Four Mothers

by Shifra Horn

  With trembling hands Sara banged on the door and ordered them to let her in. The muffled voices fell silent abruptly, and someone opened the slat of a blind to see the cause of this unexpected interruption. When the door failed to open she went on banging on it, using her knees as well. Exhausted, the women collapsed outside the locked door, and in the meantime the village rabble crowded round them.

  “They won’t harm us,” said Sara to Pnina-Mazal, who stole an apprehensive look at their audience. “They regard Geula as one of them and we’re her family.”

  Youths armed with sticks and iron bars arrived and rammed the doors of the house. When their efforts were unsuccessful they gathered the remnants of their pride and set out for town to “kill the Jews.” After they disappeared, a few youths in light khaki uniforms burst round the bend in the lane and, in Hebrew, ordered the people hiding in the house to open the door. At this command the door opened, and people began streaming out, their faces stiff with fear. Among those bringing up the rear were Gershon, Geula, and Muhammad, holding hands and looking exhausted. Muhammad nodded politely at Sara and Pnina-Mazal, as if he had just met them in pleasant social circumstances, and then he stroked Geula’s cheek, smoothed her unruly hair, and holding his head high marched toward his house.

  For the first time in her life Geula burst into tears and asked to be taken home. On the truck belonging to the khaki-uniformed youths she folded her long limbs and cuddled up in Sara’s lap like a baby, burying her head in her bosom at the sounds of the shattering glass, shots, and screams of the victims. Pnina-Mazal, avoiding her daughter’s eyes, listened to the frightened conversations in Russian between the people who had been besieged in the house.

  “Mother,” she breathed in horror into Sara’s ear, “Geula was with the Palestiner Kommunistisher Partei, the Communists.” She said the last word aloud and turned to Gershon. “You’re not working for us anymore. Geula will go to school. Five years with you were more than enough.”

  Gershon let his head fall onto his chest as if she had delivered a blow to his trembling stalklike neck.

  He was never seen in the neighborhood again. Later his friends told Geula that since he had failed to get rid of the British army, put an end to the Mandate, abolish the Balfour Declaration, and expel the Jewish invaders, and failed too in his efforts to bring about an agrarian revolution among the Arab peasants, he had left the country. He also knew, so they told her, that Pnina-Mazal had given his description to the British police. He had left early in the morning, by train, dressed as an Arab fellah. Afterward he had reached the Suez Canal, where he had boarded a ship on his way to Moscow. Years later, when Geula tried to pick up his traces, she was told that he had been caught up in Father Stalin’s purges and sent to a labor camp in Siberia.

  * * *

  Before I was born my mother lived in Meah Shearim. To be exact, she hid there. It seems that there were a lot of people looking for her. The Hagana were looking for her because of her ceaseless efforts to incite the Arab population against the Jews. She was in the habit of introducing the sentence “Annul the Balfour Declaration and expel the Jewish invaders” into her speeches and repeating it tirelessly at every opportunity that came her way, and the words acted on her audience like a red rag waved in front of a raging bull.

  The British declared her to be a Soviet agent, put out a poster with the picture of a young girl with bristling hair and a smile that exposed pointed teeth, and promised a reward for information regarding her whereabouts. As a result, even her comrades in the Party felt that she was endangering them with her extreme views, and tried to keep her at arm’s length, on the pretext that “the Comintern was dissatisfied with her activities.”

  Meah Shearim was an ideal refuge for her. No one would have dreamed of looking for her in this ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, where the women covered their shaved heads in dark kerchiefs, and the men slipped like black shadows through the narrow alleys. She arrived in the neighborhood wearing dark glasses as a barrier between her and the world, her dyed hair cropped like a man’s and resembling the bristles of a black boot-brush, and her slender body clad in a loose, shabby man’s suit. There she settled down with a large heavy suitcase full of books in a dark, narrow room that shared a wall with the Hassidei Tzaddikim yeshiva and its pure and pious young scholars.

