The image of his beloved wife’s face on the body of a cow was bad enough for Meir-Anschil, and the memory of the desperation on Malka’s face was indeed horrific. But something else unsettled him even more. How could his hands have behaved so clumsily and torn the creature’s organs like an inept amateur? He realised that if he were to continue on this path of uncontrollable desire for Malka, he would first lose his livelihood, and then both he and his family would be lost altogether. That summer, he expanded their wooden house into their back yard, built an extra room for himself and moved into it permanently.
III
* * *
Ever since she was a young girl, Malka had been eaten up by guilt. Her father, Yankele Kriegsmann, never stopped reminding her that she was responsible for all his misfortunes. Times were hard, only the Blessed Holy One could remember better days, and Yankele Kriegsmann’s livelihood hung by a thread. In his youth he had inherited vast stocks of wheat, which gradually rotted because he could not make up his mind about what to do with them. At first, he wanted to export them to the west, but was stalled by government bureaucracy. Then he learned to make beer, by which time Jews were banned from manufacturing and serving alcohol. He blamed these failures on his spoiled children, who necessitated his staying in one place and were a constant drain on his time. Consequently, he did not spare them his rod and terrorised them with stories about the angels that strike the dead with white-hot irons.
Yet even with lazy children such as his, Yankele Kriegsmann discovered that he could earn a nice income by taking in large dowries for his sons and paying out small dowries for his daughters. After all, there’s nothing undignified about making a profit. He was not especially particular, therefore, when his daughters began to receive marriage proposals, and decided that Malka, the prettiest of them all, should marry the son of Isaac-Wolf Schechter, who came from a family of slaughterhouse owners – which, admittedly, was not a respectable profession, but they were the best in their trade in the entire district. Malka was twelve when she married.
For Malka, it was no wonder that her husband did not come to her bed immediately after their wedding. In her own eyes, she had been a liability before the wedding and was to remain a liability ever after, and if her father knew this, how could she expect anything different from anyone else? This is why she was not puzzled when Meir-Anschil kept himself to himself on their wedding night, and why it came as no surprise when they continued to sleep in separate beds for many months. Nevertheless, she invented a game of prophetic signs that gave her both hope and warnings: if the rooster calls fewer than three times, Meir-Anschil will smile at her; but if it calls more than thrice, her husband will keep his usual sour face. If she pours the tea without spilling any, her husband will notice her beauty; but if she spills even one drop, he will think her ugly. If their horse neighs, good fortune will come their way; but if her shoes become covered in mud, disaster will strike. Needless to say, this chain of cause and effect that she imposed on reality was refuted over and over again. Yet all it took was just one prediction to be fulfilled for Malka to feel in control and invent a new pact. And so, one stormy night, she promised herself that if the window blew open, she would enter her husband’s bed – and when the wind duly opened the window, she did just that.
After that night, Meir-Anschil continued to pursue her, but she was not surprised when, several months later, he gave up and started sleeping in another room. She lay alone at night, unable to determine whether she was asleep or awake, fantasising about the baby that would need her and depend on her for solace. When Mende was born, Malka could not let her out of her sight and would not let anyone else come near her for fear of the Evil Eye. Malka tied the baby to her apron with a rope, because she knew that if the neighbours were to hold Mende she would not be able to find a husband for her daughter, and that if she ever left the house without her mother, the toddler would surely be run over by the wheels of a cart. Even the touch of Meir-Anschil on the baby seemed to Malka like the kiss of death.
A year later, with Fanny’s birth, things grew even worse. Malka lost control altogether and could only predict imminent catastrophe. She had no doubt that one day the Neman would overflow and that both her daughters would be overcome by the water. She visualised the girls drowning as she tried in vain to rescue them. Her grief over their loss barely permitted her to get out of bed. She gave birth to them in hope, and watched them grow in sorrow, helpless against their sealed fate.
