After the raspberries come the currants. They’re red, with little black mouths and yellow seeds, dozens of them on each branch. Run a branch through your teeth and off they come, all juicy and yummy. When they’re in season my mother buys a quart for a kopeck and I eat them with bread. The Doct’ress’ garden has two rows of currant bushes that shine in the sun. What wouldn’t I give for just one branch — for just one currant to pop in my mouth! But all this talk is making me hungry. Let’s go on to sour cherries.
Sour cherries don’t stay green for long. They ripen in no time. I swear, I’ve been on Mendl’s roof and seen cherries that were green as grass in the morning, rosy pink by afternoon, and red as fire by evening.
Sometimes my mother buys sour cherries too. But how many can she afford? Five cherries on a string. What can you do with five cherries? You play with them until you lose them and can’t find them any more.
If you can count the stars in the sky, you can count the cherries in Menashe’s garden. I’ve tried lots of times and always lost count in the end.
One thing about cherries is that they won’t drop from the tree until they’re past their prime. You’ll never find a fallen cherry that isn’t black as a plum. Peaches are different: they fall as soon as they turn yellow. Ah, peaches, peaches! They’re my favorite fruit. I’ve eaten one in my whole life and still remember the taste of it. My father was alive then and our house had all its fixings, the glass cupboard and the little couch and all the books and bedspreads. We were on our way home from synagogue when he reached into his back pocket, the one he kept his handkerchief in.
“Care for some peaches, boys?” he asked. “Here’s one for each of you.”
Out came his hand with two big, round, yellow, luscious peaches. My brother Elye couldn’t wait. He said the blessing out loud and stuffed the whole peach in his mouth. Not me. I played with it, looked at it, sniffed it, and ate it bit by bit with bread. Peaches and bread are a swell combination. I’ll never forget that peach.
From Mendl’s roof I can see a tree full of peaches. They fall one by one, yellow and red ones, splitting open when they hit the ground. I can even see their big pits. What will the Doct’ress do with so many peaches? She’ll make lots of jam and store it in the back of her oven and take it down to the cellar in winter and keep it until it gets moldy.
After the peaches come the plums. Not all at once. You’ve got two kinds of plum trees in Menashe’s garden. The first are the cherry plums; they’re small, sweet, hard, and black. Then come the bucket plums. Bucket plums are sold by the bucket. They’re thin-skinned, sticky, and watery but not as bad as you think. In fact, I wouldn’t mind one right now. But the Doct’ress doesn’t give them away. She’d rather make plum jam for the winter. Don’t ask me how she’ll eat it all.
We’re done with the cherries, plums, and peaches. Now it’s apple time. Apples, you should know, are not pears. Even a bergamot, which is the best pear in the world, is worthless until it’s ripe. You might as well chew wood. But an apple is an apple no matter how green it is. Bite into a green apple, I grant you, and you’ve got one sour mouth. Do you want to know something, though? I wouldn’t swap you a green apple for two ripe ones. A ripe one takes forever to ripen but a green one is ready to eat the minute it sets on the tree. The only difference is the size. And apples are like people: getting bigger doesn’t make them better. Your little apple can taste just as good. Take your Winesap. What doesn’t it have that a bigger apple does? And it’s going for nothing this year. There’s such a glut they’ll be trucking them in wagons. I heard that from the Doct’ress herself. She was talking to Ruvn the Apple Jew when the fruit was young on the trees.
Ruvn had come to look at her garden. He wanted to buy her pears and apples on the branch. He’s the world’s biggest expert, Ruvn is. One look at a tree and he’ll tell you what it’s worth. He’s never wrong either, barring winds, heat waves, weevils, and worms. Those things come from God, there’s no way to predict them. Not that I know what God needs apple weevils for. But he must know what he’s doing when he takes the bread from Ruvn’s mouth. A bit of bread, Ruvn says, is all he asks from a tree. He has a wife and children at home and needs to put something on their table. The Doct’ress promised him not only bread but meat. She should only, she said, be as lucky as he was in getting such trees. Trees? Pure gold!
“You know I have your best interests at heart,” the Doct’ress said. “I don’t wish better for myself.”
“Amen!” Ruvn said with a smile on his kind, red face that was peeling from the sun. “Promise there’ll be no winds or weevils this year and I’ll give you every kopeck you’re asking for.”
The Doct’ress gave him a sharp look and said in her man’s voice:
“Promise you won’t fall and break a leg.”
“No one is sent an announcement that he’s about to break a leg,”
Ruvn answered with a twinkle. “And the rich should worry more than the poor because they have more to lose.”
“You’re a clever Jew,” the Doct’ress said in a tone that could kill. “A man who wishes misfortune on others had better watch his tongue before he loses that too.”
“You’re quite right,” Ruvn said with the same smile. “A tongue is a useful thing to have. Unless, God forbid, it belongs to a hungry man on your doorstep.”
Too bad the Doct’ress’ garden isn’t Ruvn’s! Life would be a lot finer then. You’ve never seen such a witch. Let the measliest, wormiest apple with wrinkles like an old woman’s fall from a tree and she’ll pick it up and drop it in her kerchief. Where does it go from there? Either to her attic or her cellar. Most likely her cellar, because I’ve heard it’s full of rotten apples. Swiping an apple from her is a good deed.
But how? Sneak into her garden at night when the whole town’s sleeping and fill my pockets? A swell idea if not for the dog! And the most annoying part is that there are so many apples on her trees this summer that they’re practically begging to be taken. I wish I knew a magic charm to make them jump into my arms.
Well, I thought and I thought and what I finally thought of wasn’t magic. It was a long pole with a nail at one end. I had only to hook an apple by the stem and give a yank, and over the fence it would go. Provided it didn’t fall, of course. But what if it did? As long as I didn’t poke holes in it, the Doct’ress would think it was a windfall.
I swear, I didn’t bruise a single apple. I didn’t let any fall, either. I know how to handle an apple-swiping pole. The trick is to take your time. You’ve hooked an apple? Eat it real slow, take a break, and go for another. The birds won’t tell on you, I promise.
How was I supposed to know that the witch knew exactly how many apples she had on each tree? She must have counted them and seen some were missing, because the next evening she waited for the thief to show up on Mendl’s roof. She had figured out that someone was up there with a pole. Even then I might have gotten away with it if not for the witnesses. An orphan can always beg for mercy — but not when the Doct’ress thought of taking my mother and Mendl’s wife and our neighbor Pesye up to our attic with her. It was no trick to spot me through the window, fishing for apples.
“Well? What do you say about your darling son now? Do you believe me?”
It was the Doct’ress. I’d know that voice anywhere. I turned to look and saw all four of them in the attic. Don’t think I panicked and threw my pole away. It dropped by itself. It was sheer luck it didn’t take me with it. I couldn’t look those women in the eyes. If not for the dog, I’d have jumped and killed myself. The worst part was my mother. She didn’t stop weeping and wailing.