The Loves of Judith Read Online Free PDF

birdbrain. But if you can fly, what do you need a brain for? Those sparrows, they look so gray. But when the sparrow husband feeds the sparrow babies, the sparrow wife is fooling around with another guy right in front of his eyes. You knew that, Zayde? So, the piece of bread they’d give me, I’d hold it in my mouth like this and lay on the ground in the yard on my back, like this, Zayde. And the sparrows would come and stand right here on my chin and on my forehead, and they would peck the bread right out of my mouth. Give me your hand now, Zayde, help your father up from the floor.
    “And once the neighbor’s little boy caught a finch in a trap, and he says he’s gonna poke out the bird’s eyes with a needleso he’ll keep on singing. You knew that, Zayde? A songbird, if you’ll put out his eyes, he sings and sings, and he don’t stop until he dies without a drop of strength. So I steal a penny from Uncle to ransom the bird. And Uncle catches me and gives me such a beating—‘
Shmendrik!
’ he says. ‘You want to starve us to death?’—And I run away to the river and I don’t come back for two days. For food I’m eating grass, and for water I’m drinking from the river. And I’m sitting and making paper boats and writing on them:
Tateh, Tateh, kum aher un nem mikh a haym
. You know what that is, Zayde? Because of your name, I forget you don’t know Yiddish.
Father, Father, come and take me home
, that’s what I’m writing. And boat after boat I’m putting in the water, until Uncle finds me and drags me back to the workshop. And once more he’s killing me with his smacks: ‘Such things you’ll write about me?’ he says. And he sends his own sons to chase after my paper boats, because he knows how far
korebliki
like those could go. What can I tell you, Zayde? You can hit and you can punish a child, but you won’t break his spirit, and you won’t murder his dream. To tell everything I went through with this evil uncle, a person really has to be Dostoyevsky. But one thing, Zayde, I’m telling you that you should know: I didn’t part from the birds. I grew up with them. And I always had a bird to sing to me. That’s just something you make up your mind about. I just made up my mind that every bird that’s flying, he’s fluttering his wings for me. And every bird that’s singing in the tree, he’s singing for me. The Uncle’s children were students in the gymnasium, and I was only a tinsmith’s assistant, a little boy with hot tin burns on my hands, and my skin white and gray like a corpse. And coughing from coal dust. And out of the window that boy sees them walking in the street in nice clothes, the uniform of the gymnasium with buttons. But the birds, Zayde, for him they’re singing. Out of the window I see them and so I says: How did you make such a thing, Lord? A bird that sings and flies? And why didn’t you make me like that, too? Here I am, Lord, here I am, answer me!
    “Here I am, here I am, answer me,” Jacob repeated, as if hewere savoring the taste of the words along with the omelet, and them, too, he said in the Yiddish way, tearful and captivating, just like Mother would say them.

8
    A ND SO I was envious and I was covetous. Oh, how jealous I was. Jealous of the children for their suits, of the birds for their wings. The water of the Kodyma River I envied because the girls dipped their hands in it. And even the black rock I envied, where their knees touched. Even today, I take nothing from nobody and I steal nothing from nobody. But I do covet, Zayde, I do covet and I do envy. ’Cause passion and desire, these are birds nobody will catch and nobody will cut off their wings. The girls were on the black rock doing their laundry, and the wind peeped under their dresses, and the fellows went down and stood in the water and sent them the paper boats with the words of love. When you grow up and become a man, Zayde, you’ll see: you can run after a girl, you can send her all kinds