by Bart Midwood
In the yard he called for Mordecai and Anchel.
“Put on boots,” he said. When they had done so, he gave each a shovel, and he took two more shovels, one for Blima and one for himself, and they went up to the grassy knoll beyond the garden and dug fourteen graves. Together they carried the bodies one at a time to the graves. Blima had the two boys gather fourteen flat sticks and she took a carving knife from Eli’s belt. On each stick she carved a name to mark the grave. Then Eli said the prayer for the dead and they covered the graves and went to the house.
They found Surah by the stove, sitting alone.
“Where’s the baby?” said Blima.
“She was hungry, crying.”
“So?”
“The Gypsy children said you must feed her with the breast.”
“Yes? So?”
“They said they would take her to you and I should watch the stove, make the fire bigger, because it is cold in the house. See what a good fire I made?”
Blima put one hand on her throat and ran outside.
“Rivka, Rivka!” she cried.
She rushed about the yard wildly, looking now in the front, now in the back.
Eli came out and took her by the arm.
“Go in the house,” he said.
“My baby!” she cried.
“Go in! I will find the baby.”
He took the rifle from her. And he went in the house and took his hat from a hook on the wall and went out again at once and set off toward the hills in the south.
“Mordecai, go with your father!” said Blima.
Blima prepared a stew. She chopped meat and vegetables angrily and threw them into a pot. While the pot simmered on the stove, she sat in a corner and prayed, muttering aloud. When night fell, she served the stew to the two children.
“It’s bitter, Mama,” said Surah.
“Eat,” said Blima wearily and she drew a chair close to the front door and sat down and listened to the rain.
Surah looked into her bowl uncertainly. After a while tears came to her eyes and she ate no more. Anchel tried to eat a few spoonfuls but he too left almost all his portion. Soon the two children went to bed and fell asleep.
Blima listened to the rain for a long time. It went on and on. When the clock on the wall had just passed twelve, she heard footsteps outside and the voices of Eli and Mordecai.
Quickly she opened the door for them and at once her heart sank, not only at the sorry spectacle of their condition, at their muddy tattered clothes and so on, but at the way they were gazing at her, so stupidly, like visitors uncertain of their welcome. Eli’s handkerchief was tied in a knot around Mordecai’s right hand.
“A jackal, she bit him,” said Eli. “She kept the teeth in the flesh until I shot her.”
“Come in the house,” said Blima.
Once Eli and Mordecai came in, she pushed them close to the stove and stripped off their clothes and dried them with a thick towel, roughly, as if she would scrape the skin from their bones.
“Get whisky for his hand,” said Eli.
Blima untied the handkerchief from Mordecai’s hand and poured whisky on his wound, which was deep, down to the bone, three toothmarks on the back of the hand and four on the big mound of the palm. Also she poured whisky down his throat, a cupful, holding him tightly by the hair at the back of the neck. Then she drew his bed nearer to the stove, and he lay down, trembling with fever and chills, and she covered him with four blankets.
Eli put on a flannel night shirt and sat at the table with the whisky and drank some. After a while Blima joined him. They talked in whispers and he told her about the search. He and Mordecai looked in all the caves in the hills, he said. They even crossed the river with rushing water up to Mordecai’s neck. They went east and west and everywhere else, but nowhere could they find a sign of the Gypsies, not a mark in the ground, nothing.
“They vanished!” he said. “Like spirits!”
At this Blima began to weep. She wept and wept. Meanwhile Eli sat quietly and watched her.
When she was done, she looked at him and said, “This is enough. I want to leave.”
“We should wait a little,” said Eli gently.
“No.”
“Maybe the Gypsies will come back. Maybe they will bring the baby.”
“They won’t.”
“I say ‘maybe.’”
“And maybe they will come back and take Surah too! And Anchel!”
Eli waited a moment, then said, “Only two more years.”
“I can’t.”
