The following night they returned to the hut. And they did it again: inside, Molochinko copulated with the woman, while outside, Papa kneeled, his ear to the wall, listening for their groans of pleasure, for the dregs of a passionate moan. Molochinko came out with a great supply of words for him. The way she smiled; the tender flesh of her inner thigh; her soft flowing hair … Papa listened, swallowing his spit. Molochinko allowed him to sniff his fingertips: Remember now, no biting.
And then one night … Papa hammered gently, with a trembling heart, and Aron jumped up and threw the blanket off: Why does she always have to cover me up, why do I come here day after day, it’s a miracle my head doesn’t explode from all the hammering, how long can you sit and watch someone tearing down a wall, and he tiptoed out, afraid they might stop him in his tracks with a resounding shout, or the boom of the sledge, and force him back to listen, and so, sidling up to the door, he stood there dizzily, with his hand on the knob: Maybe I got up too suddenly, it’ll pass, another second and I’ll be out of here and I’ll never come back, what a bore.
… One night Papa caught a glimpse of the crone in the next hut peering out the window. He decided not to wait for Molochinko and went back to their hideout in the forest. The robber of streetlamps returned around dawn, bragging and swaggering without cease. An unfamiliar urge for vengeance seeped into Papa’s heart. An ancient outrage. He said nothing to Molochinko about the old crone next door. The enraptured lover described the bright-colored cap the woman had started knitting him, and the holy icon over the bed which she piously turned to the wall each time, and the fullness of her lips as she blew on the harmonica—there was a look on Papa’s face that made Molochinko uneasy, and he slowed down but couldn’t stop entirely: her breasts, he said, raising a hand to caress them, so warm and soft beneath his cheeks, sending out their milky vapor; and Papa’s eyes never left Molochinko, stunned by the murderous hatred in his heart, the hatred of the meek for the braggart, the hatred of Cain for Abel.
The night after, I crouched outside the hut again as usual; there were eyes in the back of my head, though, and Molochinko jumped up onme, hippety-hop, and in through the hatch, and I turned and ran in the opposite direction; I was an animal in those days, for better or worse I was an animal, that’s how I got out of the ice, Miss Edna; he was pounding with his whole body now, pressing his chest and loins against the wall, and Aron thrust the door open and fled, down four steps at a time, home through the rain, through the darkness, straight into bed with all his clothes on, with the blanket over his head, training himself in secret like a sumo. And so, Miss Bloom, Miss Edna, I ran for maybe half the night, till I couldn’t hear the dogs barking or the people shouting anymore, but all night long I saw the smoke rising out of the hut, and I never even knew the woman, only her smell.
With all his might he smashed the wall. A last chunk of stone was stuck between the bricks and he waved his hammer at it. Another bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky, but lassitude leaked in between the raindrops, as though all the spunk had gone out of winter. Papa bellowed hoarsely and struck again. And again. Edna sprawled in her armchair, all-seeing though her eyes were shut tight, with an unfamiliar violence whirling up from the abyss inside her, causing her little frame to tremble and shake; a spark flew out of the somber sky, and a bolt of lightning spat fire, but the rain had relented. Papa groaned again and paused: the rest of the wall caved in. Lightning hissed with rancor and recoiled, and there was a moment’s silence. Then the clouds began to fade into the distance, withering as they mounted higher, like an assembly of grumbly old men.
Somewhere a window opened. The lamps in the street went on. The apartment was filled with a gentle light. Papa sank down, utterly exhausted. He raised his heavy head in search of Edna and was surprised to find her crouching under the piano, her arms crossed over her knees. Her eyes caressed him with tender compassion. And he smiled at her apologetically, as though waking from a dream, reflecting how young she looked, how fragile, not much older than his Aron.
“This wall is finished,” he said at last in a husky voice.
Edna stood up and stumbled and sank down again. She laced her fingers as tightly as she could to stop the trembling. Papa approached and stood limply before her, waiting for her to say something. When he looked he saw her bashful smile, the gleam of mischief in her eyes, and her finger pointing at the kitchen wall.
“Hinda will want more money,” he said. This was his first mention of Mama, and the way he said her name filled Edna with glee, as though the two of them had become conspirators against her.
