kinds of names a dumb man calls a woman. A woman ain’t none of those things. In the end she’s flesh and blood. It’s too bad, only now I understand all that. Maybe if I understood it back then, if I understood that love is from the brain, not from the heart, is laws and rules, not dreams and craziness, maybe I would have had a better life. But understanding is one thing and succeeding is something else. If one man is going to get the one woman he really wants, somebody’s got to run the whole world for that, and all parts of the world got to move and fall into place. ’Cause nothing goes by itself. And sometimes a person drowns in water here in the Land of Israel so that in America somebody else will win at cards. And sometimes a rain cloud comes here all the way from Europe so on a stormy night a man and a woman will be together. And if somebody commits suicide, it’s a sign that somebody else wanted him to die very very much. And when a crow screams, somebody hears that scream. And when I saw Judith coming, when I saw the wagon going real slow, and the sun shining straight down—I looked on her and I knew: this is the woman my eyes could raise from the earth. Could raise her up and take her to me. In theland of India, there are people like that. They can move a cup on the table just by looking on it. You knew that, Zayde? In the children’s newspaper at the Village Papish’s house, I read about it. In his house they kept the old issues. Over there in India they got whatchacallit, fakirs, who don’t feel no pain. They stop their breath and their heart. And they can move a cup on the table to the left or the right just with a look. Believe you me, Zayde, with a look. Right and left. Left and right. Move the cup like that. And a cup, you should know, Zayde, it’s a lot harder to move a cup than to move a woman.”
14
I T WAS M OSHE ’ S older brother, Menahem Rabinovitch, whose stories and sweet carobs led Moshe and Tonya to immigrate to the Land of Israel, who knew Judith and advised Moshe to bring her to work in his house and farm.
Only after I grew up did Uncle Menahem tell me the name that was forbidden to mention, either in speaking or in writing, the name of my mother’s first husband. He said the name and told me the story.
“They were living then in Mlabes or Rishon, I’m not absolutely sure.”
My mother’s first husband was a soldier in the Hebrew Brigades, and when World War I ended, he came back to the Land of Israel and didn’t find work.
Every day he went out to the main street of the town to look for work. A proud man he was, and didn’t plead with the landlords, but rather fixed them with that soldier’s look he had acquired in the war and which had now become a stumbling block for him because he didn’t know that that look wasn’t good in peacetime.
“People use what they’ve got, even if it’s not exactly fitting,” Uncle Menahem explained. “They smile when they should cry, pull out a gun when they should give a smack, and envy their lady loves instead of making them laugh.”
Long hours that man lay in bed and kept silent. They lived in a rented room which had previously been a pen for Turkish ducks. Feathers that were already crumbled to dust turned his eyes red. The old stench of poultry droppings slapped his face like unforgotten insults.
Judith suggested he grow vegetables and sell them in the market, and the man got up and sowed a few garden beds behind the shack. But even among the sprouts he found no rest. A big tree rose in the yard and crows entered it in the afternoon for their noisy encounters, shouted and hovered over the crest of the tree like evil tidings. Their wings and their shouts blackened his hopes so much he hurried back to the room. Sometimes, he’d make a supreme effort and go sit on the banks of the Yarkon River, hug his knees, and close his eyes as if he were seeking consolation within his own body.
If not for Judith, who went on taking care of
14
I T WAS M OSHE ’ S older brother, Menahem Rabinovitch, whose stories and sweet carobs led Moshe and Tonya to immigrate to the Land of Israel, who knew Judith and advised Moshe to bring her to work in his house and farm.
Only after I grew up did Uncle Menahem tell me the name that was forbidden to mention, either in speaking or in writing, the name of my mother’s first husband. He said the name and told me the story.
“They were living then in Mlabes or Rishon, I’m not absolutely sure.”
My mother’s first husband was a soldier in the Hebrew Brigades, and when World War I ended, he came back to the Land of Israel and didn’t find work.
Every day he went out to the main street of the town to look for work. A proud man he was, and didn’t plead with the landlords, but rather fixed them with that soldier’s look he had acquired in the war and which had now become a stumbling block for him because he didn’t know that that look wasn’t good in peacetime.
“People use what they’ve got, even if it’s not exactly fitting,” Uncle Menahem explained. “They smile when they should cry, pull out a gun when they should give a smack, and envy their lady loves instead of making them laugh.”
Long hours that man lay in bed and kept silent. They lived in a rented room which had previously been a pen for Turkish ducks. Feathers that were already crumbled to dust turned his eyes red. The old stench of poultry droppings slapped his face like unforgotten insults.
Judith suggested he grow vegetables and sell them in the market, and the man got up and sowed a few garden beds behind the shack. But even among the sprouts he found no rest. A big tree rose in the yard and crows entered it in the afternoon for their noisy encounters, shouted and hovered over the crest of the tree like evil tidings. Their wings and their shouts blackened his hopes so much he hurried back to the room. Sometimes, he’d make a supreme effort and go sit on the banks of the Yarkon River, hug his knees, and close his eyes as if he were seeking consolation within his own body.
If not for Judith, who went on taking care of
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