazal. Elizabeth and Rachel were very sick, their faces had turned green, and she had looked after them until the storms abated and the sea grew smooth as a mirror again. She had met interesting people who spoke foreign languages on the ship, and enjoyed talking to each of them in his own language. Elizabeth was jealous and asked her to teach her new languages too. About America and the city of New York Pnina-Mazal wrote things that Sara found it hard to believe. She wrote of buildings dozens of stories high, where in order to get to the top you walked into a little room in the entrance, closed the door, and it took you to whichever story you desired, with no need to wear yourself out climbing the stairs. She wrote too of a train that drove right through the city; of women teetering on shoes like stilts, who wrapped their bodies in the fur of unclean animals; of places where people went just to eat; and of elegantly dressed men who served the food and asked the diners if it was to their taste. And music played in these places from great metal ears attached to a box whose single hand impaled a round black disk placed upon it. Sara laughed out loud in the face of the butterfly, whose wings wilted before her eyes, and she nodded her head in farewell and hurried out of the building.

  Edward was waiting for her at home with a letter stamped just like hers.

  “This arrived from Rachel this morning,” he said with a frozen face. “The doctors have refused to operate on Elizabeth, on the grounds that there is no chance of her ever walking again. They haven’t told her anything yet, for she is full of hope of a cure. Rachel writes that Pnina-Mazal is settling down nicely; she already has a lot of friends and she’s learning new things every day.”

  “When are they coming home?” Sara interrupted.

  “Rachel didn’t say. But since they aren’t going to operate on Elizabeth, I assume they’ll come back soon, within a year or two.”

  With a sigh of relief Sara sank into the armchair.

  * * *

  Pnina-Mazal’s absence was felt everywhere. Yitzhak seemed to miss their eye-conversations, Ben-Ami needed her, and David prowled the house like a sleepwalker, with nobody to talk to. Her friend Davida was a frequent visitor, timing her visits to coincide with the return of David and Yitzhak from their walks in the fields. Then she would sit in the kitchen with Sara, making pointless conversation of no interest to anyone and looking at Yitzhak out of the corner of her eye. Even though Davida was already aware of his condition and had never exchanged a single word with him, Sara sensed that she was attracted to him like a magnet.

  Sara received frequent letters from Pnina-Mazal, full of her life in new, strange worlds. Sara’s pockets were crammed with rustling papers, and when she met her neighbors she would put her hand in her pocket and rustle the pages of the new letter, until her interlocutor gave in and asked her to read the latest stories of America. When she stood in the public square next to the neighborhood pump holding the pages in front of her eyes, the destitute street urchins would gather round her too, opening their eyes wide in wonder at the marvels they contained. And when she went about her business in the neighborhood they would run after her, tug at her skirt, peep into her crammed pockets, and ask for “America.” Glad of any opportunity to read her daughter’s letters again, she would abandon her business and read them out loud to anyone who asked her to. To herself she admitted that she had done well to send Pnina-Mazal to that distant land. Like a grand lady in all her finery she would return to Jerusalem, where she would have her pick of the best boys in the town, marry a rich husband who would keep her in style, and spend the rest of her life bringing up her children and learning foreign languages.

  Every Tuesday Sara made her way to the Austrian Post Office. When she arrived there she would stretch out her hand and open her fingers to receive the white envelope sliding across the counter. After she had finished reading the new letter she would add it to her swollen pockets and a few days later she would lay it on top of the growing pile of letters in her bedroom. Then too she began numbering them according to the date of their arrival, lest she grow confused and read the first ones last and the last ones first. The one-hundred-and-fifty-eighth letter brought the great news.

  Pnina-Mazal was coming home.

  She was homesick and Mrs. Godwin had already purchased her ticket for the ship. When Sara read the letter out loud in the neighborhood square to her regular audience, she saw David looking out of the window of her house, his eyes shining with a new light.

  Immediately after the letter with the great news she began to receive postcards with views of distant lands that Pnina-Mazal had visited on her way home: a picture of a tower leaning to its side, threatening to fall on the heads of the people looking up at it admiringly from the ground; a picture of great ruined buildings with triangular pediments and broken marble pillars. And more ruins, and more rubble, until it seemed to Sara that her daughter was touring a continent where a terrible war had raged or a great earthquake had taken place and ruthlessly smashed all its houses and palaces. After these postcards had arrived, Sara did not hear from her for a month. She went to the post office every day and stretched her open-fingered hands out blindly. When nothing landed in her palm, she would open her eyes as if in shame, withdraw her hands, curl up her fingers, and emerge from the building with her head bowed to the waiting crowd with their eternal refrain of “America, America, America.…” In order not to disappoint them Sara would rummage in her pockets, pull out a previous letter, and read it in a choked voice to her audience, who followed her lips with their eyes and finished her sentences for her.

