I Am Forbidden Read Online Free PDF Page A

dismantled border.
    On the driver’s bench, Zalman queried in the age-old singsong of Talmudic disquisition: “Whether it is permitted to entrust a child to unbelievers when no one knows if he will be reclaimed. If the child is not hidden, surely he will die, ruled Rabbi Oshri. Moreover, the parents may live and reclaim him, or the unbelievers may return him to a Jewish institution—
    “And if the child ends up living like a Gentile, God forbid?”
    Zalman tugged at the reins and turned the cart around. Once more, he stopped by the farm gate.
    Erect on their hind legs, the dogs widened their circles, retreating to better pounce. Zalman recoiled on the driver’s bench, his umbrella parried and thrust, but he held his ground and the cart did not budge.
    “Cezar! Dracul!” a thin voice called at last.
    The growling dogs backed into the yard.
    From behind a bale of hay, Anghel watched.
    The Jew stood in the shadow of the linden tree. “Doamna Florina?” the Jew called. “Doamna Florina!”
    The Jew peeked into the hay barn; he peeked into the cowshed where the tip of Florina’s black scarf flitted between her shoulders. “Doamna Florina? I have come.…” The Jew’s hands splayed and closed as if in dialogue with each other; they pressed against his chest. “May I ask where you married?”
    Florina pulled a stained armband from a fold in her black skirt. She thrust the emblem of the Iron Guard under the Jew’s nose. “My husband, what’s left of him.”
    The Jew drew back. “Ah … your husband is deceased? I’m sorry, Doamna Florina, what I am seeking must be elsewhere. Good day, Doamna Florina.”
    The Jew climbed back into the cart.
    Talmudic singsong kept Zalman company as he headed toward the town hall. “This is the question: Must a Jew inhiding repent for smothering a crying infant if it was done to protect other lives? Rabbi Shimon Efrata said, If a person chooses to die rather than take life, that person shall be called holy. However, the one who smothers a crying infant to avoid detection and save Jewish lives must not have a bad conscience, may the Almighty.…”
    *
    A NGHEL cut across the horse meadow and climbed the bluff overlooking the river. His feet dangled from his hollow as he reached for a wild anemone. Stem between his lips, he leaned back. His gaze drifted with a cloud and he thought of Florina, who called the color of his eyes
wood-nettle
, green and prickly topside, gray and downy underside—
    A black disk blotted out the sky; the disk leaned closer, spoke.
    “Are you a Jew, yingeleh?”
    Anghel pulled his knees to his chest, sprung up, clambered across the bluff, disappeared behind a ridge.
    “Aha,” Zalman let out, “a Romanian lad suspected of being Jewish would spit, curse, charge with his pitchfork.”
    “He is here!” Anghel panted.
    Florina’s back stiffened. Her eyes crinkled to a slit.
    The boy’s lower lip trembled. “I didn’t say anything.”
    A tear gathered in the boy’s lashes and he confessed that two winters back, he did approach the Jew.
    The dogs barked. Flick of Florina’s hand, the boy disappeared.
    Florina led the oxen to their stalls. She poured a bucket of water on the barn floor. The bristles scoured as Zalman paced the yard, careful to keep his distance from the dogs pulling at their chains. Florina poured a second bucket. A third. Zalman’s head and beard filled the small opening in the thick mud wall. “Is the floor not clean yet, Doamna Florina?” When the brush lifted again, Zalman said, “Doamna Florina, for whom did you say you worked, in Vişeu de Sus?”
    Zalman had established that Florina had worked for the Lichtensteins, that Iron Guard legionnaires murdered the Lichtensteins in 1939, that the Jewish Burial Society inhumed the parents and a baby girl, but the body of a five-year-old boy was never recovered.
    “The boy,” Zalman whispered, “what happened to Josef, the Lichtenstein boy?”
    At last Florina came out of the barn,