  At first the landlord refused to rent her the room, even though he needed the money and she was prepared to pay handsomely for the moldy room. He decided that he could not possibly allow this woman, so brazenly and blasphemously dressed in men’s clothing, to live in the room, in case, God forbid, she should lead astray the young men who spent their days and nights studying the Holy Books and purifying their souls.

  The next day a bearded young man in the black garb of the Orthodox knocked at his door, pulled out a thick wad of notes, and asked about a room for rent. The landlord was only too happy to rent him the room. A couple of hours later she appeared with her suitcase, and the signed contract in her hand. Who that bearded man was nobody knows, for the moment he received the bronze key in his hand he disappeared, never to be seen again. After the event the landlord complained tearfully to everyone he met how he had been tricked by a smooth-talking pimp in disguise into renting the room to his undesirable tenant. The imposter he described as a Sephardic Jew who spoke with an Oriental accent.

  The landlord’s wife, who had been present throughout the negotiations and more than once had poked him warningly in the ribs with her sharp elbows, informed her neighbors with mournful sighs that even though her husband claimed that the imposter was a Jew, she was sure that he was an Arab. Her intuition had never deceived her, and she was ready to swear that he was an Arab disguised as a yeshiva student. She, who was immediately aware of the fraud, had tried to warn her husband. But he, with the smell of Mammon rising in his nostrils and the bribe money pushed into his pockets, had silenced her with “Be quiet, woman” whenever she tried to say something and had brushed away her elbows digging into his ribs.

  “And this is the result. Instead of a pure, pious yeshiva scholar studying in the room and steeping the place and its owners in an atmosphere of holiness and the blessings of the righteous, we had this slut in man’s clothing. She paid, naturally she paid the money, but she brought no blessing. On the contrary, all she brought was trouble—imagine, an illustrious yeshiva, and right next door to it that whore in dark glasses that she wore even when it was raining, even when it was dark outside. As if the Lord’s light wasn’t good enough for her, as if she had to filter it before it reached her eyes.”

  She had hardly moved in before the rumors spread. Those were palmy days for the tenant who occupied the rooms above her, Fruma Itzikovitz. Everyone began to greet her warmly in the street, and to offer her the freshest produce in the market, and all they wanted was for her to spy on her black-haired neighbor, who emerged from her room like a blind mole from its hole. At first Fruma didn’t know what to tell her avid questioners. She neither saw nor heard her. If she left the house at all, it was always late in the evening when all the inhabitants of the neighborhood were shut up in their homes. But later on she found plenty to tell them, so much that she didn’t always know where to begin and where to leave off.

  She told them that young men and women had begun to go in and out of her neighbor’s room as if it were a railway station, both sexes crowded together in that narrow little room, scandalizing heaven with their immorality. What they did there, she didn’t know. The woman told Fruma that she was a student, and her friends came to study with her. And when she asked her why she had picked a room in their neighborhood of all places, she said that it was the cheapest room she could find. Later, in the strictest confidence, Fruma told the women bathing with her in the mikvah that an Arab youth dropped in on her all the time, as familiar as if he were her husband. He always came with his hands full. Sometimes he brought a basket of vegetables. In the summer he came bearing a great watermelon, sometimes he brought eggs, once she saw a slaughtered chic
ken poking out of his basket, and he even brought bunches of wildflowers. When he came to visit her and she wasn’t at home he would take the key from under the flowerpot next to the door and go inside and make himself at home as if he owned the place. In a whisper that went from mouth to ear she recounted how one night when baby Itzik kept her awake because he was teething, she was standing at the window and she saw the Arab slipping out of her neighbor’s door early in the morning, after apparently spending the night with her.