  * * *

  One day after she had returned empty-handed from the post office, the door opened and Pnina-Mazal fell into her arms.

  She was taller, dressed in a blue velvet traveling suit, and her long hair fell in soft brown waves to her knees. Sara held her at arm’s length and looked emotionally at her face. The little summer freckles on her nose danced before Sara’s damp eyes.

  The driver carried in three iron trunks, which blocked the entrance to the house. After he had been paid he was obliged to jump over them one by one, his paunch quivering, his greasy fez teetering on his bald head, and the concen
trated expression of a boy surmounting an obstacle course on his face. The mother and daughter looked at each other, trying to stifle their laughter, but it burst out in loud peals in spite of their efforts, causing the fat driver to jump over the third trunk with unseemly haste and fall on his moutainous belly. Sara hurried up to him with an expression of concern on her face, evoking a renewed burst of laughter from Pnina-Mazal.

  As soon as the driver left the house, Sara put the kettle on to boil and settled down for a long talk with her daughter over a hot cup of tea. So absorbed were they in their conversation that they failed to notice David returning from his daily walk with Yitzhak. They came in at the kitchen door and stood stock still at the sight of the two women sitting at the table with their heads together. David’s face turned scarlet and he rushed out of the room, while Yitzhak stared into his sister’s eyes and uttered a choked cry. So loud was his cry that it brought the neighbors running to the open, trunk-blocked door, where they stood chanting the one-word refrain of “America, America, America, Ameri—” and hurried to add: “Welcome home.” Pnina-Mazal waved weakly at the crowd besieging the door.

  It was late at night before they began to unpack the trunks.

  “Books,” sighed Sara. “What will you do with so many books? And where will we put them?”

  When they opened the third trunk she uttered a cry of admiration. It was full of fine silks and lace, flowery parasols, silk ribbons in all the colors of the rainbow, hand-embroidered linen, high-heeled shoes made of soft kidskin, cutlery, and china crockery rimmed with bell-shaped pink flowers, the likes of which Sara had never seen in her life. When Sara pounced on a hard black cardboard box, Pnina-Mazal tried to prevent her from opening it.

  “Later,” she wheedled. But the box was already open on Sara’s knees as she scanned its contents.

  A magnificent bridal gown made of silk and trimmed with lace and pearls lay there on a bed of green velvet.

  Sara paled. “Are you planning a marriage of which I know nothing?” she asked when she recovered her breath.

  “Rachel bought it for me. It was on sale for a reduced price. Rachel said that in the end I would get married like everybody else, and I might as well have a gown ready for the occasion. I objected, but both Rachel and Elizabeth insisted. They said that in any case they would not be able to come to my wedding when it took place, and this was their wedding gift.”

  “You’re tempting fate,” said Sara, and she felt a pang of dread in her heart. “A woman who prepares her wedding gown before she finds a husband will end up an old maid.”

  Pnina-Mazal bowed her head. “I’ll find a husband,” she said, “and I’ll marry him in this dress.”

  With her throat choked by fear and in the wish to conciliate her mother, who was looking at her with a hard face, Pnina-Mazal opened the parcel of gifts. Sara received checked woolen material, Yitzhak a pair of long trousers and a jacket of suitably vast dimensions, and Ben-Ami a case full of wooden blocks painted with pictures of animals such as Sara had never seen in her life.

  “I saw them all,” Pnina-Mazal told her. “The gentiles collect the animals in great parks with high fences, and there you can go and look at them while they eat, play, and even copulate,” she whispered in her mother’s ear in order to change the subject.

  Sara was astonished. “And did you see the animal with the long neck and the spots too? And the one with the long nose and the floppy ears?”

  Pnina-Mazal laughed. “They call this place a zoo. On Sundays, their Sabbath, the park is full of thousands of couples with their children coming to look at the animals.”

  The next day Sara hurried to her meeting with Edward. “Pnina-Mazal is back,” she announced in excitement, overjoyed at her daughter’s return.

  “I know. My driver saw her in a carriage on her way home.”

  “And today is our last meeting,” Sara blurted out quickly, before she could change her mind.

  “I wanted to tell you that in a few days’ time I’m leaving to visit Rachel and Elizabeth. I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he said and averted his eyes from her inquiring gaze.

  “It’s better this way,” she said, swallowing her tears. “People are talking about us, and God forbid the rumor should reach Pnina-Mazal’s ears.”

  * * *

  When she came home, her eyes red with weeping, her cheeks seared by the stubble of Edward’s beard, which had ploughed them with fine furrows of love, and her lips swollen and scratched by his farewell kisses, she found Pnina-Mazal and David conferring over the kitchen table. Her daughter’s tear-filled eyes were looking deeply into the eyes of the young scholar, and she did not notice her mother standing at the door. The first to see her was David. He started back with a clumsy movement that overturned the wooden stool on which he was sitting.

