Four Mothers

by Shifra Horn

  When she reached the wall she leaned against it with her back and lightly pressed the base of her breast. A strong jet of steaming milk burst from the prickly nipple and fell at the feet of her guests in a white puddle, which gave off a sweet, dense smell. The milk went on streaming from her breast even when she let go of it.

  “I have to do this every day,” she apologized, but there was a note of pride in her voice. “Otherwise Muhammad would choke on the stream of milk and it would make him cough and burst out of his nose too,” she added with a smile, taking the whimpering baby back to his cradle. “Don’t worry,” she added, “Allah has blessed me with enough milk to satisfy a whole village full of babies.”

  She wriggled back into her black dress, squeezing her enormous bosom into the embroidered bodice, where a wet stain appeared and spread to her waist, ran down to the hem of her dress, and collected in a puddle at her feet. Leaving a trail of little white puddles behind her she went up to the washing line next to the cradle and took down a cloth, which she pushed down the neck of her dress to her dripping breasts.

  An expression of gratification spread over her face. “The thought of a new baby to suckle is making my breasts drip,” she explained apologetically, and added: “When will you bring him to me?”

  “It’s a little girl,” said Pnina-Mazal, who had not yet recovered from the sight of the wet-nurse’s breasts.

  “As long as they don’t fall in love with each other,” chuckled the wet-nurse, and immediately took fright at her boldness. “They will be brother and sister in my milk, and she will be like my daughter in every respect,” she solemnly declared.

  “I will be starting work next week, and then you will have to come to our house every morning,” said Pnina-Mazal.

  Fatma’s face fell, and the stream of milk stopped. “And who will take care of Muhammad?” she asked weakly.

  “Bring him with you,” Pnina-Mazal offered generously.

  “And who will look after the other four boys and feed them?” Fatma demanded bleakly.

  Here Sara intervened. “Geula can stay in Fatma’s house. I can’t see any reason why not, and you can bring her here in the automobile that will take you to the office, and fetch her again at the end of the day.”

  Pnina-Mazal looked at her mother incredulously.

  “And what about the dirt, the goats, the fleas, and the lice you talked about before we came?” she asked her in a whisper, in Hebrew.

  “I’ve examined the house and there’s nothing to worry about. She’s a good woman, her baby is well fed and well taken care of, and the house is clean.”

  Pnina-Mazal looked at her with a hurt expression, as if her mother were abandoning her only granddaughter.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said faintly.

  “If you have any other solution I’d be glad to hear it. As long as you’re determined to go out to work, you have to find the best solution for Geula. In my opinion, you should stay home with her until she grows up, and in the meantime we’ll find some other way to make ends meet.”

  Pnina-Mazal looked at her suspiciously, afraid that she would try to prevent her from going out to work, and told Fatma that she would let her know her answer soon.

  The next morning she presented herself at Fatma’s door and announced that next Monday she would bring Geula to her.

  * * *

  On Monday morning the long black car stopped at the end of the street and blew its horn twice. Pnina-Mazal emerged from the house in a new suit, carrying Geula in one hand and a bundle of diapers in the other. The driver opened his eyes in astonishment, and before he could open his mouth she ordered him to drive to the Arab village.

  The car bouncing over the stones on the dirt road sent up a thick cloud of dust, covering the train of urchins running behind it in a layer of white. Some of them, whose faces Pnina-Mazal could see clearly through the window, succeeded in hanging on to the rear mudguard before they fell back again and resumed their pursuit, their thick-soled feet kicking up little puffs of dust in their wake. Accompanied by an entourage of small children, Pnina-Mazal got out of the car and walked up to Fatma’s door, her tight skirt shortening her steps.

  The floor had just been washed, and a smell of soap lingered in the room. Next to Muhammad’s cradle, whose occupant was waving his plump, dimpled fists in the air, stood a new iron cradle. Pnina-Mazal examined the puffy mattress and saw that the material was new and shining. Gently Fatma took her baby from her hands, and immediately noticed the pitifully thin, stiltlike legs.