  Fruma was also the only person in the neighborhood who had actually been inside her room. This happened after the diapers she hung out to dry were blown off the line by the wind and fell into the courtyard. Geula picked them up and took them inside, and thus Fruma found herself knocking at her door, afraid that it might be opened by the Arab, or that Geula might have other company and she would find herself at close quarters with a strange man, God forbid. But it turned out that Geula was more frightened of Fruma than Fruma was of her. Only after cross-examining her did she agree to open the door, and then only a crack. At those moments she looked like a hunted animal. She asked her politely not to let her washing fall into her courtyard again, as she did not want to be disturbed. The brief visit and quick survey of the room satisfied Fruma’s curiosity. There were no young men there, to her relief, nor girls either. It was a small room with piles of books in every unoccupied corner. Just like a yeshiva student.

  * * *

  For a few months Geula lived in the room, and then she disappeared. Some say that her disappearance was connected to the great scandal that inflamed people’s passions and caused a commotion in the entire neighborhood. The scandal led to a schism in the community, to quarrels between brothers, and in the end to a shameful article in the Zionist press and a campaign of vilification against the head of the Hassidei Tzaddikim yeshiva, which adjoined Geula’s room. To this day, so many years after it happened, the affair has not been forgotten, and the story comes up again every Purim eve, diluting the joy of the holiday with the dire threat of splitting the community into two camps: those who believed in what had happened and the sceptics who claimed that nothing of the kind had ever taken place.

  The news of the abomination that ostensibly had taken place within the walls of the yeshiva fell on the neighborhood like thunder from a clear sky. The yeshiva housed a collection of fine young scholars who came from all over the world to study there, and who, so it was said, took no interest in the vanities of this world. They rose before dawn to do the work of the Creator, washed their naked bodies in icy water, and went out into the fields in summer and winter to welcome the Holy Spirit.

  The event that brought hatred and strife to the community took place on the day after the festival of Purim. One of the most brilliant scholars at the yeshiva asked for a private interview with the rabbi. Speaking haltingly, his eyes downcast, he told the rabbi about a disgraceful act committed by himself and his friends. The story spread through the neighborhood like wildfire. If the young scholar had not escaped from the yeshiva in time, he would no doubt have been lynched, beaten till he bled, and tarred and feathered to boot.

  After his confession the young man packed his possessions, hired a cart and mule, loaded it with one chair, a down quilt, a little bookcase, and a set of all the volumes of the Talmud published in Warsaw. Then he climbed onto the cart and left the neighborhood. People say that as soon as he reached the first secular neighborhood he took off his Hassidic coat and hat, went into a barbershop, and asked the barber to shave off his earlocks and beard. In the end, the rumors went, he returned in disgrace to America, abandoned his studies, opened a liquor shop in a black neighborhood, fell in love with a black woman, married her in a blasphemous ceremony, and spent the rest of his life living with her and bringing up their coffee-colored children.

  And this is the story he told the rabbi, a story that leaked to the newspapers and in whose wake Geula locked the door of her room behind her and disappeared from the neighborhood forever. It happened on the eve of Purim. The yeshiva students, merry with wine, kicked up a racket, danced on the tables, waved bottles of wine over their heads, and raved and ranted at the tops of their voices. When they emerged into the courtyard a figure approached them. Whether it was the figure of a man or a woman, the student could not say. This figure, whose face was smooth and whose body was draped in a man’s coat, demanded that they be quiet, because their noise was making it impossible for it to concentrate on its studies.

  “But it’s Purim,” the yeshiva students chorused in reply.

  And the figure stood its ground and insisted that they stop their revels. Playfully they formed a circle round the figure and began teasing it, first with words and then with taps on its bare head, and they began throwing it round the circle from hand to hand, tickling it between the ribs, pinching its lean flesh and laughingly pulling off its big coat. The figure tried to fight back, begged for mercy, and tried to run away, but they would not stop. The more the figure pleaded, the more arrogantly they behaved.

