Mende militantly wards off these malicious stories about her sister: how could a Jew’s soul ever mix with the soul of a gentile? But this is what people say: the Keismanns have split loyalties, they are chameleons through and through. And had they lived in Berlin or Minsk, they would have long since followed the descendants of Moses Mendelssohn and become Christians.
Mende knows that what is said is sometimes more important than what is true, and so she politely declined Fanny’s invitation to live in the village with her family.
“Zvi-Meir,” she told her younger sister, with wholehearted faith, “will return to his home, sure enough. You know what he is like. He will not settle for anything less than the best. Even if he is doomed to be a trader rather than a scholar, it is only natural that he would want to expand his business. What would he say if he heard that his children had wandered off to the village and become yishuvnikim?”
A strange, pleasurable sensation spread through Mende’s limbs as she expressed her confidence in her husband. And even now, ten months after Zvi-Meir’s departure, it does not feel like such a long time has gone by. She has read in Hamagid of married women who had waited more than five years and lost all hope, when finally, without any warning at all, their husbands came home.
* * *
Today, with perfect timing, Mende is in for a surprise. Having been caught up in the humdrum of daily life, she has forgotten that today is the fifteenth day of the month of Sivan, in the year 5654. She will mark twenty-six springs today, and behind her back her sister and daughter have been scheming how best to celebrate. Today, Fanny is coming to replace not Mirl, but Mende, to allow her sister to take a day off and do whatever she pleases. They have already worked out all the details, these co-conspirators, and Providence has played along gamely and thrown in wonderful weather. After work, sister and daughter will go to the market to buy delicacies and prepare a royal banquet for Mende. They have even obtained Reb Moishe-Lazer’s promise to give her a blessing. In the meantime, Mende can rest at home, or perhaps she would like to leave the noise of the town and go for a walk in the forest across the river. Reb Moishe-Lazer bade them tell her that one’s birthday is an opportunity to be reborn.
Mende is uneasy about this rebirth business. Doubt begins to gnaw at her mind: how can she rest and let them work so hard? And why did the Blessed Holy One create Heaven and Earth in six days, and not seven? After all, she already has one day of rest every week. But Fanny and Mirl counter all of her misgivings.
“Shabbat is the Queen, it is for celebrating the sacred; a birthday is for celebrating the mundane.”
“But why celebrate my birthday as though it is a kind of achievement? And what is there to find in the forest?”
“Fresh air! Blackberries! Blueberries! Blackcurrants! Go out and enjoy this world a little.”
Mende scoffs.
“This world? This world is . . .” She wants to say: terrible, damned, but finds herself stuttering before her daughter. “And besides,” she goes on, “I have no way of crossing the river.”
Fanny and Mirl giggle.
“We knew you would invent obstacles. We have already thought everything through and talked to Zizek.”
“Cross the river in the same boat as a gentile rogue?”
“Zizek is not a goy.”
“Poor Zizek doesn’t know what he is, God help him,” says Mende.
Fanny and Mirl tease her. “Everybody is poor and miserable in Mende’s eyes.”
Mende gives her sister a cross look and turns to scold her daughter.
“And what about your lessons?”
Mirl’s eyes fill with tears, but Fanny whispers in Mende’s ear, “Let her, sister, this was her idea. We will help her catch up with her study later, I’ll see to it.”
And Mende is annoyed that every time Fanny turns to her, she calls her “sister” – as if their relationship were not obvious and had to be underlined each time anew. In the end, she concedes that the two of them have pushed her into a corner and now she has to celebrate, not on her account, but on theirs. The matter is settled.
III
* * *
Fanny and Mirl bid her farewell at the market’s entrance, next to Yoshke-Mendel’s stall. Mende sees them walking away, giggling, peeking back at her and giggling again. Come what may, she will not go out picking blueberries; she is not an adventurous woman. How far might Mende venture on her festive day? From the cucumber stand to the radish stall, if she really tests her limits.