She thought a moment. Her bank clerk, a little man who behaved like a tall one and always tried to flirt with her, had warned: profits on the fund that paid for her annual summer trip were poor this year; she shuddered at the thought, but suddenly imagined the way he moved his hips, and something inside her, a bucking bronco, whinnied and stamped before the gaping bespectacled eyes of the clerk. “A hundred and twenty,” she said in a scintillating voice.
“No, no,” said Aron’s father. “That’s too much. It isn’t a very big wall.”
“But it may be tricky. It’s probably crawling with electric wires.” She smiled.
“Excuse me for asking, Miss Bloom, but where do you get all the money?”
She smiled a little smile, cryptically feminine, the kind of smile she’d always despised. It succeeded nicely. She smiled again.
“It’s late now,” said Papa, peering out the window. The gloomy clouds were drifting away, gnawing each other spitefully. Papa weighed the hammer in his hand and brandished it at the window. “We can’t start today,” he said, “we have to wait until tomorrow, if that’s okay with you, Miss Bloom.”
“Tomorrow is Friday,” she answered, still smiling. “And my name is Edna.”
He blinked at her, distraught, recalling something faraway, impossible, staring wildly at the swift yellow animal flapping her tail, and Edna was amazed to see that even his eyes were throbbing. Like a giant he towered over her, her narrow waist, her slender thighs, and on the wall outside that led to her entrance some brat, maybe Zacky Smitanka, had scribbled a nasty jingle about a bull and a mouse who want to play house, the coarseness of which estranged them. Suddenly, Papa swerved around, waved his hammer high, and struck a blow at the kitchen wall. Aron shivered in his sleep. The hammer remained at Edna’s over the Sabbath, implanted like an ax inside her wall, where it vibrated uninterruptedly, emitting shock waves in concentric circles.
21
Mama stood in the kitchen, cooking lunch. Her hands went through the motions like a pair of trusty horses as she sank in contemplation of the sudden turn her life had taken, thanks to a certain Hungarian Miss Eegan-meegan; thanks to her idiot of a husband too, who, like all men, had a tendency to lose his head at the first scent of fresh meat; three weeks, she reckoned, this farce had been going on, sapping her strength, preventing her from attending to any number of tasks; when was the last time she repapered the kitchen cupboards, for instance, or changed the mothballs in the linen closet, or sat down for a talk with Aron; the child was going out like a candle before her eyes, what was happening to him, it wrenched her heart, he would doze for days like somebody’s grandfather, it was having an effect on him, all this, all this … She searched for the appropriate word, but caught a whiff of a strange odor that made her lose her train of thought, and she turned her attention back to the pot in front of her, stirring gradually.
Who would have believed it, such a thing happening to us, she sighed, a model family. Mechanically she tasted the soup, added a pinch of salt, stirred joylessly. She had even stopped worrying her head about Edna Bloom in the past few days. If nothing had happened so far, chances were it wouldn’t. Passions are like fruit, she whispered to her image in the shiny pot, pick them when they’re ripe or they rot on the tree. Again she caught a whiff of the unfamiliar odor, impelling her hands to stir more vigorously, and when this is over, and Moshe comeshome with his tail between his legs ?
?? she crushed a clove of garlic, added a tablespoon of oil, and began to peel the vegetables for another soup: a vegetarian I’ve got me now, on top of everything, the food I make him isn’t good enough anymore, the boy’s a regular fein-schmecker. He has more pity for a chicken than he does for me here, killing myself to cook his dinner. But then the odor pierced her nose and startled her out of these ruminations.
For a full fifteen years Mama had lived in this dingy-gray building project, and she knew the luncheon menus and baking repertory of the housewives inside out, shrewdly identifying each curlicue of smell in the tangled skein of aromas that wafted out of their kitchens.
So it must have been appalling, a veritable stab in the belly, when these undreamed-of smells infiltrated the familiar ranks, assailing her nostrils with a gypsy effrontery, a fandango of exotic spice. Still ablaze with the memory of her debacle, Mama lost her head, picked up her umbrella, put on her heavy Khrushchev, and walked out the door. Down the stairs to the muddy, neglected garden she hurried, turning left and right. She sniffed the air. Where was it coming from? Dreary gray rain had been drizzling down for the past few days. She flared her nostrils, shut her umbrella so it wouldn’t get in the way, and marched ahead, nose in the air, her goider bulging toadishly till, all at once, in back of the house, she inhaled an aromatic cluster that burst in her nose like a bustling bazaar and filled her heart with foreboding.
