Shosha

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Bashele’s dishes tasted as good as they had when I was a child. No one could give to the borscht such a sweet-and-sour zest as Bashele. She added spices to her dishes. She cooked cabbage with raisins and cream of tartar. She kept jars of cloves, saffron, crushed almonds, cinnamon, and ginger on her kitchen shelves.

  Bashele took everything in stride. I told her I had just become a vegetarian, and she asked no questions but began to provide meals for me consisting of fruit, eggs, and vegetables. Shosha would go into the alcove to take out her old playthings and lay them out for me as she had done twenty years before. During the meal Bashele and Shosha related all kinds of things. The stone over Yppe’s grave had tipped and was leaning on another tombstone. Bashele wanted to set it upright, but the cemetery watchman demanded fifty zlotys. Leizer the watchmaker had a clock with a brass bird that popped out every half hour and sang like a canary. He had a pen that wrote without being dipped in ink and a lens that could light a cigarette when held under the sun. Berl the furrier’s daughter had fallen in love with the son of the proprietor of the tough guys’ den at No. 6. The mother didn’t want to go to the wedding, but the rabbi who came after my father, Joshua the preacher, said this would be a sin. In No. 8, a ditch was dug and they found a dead Russian sapper, with a sword and a revolver. The uniform wasn’t yet ruined and medals were still pinned to its lapel. Each time I asked for a person on Krochmalna Street, Bashele knew all about him or her. Most had died. Of those who were still living, many had moved to the provinces or gone to America. One beggar who died in the street was found to be carrying a pouch with golden ducats dating back to the Russian occupation. A whore had been visited by a man from Cracow. He paid her one zloty and went with her to her cellar room. The next day he came again and the day after that, too, and so day after day. He had fallen in love with her. He divorced his wife and married the whore.

  Shosha listened in silence. Suddenly she blurted, ‘She lives in No. 9. She became a decent woman.’

  It would seem that Shosha understood such things. I glanced at her and she blushed. ‘Tell me, Shosha,’ I asked, ‘did anyone ever propose a match to you?’

  Shosha put down her spoon. ‘They offered me one with a tinsmith from No. 5. His wife died and a matchmaker came to see me.’

  Bashele shook her head. ‘Why not tell him about the store manager who wanted you?’

  ‘Who was this manager?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he worked in a store on Mead Street. A short fellow with a lot of black hair. I didn’t like him,’ Shosha said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He had black teeth. When he laughed, it sounded like “ech, ech, ech, hee, hee, hee.” ’

  As Shosha mimicked the man’s laughter, she started laughing herself. Then she grew serious and said, ‘I can’t marry without love.’

  2

  No, Shosha hadn’t remained completely a child. I kissed her when her mother went shopping and she kissed me back. Her face glowed. I put her on my lap and she kissed my lips and played with my earlobes.

  She said, ‘Arele, I never forgot you. Mama laughed at me. “He doesn’t even know you exist any more,” she told me. “He probably has a fiancée by now, or a wife and children.” Yppe died, and Teibele went to school. The frosts came, but Teibele always got up early, washed her face, and took her books. She got good grades. Mama was kind to me but she didn’t buy me a dress or shoes. When she got angry she said, “Too bad you didn’t die instead of Yppe!” Don’t repeat this – she would kill me. During the war Mama began to sell crockery – glasses, ashtrays, saucers, and things like that. She took up a place between the First and the Second Market. She sat there every day and earned next to nothing – a few pfennigs or a mark. I was left alone. They think that I’m a child because I’m small, but I understand everything. Daddy has another woman. He lives with her on Nizka Street. He comes home maybe once every three months. He comes in, counts out some money, and starts right in to yell. He goes to Teibele’s – to where she lives. He says, “She is my daughter.” Sometimes he sends the money by her.’

  ‘What does your father do? How does he earn money?’

  Shosha’s face grew solemn. ‘It’s not allowed to say.’

  ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘I can’t tell anybody.’

  ‘Shosha, I swear by God I won’t tell a soul.’

  Shosha sat down on a stool next to me and clasped my legs. ‘With the dead.’

  ‘In the burial society?’