“Two years, Blima, and we will own the land. Then I will sell. We’ll be rich.”
“No more. I can’t.”
“If we leave now, we’ll have nothing. Money for passage, that’s all.”
“Ten years we worked here. We should have something for the land.”
“In the grant papers the Baron says twelve years.”
“So let him change the papers.”
“This can’t be done. This is business.”
“Can you not write to the Baron and say to him, ‘Listen! Ten years we slaved in Argentina. Let us sell at least a portion. Divide the land in twelve parts and let us sell ten!’”
“He won’t do it.”
“Why shouldn’t he do it? He is a philanthropist, no?”
“He gives the land so Jewish people should settle in the New World, so we should have property, a place of our own. If I write and say I want to sell, he will say this is against his purpose.”
“Does he know what it means to work in such a wilderness, this Baron? No! So what right does he have to bend us to his purpose? Is he the Devil or what!”
In the morning Blima was the first to awake. After she looked at Mordecai and found him sleeping peacefully, she started the fire in the stove and made tea. Then she began to pack clothes, pots, pans, one thing and another in the three wooden trunks that had stood against the back wall as benches for the last ten years.
When Eli and the children awoke, she told them to get busy and help with the packing, but nobody obeyed and there followed a terrible dispute, which ended with Blima running about the room, picking up now a pot, now a shoe, now a clay jar, anything she could get her hands on, and flinging it either at the wall or at Eli.
“Out, out!” shouted Eli to the children and they ran outside and watched from the doorstep, as their father ran about the room after their mother. In the end he caught her by both arms and dug his fingers into the skin until she gave up, collapsing against his chest in tears. Then he led her to a chair by the table and brought her a cup of tea and began to talk to her quietly, soothingly, as if to a child.
Suddenly the boys began to shout.
“Gypsies!” cried Mordecai. “See, Papa? They’re coming back!”
Blima rushed to the doorway, wiping her eyes quickly on her sleeve. She squinted at the pasture.
“That is not the Gypsies,” she said.
“It is, Mama, it is!” cried Anchel.
“No! Those are the peasants from the village.”
“How can you tell from such a distance?” said Eli.
“I see with my eyes.”
“The children too have eyes. Young eyes.”
“The children see as children. If these are Gypsies, where are the wagons?”
“Perhaps they left the wagons behind.”
“No, Eli, look and understand. Here you see maybe forty or fifty people. Half of them ride horses and donkeys. The Gypsies did not have so many animals. And look how these people move. They move as only the peasants move. And look at the hats on the men. The Gypsies do not wear such hats.”
Soon the caravan arrived in the yard. They were peasants from the nearby village, about fifty in all. A tall man on a black horse was the leader. This was Tomaso. He had drooping mustaches and a long face.
“Welcome,” said Eli.
“Never mind the welcome,” said Tomaso, his eyes flashing with contempt. “Where are my people that work for you?”
Though he addressed Eli, it was Blima who replied.
“I will show you,” she said, and she led the peasants to the grassy knoll.
“All were killed in the storm,” she said; then she pointed at each grave marker and recited the name: “Juan, Federico, Elena, Jorge, Santo, Maria, Alonzo, Teresa, Carlos, Rosa, Jose, Manuel, Carmela, Pepito.”
When she was done, there was some grumbling in the caravan, mostly among the old women.
Tomaso said, “They say you do not say the names of the fathers.”
“Forgive me,” said Blima. “I do not know the names of the fathers.”
“Also they say you put the bodies in the ground too soon.”
“This is the custom of my people.”
“But the custom of the Jew is not the custom of my people that you buried.”
“Forgive us.”
“Why does the storm kill all my people and spare the Jew?”
Blima remained silent.
An old woman began pointing at the house and whispering to Tomaso.
Tomaso said, “She says you Jews have a strong house, good adobe brick, but my people had houses of straw.”
“Of wood. Their houses were made of wood.”
“In such a storm wood is no better than straw.”
