Katerina

14

IN FEBRUARY, I gave birth to a son. The midwife, an old Jewish woman, informed me immediately that the child was sound in all his limbs and his weight was satisfactory. The labor was intense, but I was so excited I hadn’t felt the pains.

The next day I told the landlady I wished to have the boy circumcised and would call him Benjamin. The landlady, a simple, loyal woman, who kept a stall where she sold candy and seeds, was shocked by my intention and said, “What are you thinking about? Why give the child a serious defect? He’ll suffer from it all his life.”

“I swore in my heart,” I said.

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

I had abundant milk. I nursed the child morning, noon, and night. Strange, but for years I hadn’t remembered the daughter born to me in Moldovitsa, and now, as I nursed Benjamin, I remembered her face with great clarity. For a moment a chill passed through my body. But the sadness proved to be a passing one. I was weary from giving birth, from nursing, and every time the baby fell asleep, I slept with him.

My thoughts grew narrower and narrower, and it’s doubtful whether I was thinking at all.

“Where does the mohel live?” the words left my mouth.

“Why do you need him? Why?” The woman’s open face bespoke honesty and loyalty.

“I’ll pay him,” I said in my great stupidity.

“He’s a God-fearing man, and he wouldn’t do something like that,” said the woman, lowering her face.

The next day I went down to the train and traveled to a village. I guessed they wouldn’t be as strict in the country. But I quickly discovered my error. I spent long hours in isolated taverns, struggling with all my power to get to a mohel. The people I met didn’t encourage me. “What for?” they said. “One must protect oneself and one’s children.”

I had a long conversation with a widow in one of those narrow little roadside taverns. She spoke to me like a mother. “You’re punishing your child with your own hands. Don’t you see what they’re doing to the Jews? Not a day passes without a murder, and you, instead of protecting him, want to give him a severe blemish. We have no choice, but you, with your own hands and a clear mind, you’re sentencing him to a miserable fate.” There was sharpness and honesty in her voice. But for some reason, I don’t know where I found the strength, I repeated that single sentence like a fool. “I am determined to have the baby circumcised.”

I roamed from village to village and from tavern to tavern. A few Jews lived in each village, and in every tavern I found quiet, marvelous people, who offered the baby a cup of warm milk and served me a mug of coffee, but they wouldn’t heed my request, and more than once they reprimanded me. In my great anguish, I was about to open my mouth and tell them: I’m a Ruthenian, the daughter of Ruthenians, but my fate has pulled me from my ancestors, and now I have nothing to grasp except the hems of Jewish homes. In my heart I knew no one would understand, so I kept silent. Finally, in one isolated village I found a Jewish grocer who served as an occasional mohel. He saw my distress and agreed to circumcise my son. His agreement astonished me, and I burst into tears.

That night I didn’t sleep. Evil thoughts tormented me, and as though to bring my dread to a boil, the baby was relaxed and suckled quietly. The thought that the next morning he would be circumcised suddenly cast fear upon me, and I wanted to flee the place. But my resolution was stronger than my fear, and I didn’t budge from the house.

Early in the morning they circumcised him, and I couldn’t restrain myself. I sobbed like a servant woman. When I was aroused from my faint and saw that the child was breathing, I felt easier. I took the landlady’s hands, bowed down, and kissed her, as we do in the village.

The first night after the circumcision I didn’t sleep. The baby, to my surprise, didn’t cry but only murmured and sighed. I stood next to his wretched little cradle, and my mouth emitted words I had likely heard in my childhood in the meadows.

For a month I stayed in the mohel’s house. His wife prepared me milk porridge and a cup of coffee every morning. I nursed the boy day and night. A kind of oblivion, such as I had not known all my life, enfolded me, and I slept for many hours. Again I was in Henni’s company. Henni told me many things about her childhood and about her parents, who pinched pennies so she could study with a famous teacher. The teacher’s demands were many and difficult. After a day of torture, she would return home by the night train. More than once she begged: Let me be; I don’t want to be a pianist. But her parents didn’t listen. If she refused to rise in the morning, they made her get up, and if she refused to take the train, one of her parents, usually the mother, would escort her. Thus for years and years. When she was twenty, she ran away from home with Izio. Her mother, greatly upset, returned to her faith and began to take fastidious pains at home and with her husband.

“It’s good you’ve got a baby,” said Henni. “If I had had a baby, I wouldn’t have committed suicide. But why did you have him circumcised?”

“That’s what my heart told me to do.”

“The Jews have no particular excellence—the same stupidity and the same wickedness.”

“What can I do? I only feel at peace among Jews.”

My answer saddened her, and she curled up, folding her legs as she used to do in life. A hard sadness and total self-abnegation.

“You’re angry at me.” I couldn’t contain myself.

“I’m astounded at your hard-heartedness.”

“Why do you say hard-heartedness?”

“What else can I call it? Do you have another word? A person takes a healthy child and gives it a scar. What can we say? What can we call that crime?”

I wanted to cry, but my tears welled up within me, and I didn’t utter a word.

I opened my eyes, and I was afraid to stay in the house any longer. Henni’s appearance had horrified me. There and then, I decided to set out. “Why won’t you stay longer? It’s cold out,” the landlady pleaded.

“I must be on my way,” I said without explanation.

The snow was silent and a cold sun glittered in the sky. I wrapped up Benjamin and paid the sum we had agreed upon. The woman, to my surprise, wasn’t satisfied and asked for more. I added more, but I couldn’t seal my lips, and I said, “Why did you do that?”

“I demanded what was coming to us, no more.”

“Hadn’t we agreed on a price?”

“We did everything required—and more,” the woman replied in frightfully businesslike tones.

Not until I was outdoors, in the cold sun, did I feel what my days in the mohel’s house had done to me. In my heart I regretted that we had parted that way. There’s no touch in this world that doesn’t leave a scratch. I wanted to go back and ask forgiveness, but for some reason I didn’t. Now, when I picture that woman, I know she wasn’t evil or miserly, just bitter. Her barrenness cried out from within her.

I stood at the village square and didn’t know which way to turn. Without Henni’s jewels, who knows where I would have ended up. I bundled Benjamin in two fur wraps, and he slept quiedy. His tranquil sleep strengthened me, and I was willing to set out on foot.

“Where are you going?” An old peasant stopped his wagon.

I told him the name of the nearby village.

“Get up.”

“How much must I pay?”

“Nothing at all.”

After an hour’s ride, he asked, “Where are you from?”

I told him.

“But you don’t look like someone from a village.”

“Then from where?”

“I don’t know.”

“From the village, father, from the meadow.” The old melody of my mother tongue rose within me.

“There’s something in your voice.”

“What, father?”

“Some other tune.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And what were you doing here?” he probed.

“I was visiting relatives,” I lied.

“I wouldn’t let my daughter go out on a trip alone.”

“Why?”

“The road spoils you. A person soaks up foreign terms, foreign gestures. We Ruthenians must watch ourselves. Jews ruin everything. Now they’re spoiling our women. You mustn’t work for the Jews. The Jews corrupt one’s soul.”

I got down at the next village square and was glad to be free of that man and his reproaches.