Four Mothers

by Shifra Horn

  “If you see her you’ll wake up,” Avraham said with a wink. “She’s beautiful. She reminds me of you,” he said teasingly to Sara, who ran after him and tried to hit him with the wet kitchen towel in her hand.

  “What are we going to do about your mother?” she asked him later that night, after telling him about the letter.

  “We’ll invite her to the wedding.”

  “She’s coming here to take you back with her, to save you from harm in the war that’s going to break out when the British leave the country.”

  Avraham looked at her in amazement, as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and then burst into loud laughter and slapped his thighs as if he had just heard a good joke. “Are you serious?” he bellowed with laughter.

  “Here’s the letter,” she said and handed him the letter, which was written in poor Hebrew.

  The expression of amusement on his face gave way to one of astonishment. “I’ve got a crazy family. A father who’s put down roots in an armchair and a mother I haven’t heard from in thirty years and who suddenly wants to shelter me under her wing.”

  * * *

  A month before the final liquidation of the office Davida walked into Sara’s kitchen as if she had just popped out to visit a neighbor and was returning after a couple of hours’ absence. Her sparse hair was dyed blond, her lips were red, and two round pink spots of rouge adorned her sagging cheeks and gave her the look of a china doll. Her skinny body was clad in a suit of fine gray wool and on her head she wore a little felt hat. Her pale green eyes examined Sara in the dim light of the kitchen lamp and her transparent nostrils sniffed the scent of roses that pervaded the house.

  “Where’s Abie?” she asked as if they hadn’t been separated for almost three decades.

  “Avraham lives on a kibbutz, and next month he’s getting married, God willing,” Sara calmly replied, continuing to knead her cookie dough.

  “He’s coming back with me to England,” Davida announced firmly. “The British are leaving, and you’re all going to be slaughtered like sheep. That’s what it says in the papers. He’s my son and he’ll do whatever I tell him.”

  “Try,” said Sara pleasantly, and served her coffee and bagels strewn with sesame seeds, which she had just removed from the oven.

  And so Davida—now called Rose—sat with her in the kitchen and told her about her husband, her life in England, and her daughter Helen, to whom she had given birth after a lot of difficulties.

  “Don’t you want to see Yitzhak?” Sara asked the unavoidable question.

  “Of course, how is he?” she inquired perfunctorily.

  Sara led her to his room, and there he sat, his face to the window and his back to them. Davida-Rose entered the room hesitantly. At the sound of her footsteps Yitzhak suddenly turned his head and looked for a long time at his former wife standing in front of him.

  “Oh dear, he’s losing his hair,” she exclaimed shrilly, gave him a little pat on the back, and left him rooted in his chair. Sara, who followed her out of the room, noticed that the corners of her son’s eyes were moist.

  That was the last time Rose paid any attention to her ex-husband. From that moment on she treated him like a piece of furniture, even though his eyes filled with life whenever they fell on her and followed her round the house.

  The following Saturday Avraham arrived accompanied by a short young woman whose dark eyes darted round the house with a hunted expression, like a trapped animal looking for a way to escape. When she calmed down she smiled at Sara and accepted her invitation to dunk freshly baked cookies in a hot cup of tea. Then Avraham took her on a tour of the house and introduced her to his father.

  “Yitzhak, my father,” he said to her. “Flora, my wife-to-be,” he said to his father. Flora’s hand reached out automatically to shake Yitzhak’s and remained suspended in the air. Avraham gently lowered her hand, whispered something in her ear, and together they left the room.

  A few minutes later Rose’s shrill voice was heard at the door.

  “Where’s my Abie? My child, Mummy’s here!” she announced at the top of her voice when they opened the door. Rose wasted no time on Yitzhak, who tried to catch her eye as she passed his chair. She burst into the kitchen and recoiled at the sight of the strange man who was sitting there and filling the little room with his big body.

  Sara nodded her head.

  “Abie?” Her eyes opened wide in astonishment.