“True.”
“But when the storm came, you did not take my people into your house.”
“We did not know the storm would be so terrible.”
At this nearly everyone in the caravan laughed and jeered, but not Tomaso.
He said, “My people say it is the God of the Jews who sent the storm.”
“Is not the God of the Jews also the one God and the God of all?” said Blima.
“The God of the Jews is the Devil’s grandfather. He is the God of the Thunder and of the black Hell in the sky.”
Then Tomaso leaned to one side and spat on the ground, whereon half the caravan rushed onto the knoll. Some had shovels and picks and began to dig up the graves. Others dug with flat sticks found among the debris.
In the onrush Blima was jostled roughly and she ran from the knoll. She ran to Eli and the children and they hurried to the house. Eli bolted the door and the boys opened one of the shutters to watch the frenzy at the graves.
The fourteen bodies were soon disinterred and each was slung over the back of a horse or donkey. Then Tomaso raised his fist and the caravan swept by the house, showering it with sticks and stones.
At the door he shouted, “I will be back, Jew! First I must mourn my cousins and then I will be back!”
Eli went to the trunks and opened the lids.
“Put in only what is necessary and most valuable,” he said.
“Are we going away, Papa?” said Surah.
“Yes.”
“Where are we going?”
“We will see. Some place far.”
“To New York,” said Blima sternly.
“I said, we will see!”
“Will we go to New York, Papa?” said Surah.
“If Mama says ‘New York,’” said Anchel, “then it will be New York.”
“Do you hear your son?” said Eli.
“Let him be,” said Blima
“Tell me, Anchel, what is your Mama? Is she God?”
“Mama sees what will be,” said Anchel.
“And your Papa, he doesn’t see?”
“You see too, Papa.”
“But your Mama, she sees more than I see. Is that right?”
Anchel kept silent.
Eli persisted: “If your Mama sees so much, why did she invite the Gypsies into the house in the first place? Didn’t she see that they would take her baby? Eh? Answer!”
Anchel stood as if struck dumb and his eyes filled with tears.
“Only the Devil himself could say such things,” said Blima and she went and put her arms around the boy and held him to her breast.
That day she did no work. She fell ill and lay in bed, pale and still, like a corpse, and the others took care of the packing. The next morning she got up and made breakfast. She said she was better. So Eli and the two boys loaded the three trunks into a wagon and the family set off for the railway station about thirty kilometers away
Lo Yadua-Midwood Correspondence
November, 1982 to May, 1983
Kibbutz Bet Lev
November 30, 1982
Dear B.A. Midwood,
Thank you for the stories about Blima. I enjoyed them more than I can say, and so did my wife Ilana, who is more of a literary person than I am. Also they are very easy and pleasant to read, and I think you must have done a very good translation job. So, Mr. Midwood, I congratulate you!
Some of these events I have heard about here and there, but never in such detail and with such elaboration. The sexy scene on the ship of course I never heard about, and I can’t imagine that Anchel and Surah heard about it either. It is amazing to me that they never bothered to have these things translated, that they were never curious. On the other hand, that is just like them. You see? As amazing as it is, it is just like them!
I have many more things to say about these stories, many. Ilana and I we stayed up very late last night talking about them, and still we didn’t get to the end before we fell asleep. I will write you again about these stories when my ideas about them have calmed down a little and I can collect a few thoughts and say something that is not too senseless.
Lo Yadua
Brooklyn, New York
December 18, 1982
Dear Lo Yadua,
I’m glad you enjoyed the stories.
Just yesterday I came across another very interesting piece of literary work in German, not this time among Blima’s papers, but among Surah’s. I have already begun translating this new find and will send it to you as soon as it is done.
In the meantime can you tell me some more about your early years with Anchel and Surah? When did they move to Israel? And how long did they live there? They never told me they had lived in Israel and there is no mention of the fact in the papers.