The market is a-bustle with the clamour of man and beast, wooden houses quaking on either side of the parched street. The cattle are on edge and the geese stretch their necks, ready to snap at anyone who might come near them. An east wind regurgitates a stench of foul breath. The townsfolk add weight to their words with gestures and gesticulations. Deals are struck: one earns, another pays, while envy and resentment thrive on the seething tension. Such is the way of the world.
Yoshke-Mendel watches the passers-by as he stands over his “shop”, a wooden barrow offering this and that: pencil stubs and nails and toothpicks and kerchiefs and haberdashery. Everyone knows that you will find any useless item you can think of in Yoshke-Mendel’s wheelbarrow. Now he is smiling at Mende, his broken teeth cradled in a tousled beard, wrapped in a worn beggar’s kaftan and a wrinkled yarmulke. “Did I hear right, Mrs Speismann, a birthday? Mazel tov, then! Why not treat yourself to a hairpin from Yoshke-Mendel? Only two copecks, half-price, many thanks.” People are selling linen dresses and leather boots, roosters and meat all around her, and Yoshke is smiling with rotten teeth.
Birds of a feather flock together. Mende does indeed wish to indulge herself on her birthday and has found herself at Yoshke-Mendel’s wheelbarrow, and he is showering her with thanks before she has bought a thing. She winces when he calls after her, “Many thanks, come back later, I’ll be here.”
She walks by the luftmenschen, the “air men”, the intellectuals, yawning by the roadside, reeking of grog and vishniac, each of them with a solitary bearing even though they are sitting in groups. They gather at the market, foraging for occasional work to feed their families – sawmen and porters are always in demand. When times were especially rough, Zvi-Meir used to join them, the mujikim he called them, gypsies. They talk about money and luxuries all day long, and there isn’t a single broken copeck in their pockets. They admire the capitalists responsible for their poverty more than anyone else. Ask the “air men” if they would rather live decently without any prospect of becoming rich, or in poverty with an infinitesimal chance of making a fortune, and see what they tell you.
Now Mende senses that Zvi-Meir’s friends lower their eyes as she passes, like partners in her husband’s crime. Who among them is soon to join Zvi-Meir? Who will leave his home at dawn and abandon wife and children? This world is taking a turn for the worse, Mende thinks; suddenly everyone wants to revel in earthly delights and forget about the angels of destruction that await them in Sheol.
At the far end of the market, in the shadow of the church spire, stands the butcher’s shop of Simcha-Zissel Resnick, which is really the kitchen of his own house. In the shop window – that is, in the house’s front window – whole chickens hang from their thighs alongside cuts of meat and ribs and sausages. Mende usually hastens past this shop; the smell takes her back to her childhood in Grodno, to the days when she wanted for nothing.
Although her slaughterman father, Meir-Anschil Schechter, was never one to lavish affection on his daughters, he did make them banquets fit for kings. In recent times, however, Mende has scarcely touched meat herself, only ever sucking out the marrow of the chicken bones her children leave on their yontev plates on feast days. But now a terrible craving for meat has awakened within her, an uncontrollable desire for the taste of beef. A chasm opens up in her stomach and her head spins. Her mouth waters like the high seas, and she is so weak that she has to lean against the
wall of the nearby synagogue. This will be her birthday present, it’s a clear-cut decision. A mechayeh, what a treat.
But how can she be so extravagant? Has she taken leave of her senses? Whoever heard of a Jewess craving beef at this hour of the morning? And what will people say about the gluttony that possessed Mende Speismann, that made her ready to deny her own children food for a fleeting moment of pleasure? However, these objections only intensify her craving and make her all the more frantic as she scuttles home to her in-laws’ house for more money.
Rochaleh sees her coming and wastes no time in venting her feelings. Doesn’t she, her daughter in-law Mende Speismann, doesn’t she care that her shviger has been scrubbing the house spotless for her birthday dinner? Who is all this effort for? Mende should come and see, she should at least notice that all the lamps have been polished and refilled with the kerosene Rochaleh has saved especially for the occasion.