  ‘Yes, there. First he worked in a wine and spirits store. When the boss died, the sons pushed him out. On Grzybowska Street there is a society, The True Mercy, and they bury the dead. The boss there went to cheder with Papa.’

  ‘Your father drives a hearse?’

  ‘No, a car. This is a kind of car that if someone dies in Mokotów or Szmulewizna, Papa goes and brings him to Warsaw. He has gotten a gray beard but he dyes it and it’s black again. The sweetheart – that’s what they call her – is with the society, too. Swear that you’ll tell nobody.’

  ‘Shoshele, whom would I tell? Who of my friends knows you?’

  ‘Mama thinks that no one knows, but they know. There was a lot of trouble about drying the wash in the attic. If you hang it out to dry in the courtyard, it’s stolen. Also, a policeman comes and gives a ticket. Whenever it’s wash time, a brawl breaks out. The women curse and sometimes hit each other. There isn’t enough room for everybody. One woman who sells cracked eggs cut a line with wash hanging on it and all the shirts fell down. The others beat her and she ran to snitch to the cops. Oh, there was such a fuss I had to laugh. The woman got mad at Mama and she yelled, “Go to the dead, with your husband’s sweetheart, and rot with them together!” When Mama came home she got spasms. They had to call the barber-surgeon. If Mama knew that I told you, she’d scream terribly.’

  ‘Shosha, I’ll tell no one.’

  ‘Why did he leave Mama? I saw her once, that sweetheart. She has a voice like a man. It was winter and Mama got sick. We were left without a groschen. You’re sure you want to hear?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘We had to call a doctor, but there was no money for medicine. Or for anything else. Yechiel Nathan, the owner of the grocery store, was still in No. 13 then. You remember him, eh? We used to do all our shopping from them.’

  ‘I should say so. He used to pray in the Neustat prayer house.’

  ‘Oh, you remember everything! It’s good to talk with you – the others know nothing. We were always in debt to them, and when Mama sent me for a loaf of bread, the wife looked into a long ledger and said, “Enough credit.” I went home, and when I told Mama, she began to cry. She fell asleep and I didn’t know what to do. I knew that the society was on Grzybowska Street and I thought maybe Papa would be there. So I went. The windowpanes were white as milk, and a black sign read THE TRUE MERCY. I was afraid to go inside – suppose corpses lay there? I’m a terrible coward. You remember when Yocheved died?’

  ‘Yes, Shoshele.’

  ‘They lived on our floor and I was afraid to pass their door at night. During the day too, because it was dark in the hall. At night I dreamed of her.’

  ‘Shoshele, I dream about Yocheved till this day.’

  ‘You do? She was a little child. What was wrong with her?’

  ‘Scarlet fever.’

  ‘You know it all! If you hadn’t gone away I wouldn’t have gotten sick. I had no one to talk to. Everyone laughed at me. Yes, white panes with black letters. I opened the door and no corpses were lying there. It was a nice room – an office they call it. There was a little window in a wall and people were talking and laughing behind it. An old man carried glasses of tea on a tray. Someone at the little window asked, “What do you want?” and I told him who I was and that Mama was sick. A woman with yellow hair came in. Her face and hands were covered with freckles. The man said to her, “This girl is asking about you.” She glared at me and said, “Who are you?” And I told her. She yelled, “If you ever come h
ere and bother me again I’ll tear out your guts, you little no-good!” She said some filthy words, too. She mentioned that which a girl has – you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wanted to run away, but she opened her purse and dug up some money. When Papa found out about it, he came here and hollered so loud the whole courtyard could hear. He grabbed me by my pigtail and dragged me through the house and spat on me. For three years, maybe, he didn’t talk to me when he visited. Mama was angry at me, too. Everyone hollered at me and that’s how the years went by. Arele, I could sit with you for a hundred years and not yet finish telling you all of it. Here in our courtyard it’s worse than in No. 10. There were bad kids there, too, but they wouldn’t beat a girl. They called me names, sometimes they tripped me, but that’s all. Remember how we played with nuts on Passover?’

  ‘Yes, Shosha.’

  ‘Where was the hole?’

  ‘Inside the gate.’