IV
* * *
When Malka Schechter died, Meir-Anschil had no wish to fulfil the commandment to be fruitful and multiply with another woman, despite repeated attempts to bring his lack of male heirs to his attention. He kept on with his daily routine and left his daughters with their grandfather, Yankel Kriegsmann. The old man was asked to teach them Hebrew and arithmetic, but he devoted most of their lessons to his descriptions, in minute detail, of the fate awaiting them in Hell, where women are hung by their hair and breasts.
One evening, as Meir-Anschil was sitting with his daughters, he noticed that Mende was eating with an unusual appetite. Fanny matter-of-factly explained that her sister had broken the hinge of a door in their grandfather’s home and had therefore been punished. Meir-Anschil tried to understand the reasoning behind the decision to punish her by starvation, and it was only then that he discovered the grandfather’s educational methods. Without further ado, he instructed the girls to continue eating, took his halaf and left his house in the direction of his father-in-law’s. Kriegsmann was caught completely by surprise when his front door swung open, and the burly hulk of his son-in-law stood in the doorway, wearing a black cape and a fur hood, and wielding a knife. Meir-Anschil threw Kriegsmann across the kitchen table, grabbed him by the neck and pressed the halaf against his throat. The old man writhed in his grip and Meir-Anschil sent a fist flying into his jaw.
From that day on, Meir-Anschil left his daughters in the charge of Sondel Gordon, the tailor, so that they could learn his trade. Indeed, sewing is a low-paying profession whose practitioners risk dimming eyesight, but Meir-Anschil hoped that it would allow him to send his daughters to the Lower East Side in New York, where, rumour had it, seamstresses were in high demand and the Jews prospered. What is more, Gordon’s shop was not far from the slaughterhouse, and Meir-Anschil could keep as much of an eye on his daughters as he liked.
Yet Providence, as is its custom, had other ideas. For a few days, Meir-Anschil sensed that something was not right, and found himself constantly turning his head to see if someone was following him. The animals sensed his nervousness and struggled with even greater ferocity, while the customers noticed his hesitation when he took the tethers from their hands. At times, he wondered if the Blessed Holy One was watching him at work and scrutinising his technique, which disconcerted him each time he brought the halaf to an animal’s neck.
As it transpired, nothing of the sort was happening. In a moment of quiet concentration, as he covered blood with dirt, he heard noises coming from the roof and immediately concluded that he was indeed being scrutinised from above. But it was not the good God On High, but an unexpected voyeur who turned out to be none other than—
“—Fanny?!”
The child nearly rolled off the roof when she heard her father calling out her name; and when he carefully lowered her from the window, her first instinct was to run away. Meir-Anschil gripped her arm and felt her body tremble. Her grey eyes became impregnable and her face was quite calm.
“You should never have seen that,” he said, alarmed by the expression on his daughter’s face. “Now hurry back to Sondel Gordon.”
They said nothing to each other at dinner that evening, but when Mende cleared away the plates, Meir-Anschil announced that he wished to speak with his younger daughter.
“What you saw today,” he said, “is parnussah, which is how I make a living.” He hesitated. “Parnussah, that is, the animals and the blood.” He g
arbled his words. “Your grandfather was also a shochet,” he sighed. “And his grandfather,” he added. “The whole family, in fact. Anyway,” he finished, “I am sorry you saw it.” And he stopped talking.
“I want to learn too,” Fanny said, her eyes gleaming behind her fair hair. Meir-Anschil burst out laughing, startling Mende, but then he realised that Fanny, who was not yet eleven, was deadly serious.
“Learn what?” he asked, to make quite sure that he had understood her correctly.
“I want to learn how to use the knife,” she said.