  “Mother!” he declared with a little smile and a nod of his head, gathered her in his muscular arms, and pressed her to him. “It’s me, Mother. I’m so glad you could come for my wedding,” he added, and introduced her to Flora.

  Flora looked at her like a frightened rabbit.

  “Flora, meet my mother, whom I haven’t seen for thirty years.”

  Flora hesistantly held out her hand, and Rose’s eyes were transfixed by the number tattooed on her arm. She took a firm grip on Flora’s hand, put her finger in her mouth and wet it with spit, and by vigorous rubbing tried to erase the number from her skin. Flora attempted to pull her hand away, but Rose tightened her grip, leaving white marks on the girl’s tanned wrist, wet her finger again, and made strenuous efforts to remove the blemish from her future daughter-in-law’s arm.

  “Mother, it doesn’t come off, that’s how she came to me and that’s how she’ll go to her grave,” said Avraham with a smile.

  “And what kind of a person brands herself with a number like cattle sold in the marketplace?”

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” he promised, and immediately changed the subject to the preparations for the wedding, to the kibbutz, and to the big cabin they would be given to live in after they were married.

  * * *

  Without being asked Sara spent the whole week baking crisp sesame cookies and packing them in tins. On the eve of the wedding she took out the red velvet dress she had made herself in honor of Yitzhak’s bar mitzvah and hung it out to air on a branch of the mulberry tree in the yard. Then she filled the big tub, once used for washing the rose petals, with boiling water, and hung the dress over it to smooth out all the creases. That evening she tried it on and smiled to herself with satisfaction after inspecting her reflection in the mirror. The next day, after getting dressed, she combed her long white hair, gathered it up in a bun, and pinched her cheeks to make them pink.

  Armed with maps and directions Edward drove Sara, Pnina-Mazal, and Rose straight to the dining room of the kibbutz, where the wedding ceremony was to be conducted. Rose, wearing a tight white silk dress with black polka dots and a matching black hat with a tulle veil that covered her face, was greeted by gales of laughter. A couple of wits even asked her to donate her hat to their poor kibbutz after the wedding so they could wear it to extract the honey from the beehives, “where it would no doubt scare the bees away,” they added with a wink. And Rose, angry and offended, turned her slender back on them.

  After the ceremony Rose did not take her eyes off her son and daughter-in-law, her looks following them wherever they went and turning giddily with them as they danced the hora in the middle of the circle that had formed around them. Afterward she took her daughter-in-law aside and conferred with her at length.

  “What did she want?” Sara asked the girl without beating about the bush.

  “She said that now I’m married to her son I’m like a daughter to her, and she’ll take me back to England with her too.”

  After that Sara didn’t let Rose out of her sight. Late at night, when the accordionist folded his instrument and put it away in its wooden box padded with purple velvet, and the kibbutz women began clearing the dishes off the tables, she informed Rose that it was time to go home.

  “I’m staying here, and I won’t budge until they tell me that they’re coming with me,” she announced.

  “Avraham’s married now, he’s not the baby you left behind you, he’s a grown man; you can’t do as you wish with him,” Sara retorted.

  Avraham was called to make the pe
ace, and he whispered to his mother so his friends wouldn’t hear, “Thank you for coming, and now go back to Jerusalem with Sara, and I’ll come and see you next week.”

  “Next week we’ll all be on a ship on our way to London, or else we’ll be slaughtered in our beds.”

  “I’m staying here with my wife,” he said like a stubborn child.

  “You’re coming with me, and if your wife wants to stay here, as far as I’m concerned she can stay.”

  On her son’s wedding night Rose slept over at the kibbutz, and the next day too, and in spite of all Avraham’s efforts to persuade her she refused to return to Jerusalem. Later that week Pnina-Mazal sent her an urgent letter by special messenger to inform her that the last of the British had folded their flags and gone back to England. The next day Rose packed her bags and embarked on the last ship sailing from Haifa, never to return.

