horrible anger he once again clutched the edge of the wagon and hurled and roared—“Get out now, get out, Tonya!”—to the astonished jackals and the dying mule.
The wagon slipped out of his hands onto his broken leg and Moshe fainted, came to, and fainted again, and a few hours later, when his own shouts woke him up, he saw as if in a dream the hurricane lamps approaching and heard the shouts and barking of the search party. But by then he had already been so struck by night and sadness and cold and pains that he didn’t have the strength to call to them. It was only the mule’s groans of distress that showed them the way.
13
T WO YEARS PASSED from that day to the day my mother came to work in Moshe Rabinovitch’s house, take care of his orphans, and milk his cows.
I know only a few details about those years in her life, where she was and what she did.
“
A nafka mina
, who cares,” she’d dismiss me whenever I’d ask her about it, and would immediately get annoyed. “Now hurry and sit on the right side, Zayde, you heard!” Because once again I had forgotten and was sitting on her deaf side.
When I grew up a little, I also asked my three fathers, and they gave me three different answers.
Moshe Rabinovitch told me that she had worked for a time in the winery of Rishon Le-Zion, “and there she also learned to drink her liquor,” he smiled.
The cattle dealer Globerman, who had eyes and access all over the country, told me that my mother’s parents “stayed in exile after they heard what she did in the Land of Israel, because they didn’t want to see her no more.”
And when I kept asking and wanted to know more, the dealer said that men mustn’t investigate their mother’s past.
“What went on between Lady Judith’s legs before you came out of there, Zayde, isn’t none of your business, you don’t have to know, period,” he stated in his usual coarse way, which I still had trouble adjusting to, but which didn’t offend me anymore.
And the canary breeder, Jacob Sheinfeld, my mother’s suitor and victim, served me his fragrant dishes one after another and told me simply: “Rabinovitch’s Judith from heaven she came to me, heaven, and she went back there from me.”
That’s what he said, and his hands drew circles on the table, and the white scar on his forehead suddenly turned red, which always happens when he turns pale.
“You’re still little,
meyn kind
. But you’re gonna grow up and you’re gonna learn and you’re gonna know that in love there are rules. And it’s better you learn those rules from a father, so you don’t need later on to suffer because of love itself. How come a child has a father? So he’ll learn from his father’s troubles and not from his own troubles. How come all us sons of Israel is the sons of our father Jacob? So we’ll all learn from his love. People are gonna tell you lots of things about love. First of all, they’re gonna tell you it’s something for two. No, Zayde. For good hateyou need two. But for love, you only need one person. And one little thing is enough for love, like I already told you. And someday, when you’ll fall in love with a woman because of some one little thing, her eyes, let’s say, somebody’s gonna come along and say: you fall in love with her eyes, but in the end you gotta live with the whole woman. No, Zayde. If you’ll fall in love with her eyes you’ll also live with her eyes. And all the rest of that woman is like the closet for the dress.”
He dropped his eyes under my amazed look. His hand stopped stroking the table, but his mouth went on talking: “Those things even God don’t understand. The God of the Jews, loneliness He understands real good. But love He don’t understand at all. One Lord all alone up in heaven, no kids, no friends, and no enemies, and the worst thing—no woman. In the end He gets crazy from so much loneliness. So He makes us crazy, too, and calls us whore and virgin and bride and all
The wagon slipped out of his hands onto his broken leg and Moshe fainted, came to, and fainted again, and a few hours later, when his own shouts woke him up, he saw as if in a dream the hurricane lamps approaching and heard the shouts and barking of the search party. But by then he had already been so struck by night and sadness and cold and pains that he didn’t have the strength to call to them. It was only the mule’s groans of distress that showed them the way.
13
T WO YEARS PASSED from that day to the day my mother came to work in Moshe Rabinovitch’s house, take care of his orphans, and milk his cows.
I know only a few details about those years in her life, where she was and what she did.
“
A nafka mina
, who cares,” she’d dismiss me whenever I’d ask her about it, and would immediately get annoyed. “Now hurry and sit on the right side, Zayde, you heard!” Because once again I had forgotten and was sitting on her deaf side.
When I grew up a little, I also asked my three fathers, and they gave me three different answers.
Moshe Rabinovitch told me that she had worked for a time in the winery of Rishon Le-Zion, “and there she also learned to drink her liquor,” he smiled.
The cattle dealer Globerman, who had eyes and access all over the country, told me that my mother’s parents “stayed in exile after they heard what she did in the Land of Israel, because they didn’t want to see her no more.”
And when I kept asking and wanted to know more, the dealer said that men mustn’t investigate their mother’s past.
“What went on between Lady Judith’s legs before you came out of there, Zayde, isn’t none of your business, you don’t have to know, period,” he stated in his usual coarse way, which I still had trouble adjusting to, but which didn’t offend me anymore.
And the canary breeder, Jacob Sheinfeld, my mother’s suitor and victim, served me his fragrant dishes one after another and told me simply: “Rabinovitch’s Judith from heaven she came to me, heaven, and she went back there from me.”
That’s what he said, and his hands drew circles on the table, and the white scar on his forehead suddenly turned red, which always happens when he turns pale.
“You’re still little,
meyn kind
. But you’re gonna grow up and you’re gonna learn and you’re gonna know that in love there are rules. And it’s better you learn those rules from a father, so you don’t need later on to suffer because of love itself. How come a child has a father? So he’ll learn from his father’s troubles and not from his own troubles. How come all us sons of Israel is the sons of our father Jacob? So we’ll all learn from his love. People are gonna tell you lots of things about love. First of all, they’re gonna tell you it’s something for two. No, Zayde. For good hateyou need two. But for love, you only need one person. And one little thing is enough for love, like I already told you. And someday, when you’ll fall in love with a woman because of some one little thing, her eyes, let’s say, somebody’s gonna come along and say: you fall in love with her eyes, but in the end you gotta live with the whole woman. No, Zayde. If you’ll fall in love with her eyes you’ll also live with her eyes. And all the rest of that woman is like the closet for the dress.”
He dropped his eyes under my amazed look. His hand stopped stroking the table, but his mouth went on talking: “Those things even God don’t understand. The God of the Jews, loneliness He understands real good. But love He don’t understand at all. One Lord all alone up in heaven, no kids, no friends, and no enemies, and the worst thing—no woman. In the end He gets crazy from so much loneliness. So He makes us crazy, too, and calls us whore and virgin and bride and all
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