Meir-Anschil’s heart flooded with pride. The blood of shochetim runs through her veins, he thought, and then he recalled that morning, a year earlier, when he had found Fanny lying beneath the white sheet next to her deceased mother. The girl had held her mother’s hand and had not been dissuaded by the soul’s dance as it exited the body. She had felt a need to be the last person to bid farewell to the corpse, exactly the feeling that compelled Meir-Anschil to report for work at the gates of annihilation each and every morning. If there was one thing Meir-Anschil detested, it was the self-righteous who feed on meat but are disgusted by death and blood. They complain about the screams and screeches, and want to move the slaughterhouse out of the town to keep the stench of the carcasses at a distance. And then what do they serve at their tables?
It was unthinkable that a girl should learn the slaughterer’s trade, let alone a future wife and mother. Nevertheless, in complete breach of her father’s wishes and instructions, Fanny clung steadfastly to her plan, and Meir-Anschil began to notice worrying signs in his daughter’s behaviour. Firstly, although Mende knew how to patch clothes immaculately by now, Fanny had not learned a thing from Sondel Gordon. Secondly, Meir-Anschil saw her nosing about the slaughterhouse on two further occasions. Thirdly, on rainy days the roof began to leak in several places, and when Meir-Anschil climbed up to inspect it, he discovered that some of the tiles had been moved and not replaced properly. Fourthly, the letter opener that disappeared from the kitchen table was found in Fanny’s room. And fifthly, Meir-Anschil began to notice deep scratches on the furniture around the house.
Whatever Fanny could deny, she denied: the spying, the tiles, the scratches, and more. But when, one evening, he glanced into her room and saw her wielding the letter opener in her left hand and grabbing an imaginary creature in her right, Meir-Anschil knew that he was in deep trouble. However, a man like him does not give in to his distress, so he forbade that which he saw from continuing and accepted that which was hidden from his eyes, in the hope that the whim would pass. And then the rabbi came to see him on behalf of Sondel Gordon the tailor, who feared speaking with Meir-Anschil about his younger daughter, and yet was also concerned about the letter opener, which, it transpired, she had been using to dismember insects on the shop floor.
The rabbi made it clear to Meir-Anschil that he was speaking to him as one father to another. After all, Fanny had only recently lost her mother, and her refusal to learn to sew and her activities with the knife were surely indications that she was going through a difficult time. Best to pay special attention to her and perhaps even seek the help of a woman at home; the Almighty knows that a girl needs a mother. Anyway, let it be clear that he had no wish to interfere with the child’s upbringing. As far as he was concerned, she could even become a female shochet, should the honourable gentleman so choose. It was only that it was best to put her on the straight and narrow path and avoid sealing her fate because of a childish caprice, and hence . . .
“What do you mean, ‘she could even become a female sho-chet’?” Meir-Anschil demanded.
“I did not mean to offend,” the rabbi said.
“She can be a female shochet?”
“Forgive me,” the rabbi said, raising both his hands, “but that is not what this is about.”
“Women can perform religious slaughter, they can actually perform the act?”
“Well, it is best if they don’t. But never mind that. The thing is . . .”
“If that is so, then they are forbidden to practise it?”
“Well,” the rabbi mumbled, “there is no explicit prohibition, and our law permits it in principle, but important halakhic rulers have already recommended that women had best refrain from practising the trade, due to their timidity and frailty. But, mind you, that is not why I came to see the honourable gentleman; that is not what is at stake.”
The next day, Meir-Anschil invited Fanny to come to the slaughterhouse. The conditions were clear: she must watch and be silent. He gave her an old, oversized apron and seated her on a stool in the corner. This was how he himself had started at the age of ten; he remembered all too well being rushed back to his home twice on account of his vomiting and dizzy spells. In the evening, his father had come into his bedroom and said, “True, you will not have beauty in your world, but there will not be a thing that you and your family will need and not have.” He had loathed his father for saying this and had always felt tortured by the profession he had inherited. Now, he felt a faint pang of remorse for having not promptly stopped his daughter from following him down the same path.
“Are you ready?” he asked Fanny, hoping that she might yet change her mind.
She nodded.
