I would like to thank the Blessed Holy One for having bestowed upon me bounty and grace, granting me a roof for my head and the heads of my two darling children. I, Mrs Mende Speismann, daughter of Meir-Anschil Schechter, am not waiting for my husband Zvi-Meir. I find it hard to remember his features; I do not have an image of his face in my mind, I do not know how to describe his beard, and the colour of his eyes is long forgotten. But, as long as I live, I shall continue fulfilling my duties for the sake of the Creator, whose generosity to me is plain to see.
For a moment she hesitates, wondering whether this advert is of any public interest and whether it might become a topic of discussion, no longer so sure of what she had wanted to say or whether she has made any spelling mistakes, but then she addresses the letter, according to the details in the issue in her hand, to the Dear Editor Ya’akov Shmuel Fuchs. This public notice, she knows, marks her rebirth, and with trembling hands she gives the envelope to Mordecai Schatz, who travels with his cart between Pinsk and Baranavichy and can post the letter at the Telekhany post office. The matter is settled.
* * *
On returning to the street she adjusts her scarf. The smell of excrement rising from the latrines behind the houses jolts her awake as if from a dream, and an elderly horse standing next to her unloads its own contribution of dung, deepening the stench of the malodorous brew. Flies swarm around the mass of faeces, and Mende’s full stomach is struck with nausea. She starts back to her home, but then she recalls the request to buy firewood. How time has flown by. She reaches the stall of the wood-seller Isaac Holz, and a chill washes through her body, freezing her breath. Three roubles and forty-five copecks is all that remains in her pockets. All the money she had saved for times of need, for buying a train ticket, for sending Yankele to the yeshiva, bribing an official for papers, giving Mirl something for her dowry and terms of marriage – she has squandered it all in a single fit of madness. And now she stands helpless before Isaac Holz, unable to give him her last coins in return for firewood.
In the distance, she sees two horsemen approaching the market, and Mende prays for the worst to happen. Let them be bandits, let them rob and massacre and burn everything to the ground. She recalls the horrific stories she heard as a child from her grandfather, Yankel Kriegsmann, who used to scare Fanny and her with tales of the pogroms wreaked by Bohdan Khmelnytzky. Her tears choke her, and she wishes desperately for the two riders to turn out to be Cossack brutes. But they are only Kaufmann the horse dealer, and his son, who ride by and greet her with a nod. Why must all the faces around her be so terribly familiar? Where can she find refuge and respite? The Jews have huddled so close to each other that they have not left themselves any space to breathe.
Her head bursts with pain. Cold shivers strike her back like the lashes of a whip. She must ask the vendors to take everything back. Even if they will only agree to half the original price. Or a quarter – anything. But Grossman cannot sell used handkerchiefs, and Ledermann has already hammered the nails into the soles of her new shoes, and Schneider has cut the fabric of her dress and started sewing, and they all refuse her requests and will not refund a single copeck.
IV
* * *
They will come looking for her soon. Her in-laws will wonder what has taken her so long, they will suspect that something is awry, and they will not wait idly at home for her return. The only way she’ll be able to excuse her lateness is if she crosses the river and pretends that she wanted to be frugal and buy cheaper firewood on the other bank.
Obviously, she will not tell a living soul about her uncontrollable fit, not even her sister, and she will make up the loss with additional cleaning work. Deep down, Mende knows that she will pay a heavy price for the sudden savage impulse that just engulfed her, and yet she cannot quite admit that it was a mistake. Her heart had never throbbed like that before.
She makes for the Yaselda. The sun, that old heretic, shoots gleaming crosses of light over her head, but the pines and oak trees help her along with their fleeting shade. She peeks over garden fences and follows a raucous discussion between some ducks and roosters. A shiksa comes out of her house with her two children, and sweeps the entrance with a straw broom. The woman flashes Mende a black-toothed smile, and Mende wonders if this shiksa has also been left alone with her children.