  ‘We played and I won them all. I cleaned you out. I wanted to give you back your nuts, but you wouldn’t take them. Velvel the tailor made me a new dress and Mama ordered a pair of shoes from Michael the shoemaker. Suddenly, pious Ytzchokl came out and began to yell at you, “The rabbi’s son plays with a girl! You dreadful boy, I’m going to tell your father this minute and he’ll pull out your ears.” Do you remember this?’

  ‘As it happens, this is something I don’t remember.’

  ‘He chased you and you ran. In those days, Papa still came home all the time. A sheet of matzohs hung in our house. Mama had rendered chicken fat after Hanukkah and we ate so many scraps our bellies nearly burst. They had made you a new gabardine. Oh, look how I’ve been chattering away! In No. 10 it wasn’t so bad – here, the thugs throw such big rocks they once made a hole in a girl’s head. One fellow dragged a girl down the cellar. She screamed, but if you scream in No. 7, no one bothers to see what’s wrong. A lot of the hoodlums carry knives. Mama always says, “Don’t mix in.” Here, if you stick up for someone, you could get stabbed. He did, you know what, to the girl.’

  ‘And he wasn’t jailed for it?’

  ‘A policeman came and wrote in a book and that was that. The fellow – Pavsach is his name – ran away. They run away and the policeman forgets what he has written. Sometimes they send the policeman to another street, or to the higher numbers here. When the Germans came, they threw all the bullies and thieves in jail. Later, they let them all out again. People thought it would get better under the Poles, but they take bribes, too. You slip a zloty into the policeman’s hand and he erases what he wrote down.’

  Shosha stood up. ‘Arele, you must never go away again. When you are here, I become healthy.’

  3

  We took a stroll and Shosha clung to my arm. Her fingers stroked my hand, each finger fondling me in a separate fashion. Warmth spread over me and a prickling hair zigzagged across my spine. I barely kept from kissing her in the street. We stopped before every store. Asher the dairyman was still living. His beard had turned gray. This man who rode each day to the train depot to fetch cans of milk was a charitable person, my father’s good friend. When we left Warsaw, my father owed him twenty-five rubles. Father went to say goodbye to him and to apologize for his debt, but Asher took fifty German marks from his purse and gave them to Father.

  I was supposed to be sitting polishing the play; instead, I was walking with Shosha through the narrow gate of No. 12 to seek out my chum, Berish’s son, Mottel. Shosha didn’t know him – he belonged to a later period of my life. In the courtyard, I passed by the Radzymin and the Novominsk prayer houses. Afternoon services were already in progress. I wanted to leave Shosha for a minute and look inside to see which of the Hasidim remained alive from among those I had known, but she held on to my arm and wouldn’t let go. She was afraid to remain alone in the courtyard. She had not forgotten the old tales of pimps who rode around in carriages snatching girls to sell into white slavery in Buenos Aires. I didn’t dare bring a girl into a Hasidic prayer house while the congregation was praying. Only on Simchas Torah were girls allowed inside a house of worship, or when a relative was deathly ill and the family gathered to pray before the holy ark.

  A Gentile man carrying a long pipe at the end of which a flame flared went from lamp post to lamp post lighting the street lamps. A pale light fell over the crowds. They shouted, jostled, pushed. Girls laughed noisily. At every other gate stood streetwalkers, beckoning to the men.

  I didn’t find my friend Mottel. I climbed the dark stairs to where his father lived with his second wife and knocked on the door, but no one answered. Shosha began to shiver. I stopped with her on the landing and kissed her. I pressed her close and thrust my hand inside her blouse and felt her tiny breasts.

  She began to tremble. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘Shoshele, when you love, such things are permitted.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I want you to be mine!’

  ‘For real?’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I’m so small. I can’t write.’

  ‘I don’t need your writing.’

  ‘Arele, people will laugh at you.’

  ‘I’ve longed for you all these years.’

  ‘Oh, Arele! Is this true?’

  ‘Yes. As soon as I saw you, I knew that I really haven’t loved anyone till now.’

  ‘Have you had many girls?’

  ‘Not many, but I’ve slept with some.’

  Shosha seemed to think it over. ‘Did you do it with this actress from America?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When? Before you came to me?’

