The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) by David Bergelson
Authors: David Bergelson
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he really so afraid of the priest’s son-in-law, the pharmacist?
So he, the neurotic, stayed on a little longer and, still feeling insulted, was obliged to listen to the way the midwife Schatz, without looking at him and blowing her cigarette smoke toward the low ceiling, joked with Mirele about her own life:
—To tell the truth, it wasn’t only her present guests who said so … All of her acquaintances who called on her looked around and remarked that she certainly lived well. But she knew this far better than anyone else. What more was there to say? She regarded herself as supremely fortunate …
Each time Mirel paid some attention to the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan on the other side of the room, the midwife, seated on the bed, moved the whole of her bulky frame closer to Lipkis and, staring at the wall, nudged him in the ribs with her elbow:
—Lipkis! … Too bad for you, Lipkis!
In this way, clearly, she was hinting that she knew everything that was going on between him and Mirele, chuckling inwardly and soundlessly as she did so. The infuriated Lipkis almost burst with vexation and finally bellowed:
—Who gave you the right? … How dare you pry into my most intimate feelings?
In response, the young pharmacist’s assistant Safyan found his knee starting to twitch even more violently under the table, so that he finally announced nervously:
—He had to leave … Eventually he’d have to go back to the pharmacy, after all.
And off he went, alone with his nervous, bulging eyes. It seemed as though the slightest movement of a finger near those eyes would instantly make them pop from their sockets.
Of him the midwife Schatz remarked:
—A foolish young man … all in all, a foolish young man.
And she immediately forgot about him and went on talking about herself:
—Earlier that week, at the sickbed of someone she knew, she’d met the extremely busy Dr. Kraszewski and told him: I’ll marry you, doctor, if you’ll come with me now to one of my poor women in childbed.
Such was the nature of this bulky young woman with her smoothly combed hair and mobile, cheerful features: she could tell ironic stories about herself for hours without ever touching on her innermost life by so much as a single word. She’d probably inherited this disposition from her Lithuanian kin, so that, looking at her and thinking about this unknown family, what came hazily to mind was her eighty-two-year-old grandmother, a diminutive old woman as scrawny as a bird who’d come on a visit the previous summer and spent two successive months living in this room.
For long hot days on end, this little old creature lay propped up high on the pillows of the bed with her eyes shut, expiring from afar, like some harried and exhausted foreign parrot which, no longer able to endure the longing for its old home, constantly dreamed about the distant country across the seas where it had been born. It seemed as though she dozed for weeks in one long birdlike reverie, heard nothing of what took place around her, and didn’t even notice the young people from the shtetl who called on her granddaughter and discussed a variety of interests. Some of them were even certain that the old woman was deaf and senile and hadn’t spoken for a great many years.
On one occasion, however, a number of young people had been sitting here, theorizing at great length about themselves and their lives, and had then fallen silent for some time. Quite suddenly, all were greatly startled and clutched at their hearts in alarm.
Behind them, the little old woman had opened her sunken mouth, and her hollow voice could be heard across the entire room, a lethargic, plaintive voice materializing from some distant, crumbling ruin:
—Daughter of my daughter! Whoever talks less about herself talks less foolishness.
How odd that even now this little old woman also wanted to crack jokes. Her daughter’s daughter, the midwife Schatz, was neither surprised nor incredulous.
So he, the neurotic, stayed on a little longer and, still feeling insulted, was obliged to listen to the way the midwife Schatz, without looking at him and blowing her cigarette smoke toward the low ceiling, joked with Mirele about her own life:
—To tell the truth, it wasn’t only her present guests who said so … All of her acquaintances who called on her looked around and remarked that she certainly lived well. But she knew this far better than anyone else. What more was there to say? She regarded herself as supremely fortunate …
Each time Mirel paid some attention to the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan on the other side of the room, the midwife, seated on the bed, moved the whole of her bulky frame closer to Lipkis and, staring at the wall, nudged him in the ribs with her elbow:
—Lipkis! … Too bad for you, Lipkis!
In this way, clearly, she was hinting that she knew everything that was going on between him and Mirele, chuckling inwardly and soundlessly as she did so. The infuriated Lipkis almost burst with vexation and finally bellowed:
—Who gave you the right? … How dare you pry into my most intimate feelings?
In response, the young pharmacist’s assistant Safyan found his knee starting to twitch even more violently under the table, so that he finally announced nervously:
—He had to leave … Eventually he’d have to go back to the pharmacy, after all.
And off he went, alone with his nervous, bulging eyes. It seemed as though the slightest movement of a finger near those eyes would instantly make them pop from their sockets.
Of him the midwife Schatz remarked:
—A foolish young man … all in all, a foolish young man.
And she immediately forgot about him and went on talking about herself:
—Earlier that week, at the sickbed of someone she knew, she’d met the extremely busy Dr. Kraszewski and told him: I’ll marry you, doctor, if you’ll come with me now to one of my poor women in childbed.
Such was the nature of this bulky young woman with her smoothly combed hair and mobile, cheerful features: she could tell ironic stories about herself for hours without ever touching on her innermost life by so much as a single word. She’d probably inherited this disposition from her Lithuanian kin, so that, looking at her and thinking about this unknown family, what came hazily to mind was her eighty-two-year-old grandmother, a diminutive old woman as scrawny as a bird who’d come on a visit the previous summer and spent two successive months living in this room.
For long hot days on end, this little old creature lay propped up high on the pillows of the bed with her eyes shut, expiring from afar, like some harried and exhausted foreign parrot which, no longer able to endure the longing for its old home, constantly dreamed about the distant country across the seas where it had been born. It seemed as though she dozed for weeks in one long birdlike reverie, heard nothing of what took place around her, and didn’t even notice the young people from the shtetl who called on her granddaughter and discussed a variety of interests. Some of them were even certain that the old woman was deaf and senile and hadn’t spoken for a great many years.
On one occasion, however, a number of young people had been sitting here, theorizing at great length about themselves and their lives, and had then fallen silent for some time. Quite suddenly, all were greatly startled and clutched at their hearts in alarm.
Behind them, the little old woman had opened her sunken mouth, and her hollow voice could be heard across the entire room, a lethargic, plaintive voice materializing from some distant, crumbling ruin:
—Daughter of my daughter! Whoever talks less about herself talks less foolishness.
How odd that even now this little old woman also wanted to crack jokes. Her daughter’s daughter, the midwife Schatz, was neither surprised nor incredulous.
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