Brandy’s relationship with Feiga was civil. Faced with Feiga’s complaints — the dirt, the barking, the fleas, the ticks — she was considerate to a fault, making herself available for bathing whenever asked, and doing her business far away. Her barks served only Moshe’s welfare. Our treatment of her was more fitting. Anyone who came to visit Grandpa Yosef remembered to bring something for Brandy; a little token of appreciation, usually made of salami. Although she was well fed by Grandpa Yosef, she never insulted the pilgrims, sticking her snout into anything they offered and even tasting a morsel. Once in a while, Feiga interfered with Brandy’s feeding, furious at the waste. Weren’t bones good enough? Grandpa Yosef, in trembling silence, repeatedly transgressed Feiga’s laws, filling Brandy’s bowl with the finest fare. He stroked her head, her ears, her shoulders. Whispered lovingly to her as her snout inhaled the aroma of chicken and the scent of pink sausages. With her tail, she would signal, “Your love has been duly noted.”
1985 was a year of great consequence for Brandy. Due to some business in a distant neighborhood, Grandpa Yosef found himself doing the grocery shopping in a modern supermarket, where he discovered the dog kibble named Bonzo. That same day, his newly powerful shoulders hauled a forty-pound bag of Bonzo home, from which a few pellets were poured into Brandy’s bowl as an introductory portion. Brandy sniffed and grimaced in surprise. She must have let something slip because Grandpa Yosef grew angry:
“What? No good? What now? Nu, enough. Every day, day in day out, twenty years, and never a word of thanks. I break my back and there’s no regard, not one word. Nu, enough. How many years? How long can this go on? Just one kind word. Let me hear something. But nu, nu, we mustn’t think badly…”
Grandpa Yosef pulled himself together and his anger was all but gone. He quickly restored his calm and put the world back in order. Brandy’s bowl resumed carrying its normal contents: chicken necks and fatty bones. Only a few pellets of Bonzo, at Grandpa Yosef’s insistence, were added to the menu to commemorate their fight. He asked us expressly not to bring her food — there was no need to spoil her. Only if there were leftovers, that was all right. The family ignored his request and brought Brandy the finest. Leftovers were for other animals.
In our homes, food was not thrown out. This was another basic axiom, almost as vital as the Law of Compression: Food is Not Thrown Out.
Why?
Because.
Why because?
Because Food is Not Thrown Out.
The true reasons:
Because people died for a single potato.
Because people turned their parents in for a morsel of cabbage.
Because people were so starved that they ate wooden planks in their huts in Buchenwald.
Because people stole soup. Because they had their heads whipped and they kept on eating. Because their bodies had already died from the beatings, and yet their mouths kept on chewing.
But we were not told these reasons, not given explanations. The third rule was that we had to be Old Enough to hear things. Becoming Old Enough was a purpose, a mission. Every year they told us stories about the war. Every year, the appropriate dose of horror. In order to climb up the rungs of horror we had to wait, restrained, until we were Old Enough. In the meantime, don’t ask why. Food is Not Thrown Out.
My mother had a rigid set of rules. Hard bones were collected for the dog downstairs. Leftover tender meat and expired cheese for the stray cats in the yard. Dried bread that couldn’t be toasted — add a little water and put it out for the birds. The fundamental law, the underlying notion governing her rules, was that any food could satisfy someone’s hunger. Never throw out anything that contains protein, fat, or carbohydrates. Someone needs it. It can’t simply be tossed into the trash to rot or rust. It must be given to someone, and not just given — arranged and presented so it becomes edible. Crack the eggs and remove the shells. Take the lids off the containers of cheese. Pour the milk into a bowl. Even orphaned leftovers (a moldy pickle, puff pastry forgotten in the freezer) were gathered into a little pile. Someone would eat them. Hunger leads to compromise.
In this kingdom of the living, surviving on my mother’s generosity, there was only one exception: ants. In this Garden of Eden, ants had replaced the snake, persecuted to the point of total eradication. Terms of negotiation never existed between my mother and the ants.
Mom, why do you hate ants?
A question I never asked.
Why not?
Because you didn’t ask. Because there were questions without answers, and questions you didn’t ask.
At home, we led ordinary lives. Mom was two years old when the war started and Dad was nine, both young enough to recover from the Holocaust and eventually start a normal family. We children were not the “second generation” of the Holocaust — we were the second and-a-half generation. That slight shift, just half a rung on the generational ladder, gave us a simpler, healthier life, with parents who smiled, who found it easy to love, to hug, to talk with us. But beneath the surface was an enchanted tapestry of musts and must-nots. Questions you didn’t ask Mom, questions you didn’t ask Dad. And questions you did ask, but which had no answers. Hints picked up in a hesitant breath, answers that seemed disoriented — at first they were simple, benevolent, but then rather than thrust themselves into the light, they squirmed around in circles, lost in the darkness.
Where were you, Mom, in the war? Were you in the ghetto, like Dad? How did you walk barefoot in the snow for a whole winter?
Mom, why do you hate ants?
Don’t ask.
We knew there was something in common, a shared basis that could provide all the answers, and it was called “the Shoah,” although they usually referred to it simply as “the War.” The Shoah could explain things, expose the truth — the real truth, not the answers passed off to us as the truth. It was a deep and hidden Shoah, unrelated to the one declared each year with a siren. That was the Shoah that made everyone angry at Effi year after year because she couldn’t help bursting out in peals of laughter during the moment of silence.
The Shoah was a dual entity: there was the one declaimed at school ceremonies with torches and handmade black placards and the six million, and there was its twin, the familial one, the one that had not enlisted six million into its ranks but contained instead a vivid cast of characters — not only Grandpa Yosef and Mom and Dad, but also the banal personas on the margins of life. There was Aunt Frieda, whose life was no life at all, and Aunt Zusa, who had nothing but trouble. Aunt Riesel, whom God did not take because he knew what a mouthful he’d get when he did. And Uncle Lunkish, who had an unusual name but nothing else unusual — we couldn’t find out anything about him: when we asked, we were shushed. There was Uncle Antek, the Auschwitzian prophet who could predict what happened there, and Aunt Ecka, who didn’t seem to fit into any of our categories (was she animal, vegetable, or mineral?) as she sat clammy and wrinkled at the edge of every family affair. Always by her side was Mrs. Kopel, who had no children — she wanted them, but “her womb had dried up.” And there was Uncle Menashe, the bachelor, who owned a little butcher shop in Netanya. When he showed up at weddings, unannounced, Aunt Frieda would faint because his hands always smelled of poultry, even after he had showered and put on aftershave. It made no difference to Aunt Frieda who was being slaughtered — she counted any death as a strike against her. In order for them to be able to sit together, because otherwise it would be embarrassing (and Uncle Menashe was actually a very nice man), he had to learn how to come up close to her instead of disappearing into a far corner, because with Aunt Frieda death was unaffected by distance — quite the opposite: you had to come right up to her, cautiously, taking apologetic and slightly peculiar steps that Uncle Menashe had invented and which could generally only be seen in nature films that showed male birds courting a female.