“At night I make a little noise,” she said. “When I visit my lover. Sometimes I make little cries of ecstasy, but never too loudly, because that would wake the others.”
“Yes,” Awromele said. “I understand.”
“I hope you don’t hold it against me,” she said. “About you being my misfortune. You probably can’t do anything about it. It’s just the way nature arranges things.”
She took the bread knife out of the dish rack.
“I…” Awromele said, “I’m going back to sleep.”
“No,” the mother said, “don’t go to sleep.”
“I really need to get some sleep. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“Don’t go to sleep,” she repeated. “I want you to meet my lover.”
She held up the knife. Black and gleaming. “He’s from Italy,” the mother said. “They say that Italians make the best lovers. I wouldn’t know, but it doesn’t surprise me. What do you think? Are Italians the best lovers?”
Awromele forced himself to smile. He couldn’t help thinking about his own mother, about his little sister Rochele and everything she had whispered to him about the pelican, and then about the tall boy again, and what he had said. Awromele had never been to Italy: maybe the best lovers did come from there. But he had never thought they would look like this: a bread knife with a black handle.
“Come closer,” the mother said. “I’ve always wanted an Israelite to see this. I knew it would happen one day. Only I didn’t know when, or how.”
“I need to go to sleep,” Awromele said. “Mrs. Radek, I really need to get some sleep.” He was whispering, but he still tried to speak as clearly as he could, so she would understand him, in order to rule out misunderstandings.
“I do it for you people as well,” the mother said. “For the Israelite, so also for you. When I stroke him, my lover, my sweetest, the warmest, the loveliest of all lovers, then others are stroking him as well; then the Israelite is stroking him, too. I stroke him on behalf of others, the way my lover also takes me on behalf of others, forces himself into me on behalf of dozens, thousands of others. That’s how it feels, as though thousands are forcing themselves into me when he takes me.”
She held out her hand, but Awromele didn’t dare take it. Besides, he was standing too far away to take her hand, and he didn’t feel like getting any closer.
“I’ll be going now,” Awromele said. “I’m very grateful to you for letting me stay here for a few hours. I’ll never forget it. It was a pleasure. Shall I fold up the sheets?”
“Stay,” the mother said. “I want you to see this. I want you to get to know my lover. People are cold, Awromele, but not my lover, my lover is hot.”
Now she took a step towards the boy. That was hard for her to do with her pajama pants around her ankles — she had to hold on to the counter. Inch by inch, she shuffled towards Awromele.
And he stood there, remembering that this woman was the mother of his beloved, that Xavier had come out of her, just as Awromele had come out of the rabbi’s wife.
Finally, she stopped. The Italian bread knife was dangling from her right hand. “I’ve often wondered what my misfortune would look like,” she said. “In the evening, when I couldn’t get to sleep: at night, when I woke up, and I always woke up at night. What would he look like, what kind of eyes would he have? My husband wasn’t my misfortune. My husband was the father of my son, my husband gathered me up when I was nothing, an orphan, a rag. My husband was disgusted by me, but that doesn’t matter, Awromele, because so am I.”
“Yes,” Awromele said, “yes, yes. Of course.” Now he remembered the name the tall boy had mentioned as he spoke the language of shoes and knuckles. Kierkegaard. A strange name. Kierkegaard. It sounded like a company that made Swedish crackers, and he thought of the matzos his people had to eat at Pesach, the whole time keeping his eye on the mother’s lover.
“I had a hunch,” the mother said, “but I wasn’t completely sure. Now I know for sure, and it’s strange, it’s as though I’ve known my misfortune the whole time, as though you’ve always been there, from the very first day of my life, from the moment I met my husband. My husband liked to do it violently, so he could forget that I disgusted him. He explained that to me once, in a moment of weakness. Violence was the only thing that could make him forget how I disgusted him. Everything about me disgusted him, my hair, my mouth, my teeth, the way I smelled, my caresses, my holes — some holes less than others, but he told me, There’s not a whole lot of difference. Because sometimes he really talked to me. Then he was tender, then he explained things: why he had to assault me, why he couldn’t do it any other way, why that was the only way he could show his love. It doesn’t surprise me that my misfortune is pretty, and young, and blond. That’s how it should be, young and pretty and blond.”
She gasped for breath; she was dizzy. She had to hold on to the counter. “I talk with him,” she said, “with my lover, every night, here in the kitchen, before he takes me, before he tears me open like an animal. Before he does that, I talk with him. I caress him. His blade is cold at first, but that’s only appearances; he’s as warm as a person could never be. They try to be, people do, but they’ll never be as warm as my lover. I tell him everything while I caress him. He likes that, it thrills him.”
She held the knife out in front of her.
“I want you to caress him, too. Now that I’ve seen my misfortune, now that I never again have to wonder exactly what it looks like, that misfortune of mine, now that I know that, now I want you to caress my lover. Neither of us should have existed, Awromele. But it’s too late to do anything about that now.”
She swallowed the wrong way, coughed, and wiped her mouth with her free hand. Then she said: “He likes being caressed, he loves that, he loves being called little names. Caress him and say something to him.”
She held the knife under Awromele’s nose.
“I can’t,” Awromele said. “It’s very sweet of you to offer. But I really have to go home now — my family is waiting for me — some other time, I’d be delighted. It sounds like fun, when I’m a little less pressed for time.”
“No,” the mother said. Her voice sounded furious, sharp as an ax. “Not some other time. Caress my lover. They’ve forgotten about you. If you hadn’t existed, I would have been happier. But they’ve forgotten about me, too. I’m just as forgotten as you are. That’s why I want you to stroke my lover. I want my lover to feel the hands of my misfortune, the soft hands of my misfortune.”
Awromele moved his good hand towards the knife, placed his index finger carefully against the blade.
“Stroke it,” the mother said, “stroke it. You’re cold, my lover is hot.”
Awromele carefully moved his finger up and down.
“That’s good, the way you do it,” the mother said. “He likes that, it thrills him. This is the love of my life, Awromele. When I’m not around anymore, I want you to remember what the love of my life looked like. I want you to tell other people: Mrs. Radek had one great love in her life, and I stroked him.”
Awromele held his finger still, but the mother said: “Don’t stop. Go on. Talk to him, talk to him in your language, that horrible language of yours, the one that causes me such pain, the language in which you people speak to your God. Say to my lover the prayer meant for your God. My lover wants to hear your prayers, he wants to hear prayers that aren’t meant for him, and so do I. I want to finally hear a prayer in the language of my misfortune.”