by Ezra Glinter
Trochim, meanwhile, could not understand what he had done wrong. It made no sense to him. Confused and concerned, he scratched his ear. He made a mournful face and asked in Polish, “What’s wrong? Why are you yelling, Miss? Did I hit you? Did I steal your goat?”
With great curiosity, Velvel regarded the poor innocent loaf of bread that was now forbidden. He tried to see what made it nonkosher, but could find nothing. It was a warm loaf of bread, brown and glossy, sprinkled with fragrant caraway seeds, just like all the other loaves. But nevertheless . . . when Trochim had touched it, he had divulged to it the secret of the forbidden. The secret loomed over it. His mother must be afraid of it. If not, why would she have yelled at Trochim so much?
“Mama, Mama, there’s nothing wrong with it! Look, nothing got on the bread!”
“Do you want to be excommunicated? Dear God in heaven! As if the bread wasn’t enough to deal with. Who asked you to weigh in? Just wait until your father gets home . . .”
In the end, Mama Feyge worked out a deal with Trochim: he would buy the bread from her for half off. Bread, that had cost her thirty groschen to make, she would sell to him for twenty . . . no, fifteen! Okay? She placed the loaf on Trochim’s side table (the one meant for nonkosher food), silently wishing he would choke on it, and left in a huff. Trochim followed her, still arguing. Velvel grew nervous. He looked around—no one was there. Quietly and with great delicacy, he crept towards the nonkosher bread, which beckoned to him with a forbidden, secretive smile, crackling quietly as it cooled. In a flash, he bent over the table and licked the bread’s browned crust, his heart pounding. See? He knew it! If he wasn’t mistaken, the bread had no particular unfamiliar taste. Where was the taste of the forbidden? Why had his mother been so frightened?
He took one more lick, but still could detect nothing out of the ordinary . . .
He heard footsteps. Someone was coming! Velvel spun around and crept out of the kitchen.
III
VELVEL COULD NOT erase the image of those neat squares of pale meat from his stubborn head.
A year later, a new baby was born in Papa Uri’s house. They named him Yerachemielke. Mama hired an elderly Polish woman to help care for him. This seventy-odd-year-old woman, who had light gray eyes in a large head, was always wrapped in a red shawl—a complicated one, with tassels and folds, like you see in Belorussia. This lady was very familiar and casual with everyone, even Papa Uri. She would stuff baby Yerachemielke with porridge and milk until he could barely move. She kissed him and hugged him as though he were her own baby, all the while cursing her daughter-in-law, who had driven her out of her own house, forcing to her leave her own village, her own garden, where she had planted onions and cucumbers as a child. And now . . . now she was forced to serve in a stranger’s house, among Jews.
This old lady would secretly buy Velvel sour apples whenever she went to the market. But at the same time, she would always tell on him to his mother and father whenever she knew that he was up to something. And Velvel, who was now becoming a teenager, would pay her back in kind. He would steal whiskey and bread for her from the cupboard, but also lose his temper from time to time and throw her tattered boots at her, calling her an old witch as she fled.
Frequently she and Velvel would find themselves in deep philosophical discussion about the differences between their religions. She showed Velvel her old brass cross—a strange bauble, decorated with blue glass beads. She said she had inherited it from her great-great-grandmother, who had walked on foot to Kiev on pilgrimage. Tremendously impressed, Velvel touched it tremblingly with a pinky finger, then went to show her his father’s tefillin. 79 He showed her how Jews wore them in prayer. This was how they wrapped the straps, did she see? This was how they wore the one that goes on the head. Did she understand? Afterwards, they would roll up their left sleeve. Look! The old woman nodded her bushy head, not understanding a word, regarding Velvel with wonder and suspicion, like one would an underage magician.
“Aha! Aha!” she would answer him in the provincial manner, open-mouthed, after every word, indicating that she understood very well.
“Aha! Aha!”
In the end, she permitted herself to touch, with great respect, the letter shin that adorned the box that was worn on the head. Clicking with her tongue, she asked quietly, “So this is your cross?”