It was almost noon. The children were not yet home from school. The rain fell dully, undeviatingly down. The days of heavy downpours were over, it seemed; winter had reached its peak too soon, and now there were only wishy-washy showers. She scrambled up the growing mound of debris under Edna’s window and sniffed the air. Here, on top of this monument to her own defeat, with her nose in the clouds, she was struck by a distinctive odor—no mere kitchen scent with seasonings this, but a rarefied female perspiration mingling with the cooking, that special smell Mama remembered all too well from bygone days, which came of a woman’s stirring herself into the pot and spraying it with the musk of her intimate longings. Mama climbed down the mound, like a hen deposed from a refuse heap, and shambled home, brokenhearted.
She stood in the kitchen, wearing her apron, leaning against the marble counter, which had been stained and cracked over the years ina faithful, unflattering reflection of her life. Furtively, tormentedly, she took another whiff, and shuddered: it wasn’t just an unfamiliar smell anymore but a whole new language. Like an animal she sniffed, holding back her tears so as not to lose the scent. The humiliating part was that Papa had never so much as hinted he was dissatisfied with her cooking, or susceptible to a craving for other food; suddenly she remembered and cringed with pain, his farts had a different smell to them lately; as a matter of fact, she realized to her indignity, for the first time since she’d met him, he let them out on the sly instead of tooting unabashed. Again she sniffed and flared her nostrils, drawing in all the errant odors. And thus, with fists clenched on the kitchen counter, did Mama learn the culinary language of her rival. Despondently she returned to the chicken soup mit lokshen, the noodles floating in the watery broth Moshe liked so well. Tfu! She almost spat out her biliousness, then settled herself on the “little cripple,” crossed her arms over her breasts, and stared in the air. Only when Aron’s nervous cough reached her ears did she shake herself out of it, disappointed to discover that for the first time since early youth she was sitting in her kitchen as she worked.
Aron slinked off to his room and lay on his bed with open eyes, kneading his sore, distended belly. Rain fell outside the window, blurry, watery, insipid. Sure has been raining, reflected Aron, listening to the pitter-patter; first there were floods, and the tree out front, that plane tree, almost collapsed, I mean the entire building creaked and groaned. He yawned. Shut his eyes. Maybe he would catch a few winks before lunch. Before the main siesta from two to four. Or the nap from four to seven. Brilliant of those grownups to come up with the siesta. It used to drive him crazy to have to lie down after lunch when there was a whole world out there. But he was calmer nowadays. And in any case, there wasn’t much to do, he’d been having a kind of dead spell lately, like a hibernating bear, and what was the use of going out in this rain, in this spray like a thick gray veil, in this mizzle and drizzle. And Papa was missing beyond it.
Aron hadn’t been to Edna Bloom’s for days. The booms were heard less frequently now. Papa was working with a drill, with a chipping hammer and a chisel; his tools were getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes he seemed to be doing nothing at all, maybe he was just sitting on the floor there, lost in thought, listening, wondering. From time totime a passerby would see him loom statuelike in the window, staring out at the tepid rain. Then he would suddenly shake himself awake, rub his eyes ill-humoredly, and start pounding the wall again, only to languish a moment later. And once or twice a day, his powder-white mane would lean out the window as he threw a bucketful of debris onto the rising mound below. Yesterday on Aron’s way home from the trash bins, he saw Papa in the window like that. Papa stared blearily, meshed with sleep, not quite seeing or recognizing him. Aron stood motionless, with arms outstretched, hidden in the coat with the sleeves that came down over his hands, his tummy sticking out for all to see: his little pregnancy, a medical specimen, a dry fact. For a moment Papa’s eyes grew wide. A trace of disillusion shot through them. I’ve been like this for three whole weeks, Aron thought at him with all his might, you have no idea how much it hurts. Papa shook his head in disbelief. Or maybe he was only shaking the dust off, because he promptly went in and shut the window, and curtains of trickling rain closed over it, and once more his hammer blows resounded, urgent, angry, like banging on the doors of a moving train, and Aron hurried to his secret hiding place at the Wizo Nursery School, maybe now, at long last; he looked down with revulsion at his little potbelly, calling to Papa in his heart, encouraging him: Harder, harder, come on, we’ll make it, but he knew Papa was too far gone by now, he recognized this wordlessly, trudging through the snow-covered steppes, hunching his shoulders