He brought a proud brown ram into the pen. Meir-Anschil pushed it to the ground and bound three of its legs. The ram struggled with its head and kicked with its free leg, but the shochet skilfully avoided the blows. He brought the halaf to the neck of the bleating animal and, with a sharp, masterful gesture, he slit its trachea and oesophagus.
Meir-Anschil looked over at his daughter as the ram began to convulse in a pool of blood. Instead of seeking consolation in her father’s eyes, Fanny was riveted by the animal’s final twitches. She appeared not to feel any emotion or fear, but to consider the job as a kind of game. When he approached her with his stained apron, she stretched out her fingers to touch the blood, and when the ram had stopped moving, Meir-Anschil held her arm to show her how to move the knife. The girl stood in the pool of blood and stared at the ram’s neck, apparently ready to perform kosher slaughter herself.
“You do realise that this is an animal?” he asked her. “That was alive?”
“Yes, I realise that.”
She watched her father in tense anticipation, for months on end, waiting for the moment when she would leave the world of theory and step into the world of practice. In the meantime, she learned the procedure from her father and helped him spread earth over spilled blood. After more than a year, on her twelfth birthday, Meir-Anschil gave her a small knife for slaughtering chickens. Fanny was thrilled and sharpened it regularly, and even asked Mende to sew her a rag doll on which she could practise.
Mende flatly refused. As far as she was concerned, her father and sister had taken leave of their sanity. She concluded that she should spend more time with the family of Sondel Gordon the tailor instead. Mende knew that an increasing number of townspeople did not look favourably upon her younger sister’s tomfoolery, and that the day when they would take their custom elsewhere was not far off, and then her father’s business would run aground; and she, the eldest daughter, would not find a proper shidduch. She was therefore always courteous, avidly fulfilled the commandments and made sure to appear gentle and modest before any man she encountered. She knew that people had started calling her “Mende Gordon” behind her back, but she thought that this malicious nickname might work in her favour. At any rate, it was better than her sister’s nickname: “die vilde chaya”, the wild animal.
V
* * *
Whether or not Fanny was indeed a vilde chaya, she certainly demonstrated a rare talent for shechitah from her first attempt. Generally, those who are inexperienced shochetim are alarmed when a frightened rooster flaps its wings. They recoil from its snapping beak, and are taken aback by the bird’s indomitable will to live. Often, they end up cutting the throat with tr
embling hands, or even accidentally severing the rooster’s head. Fanny knew that the cut had to be firm and controlled, never frenzied. She would immobilise the rooster with one arm, grab the wings with her right hand and with two movements of her left hand, back and forth, she would slit the trachea and esophagus. Then, instead of leaving the rooster to agonise in a flapping of wings and legs in a bucket of blood, as is customary, she would hold it against her chest until she felt its soul leave her arms, and only then would she cover the blood with the earth, and smile at up her father.
Meir-Anschil watched his daughter with a pride that was mixed with trepidation. For two whole years, Fanny slaughtered – roosters and lambs mostly – and lo and behold: his customers loved her work. Jews from all across the district came to see the wonder with their own eyes, and there was no solid counter-argument, such as an explicit halakhic prohibition, which her detractors could use against her. Customers were not allowed into the slaughtering pen, but the prospect of seeing the slender girl with fair curls and wolf-like eyes in the slaughterhouse yard was persuasive enough for them to take the trouble to ride all the way to Grodno. They sated their imaginations in the taverns and rested their bodies in inns, and the residents of Grodno quickly realised that Meir-Anschil’s daughter was good for business. The marketplace makhers embellished the fable of the vilde chaya and told how she fearlessly seized the animals to produce kosher meat, and that no-one wielded the knife more skilfully than her. The Blessed Holy One guides the work of her left hand, so they said, and burnt offerings made with her meat bring a blessing upon diners and protect against the Evil Eye. Before long, there wasn’t a single person in Grodno, Jew or gentile, who did not want to take their livestock to be slaughtered by the vilde chaya.
The Slaughterman's Daughter Page 5