Almost every Sunday her son Mikita would visit her. Mikita was tall and thin. His cheekbones were sharp and shiny, his nose fleshy and haughty. When he turned to you, the first thing you noticed was his large nostrils, and after that—his small, pale blue eyes.
Every time Mikita arrived with his coarse shoes and his broad hello, he brought with him an unfamiliar scent, peculiar to gentiles, into Papa Uri’s house. It was the scent of barns, and leather, and cheap Russian tobacco, and tilled fields. Mama Feyge would get cross, and Papa Uri would smoke a cigarette right away. But it didn’t bother Velvel. Something about Mikita attracted him, and he waited impatiently to see him on Sundays, arriving in his sheepskin coat. Velvel was strangely drawn to this coat, which was a dark red in the front, with a yellow patch on the back. He liked touching the leather outside, which had hardened from rain and snow. He liked touching the soft sheepskin inside.
And Mikita did what he came to do. Dear “Matka” would lovingly call his elderly mother “nonna,” and use every trick in the book to wheedle her out of her meagre earnings. He would cross himself and swear to pay her back, beating his chest in self-reproach at his past failures in this regard, going on and on to such a degree that in the end his mother, silent and defeated, would hand over her few pennies. As soon as he was out the door, his mother would start cursing a blue streak, damning her deadbeat son and wretched daughter-in-law to the seven hells.
When they served Mikita tea, he would pour it into the china cup little by little, gripping the saucer with both hands, as though afraid someone was going to take it away from him. Without lifting it from the table, he would slurp the tea with deep sighs of contentment. Holding a cube of sugar in his teeth, he would exhale a cloud of hot steam, while wiping sweat from his brow with his coarse linen sleeve. He would take such huge bites of bread that each one sent a shiver down Velvel’s back.
After drinking tea with sugar and eating a good bit of bread, Mikita would grow lighthearted. He would take out his copper pipe, stuff it slowly with Russian tobacco, call over Fayvke, Velvel’s five-year-old brother, and ask him in Polish for a match. The little one would stand silently, abashed and afraid, put his little finger in his mouth, sneak out quietly and run to his mother, crying his heart out. From the other room, Mikita would try to make up with him, saying in broken Yiddish, “Aw, little boy! What, you scared? I want only . . . you good . . . just . . . give match!” He laughed, rattling off a nonsensical string of Yiddish words, trying to soothe the boy.
But with an older child, like nine-year-old Velvel, he spoke very intelligently. “Among your people,” he would say meaningfully, “everyone eats challah, challah and more challah. You could eat fifteen challahs and still not be satisfied! Maybe even more!” At this point, Mikita would show Velvel a tiny pinch of bread with his dirty fingernails. “With us, in Makorovke (this was the name of his village), after this much, you hear, ‘Enough brother, you’ve had your piece, it’s enough.’” And he would wave his hand dismissively in front of his nose, so Velvel would understand exactly how he felt.
Sometimes he would tell them a tale about one of his best pigs, who had gotten sick. He had started dragging his hind legs, poor thing. He told him (Mikita told the nonkosher animal, that is), “Do you really want to die like this, and waste my money? Cursed beast!” One blow with a wooden cudgel and it was over. He salted the meat to save it for the holidays. It was good meat. But after they ate it, they all got sick, dragging their limbs, just as the pig had. Everyone had it. What a sickness it was! This “listeria” was a terrible thing. His little daughter Marina had gotten sick from it, and wasn’t able to eat a thing, not bread wi
th herring, not cabbage, not blintzes with sour cream. He had gone to town and bought her a pastry with raisins, and even that she wouldn’t touch. “So,” he said, “She died.” Just like that!
Before he left, Velvel wrapped up a big piece of challah for him, and Mikita would thank him with a clap on the shoulder from his great paw.
“Visit us in Makorovke sometime, little one! We’ll serve you potatoes with fresh dill and sour cream!”
Of course, Velvel could have the same potatoes with sour cream at home. But still . . . Why did some part of him faint with desire to visit Mikita in Makorovke? Why did he long for Mikita’s potatoes, for fresh sour cream?
If only his father was nicer! Then he would let him go and visit!
But his father was not nice, and did not let him go.
