Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

like mirrors. The white kitchen cupboard bulged with plump rolls, dried noodles, tasty cheese, all for the taking by anyone happening to drop by.
    Small wonder that I bundled myself up again and set out for Aunt Miriam’s to look for Mother.
    The snow lay deep and soft. You had to step carefully, quietly, as if you were afraid of waking somebody who was very sick.
    The way led through Cobblers Lane. But Cobblers Lane was narrow and crooked, with cracked pavement. Along one side low roofs hung over broken-down, humpbacked hovels, and along the other ran a stone wall with peeling patches of lime.
    Behind the wall was a cottage with a red door, where there lived a certain Dobrele, who had just returned from Buenos Aires, a woman with a pious, milky face, wearing a broad-brimmed, black hat. About Dobrele they said that she had turned religious, that she recited blessings over everything, even after hearing thunder. Wealthy landowners, it was whispered, came visiting in carriages and, while dallying with them, she would loudly say her prayers. She also had her eye on schoolboys from the nearby kheyder , and on those nights when no landowners’ carriages stopped by, Dobrele would stand outside her door, dressed all in red, grab passing schoolboys, take them inside, and pray with them.
    I thought I’d better steer clear of Cobblers Lane and take the promenade instead. There, the snow fell more silently, bluer than in the central market. By the narrow, sharp-spired German church, set among small parks and gardens, a bent figure knelt and, with face touching the feathery snow, made the sign of the cross.
    But I was still some distance from Aunt Miriam’s house, near the prison with its high, yellow fence, where a burly soldier in a fur overcoat, shouldering a rifle, paced back and forth. Walking past him was forbidden, so I crossed over to the other side, walked through the prison lane, and only then onto Warsaw Street.
    I could have sworn I was heading in the right direction. The way to Aunt Miriam’s was as familiar to me as my own ten fingers. Here was Shimshen-Shloyme’s tavern, and beyond it, the wide Orthodox church, near which there ought to be a red wooden shack where the prison guards warmed their frozen fingers.
    But there was no sign anywhere of Aunt Miriam’s cottage. Was it because of the snow swirling around both sides of my face? Suddenly, I saw a tall shape approaching, a hulking figure who seemed to be singing. Singing? How could someone be singing with all this snow pelting one’s face? I soon realized that no one was approaching, no one was singing, but that I must have run into the battered stone wall in Cobblers Lane, staggering past the very door where Dobrele with the pious, milky face lived.
    I soon realized that it wasn’t the stone wall, but the fence surrounding the Gentile hospital. If so, Aunt Miriam’s place couldn’t be far off, probably that small structure over there, with the two lighted windows. But I couldn’t see the wooden shed, which clung to the cottage like a child to its mother’s apron, nor the low, round water pump.
    I heard the tinkle of a bell, and a sleigh glided past my eyes.
    “Little boy, little boy, where are you going? Little boy, little boy, why have you stopped?”
    I couldn’t make out where the voice was coming from, whether from the passing sleigh or from Aunt Miriam’s cottage. It reminded me of crazy Mordkhe, who was called “the hook” because of his habit of catching you by the ear, hooking his finger around it, and singing into it,
    “Little boy, little boy, where are you going? Little boy, little boy, why have you stopped?”
    I had, indeed, stopped … no, I was lying down. It felt soft and warm and the inside of my nose tickled. My eyes grew heavy. Yes, I was lying in bed with my face to Father’s back, but I didn’t seem to smell his hairy body. Instead, there was a different smell, the kind that came from the kosher butcher shops on Fridays. But