  In the end the wretched figure was lying flat on its face on the ground, its trousers pulled down and its ankles trapped inside them, its bare buttocks rising cheekily and temptingly in the air, while the pious youths crouched over it, came at it from behind, and performed unspeakable acts on it. And when the figure cried for help they shoved the neck of a wine bottle into its open mouth. And when it went on screaming, they sat on its back, held down its waving arms and kicking legs, and poured gallons of wine down its throat. The wine burst out of its mouth and nose like a fountain and wet its clothes. They kept on pouring wine down its throat until the figure lost consciousness and lay still, its face buried in the dirt, and they had their will of it. At dawn they departed, leaving behind them the body spread-eagled in the dirt. And when they sobered up a few hours later and hurried to the scene, the body was gone and they tried to wipe the memory of what they had done from their hearts. But for the student whose conscience drove him to confess to the rabbi, nobody would ever have known.

  The day after the incident my mother crammed all her books into her suitcase, locked the room behind her, and stole out of the neighborhood never to return. Fruma, at her observation post, saw her stumbling out of the room, deathly pale and leaning on the Arab’s arm. After that the Arab showed up at the landlord’s door, put a month’s rent on the table, returned the key, and disappeared. Fruma, with the fount of her stories dried up, deprived of her occupation as a sleuth, turned her attention to interpretation, and told whomever was interested that her heathen neighbor had left because she believed the slanderous rumors about the fine, upstanding yeshiva scholars. Presumably, she said, the girl had run away because she was afraid the same thing might happen to her.

  * * *

  The year my mother left Meah Shearim the War of Independence broke out. Most of the houses in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood were damaged by shots fired from the adjacent Arab neighborhood. Men, women, and children fell like flies, and only the yeshiva, its students, and the houses next to it escaped unharmed, which was seen as a sign from heaven by those who had refused to believe the rumors and denied that the incident had ever taken place.

  After the war was over the yeshiva was closed down. Today the premises are occupied by a welding shop famed for the quality of its window bars, and the soft murmur of Talmudic debate has been replaced by the noise of metal saws, blowtorches, and soldering irons. They say that attendance at the yeshiva had fallen off sharply before it closed down, and the few students that remained dispersed and went to study elsewhere. To anyone who asks, Fruma says with a sigh that pure souls like the boys who studied at the old yeshiva are impossible to find today.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The letter with the purple stamp picturing a man’s crowned head was waiting for Pnina-Mazal on her office desk, hiding between the heavy wooden boxes. Notice of the liquidation of the office and orders to pack up the documents had reached them a month before, but she had done hardly anything about it. The dat
e came closer, and she still had not succeeded in overcoming the weakness that took hold of her at the thought of burying her life in the pale wooden boxes smelling pungently of the best black Ceylon tea.

  She recognized the handwriting on the envelope, and carefully, in order not to damage the stamp, she opened the letter with the ivory paper knife she had received as a prize for outstanding work.

  At home, she told Sara about her day and casually mentioned the letter and the news that Davida was coming to take Avraham and save him from the war about to break out.

  “Now she remembers,” Sara responded sarcastically. “Never mind, let her come. Let’s see her running round the country and looking for her overgrown son in all the kibbutz training camps.”

  On Saturday Avraham came to visit them. He was tall, long-limbed, tanned, with his fair hair combed back to reveal a high, lined forehead. He gave his father, planted in his chair, a friendly pat on the shoulder and tousled the few hairs left on his head. Then he stood opposite him, tried to catch his eye, and shouted at the top of his voice, as if his father were deaf: “Next month I’m getting married.”

  Sara and Pnina-Mazal came running startled from the kitchen, wiping their hands on checked towels.

  “What were you yelling at Yitzhak like that for?” asked Sara.

  “I was just informing my father that I’m getting married,” he said lightly, as if he were talking about the breakfast he had eaten on the kibbutz before coming to Jerusalem.

  The two women rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheeks, which smelled of the sun. His green eyes laughed at them.

  “Mazal tov, and who’s the bride?”

  “A girl I met on the kibbutz, a refugee from the camps in Europe. Next time I’ll bring her to meet you. And what do you think?” He turned to address his father. “Will you give me your blessing? Because if you don’t I’ll be forced to spend the rest of my life on an armchair next to yours,” he added and slapped Yitzhak’s shoulder with a force that jolted his slack body and made his head drop to his chest.