  “She has two teeth already,” Pnina-Mazal warned the wet-nurse. “She was born with them.”

  Fatma laughed incredulously, clucked pityingly, undid the buttons of her blouse, and offered her nipple to the baby’s lips. A warm smell of milk rose from her breast and Geula inclined her red head toward it.

  Without the kind of games she played with her mother, the baby took the stiff nipple between her lips and sucked noisily, waving her hands contentedly to and fro. On her face was an expression of pure pleasure, which Pnina-Mazal had never seen there before. She felt a stab of envy, but it disappeared when the baby began to choke on the abundant stream filling her mouth, making gurgling sounds in her throat and spraying the milk in all directions.

  “Never mind,” Fatma quickly reassured Pnina-Mazal, who tried to tear the baby from her arms. “She has to get used to the stream. My Muhammad had problems at the beginning too. Before the day is out she’ll learn to use her mouth and lips to regulate the flow,” she said and pressed the baby against the cleavage between her breasts, where she groped blindly for the new fount of plenty that had come her way, and stuck her mouth to the nipple like a leech. Pnina-Mazal waited patiently until Geula’s stomach grew round and the nipple slipped from her mouth. Fatma touched the baby’s sharp teeth wonderingly, allowed her mother to cuddle her on her shoulder to burp her, and then set her gently down in her cradle.

  Before she left the house for the waiting car, it seemed to Pnina-Mazal that she saw Muhammad, who had woken up the meantime, fix his eyes darkly on Geula’s white face. She quickly banished the disturbing thoughts from her mind and sat down next to the driver.

  Before he had time to start the car, Fatma appeared in the doorway and waved her arms. She hurried heavily to Pnina-Mazal and pressed a bunch of dried sage into her hand.

  “Put this in your tea,” she whispered in her ear, as if afraid her words would reach the stranger’s ears. “It will dry up your milk. Why should you suffer?” she added.

  Pnina-Mazal hesitated, but when she thought of her breasts leaking inopportunely and shamefully at the office, she thanked her and took the herbs.

  In the evening, at the end of her first day in the office, she returned to the village. The driver, after dropping the other passengers off and remaining alone with her, turned on the headlamps of his car. The lamps illuminated the rutted road before them in a beam of light that brought the urchins running out of their houses to escort them. When they arrived at the house she found Fatma sitting in the light of the oil lamp, naked to the waist, cradling two infants in her arms, one whose head was crowned with a soft, shining black forelock, and the other whose spiky red hair stuck out in all directions. They had their mouths clamped to their respective nipples and were sucking greedily. Their hands, which were waving with spasms of pleasure at their sides, kept touching each other’s bodies, and it seemed to Pnina-Mazal that they were dancing together. Gently Fatma removed the open mouths dripping with milk from her breasts and smiled at Pnina-Mazal. Only then did Pnina-Mazal realize that although Fatma was years younger than she, she was almost completely toothless.

  “Each of them chose a breast,” she said. “The baby girl chose the breast that covers the heart. I tried to give her Muhammad’s breast and she spat it out,” she added with an ingratiating smile, handing Pnina-Mazal a pile of freshly laundered diapers.

  Pnina-Mazal took Geula in her arms, and she could have sworn that the day spent fastened to Fatma
’s nipple had already put flesh on her bones.

  * * *

  At home Sara was waiting for her with a hot meal on the table.

  “How was it at the office?” she asked curiously.

  “And you don’t ask about Geula?” demanded Pnina-Mazal, insulted.

  “I know that everything’s all right,” she said, without telling her that she had spent hours at Fatma’s house inspecting everything she did.

  “After I give birth and go back to work, perhaps a similar arrangement can be made for me,” said Davida in a pampered tone, stroking her slightly rounded belly. “I’ll have to go back to work, because who will take care of me?” she added with the note of complaint that had invaded her voice ever since she found out that she was pregnant.

  Sara preferred to ignore the rhetorical question, and Pnina-Mazal gritted her teeth and looked hard at Yitzhak.

