Somehow I must have fallen asleep for a good while, because when I wake up, I look around and wonder where I am. I touch the wall. I touch the sofa. I stick my head out and see a large, bright room with satin carpeting. The walls are decorated with knickknacks, and the ceiling is painted like a synagogue. Old Luria is still sitting bent over that large book he calls Rambam. I like the name Rambam — to me it sounds like bimbam. Suddenly I remember that just yesterday old Luria wanted to eat me up. I’m afraid he might see me and again want to eat me up. I hide between the wall and the sofa and remain silent.
A key jingles outside the door. It opens, and in comes the elegantly dressed woman. Behind her comes the cook named Chanah, carrying a big tray with cups of coffee, hot milk, and fresh butter rolls.
“Where is the boy?” Chanah looks all around the room, then sees me between the wall and the sofa.
“You’re a rascal! What are you doing there? Come with me to the kitchen. Your mother’s waiting for you.”
I jump out from my hiding place and run down the carpeted stairs in my bare feet, singing “Rambam, bimbam, bimbam, Rambam!” till I get to the kitchen.
“Don’t be in such a hurry!” Chanah the cook says to my mother. “Let him at least have a glass of coffee and a butter roll! And you have some coffee too. They have enough. They won’t miss it.”
My mother thanks her and sits down. Chanah serves us wonderful-smelling hot coffee and fresh butter rolls.
Have you ever eaten egg kichel with sugar? That’s what the rich call butter rolls. Maybe they’re even better. The flavor of the coffee I can’t describe — it’s a taste of paradise! My mother holds the glass, sips, and savors it all. She gives me more than half of her butter roll.
When Chanah the cook sees this, she raises a big fuss. “What are you doing? Eat, eat — there’s plenty!” Chanah gives me another butter roll, and now I have two and a half. I listen to their conversation.
It’s a familiar conversation. My mother bewails her bad luck. She is a widow and has two children. One stumbled onto a gold mine — the other one you can see for yourself. I’d like to know how my brother Elyahu stumbled onto a gold mine. A gold mine? Chanah hears out my mother and shakes her head in sympathy.
Then she starts to talk, bewailing her bad luck in having to work for others. She was her father’s favorite. Her father was once well-to-do but was badly burned in business. After that he fell ill, and then he died. If her father, she says, were to rise from the grave and see his Chanah working at a stranger’s oven! But she can’t complain, thank God for that. She has a good job. The only problem is that the old man is a little — and Chanah points to her forehead. I can’t figure out what that means. My mother listens and shakes her head. Then my mother starts talking again. Chanah listens to my mother and shakes her head. She gives me another butter roll for on the way.
I show it off to the other schoolboys. They gather around me and can’t take their eyes off me as I eat it. It must be something special for them too. I give each of them a small piece, and they lick their fingers.
“Where’d you get such a delicious treat?”
I stuff my cheeks and shove my hands deep into the pockets of my stiff pants. I chew and swallow slowly.
Then I do a little dance in my bare feet, as if to say, “Eh, you poor, flea-bitten good-for-nothings! These are a rare treat, these butter rolls, ha ha ha! You should try them with coffee, and then you would know what paradise on earth really is!”
VI
A GOLD MINE
A.
The only thought that keeps my mother going is that my brother Elyahu has stumbled onto a gold mine, thank God. That’s what my mother calls it, and as is her way, she wipes her eyes even out of great pride. He is set for life, she says. Her daughter-in-law is no great prize (I agree!), but God sent her son a wealthy father-in-law, Yoneh the baker. He does not do the actual baking himself. He just buys the flour and sells the bread. On Passover he bakes matzo for the whole town. He is a whiz at running the bakery business, but as a person he is always grumpy, even angry. In fact, he’s a terror.
Once when I’m visiting my brother, he catches me helping myself to an egg bagel. The bagel is fresh and warm, straight from the oven. The devil himself must have sent Yoneh the baker to catch me. You should have seen his furious face and his blazing eyes! From then on I never go back there. I will never again set foot in that place, even if I am paid in gold! That a man will grab you by the collar and throw you out the door with three swift kicks to your rear! I tell my mother what happened, and she runs right over there — she wants to give Yoneh what he richly deserves.
But my brother Elyahu doesn’t allow it. He agrees with Yoneh and complains to my mother that I have shamed him. Whenever I visit him, he says, I eat bagels. He’d rather give me a kopek and let me go somewhere else to buy a bagel. My mother tells him he doesn’t have a drop of compassion for me. He doesn’t care at all that I am an orphan. My brother Elyahu tells her that even orphans aren’t allowed to grab a bagel from someone else’s oven.
My mother warns him to speak a little more quietly. My brother Elyahu says he’ll shout to make sure everyone knows I’m a thief.
The word thief my mother can’t bear to hear. She turns all colors and warns my brother not to forget that there is a God in heaven. You don’t play with God. God will not be silent. He’s the Father of orphans. He’ll take an orphan’s part. He is a great God and can do anything. If God wishes, Yoneh the baker will not be worth one bagel! Thus she ends her speech to my brother Elyahu, takes me by the hand, and slams the door. We go home.
B.
Listen, it’s really true, you can’t play with God! Wait till you hear what happened to Yoneh the baker. I did tell you that Yoneh does not do the baking. Two swarthy men and three women from elsewhere do it for him. The women are shabby and scabby and wear sweaty red kerchiefs on their heads no matter how hot the weather is.
Strange things started happening. Customers complained that they were finding long threads, ribbons, cockroaches, and shards of glass in their rolls. One Gentile customer brought the baker a whole handful of black hair that he’d bitten into. This Christian frightened Yoneh the baker, especially when he threatened to call the police. They checked the bakers’ hair, trying to discover whose hair matched the hair found. The men blamed the women; the women blamed the men. The women pointed out that they all had blond hair. The men said, “Where did you ever see such long hair on a man?” The women quarreled among themselves, and some interesting things came to light: one had lost a garter in the challah, and another had kneaded a bandage from a cut finger into the dough. Another had used the challah dough as a pillow. The one accused solemnly swore it was a lie, then finally confessed that it had happened only once or twice, since she didn’t own a pillow.
The entire town was in turmoil. Poor Yoneh the baker had his hands full. Calling on God didn’t help. No one wanted to touch his baked goods! He might as well throw it to the dogs! Served him right!