“You move like a lead bird!” “Bear feet!” “The devil take him!”
“Break your head, may an evil spirit take you!”
“What’s going on there?” a hoarse voice is heard from the sickroom.
“Nothing!” my mother answers and wipes her eyes.
D.
But it’s my brother Elyahu’s bed and my little cot that give me the greatest pleasure. My brother Elyahu’s bed was once a sofa for sitting on, but when he got engaged to be married, he began sleeping on the sofa next to me on the cot, so the sofa became a bed. In the good years when my father was healthy and chanted the musaf prayers in the butchers’ small synagogue with four choristers, the sofa had springs, but no more. The springs were now mine. I did all kinds of tricks with them: I bruised my hands, I almost poked out an eye, and once I wrapped them around my neck and came close to strangling myself, until my brother Elyahu tossed the springs into the attic and took away the ladder.
Chana buys the bed-once-a-sofa and the cot. My mother won’t allow her to look too closely at them. “What you see is what you buy. There’s nothing to look for!”
But once Chana sets a price and makes a deposit, she goes over to the bed and the cot and lifts the bedding. Slowly she looks in all the hidden corners, then spits hard.
My mother is offended by the spitting and wants to give back the deposit, but my brother Elyahu steps in. “Once it’s sold, it’s final!”
We now lay out our bedding directly on the floor. I and my brother Elyahu stretch out like royalty, covering ourselves with one blanket (they sold his). It’s very pleasant for me to hear my older brother say that sleeping on the floor isn’t so bad after all.
I wait till he has recited his evening prayers and has fallen asleep, and then I begin rolling all over the floor. Thank God there is plenty of room to roll on the floor, as wide as a field, a real pleasure, a paradise!
E.
“What more can we do?” my mother says one morning to my brother Elyahu as she studies the four bare walls, her forehead wrinkled. I and my brother Elyahu, to help her out, study the walls with her. My brother Elyahu looks at me with concern and pity.
“Go outside!” he says to me sternly. “We have to talk about something.”
On one foot I hop outside and, naturally, right over to my neighbor’s little calf.
In recent days Meni has grown tall and handsome, his black muzzle attractive, his round eyes full of human understanding and intelligence. He is always looking to get something in his mouth and enjoys being scratched under his neck.
“Again? You’ve been playing around with the calf? You can’t tear yourself away from your dear friend?” says my brother Elyahu, this time without scolding. He then takes me by the hand and says we’re going to Hersh-Ber the cantor. There, he says, it will be good for me. First of all, he says, I’ll have something to eat. At home, he says, it isn’t good. Our father is sick. We’re doing all we can to save him.
My brother Elyahu unbuttons his coat and shows me his vest. “Here’s where I had a pocket watch, a gift from my future father-in-law. I sold it. If he knew, it’d be a black day! The world would turn upside down!”
I thank and praise God that his future father-in-law doesn’t know about the pocket watch and that the world doesn’t turn upside down. Oh my! May it never happen, because if it did, what would happen to Meni the neighbor’s little calf, a dumb helpless animal?
“Here we are!” says my brother Elyahu, who by the minute is growing ever more caring and friendly.
Hersh-Ber the cantor teaches singing. He himself doesn’t sing; he has no voice at all. That’s what I heard from my father. But he knows everything there is to know about singing. He has about fifteen little choristers and is an awful grump. He listens to me sing “Mogen Oves” for him with my own personal touch. He pats me on the head and says to my brother that I’m a soprano. My brother says I’m not just any soprano, but a soprano among sopranos! My brother Elyahu negotiates with him, pockets some money from Hersh-Ber, and tells me I’m going to stay with Reb Hersh-Ber the cantor and that I should obey him, and he adds, “Don’t be homesick!”
That’s easy for him to say! How can I not miss summertime, with the sun baking, the sky clear as crystal, the mud long dried out? Near our house lie wooden logs, not ours, but Yossi the rich man’s logs. He’s planning to build a house and has readied logs but has no place to put them, so he’s stacked them near our house. Long may he live, Yossi the rich man, because out of those logs I can build a fortress. Spiny plants and puffballs grow between the logs. The thorns are good for sticking, and the puffballs you can blow up and burst against your forehead.
I have it good. Meni our neighbor’s little calf also has it good. Meni and I are the only real masters here, so how can I not miss him?
F.
It is almost three weeks that I’ve been at Hersh-Ber the cantor’s, and I hardly sing at all. I have another job. I carry around his Dobtzi, who is a hunchback, barely two years old, but still, kayn eyn horeh, quite heavy, heavier than I am. I risk my health carrying her around. Dobtzi loves me. She hugs me with her thin little arms and latches on to me with her thin little fingers. She calls me Kiko. Why Kiko, I don’t know. Dobtzi loves me. She keeps me awake all night. “Kiko, ki!” means she wants me to rock her. Dobtzi loves me. When I eat, she tears the food from my mouth. “Kiko, pi!” means “Give it to me!” I long for home. The food here isn’t too good either. It’s a holiday — Succos evening. I want to go outdoors to see the sky opening up, but Dobtzi won’t let me. Dobtzi loves me. “Kiko, pi!” She wants me to rock her. I rock her and rock her and fall asleep.
A guest comes to me — Meni the neighbor’s little calf is looking at me with knowing eyes and says, Come! We run downhill to the pond. Not wasting any time, I roll up my trouser legs, and plop! I’m in the pond. I swim, and Meni swims after me. The other side is lovely. There’s no cantor here, no Dobtzi, no sick father. I wake up — it’s just a dream. Run away! Run away! Run away! Where to? Home, naturally.
But Hersh-Ber is already up before me. He has a huge tuning fork that he bangs on his teeth and then places near his ear. He tells me to dress quickly and go with him to shul. Today for musaf they will sing a special piece. In shul I see my brother Elyahu. What’s he doing here? He usually prays in the butchers’ shul, where my father is the cantor! What does this mean?
My brother Elyahu is saying something to Hersh-Ber the cantor, who is not pleased and says, “Remember, for God’s sake, bring him back right after we eat!”
“Come!” my brother Elyahu says to me. “You’ll see Papa!” We go home together. He walks, and I skip. I run, I fly.
“Take it easy! Why are you in such a hurry?” He holds on to me. It looks like he wants to talk to me.
“Do you know that Papa is sick, very, very sick? Only God knows what will happen to him. We must save him, but we don’t have the medicine. No one wants to help. Mama won’t let him go to the poorhouse under any circumstances! She’d rather die herself. She says that before letting him to go to the poorhouse. . Sha, here comes Mama.”
G.
My mother comes toward us with outstretched arms and embraces me, and I feel her tears on my cheeks. My brother Elyahu goes to my sick father, and my mother and I remain standing outside. We are surrounded by our neighbor’s wife Fat Pessi and her daughter Mindl, her daughter-in-law Perl, and two other women.