  “Yitzhak would be happy if you returned to his bed,” she said shortly, after she had finished talking to Yitzhak with her eyes.

  “And what will happen to the fetus?” Davida’s eyes widened in self-pity. “He wants me all night, every night.”

  “Plenty of intercourse enriches an embryo’s blood,” Pnina-Mazal said, remembering with longing the sleepless nights she had spent with her husband. “And you can thank God that you’ve got a husband,” she added in a venomous whisper.

  Davida, whose eyes would fill with tears on the slightest provocation ever since her pregnancy began, pushed her plate away and rushed to her room, from which the sounds of her sobbing reverberated throughout the house.

  After the sobs had subsided and Sara had taken Yitzhak to his room and soothed him with kind words, she was ready to hear about Pnina-Mazal’s experiences on her first day at work.

  “The building of the Governor’s offices is like the Tower of Babel, and it’s my job to introduce order into all the languages before they start fighting and killing each other,” Pnina-Mazal said. “After I translated documents the Governor calls ‘Proclamation’ into Hebrew, Arabic, French, and Russian, he asked me to come and translate for him at a meeting he had called.”

  “What did you translate for him?” Sara asked curiously.

  Pnina-Mazal blushed faintly and continued: “At the meeting there were Jews, Christians, Muslims, Armenians, and—”

  “But what did you translate today in the Proclamation?” Sara asked again.

  Pnina-Mazal took a deep breath, avoided meeting her mother’s eyes, and said, “It was an official announcement about brothels.”

  “And what did it say?”

  “I don’t remember. You can read it tomorrow. It will be pasted up all over town.”

  “How many languages did you say you translated the announcement into?” Sara inquired.

  “Four,” she replied obediently.

  “And how is it that after translating it into four languages you don’t remember what was written there?” Sara persisted.

  “‘Heavy fines will be imposed on anyone soliciting men, especially members of the armed forces, by word or gesture, and the activities of prostitutes will be confined to specified locations,’” she recited.

  “What locations?” Sara asked.

  “Nahalat Shiva and the Shlomo Milner quarter next to Meah Shearim. Any prostitute caught plying her trade outside those places will be put in jail for a month and fined ten Egyptian pounds.”

  Sara giggled, trying to imagine a row of prostitutes standing in the doorways of the houses in Nahalat Shiva, all powdered and painted and dolled up to the nines, with the respectable residents of the quarter stealing past them like thieves in the night. She laughed aloud as she imagined how the residents of Nahalat Shiva, who considered themselves so superior, would be forced to watch the abominations taking place right under their noses.

  Sara detached herself from the scenes floating in front of her eyes and asked her daughter to tell her about the meeting called by the Governor.

  “The Mayor was there, the mufti, rabbis, church dignitaries from the Franciscans, the Armenians and the Italians, and also representatives of the Arabs and the Americans—”

  “Who was the American?” Sara interrupted her.

  “We don’t know him,” Pnina-Mazal hastily reassured her mother. “He’s new in town. Since there was such a confusing medley of tongues, and I and one other translator had to cope with all of them, it was decided to conduct the meeting in French, and I translated everything for the English speakers, including the conversations being conducted around the table in Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, and French.”

  “And what did they discuss?” Sara asked, as curiously as if the decisions made there would have a decisive influence on her own personal life.

  “They set up an association on behalf of Jerusalem to deal with the affairs of the city,” Pnina-Mazal said with undisguised pride at her important role in the life of the town.

  * * *

  Loud screams coming from the room Pnina-Mazal shared with Davida interrupted their conversation. They rushed to the room in alarm, and there, in the gloom, they saw Yitzhak crouching over the screaming Davida, his backside rising and falling above her body in a rhythm unique to him. The shrieks of the terrified Davida, who did not notice the women rushing to her rescue, gave way to squeals of delight, and she crossed her legs on her husband’s back, adjusting the movements of her pelvis to the rhythm he dictated. Her moans rose to a crescendo in time to Yitzhak’s grunts, and when it was all over, and his penetrating thrusts were stilled, she stroked his sweating face and wiped his drooling mouth.

