“Do you have a guest for Shevuos? God love you and your guest!” they say.
My mother lowers her swollen eyes. “A guest?” she says to the women. “Just a child, come to find out how his sick father is doing. Just a child. .”
While Pessi is shaking her head, my mother whispers in her ear, “What a town this is! No one cares enough about what’s going on. Twenty-three years of his life he gave singing in the pulpit, sacrificed his health. I want to save him, but I don’t have with what. Everything, praised be God, is sold down to the last little pillow. We’ve placed the child with a cantor, all for his sake.”
So my mother laments to Pessi. I look all around me.
“Who are you looking for?” my mother says to me.
“What does a child look for? Probably the little calf,” Pessi our neighbor says with strained friendliness. “Eh, little boy! No more little calf! I had to sell it to the butcher. Did I have any choice? It’s enough that we have to feed one dumb animal — we can’t manage two!”
Now the calf has become a dumb animal to her? A strange woman, this Pessi. She pokes her nose into everything. She wants to know if we’re having a dairy supper.
“Why do you need to know that?” asks my mother.
“Just like this!” says Pessi. She lifts her shawl and pushes a bowl of sour cream at my mother.
My mother pushes it back. “God be with you, Pessi! Why are you doing this? What are we, God forbid? You know the way I am.”
“On the contrary,” Pessi protests, “it’s because I do know you. The cow, kayn eyn horeh, has been giving lots of milk lately. We have cheese and butter. I’ll lend you some. God willing, you’ll repay me.”
And Pessi the neighbor talks a long time to my mother while my heart aches for the logs, the little calf — oh, the little calf! If I weren’t embarrassed, I’d burst out crying.
“If Papa asks you anything, you should say, ‘Thank God!’ ” says my mother.
My brother Elyahu explains further. “You’re not to complain. Don’t tell any stories. Just say ‘Thank God.’ Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
And my brother Elyahu leads me into the sickroom. The table is covered with bottles, pillboxes, and cupping bottles. It smells of medicines. The window is shut. In honor of Shevuos they’ve decorated the room with green sprigs, and above his bed they’ve hung a Star of David made of flowers, my brother Elyahu’s handiwork. The floor is covered with fragrant grass.
My father sees me and beckons me to him with a long, thin finger. My brother Elyahu gives me a shove from behind. I go to my father. I can barely recognize him. His face is like clay. His gray hair shines, and the hairs stand on end as if they were someone else’s that had just been stuck in. His black eyes are sunk deep into his head as if they belonged to someone else and had been screwed in. His teeth look as if someone else’s had been put in his mouth. His neck is so scrawny, it can barely hold the weight of his head. It’s a good thing he can’t sit. His lips are moving oddly like a person swimming: “mpfu!” He lays a hot hand of bony fingers on my face and smiles a twisted, crooked smile like that of a corpse.
At this point my mother comes into the room, followed by the doctor, the cheerful swarthy doctor with the large mustache. He greets me like an old friend, honoring me with a flick to the belly. Then he says cheerfully to my father, “You have a guest for Shevuos? God love you and your guest!”
“Thank you!” says my mother, and nods to the doctor to attend to the patient and write out a prescription for him.
The swarthy doctor throws open the window and scolds my brother Elyahu for keeping it shut. “I’ve told you a thousand times that a window wants to be open!”
My brother Elyahu nods toward my mother, indicating that she’s the guilty one: she won’t allow the window to be opened for fear my father might catch cold, God forbid. My mother nods to the doctor to get on with the examination and to write out a prescription for him.
The swarthy doctor takes out a large gold fob watch. My brother Elyahu looks with wide eyes at the doctor’s fob watch. The doctor notices this. “Do you want to know what time it is? It’s four minutes before ten-thirty. What does your watch say?”
“My watch has stopped,” my brother Elyahu answers, and turns very red from the tip of his nose to the back of his ears.
My mother can’t stand still. She’s anxious to have the patient examined and a prescription written. But the doctor has time. He questions my mother about minor things: When is my brother’s wedding? And what does Hersh-Ber the cantor have to say about my voice? I must have a good voice. A voice, he says, is inherited. My mother is bursting!
Suddenly the doctor turns his chair to my sick father and takes his hot, dry hand in his. “Nu, cantor, how are the prayers for this Shevuos?”
“Thank God!” my father answers him with the smile of a corpse.
“For instance, have you coughed less? Have you slept well?” The doctor bends over very close to him.
“No!” my father answers, barely able to catch his breath. “On the contrary. . I’m coughing. . and I’m not sleeping. . but thank God. . it’s Shevuos. . such a day. . we received the Torah. . today we have a guest. . a guest for Shevuos.”
Everyone looks at the “guest,” and the “guest” looks down at the ground, and his mind is outdoors somewhere by the logs, by the thorns that stick, by the puffballs that pop open, by the neighbor’s clever little calf who has suddenly become a “dumb animal,” by the pond that rushes downhill, or way up in the higher, wider, deeper blue skullcap that is called the sky.
H.
The little bit of dairy dish that our neighbor Fat Pessi lent us actually comes in very handy. I and my brother Elyahu make a feast of it. We dip fresh challah in the cold sour cream, and it isn’t bad at all.
“Only one problem — there’s too little of it,” comments my brother Elyahu, who on this day is in very high spirits, so much so that he gives me permission not to go back so soon to Hersh-Ber the cantor and to stay and play some more at home.
“You’re our Shevuos guest,” he tells me, and lets me play outside on the logs, on the condition that I not climb on them too long and, God forbid, rip my only pair of pants.
Ha ha ha! I shouldn’t rip my only pair of pants? Too bad there’s no one to laugh along, as I’m a Jew! You should see those pants! Better not talk about pants! Better to talk of Rich Yossi’s logs. Ay, logs, logs! Rich Yossi believes the logs are his logs. Not at all! They’re my logs! I built myself a palace out of them and a vineyard. I’m the prince. The prince walks around freely and openly in his own vineyard, tears off a puffball, bangs it on his forehead, tears off another one and bangs it on his forehead, and everyone envies me. Even Rich Yossi’s son, Cross-Eyed Henich, begrudges me my good luck. He passes me by in his shiny new clothes and points to my pants. Laughing, he squints his crossed eye and says to me, “Make sure you don’t lose something. . ”
“You’d better go away nicely,” I say to him, “or else I’ll tell my brother Elyahu!”
All the boys have respect for my brother Elyahu. Cross-Eyed Henich backs off, and I’m again alone, again the prince in my own vineyard. It’s just too bad that Meni our neighbor’s calf isn’t here! He’s no longer a calf, but now a dumb animal, as our neighbor Pessi says. What does that mean? And why did they sell him to the butcher? Could it be to slaughter him? Was he born only to be slaughtered? Anyway, why is a calf born, and why is a person born?