From a fair distance, she can see Zizek waiting in his boat, and as he is fixing the oars in place, she thinks that he has also spotted her and guessed her intention. She approaches him hesitantly, but says nothing. There’s no talking with Zizek. You board the boat, you are rowed to the other bank, and then you come back. He has no interest in discussing the past and he certainly will not subject his daily routine to scrutiny. But if one wants to share a cup of rum from the barrel in his boat, he is more than happy to oblige. He does not wear a hat, he does not wear a four-cornered undergarment with fringes like a good Jew, and he hasn’t seen a page of Gemara since he was twelve. Those who want to travel in his boat can come aboard. Those who don’t can walk away. And those who call him a sheigetz can try saying it to his face and see what happens to them.
* * *
Everybody knows that when he was a child, Zizek’s name was Yoshke Berkovits, and that his only sin was to be born into a very poor family at a very sorrowful time for the People of Israel. In 5587, Czar Nikolai the First, the Iron Czar (may his name and memory be blotted out), issued the Cantonist Decree, by which he ordered the conscription into the Russian army of one righteous and innocent boy for every thousand Jews in the population. Every town, village and settlement was forced to tear out the flesh of its flesh and sacrifice its children to Moloch. The heads of the community announced a fast, confronted high-ranking officials, attempted bribes, all to no avail. And so every household of Israel came to realise that it must fend for itself. Parents married off their sons when they were as young as twelve, because married men were exempt from service. Entire families fled the Pale of Settlement. Officials raked in bribes in return for “correcting” dates of birth and forging the number of registered household members. And whose names remained on the authorities’ conscription lists? Impoverished families to whom no-one was in a rush to marry off their daughters, who lacked the means necessary to either bribe or escape.
This is how the community leaders came up with the name of twelve-year-old Yoshke Berkovits, Lame Selig’s young son, and they sent the sborchik, the tax collector in charge of conscription, to break the news of the decision to the parents. Yoshke’s mother fell to the ground, and his father stamped about on his lean legs and punched the wall until his knuckles bled. Selig and Leah Berkovits rushed to the synagogue courtyard and implored the rabbi and heads of the congregation to withdraw their decision. They shouted and wept all night long, their wails kept everyone awake, and the rabbi shut himself up in his room and cried with grief. He knew full well that conscription meant almost certain death. These children would be baptised and educated according to the customs of the goyim. They would eat treif, they would no longer keep Shabbat, and, if they remained alive after battle, they would pray to that madman, Yeshu’a, who had fantasised that he was the Son of God.
In any case, the Berkovits parents would not leave the courtyard, and their presence became a nuisance. The residents of Motal passed them on their way to the morning prayer and watched them sobbing after the evening prayer. Holiness seemed to desert the synagogue, and everyone walked around with their eyes fixed on the ground, not daring to raise their heads. On the appointed date, Selig and Leah refused to deposit their son with the asesor, the local assessor. They kept him at home, did not send him to cheder and would not even let him go outside to draw water. And so the sborchik was forced to call in the khapper, Leib Stein, who made his living abducting children to fill conscription quotas. At the third watch, he broke into the Berkovits house with a band of thugs, struck Leah in the face when she tried to resist, and deposited Yoshke and two orphans in a prison cell
not far from the synagogue. Leah Berkovits stood at the prison gates and wept with heart-wrenching sobs.
What escapades did Yoshke get up to in the Czarist army? No-one knows. Some people will swear they heard that Yoshke-Zizek slew two hundred Turks with his bare hands, while others believe that he was never any more than a paltry quartermaster. Either way, he was no longer a Jew. Clean-shaven, his hair parted on one side, decked out in army uniform and iron medals, and with an unmistakable air of majesty and grandeur, he suddenly reappeared in the town thirty years after he had been wrested from his home. Market pedlars were alarmed by the imposing legionnaire and hesitated before pointing out to him where his mother’s house stood. None of the neighbours recognised the gentle boy they had once known, suspecting a confidence trickster in his place. Three of his brothers had married and now lived far from Motal. The brother who still lived with his mother feared Yoshke’s vengeance, refused to open the door, and did not tell the old lady what was behind the commotion at the front door. Yoshke had intended to tell his father and mother that their youngest son was back, standing before them like a man raised from the dead. But then one of the neighbours yelled to him that his father had died of sorrow and that his mother avoided any contact with the outside world. And that now it would be best if he did not add to her sorrow; she would expire if she knew that he was there.