B.A. Midwood
Kibbutz Bet Lev
January 4, 1983
Dear B.A. Midwood,
My parents never lived in Israel. Just before I was five years old, they got a Jewish agency to take me to Palestine and put me on a kibbutz. At the time I did not understand why they did this and it caused me terrible grief. Never again have I suffered so much as I did then, not even in the wars.
Lo Yadua
Brooklyn, New York
January 21, 1983
Dear Lo Yadua,
I am sorry for your suffering and I do not mean for our correspondence to reopen old wounds. If you experience my questions as intrusive, please tell me.
B.A. Midwood
Kibbutz Bet Lev
February 4, 1983
Dear B.A. Midwood,
Don’t worry about the old wounds. Ask what you like.
Lo Yadua
Brooklyn, New York
February 22, 1983
Dear Lo Yadua,
Why did your parents give you up to the kibbutz?
B.A. Midwood
Kibbutz Bet Lev
March 10, 1983
Dear B.A. Midwood,
Shame. This is why they gave me up. As soon as I was born, I brought shame on them. The whole family condemned them, specially my grandfather. He cursed them and said he would never set foot in their house again, and he never did. All the same, they stood up to him and everyone else and kept me for more than four years, just up until the time when I was to go into the public school. This they could not stand up to, the public school, though frankly I’ve never understood why. After all, they didn’t have to tell the school that they were brother and sister, did they? Well, it was easier I suppose just to be rid of me. In later years my mother had it that she had made a great sacrifice, had packed me off to the kibbutz to promote the cause of Zion. Whereas other American Jews merely gave money, she’d say, she gave her only son! O
ften she tried to oblige me to admire her on that account, but I couldn’t bring myself to it and sadly disappointed her, I’m afraid.
Lo Yadua
Brooklyn, New York
March 31, 1983
Dear Lo Yadua,
In your last letter you mention your grandfather. I assume that the story of his monstrous response to your birth was told you by your parents. Do you have in addition any conscious memory of him?
B.A. Midwood
p.s. Can you tell me your date of birth?
Kibbutz Bet Lev
April 23, 1983
Dear B.A. Midwood,
I remember Grandpa quite well. Tall and thin. Pointed ears and a neat little mustache. A tailor he was. Made his own clothes. Very smart ones, too. Though he kept his promise never to visit us, still every Sunday my mother used to take me to visit him, and he was always ready with a little treat for me, usually chocolate cigarettes, elegant ones wrapped in genuine cigarette paper, which he kept in a silver case along with his Camels. He’d snap open the lid and offer me a few. “The ones near my thumb,” he’d say.
Also he used to quiz me. He’d ask me questions like how many toes did I have all together, or what were the five boroughs of New York, and he’d lean so close and stare so hard I used to fear he could penetrate my skull. Some answers I knew, some not. I knew how many toes, for example, but not the boroughs. Once I heard him tell Mama that she had spawned a little idiot. She got angry but she did not say he was wrong, and the next Sunday we went along to visit him as usual, as though nothing had happened, and he continued to give me the cigarettes and to quiz me.
That’s all I remember. It’s not much, but it’s enough.
One thing I liked very much in the German stories, by the way, is how they show that my grandfather Eli was continually sneering at Blima, did not appreciate her, could not appreciate her. Well, I thought, that is just like him, to be sneering, to be not appreciating.
The date of my birth is May 7, 1926.
Lo Yadua
Brooklyn, New York
May 15, 1983
Dear Lo Yadua,
Enclosed find my English translation of the fourth story in German that I mentioned about six weeks ago. This story is also initialed L.H., but was obviously written later than the other three. I found it, as I mentioned previously, not among Blima’s papers, but among Surah’s, pressed between the pages of her diary, folded in four parts and in sorry condition. I had to use a magnifying glass and a darkening agent to decipher some of the script, and three words I had to guess purely on the basis of context. In the last analysis, however, I’m satisfied with the result and I think you can rely on it comfortably.