One day Velvel overheard Mikita telling his mother, Yerachmielke’s nanny, that he would bring her some pork next Sunday. Unconsciously, a shudder went through him, and he kept it in mind, and waited impatiently . . . What did Mikita’s pork really have to do with him, who would be a yeshiva student soon? And yet, he waited . . .
IV
THE NEXT SUNDAY, when Velvel came home from school for lunch, he found the nanny a little tipsy. In a tremulous voice, she lovingly related that her son Mikita had only just left. He had shared a bottle of whiskey with her, told her how much he missed her, said he wanted her to come back home to Makorovke soon, and brought her a present of roast pork. A lovely piece, too! It was right over there, under the sofa in the nursery, in a pot. What a son he was, after all! It was just that wife of his, the wretched woman, may she rot in a pit, and so on, and so forth.
The boy ate his lunch without tasting it. He kept finding reasons to go into the nursery, and stole glances at the package under the couch each time, before slipping back out. Finally, Mama Feyge got tired of his running back and forth, and shouted, “Don’t you have to get back to school?”
When Velvel came home in the evening, the house was quiet. His father was still at synagogue, his mother was at the market, the nanny and the baby were sleeping, and his little brother was playing quietly by himself in the kitchen. He snuck into the nursery, crept under the sofa and quietly lifted the pot lid. He looked inside the pot and caught a glimpse of a glistening piece of meat, wrapped in a simple linen cloth. Suddenly frightened, he replaced the lid and left.
In the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep, and the nanny was snoring in the nursery, Velvel suddenly awoke, as though someone had shaken him. He tried to get back to sleep, but could not. “The pot . . . the pot . . .” Slowly, Velvel slunk out of bed, went back to the sofa, went down on all fours, and looked into the pot with terror and trembling, as though he were leaning precariously, staring into a terrifying black abyss. Under the sofa it was black as pitch. It was so dark he could not see the pot, yet he felt it there in the secretive blackness. Sensed it, like a cat sensing a mouse. His white shirt glowed palely in the darkness. He didn’t dare to actually touch the pot. He couldn’t say why not.
Several days passed, but the thought of the pot still tormented him. The pot, and the secret that lay inside it . . . The secret! Velvel tried to form a clear image in his mind of what was inside the pot. He thought maybe it was like a kind of honeyed pastry, a taste that was out of this world. They said that eating pork made people healthy, healthy as a horse . . . That was what they said. Perhaps it would give him a healthy red glow like he had seen among the Polish children. Healthy!
Velvel woke early in the morning and tried to concentrate on thoughts of his teacher, of prayer, of studying Talmud . . . but he quickly grew bored, and yawned. But as soon as he thought about the pot and its mystery, suddenly he grew limber and lithe, and sprung out of bed to get dressed, quick as could be.
Velvel began making preparations for his “sin.” The devil alone knew how a nine-year-old boy could suddenly become so clever and calculating, so cold-blooded that no one in the house suspected him of a thing. He understood right away, for example, that it would be difficult for him to take a piece from the large roast in the pot. To sneak over to the sofa, take off the lid, unwrap the linen that protected it, take out the whole roast and cut off a small slice with a knife that he would need to have hidden in his pocket—all that would not be easy. Someone might interrupt him, or the old crone might notice that something was missing. What a present Mikita had sent! Now he had to be sharp and clever, lest his adventure be exposed.
He summoned all his patience and began to wait for the old woman to break into the pot on her own. It seemed she was worried that it would not be enough for her, so she cut the roast into smaller and smaller pieces, to pace herself. This was her nature, and she did this with everything: bread, meat, pickles. Very likely there would be some left over, and he could just take a tiny bit—she wouldn’t notice a thing! He found a paper bag in which to store his future treasure, and took to keeping it in his pocket. Velvel had always been a very neat person, so no one wondered why he might have a little bag with him to store something.