  Pnina-Mazal turned to face her. A cold shiver ran down Sara’s spine as she felt her daughter’s eyes staring at her unseeingly, fixed on some invisible point in the distance. Without a word the girl got up and followed David out of the kitchen.

  Sara hurried after her. “What did he tell you?” she asked hoarsely. “Don’t believe him, whatever he told you. He’s trying to make trouble between us. There was nothing between me and Edward. It’s all a pack of lies.”

  A shock passed through Pnina-Mazal’s body. Sara saw the blood draining from her face and the little freckles turning white on the tip of her nose. The girl her mother a cold, contemptuous look. Sara tried to look into her eyes, but to her horror Pnina-Mazal looked right through her, as if she were transparent.

  “If he told you stories about me, don’t believe him. It’s all lies. Gossip and slander,” she tried again.

  Pnina-Mazal maintained her silence.

  “If he told you lies he won’t stay under my roof any longer,” she said quickly, before she had time to regret it.

  Pnina-Mazal narrowed her eyes in pain and said nothing.

  “Answer me,” Sara screamed at her, shaking her thin shoulders violently. The girl’s slender body swayed limply between her hands like that of a rag doll. When she continued shaking her, her body shrank in pain. All this time she kept staring fixedly at the invisible point on the wall. Suddenly red finger marks appeared on her pale face. Sara looked at her hand as if refusing to believe that she had slapped her daughter.

  Tears flowed soundlessly down Pnina-Mazal’s cheeks. She stared blankly over Sara’s shoulder without moving a muscle.

  Sara turned on her heel and found herself looking into David’s flashing eyes.

  “Don’t you dare raise your hand to her,” he whispered and took the silent girl into his arms.

  Sara tried to tear her daughter from his grasp, but his hands protecting the weeping Pnina-Mazal were too strong for her. He led her gently from the room, and she looked as fragile as a pale butterfly fluttering in his arms.

  Sara remained alone, refusing to believe the evidence of her eyes. With an anguished cry she burst into her daughter’s room. She was lying calmly on her bed, with David sitting beside her and holding her slender hand.

  “Go away,” he hissed. “She doesn’t want to see you now.”

  “How dare you!” Sara replied in a whisper full of hate. “Pack your bags and leave this house tonight.”

  “I’ll leave,” he said, “but Pnina-Mazal will come with me. We’re engaged and we’ll be married soon.”

  Waves of cold ran through Sara’s body and made her hair stand on end. Her daughter deserved the best, not some skinny, penniless yeshiva student dependent on her for his keep. Swaying like a drunk she left the room and closed the door quietly behind her.

  * * *

  David spent the night at Pnina-Mazal’s side, holding her hand, gazing at her transparent eyelids with their delicate tracery of veins, and counting her freckles. Sara paced her room like a caged lion, unable to decide which to mourn first—Edward’s departure or her daughter’s unexpected wedding. She opened and shut the wardrobe’s doors and pulled out its contents, empti
ed chests and packed them again with sheets and towels, household wares and clothing. The next morning she stole into Pnina-Mazal’s room and found David there, wide awake and holding her daughter’s hand.

  “I give you my blessing,” she said in a trembling voice, “on condition that you don’t leave the house. Yitzhak needs you both, and I couldn’t endure another parting from my daughter.”

  David smiled at her conciliatorily and let go of Pnina-Mazal’s hand. The girl woke up suddenly and at the sight of her mother standing over her she buried her face in her pillow.

  Sara sat down beside her. “Make all the necessary preparations for your wedding,” she said gently. “I’ll telegraph your father. Perhaps he’ll be willing to make the effort to come to his daughter’s wedding.”

  A faint smile illuminated Pnina-Mazal’s face. Slowly she tried to get out of bed, only to fall back on the pillow again, overcome with giddiness. As the first rays of sun penetrated the shutters Sara saw to her horror that the marks of her fingers from the night before were still stamped on her daughter’s face.

  * * *

  Sara led her daughter discreetly to the mikvah. When Pnina-Mazal took her clothes off she looked at the skinny girl standing in front of her like a snail that had lost its shell. Her little breasts peeped impudently through the hair falling round her body. In the dim light coming through the air vent in the ceiling she looked at her childish, bony knees and then at the down covering her thin freckled legs like a halo of yellow fur.

  Sara tried to banish the picture of her daugher crushed under David’s body from her mind’s eye, but the picture grew sharper. Her ears heard the moans and her nostrils filled with the smells of their lust. Ashamed of her thoughts, she led Pnina-Mazal to the pool of black rainwater, holding her hand and supporting her down the slippery steps.