Even after this, Yoshke did not leave the residents of Motal in peace. He had acquired great wealth and many privileges as a soldier, and had even been granted a yellow card that permitted him to live anywhere outside the Pale of Settlement. No-one would let him rent a house in Motal, so he bought a parcel of land on the northern side of the river, beyond the lake. In the space of a few weeks he had built a sturdy dinghy for three passengers, with just about enough room for a fourth to squeeze in, although where the third and fourth seats should have been, he loaded a barrel of dark rum, to which he had become addicted during his service. And ever since then he had reported for duty on the Yaselda every day in his uniform, ready to effect a reconciliation between its two banks and burden the hearts of all who saw him with guilt. He began taking passengers thither and bringing those returning hither. And since he did not ask for any fee, and would even offer his customers a cup of grog as he rowed, he quickly built up a monopoly. Zizek transformed his undesirable presence into a necessity and a scourge for the guilt-ridden townsfolk.
What does Zizek want from the residents of Motal? If only he were to tell them, they might understand. At first they tried to get him to talk, offering to pay him with goods, but Yoshke Berkovits rejected all compensation. Then they suspected that he might not remember how to speak Yiddish and tried Russian and Polish instead. But he kept rowing and did not respond even when they addressed him by name. Does he blame them or is he in pain? Is he hopeful or disappointed? Has he come back to give them an eye for an eye or to turn his other cheek? One thing was clear: the name “Yoshke Berkovits” brought back forgotten memories that were best left where they were, and it was not a name fit for a man without religion or family. Therefore, when the name “Zizek Breshov”, his name in the Czarist army, was first mentioned, the people of Motal were relieved. Zizek is a popular name among the goyim and common enough among soldiers; in a way, it testified to Zizek’s full transformation from Jew to gentile.
* * *
Now though, as Zizek is nodding at Mende and as she hops into the boat, she glimpses poor Yoshke Berkovits behind the soldier’s uniform and feels pity for him. With an oar in each hand, he pushes away from the bank, careful not to rock the boat more than necessary. He rows with great precision and his face displays only an absolute calm. She makes the mistake of believing, like so many before her, that it is with her, of all people, that the unfortunate man will at last consent to talk, and she dares to address him by his original name: “Yoshke?” But nothing stirs in his face, his scarred lips remain sealed, his nostrils flare, and his bright-coloured eyes stay fixed on the bank. Suddenly, his serenity strikes her as apathy, his gaze seems to harbour death, like the vacant carcass of a deer, and a sharp pain pierces her heart. “What is wrong with this world?” cries out her soul, and she feels the few coins left in her pocket. A world where poor children are snatched away from their parents, where they can be torn from their faith, and the miserable wretches abandoned to lives of torment. Where is justice? God help us.
She is no longer thinking of herself, for she is not faring too badly, all in all. She has her commandments and customs, a roof over her head and her children, she earns a living and has good neighbours. But why is she in such a hurry now? To fetch firewood for the stove? To celebrate with a birthday meal? How is she any different from the goyim feasting in their homes while thugs burn down Jewish households? After all, she indulges her petty anxieties, just like them, as the truly unfortunate see their world fall apart.
“Stop,” she says, “I want to go back.”
But Yoshke keeps rowing across the river.
“Stop!” she begs. “I cannot go on.”
The splash of Yoshke’s oars continues unabated. His indifference terrifies her. She utters a prayer to the all-merciful God, and throws herself, head-first, into the waters of the Yaselda.