  Six months later they received a letter from her, inquiring about the situation in the country, and asking Sara to keep an eye on her son and not to let him wander around by himself in the kibbutz fields at night. When the war was over and Avraham’s son Yiftah was born, she sent her grandson a blue woolen sailor suit, together with an explicit request not to be called Granny.

  * * *

  Geula stood in the darkness at the front door, dark glasses on her eyes and her hair black and cropped like a boy’s. Sara paused for a moment before she recognized her granddaughter and fell upon her neck with cries of joy.

  “Geula, you’ve come back, I’m so glad to see you. What happened to your hair?”

  “Never mind,” she replied impatiently, gave her a light push, and rushed into the house, as if a pack of devils were hot on her heels. “Close the door and lock it,” she said in a commanding voice, “and if anyone knocks, don’t open. And if people come and ask you about me, say you haven’t seen me.”

  “They’ve already been here and asked questions, and you have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused your mother. That was the last thing she needed, working for the British. You should know that she nearly lost her job because of you,” Sara said reproachfully.

  “Where is Mother?” asked Geula, as if she had just remembered that she existed.

  “Translating at a party at the High Commissioner’s.”

  “Don’t tell her I was here.”

  Sara led her granddaughter to the kitchen and inspected her closely.

  “You’re pregnant,” she said dryly. “Who’s the father?”

  “Let’s not talk about the father,” said Geula, astonished at her grandmother’s powers of perception, which had succeeded in penetrating the walls of her still-flat stomach. “In short, how do I get rid of it? You know. You have the power.”

  Sara sat down heavily on a chair.

  “I have been gifted with the power to give life, not to take it,” she said. “It’s a girl, and you have to give birth to her. You won’t have any more children,” she said with cruel frankness.

  Geula stared at her in dismay, then she recovered and blurted out, “Nonsense. How can you possibly know, and why should I listen to your nonsense?”

  Sara said nothing and put the kettle on to boil.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

  “Don’t open it,” said Geula in alarm.

  “Don’t worry,” Sara reassured her. “It’s only Edward.”

  “Tell him to go away.”

  Sara shuffled to the door, opened it a crack, and whispered to the figure standing outside.

  “At least let me say hello to her,” Geula heard his voice say.

  “She refuses to see anyone. Let’s leave her alone today.”

  Sara closed the door and locked it.

  When she returned to the kitchen she saw that all the cookies on the plate had disappeared.

  “Come home before the birth,” she said. “We’ll help you and we can look after the baby if you’re busy,” she offered generously.

  Geula frowned. “If I decide to keep it. You have to understand that it’s very inconvenient for me. I had plans to study law, and this is the last thing I need now.”

  “I told you that we’d help you. There’s plenty of room.”

  Geula pursed her lips scornfully. “Yes, and every day I’ll have to fight my way through all the women who thanks to you will bring about a population explosion and deplete the food resources of the world.”

  Sara was silent.

  After providing her granddaughter with a bag full of fragrant cookies she said good-bye to her and repeated her request: “Come back to me for the birth.”

  Seven months later, when the shells were exploding over the besieged city, Geula returned to her grandmother’s house. Pnina-Mazal was the first to see them entering the door, Geula leaning on Muhammad’s strong arm, her belly rising in front of her and her face twisted in pain.

  “Put the kettle on,” Sara said serenely from the kitchen, even before she saw her granddaughter on the doorstep. She spoke quietly and calmly, as if she were asking Pnina-Mazal to to boil water for tea for their guests.

  Obediently and without asking superfluous questions, Pnina-Mazal did as she was told and filled the copper tub with boiling water. Geula stole a glance at Muhammad, who stroked her hair, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and went outside. Sara took Geula in her arms and led her to her room. Clean, stiff sheets had been spread over the brass bed, as if Sara knew in advance that her granddaughter’s time had come.