  The two women, who had been standing rooted to the spot, tiptoed out of the room. That night Pnina-Mazal slept with Geula in Yitzhak and Davida’s bed, while they pleasured each other on hers.

  The next morning Davida greeted them with sparkling eyes and announced that she would never neglect her husband again, and she stole a fond look at his face as he sat staring at some invisible point on the wall, while an expression reserved for very special moments of grace spread over her face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pnina-Mazal spent more and more time at work, and sometimes, when she was obliged to remain at the office until the small hours of the morning, she did not bother to collect Geula from Fatma’s house but left her there all night long. On Saturdays and Sundays, when she was off duty, she tried to quiet her conscience by playing with the child and taking her for walks in the fields, teaching her about the plants, the butterflies, and the little animals they met on their way. Geula, who had already learned to walk, and whose body had rounded and grown broad and strong, insisted on speaking to her mother in Arabic, while Pnina-Mazal made determined efforts to return her to Hebrew.

  The day she came back from work and found Geula and Muhammad wrapped in each other’s arms, murmuring to each other in a language known only to them, she gave Fatma notice that the child had to be weaned. The Arab woman’s eyes filled with tears and the milk burst from her left breast in a strong jet that hit Pnina-Mazal and wet her dress. Filled with revulsion she ran to the water jar and tried to remove the milk stain. The stain spread wetly over the front of her dress and a nauseatingly sweet smell of milk filled her nostrils.

  “There’s no choice in the matter,” she said to the weeping Fatma. “She has to be weaned. She’s already walking and talking, and you can’t go on breast-feeding her forever.”

  “But I’m still breast-feeding Muhammad,” she tried to persuade her. “And I shall go on doing so for two more years at least. Don’t take her away from me,” she begged, “she’s happy here, and from the day she arrived she hasn’t had a day’s sickness and she’s grown big and fat.”

  Pnina-Mazal hardened her heart even though she secretly agreed with Fatma, and she notified her again, before she could regret it, that from Monday Geula would not be coming to her anymore. She averted her eyes from the wailing Fatma, who beat her left breast as if she had just lost her daughter, and left the house.

  On Monday she left Geula with
her mother and hurried to work. Before the hour was out, Reuven, the neighbor Esther’s son, burst into the room where Pnina-Mazal was translating the words of the head of the Jewish council, who was protesting the closure of his neighborhood school.

  “Your mother wants you to come home right away,” he said, panting for breath.

  Pnina-Mazal hurried home and found Sara at her wits’ end with Geula screaming and arching her body in her arms, her red hair bristling.

  “She won’t eat a thing. She spat out everything I gave her and screamed for Fatma.”

  Pnina-Mazal quickly took the red-faced child in her arms, where she writhed about and tried to free herself.

  “Fatma, I want Fatma,” she shrieked in Arabic, vomiting onto Pnina-Mazal’s elegant dress the remains of the lunch that had been pushed into her mouth by force.

  “We’ll go tomorrow,” promised Pnina-Mazal, sure that the child’s memory would not last that long.

  Geula calmed down immediately and allowed her mother to wash her face and change her clothes.

  The next day the little girl woke up unusually early, singing to herself an Arabic song Fatma liked to sing while she was breast-feeding her. For the first time in her short life she allowed her mother to comb her rebellious hair, and as soon as she heard the car she ran out of the house.

  With cold calculation Pnina-Mazal distracted her and sent her back inside to fetch a change of clothing. The moment the child tottered into the house, waddling like a fat goose on her little legs, Pnina-Mazal slipped into the seat next to the driver and ordered him to drive full speed out of the neighborhood. When she looked back she saw the deceived Geula standing in the doorway, her mouth wide open, screaming at the top of her lungs. All that day Pnina-Mazal could not concentrate on her translation work, seeing before her eyes her daughter’s flushed face, her mouth gaping and screaming in the astonishment of her betrayal.