V
* * *
The Yaselda river does not lend itself to drowning. Its waters are shallow and its currents are restrained. In winter it freezes, in spring it floods the fields, and in summer its temperament is as moderate as that of a tzaddik, the righteous man, who never bellows his prayers until he is hoarse, never lavishes alms right and left on his trips to the market, and does not boast of his wisdom to others. The tzaddik keeps the commandments at home, gives charity in secret, and does not care whether or not he impresses the other members of the congregation.
Mende wakes up in her bed. Her eyes can barely open and her vision is blurred. She recognises her mother-in-law Rochaleh’s sour smell, and the hunched back and the loud voice with which Eliyahu, her father-in-law, wages war against his deafness. It is hard not to recognise Reb Moishe-Lazer, thanks to his enormous coiffured beard, and she would know the silhouettes of her children from any distance. Out of the corner of her eye she notices a girl, or perhaps a woman, probably her younger sister Fanny, nerves wracked, beating her fist on the wooden wall. A man is sitting at Mende’s bedside. She cannot turn her head to look at him and is only aware of the palm of his hand resting on her heart, when suddenly he rises and lowers his head towards her chin. Can it be? Has her plight driven Zvi-Meir to repentance? Has he finally returned to his wife and children? She tries to catch a glimpse of his face, but her neck is too stiff.
“She has woken up,” the man announces in a squeaky voice, and she needs another moment or two to realise that the voice belongs to Dr Itche-Bendet Elkana.
She flutters her eyelids and lets out a pained sigh. Everyone, apart from her younger sister, gathers around her. Her son Yankele lands heavily on her stomach and Mirl pulls him back. No, Mende wants to tell her, this is a wonderful pain, but her voice seems to choke in her throat. Rochaleh eyes her daughter-in-law long enough to conclude that the patient will live.
“Well,” she says, clutching Mende’s arm in an unnecessarily tight grip, “have you finished making us worry?” She plumps up the pillow under Mende’s head, keeping hold of her bedridden daughter-in-law’s arm.
“This is not her fault,” Eliyahu says. “I’ve been saying it for a long time: that Zizek is nothing but trouble.”
Mende thinks that this is the first time she has heard him say anything of the sort.
“Did he push you in the river?” interjects Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin, by virtue of his responsibility for his congregants’ well-being.
“How could he push and save her at the same time, Reb Halperin?” her sister Fanny calls from the back of the room. “It was Zizek who brought her back here straightaway, and sent for the doctor.”
The rabbi is momentarily stymied by this re
asoning, but rallies quickly. “He pushed to take revenge and saved to make amends, this is what happens to a man torn between the Jewish and Christian faiths.”
Mende shakes her head, still unable to get a word out. “There is your answer,” Fanny says. “She wanted to wet her face in the heat of the day and she slipped, did you not, sister? Now, stop interrogating her and send someone to thank dear Zizek for saving her life.”
Mende nods, and they all seem disappointed by this simple explanation for the accident. When disaster strikes there must be culprits, even if the victim does not have the courage to name them. Eliyahu pays the rabbi for his blessings and gives Dr Elkana his fee, and then bows in gratitude. Rochaleh sends Mende a glance more painful than the firm grip on the arm, which plainly says, “We spent one rouble and then another one, and for what?”
The doctor bids them farewell with a prescription they could have devised without his expertise: Mende should rest for a few days, regain her strength with three meals a day, drink plenty of water and stay warm; and should her temperature rise or her neck become swollen, God forbid, they should send for him right away. What will he do then? Everybody knows the answer: not much. Still, it is better to hear these things from a man with credentials than from a fool.
Reb Moishe-Lazer Halperin re-enters the room to say goodbye to Mende and informs her of the extraordinary level of interest in her well-being from the people of Motal. She will not believe her ears, but Ledermann the cobbler has sent complimentary leather boots and called in Chaya-Leike to utter her incantations and drive away the Evil Eye with eggs and chamomile paste. Schneider the tailor has promised a turquoise dress as a gift – “You know how crazy Schneider can be sometimes.” And Simcha-Zissel Reznick the butcher has brought over some leftover sausage, along with medicinal herbs and linden blossom. And they all want to know what else might bring her relief.
The Slaughterman's Daughter Page 3