“I’ve worked my fingers to the bone, all day long, and for what?” Mende’s shviger laments. The usual tirade. And now, Rochaleh goes on, if Mende would be so kind and go out again, they need more firewood. Mende apologises, aims a kiss at the forehead of the sour-faced Rochaleh, and slips away to the back room to take out the savings she keeps hidden in a box beneath the mattress.
One rouble should be enough for a decent cut of meat. She takes two roubles from the wooden box, then puts one back and quickly closes the lid, and then reopens it and thinks again and counts the coins: thirty-two roubles and seventy-one copecks, her entire fortune. In short, two out of thirty-two is no small matter. But even if she spends the two roubles, she will still have more than thirty left. And suddenly, in a spate of mania and craving, she empties the entire box into the pockets of her dress and leaves the house, as Rochaleh’s voice echoes after her: “All my bones are hurting, and for what?”
The eyes of the townspeople pierce Mende from every direction. Miserable beggars gawp at her. She avoids the market by taking a muddy alleyway between the wooden houses and arrives back on the main street by the churchyard fence, then she sneaks into Simcha-Zissel Resnick’s shop and surprises the butcher as he dozes at the counter; he is unimpressed. Normally Mende only comes to his shop to buy chicken legs for the High Holidays, and such clientele is nothing to write home about. He straightens the cap on his head and wets his lips, taking the feather-plucking knife in his hand.
“What would you like, Mrs Speismann? Chicken?”
But Mende asks for a cut of beef, and Simcha-Zissel rubs the tassels of his tzitzit in a request for the Almighty’s opinion on the matter. Four silver coins on the counter give him a quick answer and Simcha-Zissel disappears into the store in his courtyard and returns with a piece of beef wrapped in paper. Mende opens the wrapping, she cannot help herself. She could not have asked for a juicier cut, probably from the cow’s loin. The meat is red but not shiny, just as her father had taught her it should be, dry on the outside and muscular, covered by a fine layer of fat. Simcha-Zissel Resnick pats his belly and says, “Only the best for Meir-Anschil Schechter’s daughter!” She smiles back at him: four roubles have transformed her from a miserable wretch to so-and-so’s daughter.
She returns to the alleyway that skirts the busy market. Hunger grips her and her limbs tremble. She holds the cold meat against her middle and feels her heart beating faster and faster. Suddenly she freezes, horrified: how will she cook the meat? She cannot return to her in-laws’ home with four silver coins’ worth of beef, and even if one of her friends let her into their home, how would she justify this indulgence without making them jealous? How could she dare roast her meat before pale faces and starving eyes without offering an explanation, without offering to share?
Mende leans against the churchyard fence. Her body slides down to the boggy, black ground, and the sun strikes her face. The town of Motal is bathed in a bright light that imbues the market people with a translucent pallor. Beards, hats and head scarves blend with blinds and awnings. Voices and chatter merge with the buzzing of flies. She raises the package, removes the paper wrapping and, without stopping to think, takes a bite of the raw meat. Her teeth are startled by the cold, her eyes widen as she tries to tear off a stubborn, sinewy bite. The taste of blood clouds her senses, stings her lips and tingles on her tongue.
Fortunately, Simcha-Zissel Resnick, suspecting that something is not right, has been watching her through the window, and now he leaves his wife at the shop counter and hastens to Mende’s rescue. He gently pulls her to her feet, wraps the meat again, and leads her to a shed in the courtyard, a makeshift kitchen in which he stores wood, bags of grain and an old stove. He seats her before him on a stool, lights the stove and cuts the beef she bought from him into thick slices, which he brushes with oil and sprinkles with spices. Finally, he arranges the slices in a frying pan and fans the flames with the bellows, serving her the first piece a few moments later.