  I should have answered yes. Instead, I heard myself say, ‘I slept with her the night after we met.’ I regretted my words immediately, but confessing and boasting had become a habit with me. Perhaps I learned it from Feitelzohn or in the Writers’ Club. I’ve lost her, I thought. Shosha tried to move away from me, but I held her tight. I had the feeling of a gambler who risks all he possesses in a game, yet makes himself remain quiet. I could hear the pounding of Shosha’s heart behind her little left breast.

  ‘Why did you do it? You love her?’

  ‘No, Shoshele. I can do it without love.’

  ‘This is what they do – you know who I mean.’

  ‘The whores and the pimps. That’s what we’re all becoming, but I’m still able to love you.’

  ‘Do you have others, too?’ Shosha asked after a pause.

  ‘It happens. I don’t want to lie to you.’

  ‘No, Arele. You don’t need to fool me. I love you as you are. But don’t tell Mama. She would raise a fuss and spoil my happiness.’

  I had expected Shosha to demand details about my affair with Betty. I was ready to give them to her, as well as the fact that I made love to Tekla, though she had a fiancé in the army to whom I wrote letters for her. But Shosha seemed to have forgotten what I told her or to have dismissed it as of no importance. Was she born with the instinct for sharing Feitelzohn talked about? We continued our walk and we came out on Mirowska Street. The fruit stores had closed, but the sidewalk was littered with straw, slats from broken crates, and tissue paper used to wrap oranges. In the First Market, workers were hosing down the tiled floor. The merchants and customers had already dispersed, but the echoes of their shouts hung in the air. In my time, non-kosher sea creatures without scales or fins used to swim here in enormous tubs. The storekeepers sold lobsters and frogs, which Gentiles ate. Huge electric lights lit the market through the night. I led Shosha into a niche and clasped her shoulders. ‘Shoshele, do you want me?’

  ‘Oh, Arele, do you still have to ask?’

  ‘You’ll sleep with me?’

  ‘With you – yes.’

  ‘Did anyone ever kiss you?’

  ‘Never. Some lout tried to once, but I ran away. He threw a chunk of wood at me.’

  Suddenly I had the urge to show off in front of Shosha, to spend money on her. ‘Shosha, you said just now that you would do whatever I told y
ou.’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘I want to take you to the Saxony Gardens. I want to ride with you in a droshky.’

  ‘The Saxony Gardens? They don’t allow Jews there.’

  I knew what she meant – under the Russians, Jews in long gabardines and women in wigs or bonnets had been banned from the park by policemen guarding the gates. But the Poles had since rescinded that order. Besides, I was wearing modern dress. I assured Shosha that we were allowed to go wherever we chose.

  Shosha said, ‘Why take a droshky? We can take “streetcar No. 11.” Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes, go on foot.’

  ‘It’s a shame to waste money. Mama says, “Every groschen counts.” You spend a zloty for the droshky and how long is the ride? Maybe half an hour. If you have bundles that’s another story.’

  ‘Have you ever ridden in a droshky?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Today you shall ride in a droshky with me. I have a pocketful of zlotys. I told you, I’m writing a play – a theater piece – and they’ve given me three hundred dollars. I’ve already spent a hundred and twenty of it, but I’ve got a hundred and eighty left. A dollar is worth nine zlotys.’

  ‘Don’t talk so loud. You could be robbed. Once they tried to rob a man from the country, and when he fought, they stabbed him.’

  We walked down Mirowska Street on the way to Iron Gate Square. On one side was the First Market, on the other a long row of flat shacks where Gentile cobblers sold shoes, boots, even footwear with raised heels and soles for the lame. They were closing up shop for the night.

  Shosha said, ‘Mama is right. God Himself sent you to me. I’ve already told you about Leizer the watchmaker. Mama wanted to arrange a match between us, but I said, “I’ll stay single.” He’s the best watchmaker in all Warsaw. You give him a broken watch and he’ll fix it so it will run for years. He saw your name in the paper and he came to us and said, “Shosha, regards from your fiancé.” That’s what he called you. When he said this, I knew that you would come to me one day. He says he knew your daddy.’