Another day passed. Now it was Thursday. When Velvel came home from school for lunch, he saw that the old Polish woman had taken her gleaming white roast out of the pot. She cut off eight small slices for her lunch, wrapped up the rest in its linen, put the pot back in its place, and sat down to eat. She chewed slowly, absorbed in her food. Her wrinkled cheeks and creased temples moved in tandem, jumping and bending like the parts of a machine. Her chewing was driving Velvel crazy. She didn’t care that any moment his mother would order him back to school. But Velvel kept his composure. He leafed mindlessly through an ornamented book, stealing glances all the while at the pieces on her plate. He was afraid she would ruin this for him by eating everything up. He knew her, after all. What if she cleaned her plate, the old crone? May she rot. His mother was always saying, after all, that she was eating them out of house and home. Velvel had heard her say that not too long ago. But wait! She was crossing herself. She untied the strings of her apron and hiccuped. Three whole pieces of pork were left over from her lunch! She stood up and sighed. Looking piously up at the ceiling, she put the three leftover pieces back in the pot, not even bothering to wrap them back up in the linen.
Velvel grew hot with anticipation. Soon he would achieve his goal. Part of him still didn’t want to, but nevertheless he would. But his mother ruined it. She arrived in the nursery, her sleeves rolled up, with a broom in her hands, breathing heavily. It looked like she had just been in a fight with someone. As soon as she saw Velvel, she unleashed all her pent-up rage, screaming at him and waving her broom. “Get to school! Why are you hanging around here, driving me crazy! You should be in school!”
Velvel sprang to his feet and rushed to school. His face was still flushed and his heart contracted with desire. The afternoon dragged on interminably—the same dour teacher with his quick ruler, the same afternoon prayers, after that the evening prayers, a typical dinner, and then bedtime with the same snoring coming from the nursery. Velvel was afraid to approach the pot at night. Under the sofa a tiny black, clever, demon awaited him, licking the pot with its sharp tongue, and staring up at him with shrewd eyes.
V
THE NEXT DAY, Friday, Velvel had only a half-day at school. He was freed at two o’clock and came home to a light pre-Sabbath lunch. He ate without appetite, and then wandered around the house aimlessly. He kept taking naps in his nicely made bed, or playing listlessly with his little brother. In his agitation, the repetitive tunes of the Torah verses they were learning in school echoed in his head like a drill.
“Mama! Do you know how they make a shalsheles?” 80 he asked suddenly.
“A shal- whatsit?”
“Shaallshellles,” he dragged the word out for emphasis.
“Go bother your brother!”
Velvel walked away, not feeling a shred of guilt. His head was foggy, and he felt flushed. He was waiting for the nursery to be empty. Every so often, he would peek into the kitchen, where the enticing smell
s of peppered fish and baked apples were beginning to fill the air. There he practiced quietly lifting a lid so that no one would hear. But his mother heard, and gave him a push out the door along with a curse and a threat that his father would hear all about what he was up to. Velvel was never left alone in the nursery even for one second. The bastards! As soon as the nanny would leave, his mother would rush in. When his mother left, Fayvke would roll his little wooden wagon in. “Voom! Voom!” Now, of all times, he had to play wagon driver! When Velvel tried to drive him away, he responded with hysterical cries, as though Velvel had pinched him. His cries brought the nanny and his mother rushing back in. The springtime sun was already setting into the distant woods. Late afternoon rays poured red light over the village’s shingled roofs. As if in spite, someone asked Velvel to clean his father’s boots. After that he had to quickly get ready, wash his hair with steaming hot water, put on his nice pants for the Sabbath and run out and buy candles, which his mother had forgotten to buy, as she always did.
When he returned, he found himself once again in the nursery.
Shhhh! This time, no one was there. The baby slept, moving his lips silently. Little soul! The only thing he knew to dream about was a bottle of milk. A cow mooed, somewhere far off. Hush, cow!
Quickly, Velvel dropped to his knees next to the couch, still in his nice Sabbath clothes. His mother would see! He grabbed the paper sack out of his pocket and adroitly removed the lid from the pot. Soon he felt one of the small squares of meat touch his hand. As though it were dangerous, Velvel flung it into his paper bag, careful and swift, barely touching it. The bag went back into his pocket. It was done!
Velvel looked around—nothing. The clay pot stood in its place like an idol. It was silent. Could it be that nothing had happened? But his heart was pounding hard. He could hardly swallow.