Mende devours the meat, which would have been enough for a family of four, or for six miserable paupers, or ten orphaned children. Simcha-Zissel watches her with some concern, urging her to slow down, to chew the meat and savour its taste. But she revels in her own lust, eyeing the door every other minute like an animal guarding its prey. And when the meat congests her stomach and travels back up her throat, she forces the masticated chunks down into the gluttonous surfeit. Simcha-Zissel watches her with a dismay mingled with barely suppressed desire. Then his wife calls him from the shop and he reluctantly leaves the shed.
In the meantime, Mende leans against a bag of wheat. The food fills her belly and its taste floods her with happiness. She bursts into laughter that keeps rolling on and on until she can hardly breathe. Never before has she laughed like this; no virtuous woman would lend herself to such frivolity, let alone a wife and mother. Indeed, for a moment, anxieties creep back into her thoughts: what has she done? What will happen if her in-laws find out? And what about the firewood she was supposed to bring home? And the money?
She feels the notes and coins in her pocket, but she does not want to go back to being Mende so soon. After all, Mende lashes out all the time, Mende is angry, Mende suffers, Mende worries, Mende blames: where is Mirl, where is Yankele, why does Fanny, how long, why here, how could he have left, when is he coming back . . . No more! Enough! Not now! She shakes these thoughts from her mind, rises and makes her way back to the market, one stall at a time, one cart at a time, one shop at a time. Before she realises what she is doing, she has chosen new handkerchiefs at Grossman’s and is sitting at Ledermann’s stall to buy fine leather shoes, and then breaking a twenty-five rouble note at Schneider’s to try on a turquoise tasselled dress – so bold! – and asking for a slice of plum torte at Blumenkrantz’s pastry shop. And they all take her money and give its full return: it is not every day that they are blessed with a new customer in such high spirits. They ask for ten roubles, she suggests eight, they settle on nine, all without any of the usual mutterings of “I wouldn’t even take it for free”, or “It’s not for me to pay your daughter’s dowry”. Mende meanders through the market like a bride on her wedding day, showering the stallholders with smiles and sprinkling compliments all around. Mordecai Schatz, the owner of the book cart, cannot help himself and asks, “What is the occasion, Mrs Speismann? Is Zvi-Meir back today?” And Mende roars with laughter and pulls from his cart a new issue of Hamagid, printed only twelve days ago, a true feast, and overpriced accordingly. But she could not care less, today she is buying it!
Once again, she comes across the cry of a miserable agunah, this time with a more understated headline: “Help”. She chuckles and reads the advertisement to Mordecai Schatz in a voice thick with crocodile tears: “I implore the honourable readers of Hamagid, perhaps they have heard of my husband, Reb Yosef Zilberstein, who left me nine years ago when he ventured out to the city of Minsk, and not a word has been heard from him since. Perhaps he caught the coughs and, God forbid, his heart stood still; maybe he was taken captive by bandi
ts? Surely he will not deny his charity to me and his two hunger-stricken sons? In his absence, we feed on our own tears. These are his details . . .”
Mordecai Schatz looks at her in amazement, not knowing if he should laugh or cry, and Mende says with a sly smile, “Nine years, Reb Mordecai, what do you think? Ill? Dead? Taken captive?”
Mordecai Schatz lowers his browless, defenceless eyes. Mende pats him on the shoulder: “Taken captive by kurwas in a bordello!”
At that moment, an idea flashes up in her mind and she asks Mordecai Schatz for a blank sheet of paper. On she goes to Yoshke-Mendel’s “shop” and leaves a copeck for a quarter of a pencil. It all happens so quickly that Yoshke-Mendel doesn’t even have a chance to say “many thanks”. Mende slips away from the market and finds a shaded spot between the ramshackle huts where, with much excitement, she sits down to write her first letter to Hamagid, entitled “The Voice of a Merry and Contented Woman”:
The Slaughterman's Daughter Page 2
