Yura and I didn’t miss a thing. Now, we were busy with chaliko, ground nuts and raisins mixed with wine. Not bad, right? I heard that Jews in other countries called that dish charoset and made it of nuts and apples. Chaliko or charoset, that tasty paste, symbolized the clay that Jewish slaves in Egypt used to make bricks.
Yura handed the chaliko out to us himself. He put it between layers of matzo, adding lettuce leaves. He formed a big pie, broke it into pieces with the precision of a pharmacist and distributed them among the kids. He used twice as much chaliko for the two of us, which Yasha, who sat next to him, noticed. He was about to say something, but Yura directed a spoonful of chaliko toward his mouth, and Yasha decided not to expose him.
Not that I swallowed the chaliko; it disappeared in my mouth in a mysterious way, and I felt like having more right away. But prudence suggested: stop! There was so much of everything on the table. And how tempting was the luster of the bottles. Today, unlike on regular days, we were allowed to have a drink when our ancestors were remembered. And we managed to have another round in-between.
But then it became impossible to eat any more. Even Yura looked pensively and almost indifferently at the piles of food left on the table. And I saw that the adults had stopped eating. They had drinks, talked and laughed, drowning out Grandpa, though Mariya, Robert’s wife, was still eating. She had to eat more so there would be enough for two. Mariya had fixed her hair nicely and was well dressed, but her face was a little puffy and her belly protruded, tightening her silk blouse. It meant that another family member was at the table, this one not yet born.
Today, Mariya was merry. She looked peaceful, which didn’t happen often. The new daughter-in-law turned out to be a hard nut for Grandma Lisa to crack. Mariya became the first daughter-in-law who refused to tolerate Grandma’s escapades, reacting to them in a way Grandma wasn’t used to. First, Mariya never got scared and kept her cool when Grandma began to kick up a row. She, as they say, couldn’t care less. She didn’t give a damn about Grandma or the whole Yuabov family, including Robert. But if she lost her patience, she aired her grievances to her mother-in-law and husband. She packed her things and left for her mother’s a couple of times after serious rows. That was something unheard of. It was a great disgrace for a family in Central Asia. How could one possibly pretend that the family lived in peace and harmony after something like that happened?
In a word, Robert, who managed with difficulty to bring his wife back after she had left yet another time, forbade his mother to interfere in his family’s affairs. Grandma Lisa had to shut up as much as she could. She even had to put up with the fact that her youngest daughter-in-law refused to call her Mama.
Naturally, all the relatives, which was all of our families, knew how the youngest daughter-in-law behaved. But that wasn’t discussed because my father and Uncle Misha thought that Mariya set a bad example for their wives. Yes, Mariya aroused fear in them, and they snapped maliciously when she was the subject of conversation. By the way, Aunt Valya’s life had become easier because Grandma let up a bit after Mariya joined the family.
Aunt Valya, like my mama, was exhausted from rows and squabbles, but it was too much for her to struggle with her mother-in-law.
“How lucky you are that you were able to leave,” she said every time Mama came to Tashkent. She became very lonely after Mama left. She failed to become friends with the new daughter-in-law. Mama and Aunt Valya had always supported each other.
Mama came for Passover mostly for Valya’s sake. They sat across from me, also at the end of the table, so that it would be more convenient for them to get up and bring the hot food from the kitchen. They smiled at each other and talked quietly about something.
Mama was merry and beautiful. Her thick fluffy hair had been cut. Recently, she had broken her arm and had to wear a cast, so it was impossible for her to care for and set her long hair with one hand. She had had to get it cut, but it was very becoming on her.
Mama had dressed up and painted her eyebrows. She looked great, but her fingers and wrists were red and swollen. Our indefatigable mama, even though she had come to Tashkent for the holiday, had decided to earn some money. There were a few private bakeries in Tashkent that hired women to roll out and bake matzos before Passover, so Mama took a job at one of them, and she kneaded dough and rolled it out for twelve hours every day. At home, I had seen many times how it was done since pelmeni (dumplings) and manti (big dumplings) were made of exactly the same kind of dough. But at home it took her half an hour to make them, and here…
I always liked to watch Mama work. It seemed to me that she could do anything. And she made dough particularly well.
First, Mama mixed the dough in a pot or special small bucket. She kneaded the dough with her fist as if massaging it. She pressed, kneaded and mixed it. Her strong hand went through the dough almost to the bottom of the pot. She worked with concentration, breathing through her nose. When she took the ball of prepared dough out of the pot, it was soft, warm and springy, as if it were alive. Mama tossed it on her palm and patted it like a newborn. Then she put it on the table, covered in a layer of flour that looked like a diaper. Then, the “newborn” really suffered when she began to roll it.
First, she used a short thick rolling pin, then a long thin one that looked like a stick. Her hands slid between the center of the stick and its ends. Back and forth, back and forth went the rolling pin. Her hands continued to move between the center and the ends. The roll of dough became flat, getting thinner and thinner and wider, like a platter or tray. Mama picked it up by the edges and, with a precise movement, without tearing it, returned it to the table. It was almost transparent. It was about to break… But no, there wasn’t a single tear, not a single hole in its surface. You’d assume the dough was ready, right? Not at all. Mama splashed it with oil that she spread carefully over its surface and wrapped it around a rolling pin. Now, there was a long, rather thick rolling pin on the table. When Mama rolled the dough out the last time, it looked like a tablecloth. At last, the dough was ready to be used.
I saw all of that at home many times, and I never tired of admiring how beautifully Mama did it, how precisely, how skillfully. When a true master builds a house, creates a detail on a lathe or makes dough, that person can we considered an artist, if the work is done with talent. But I looked at the hands of my Mama, an artist, with pain and compassion that Passover evening. She had been kneading and rolling out dough for twelve hours, and now her swollen hands were on the table in front of her. They must have hurt.
Mama met my eyes and smiled at me tenderly and merrily, slightly raising the corners of her lips. I smiled at her in response and remembered that I had also had to work a bit before Passover, certainly not like Mama, but still…
Everybody, perhaps, knows that a Jewish home must not only be clean for Passover but spic and span. With housewives like my Grandma Lisa, pre-holiday cleaning becomes a disaster for the whole family. The walls, the windows, the floors and furniture must be cleaned and washed. Special dishes and kitchen utensils must be readied. There is no way to enumerate everything. Not a single member of the household can evade this “conscription” labor.
Even though it was my birthday on one of the pre-Passover days, that didn’t liberate me from boring housework. I was overwhelmed with resentment, but Grandma was implacable. “Djoni bivesh,” she said sweetly after I finished yet another assignment, “And now why don’t you do this.”