  “It will be an easy birth. I don’t expect any complications,” she said to Geula in a reassuring tone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  About half an hour later I emerged into the light of day on my great-grandmother’s big brass bed. From the moment I came alive I used all five senses. The first cry that burst from my mouth was addressed to my mother. She looked into my face with a shocked expression, as if refusing to believe that her body had produced this kicking and screaming red bundle. I looked back at her, blinking slightly in the glaring light invading my eyes, which had grown accustomed to the darkness of the womb.

  When Sara dipped me in the lukewarm water in the copper tub, I breathed in the scent of roses, which rose into the air with the vapors of the water, penetrating my nostrils and adhering to my skin.

  “It’s a girl, it’s a girl, it’s a girl…” were the first words that trembled on my eardrums and made me forget the sound of the beating heart and the gentle murmur of the waters in which I had been swimming for the past nine-and-a-bit months. The nipple that was pushed into my mouth straight after I was born filled it with a warm, dense liquid, which stimulated the taste buds on my tongue, and imprinted one of the gray cells in my brain with the taste “sweet.” My hands fluttering around my body became entangled in Sara’s hair as she bent over my mother, and as I clenched my fists in what students of babies call the “monkey reflex” I found myself clutching a few long hairs uprooted from my great-grandmother’s scalp. These hairs, which were like silk to the touch, remained imprisoned in my fist for a few days after I pulled them out, and they soothed my sleep during my first nights in the air of the world.

  * * *

  Edward would arrive every morning in his black Ford convertible, wearing a pith helmet and a white safari suit and boasting a white cane with a gleaming brass knob. At the door he would breathe in the heavy scents, pause a moment, smile to himself, and then knock discreetly on the iron door with the knob of his cane. She would hurry to open it with a welcoming smile, her white hair gathered in a bun on the nape of her neck and her body giving off a strong smell of freshly plucked roses.

  In their regular morning ritual he would examine Sara gravely through the lenses of his pince-nez, as if he were seeing her for the first time in his life, kiss her gently on her forehead, and repeat the sentence he said to her every morning, year after year, until the day he died: “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” And she would giggle shyly, like a maid of tender years receiving her first compliment from a young man, and give him the sam
e reply that she repeated word for word all those years: “They have eyes and see not. I’m already an old grandmother.” Then she would ceremoniously invite him to come inside, as if he had never visited her house before. After that she would lead him into the kitchen, seat him at the small, scarred wooden table, and serve him strong morning coffee and a sesame cookie still warm from the oven.

  Thus they would sit until the line of women lengthened under the mulberry tree and she went out to them with little bottles of water in her hands. While she was busy with the women, he would set up his camera stand and photograph his beloved, who stood out with her white hair, smiling face, and shining eyes among the hard-faced, dull-eyed young women. With his head buried under the black cloth he would hum the verse from the Song of Songs to himself: “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”

  Every morning he photographed her and every night he developed the photographs in the darkroom in his house. When the pictures dried he tied them in bundles and put them away in square English biscuit tins. Every evening he returned to her house laden with food he bought in the market, sat with her in the kitchen, and helped her to peel potatoes and wash vegetables. After they ate he would lie on his back on the carpet in the sitting room and entertain her with stories of his travels. When she tired he would lead her to bed, lay her down, hold her hand, and put her to sleep with lullabies that he sang to her in English. Then he would kiss her lightly on the forehead, whisper words of love that brought a blush to her beautiful, faded face, and go home enveloped in the scent of roses. And she would remain by herself in her brass bed, with tender ocean waves blissfully rocking her body.

  And so it was day after day. He never missed his daily visit. Even in winter, on days when the city of Jerusalem was covered with a blanket of heavy snow that choked the streets and bent the boughs of the cypress trees under its weight, he would put on his galoshes and his warm fur hat and plough through the snow with his stick. With all the furious determination of a knight of old overcoming trials and tribulations to reach his lady love he would beat a path to her door. Then he would thaw his bones at the kitchen stove, and she would rebuke him and say that one day he would kill himself for her sake and that she wasn’t worth the sacrifice.