as he thrust deep into winter, and Aron stood up and shuffled wearily home. He dived under the blanket, under the roots of lights, forgetting Papa, who had disappeared, who had wandered beyond the storms, beyond thunder and lightning, those childish displays of an amateur-winter, and who would tell him he was going astray, that he was running in circles like a huge, blinkered mule around a grindstone, inscribing frozen rings on the ice, but Papa doesn’t hear as he goes on pounding, soullessly, with lackluster eyes, striving to destroy the site where winter was begotten, the place where there is no day or night, a barren clifftop, gleaming blue like a marble egg, the winter’s heart where the winds draw their chill, which Papa will smash to release a warm little chick …
From the kitchen he could hear the clatter of dishes. Mama was setting the table. Soon she would call him in to eat. But how would he put anything in his mouth. As if there were any room left for food in there.He curled up on his side, not daring to lie on his stomach. If he were a mensch, if he had the strength, he would get up and do something: he had a math quiz tomorrow, there was Bible homework to do, at the very least he could straighten out the mess in his bottom drawer. It was impossible to find anything in there with all the bottle caps and labels and newspaper clippings and trademarks and Popsicle sticks and lottery tickets, who would have believed there were so many contests, and this morning he made a vow that from now on he would send in at least one a day, a brain twister or a completed jingle or a crossword puzzle, or “Find the Seven Differences,” at least that much he ought to do, because what else did he have to occupy him lately, sleeping, waiting, wasting his life. And he heaved a sigh. Once he loved summer. Then he started preferring winter. The pale colors, the warm steam of his breath that left a smell in the woolly mouth of his stocking cap; and winter clothes are thick, so at least they make you look a little bigger. But this winter has been tough for him. And the rain is deceptive: like nothing much, but the cold pierces through. Every day on t
he radio they tell about chickens freezing to death. Crops destroyed by frost. Aron feels cold too. Like not enough blood is circulating maybe. He nestles inward. Worn out.
“What’s with you?” Yochi walked in, home from school, and threw down her satchel. Up went his knee. So they’d know there was a body under the blanket. “Open the window, how can you breathe in here?” Why did everybody open the window whenever he was in the room. “But it’s cold out.” She relented and lay down on her bed, massaging her temples, panting with stifled rage, with misery. Who knows what was going on with her friends at school. How they treated her there. She never discussed them with him. Never mentioned names or admitted she was jealous of the ones who had boyfriends now. Never went to parties at school. Maybe Yochi was the Shalom Sharabani of her class. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Knowing. Once she used to share her thoughts with him. They would have these little talks at night before they fell asleep. They’d hide in their parents’ linen closet, leaving the door open just a crack for air, and Yochi would make up stories for him, what a wild imagination she had; he didn’t remember the details, only her soft, flowing voice, and the smell she gave off as she sat facing him on the chest of drawers, a special girl scent that got stronger and stronger as the story reached its climax, and then there was their secret code, thelast one home from school would ask: Is A B? Meaning: Is Mama angry? And what about that friend of hers, Zehava, thought Aron, straining, indifferently, to fulfill an old duty. Who was Yochi to him now? When did they start to drift apart? Until a couple of weeks ago they had been close, they loved each other. Where were the beautiful years of their togetherness? And maybe she’d wind up marrying a big fat rich guy, dumb but sensitive, who would build a special room in the house for Aron. That would be Yochi’s condition for marrying a man she didn’t really love. And her children would play with him. One of them would look a lot like Aron, and they would be very dear to each other, but he would die young. And the other two, a son and a daughter, would be wilder and bratticr. They would throw Aron around like a ball and take away his Houdini equipment and seal him in an enormous pickling jar, and sit there staring at him from outside, pressing their noses against the glass, it’s a good thing Yochi walked in just in time to rescue him. And when Mama and Papa came to visit them once a year, Yochi would bring Aron out. And they’d sit around the table on her dainty chairs, while Aron and Yochi conversed in refined phrases, fragile words. And the salesman, Yochi’s husband, would watch them with a contented smile on his face, though he wouldn’t really understand. And Mama and Papa would sit there, meek and gray, awkwardly twiddling their forks, wondering whether it’s okay to eat chicken with your fingers.