The Loves of Judith Read Online Free PDF Page B

of little gifts, you can sing her songs at night, like the Italians do with a guitar. You can put a paper boat for her in the water, and best of all maybe do all of them. Because you never know what she really loves. For instance, the son of the miller back home once saw a carriage on the road going along the river. Just then he’s standing next to the big mill wheel and two green eyes are looking at him from the carriage with such a look that even you, at your age, Zayde, would understand. So a whole day he sits and thinks what the eyes says, until finally he goes nuts and starts chasing every cart and every wagon that goes by in the street. And once he’s running like that, chasing the coach of the mistress of a cossack officer. She was a Jew who followed her officer to every war and every place the cossack went. Shehad a coach and horses and all the luxuries you need for love she had there—a bed with a velvet curtain, and the silk sheets that keep a man strong all night long. Maybe you’re not old enough yet to hear stories like this, eh, Zayde? And every single kind of sausage and food and bottles she had there, ’cause love gives you a big appetite. And everything was nice and neat and on its shelf. ’Cause if a woman is loved very much she’ll also be very tidy. Exactly the opposite of a man. For a man, love comes with a mess right away. And terrific eyebrows she had, eyebrows that men who know about such things would kill for. All you need is just one terrific thing in a woman to hold on to a man. We men need to stand like cattle in the meat market to show everything we got, outside and inside. But a woman, it’s something else. You can love the whole woman for a whole life just because of one terrific little thing she’s got. Just remember that women don’t know that, and you dassn’t tell them. Did I tell you that already, eh, Zayde? Did I already say that? Never mind. It’s not so terrible. Some things you can say twice. The first time you say it as soon as it comes into your head, and the second time you say it as soon as you understand it. And you, if you think the God of the Jews cares about our love, just imagine this: a cossack battalion is passing by, the horses are galloping, noise, dust, and then the wagon with the Jew and her officer in the silk bed. And that fool of a miller’s boy, who’s chasing after every cart and carriage because of her green eyes, he runs after that wagon, too. Well, the cossack officer didn’t bat an eyelash, and you’ll forgive me, Zayde, he doesn’t take his
shvantz
out of his Jew, and he leans on one hand like this. And the other hand with the sword he sticks out the window of the carriage. And right in the middle of everything, he splits the boy’s head open with one stroke, like a watermelon, and all his brains spill out on the ground. And all his love and his questions and everything inside there pours out, too. ’Cause love, like I told you, Zayde, it’s in the mind, it’s not in the heart like people your age still think and that’s where they look for it. Come on, eat now,
meyn kind
, eat, my orphan. Too bad your mother ain’t here to see us, father and son happy and eating together. Forgive me if maybe I ruined your appetite with such a tale.
Ess, meyn kind
, eat.”
    And I ate.

9
    M OSHE R ABINOVITCH , the father who gave me his name and left me his farm, was born in a small town not far from Odessa. He was born late in his parents’ life, the youngest of their seven sons.
    His mother, whose hope for a girl was disappointed, dressed him in little girl’s clothes, grew his hair long, plaited it into a golden braid, and wound blue ribbons in it, and Moshe didn’t protest.
    He grew up in the kitchen, enveloped in women and smells, and the years of sewing and knitting, listening to the intimate conversations of the maids and the cooks, and playing with lace dolls, made him into a muscular, quiet little girl, who was marvelous at embroidering loops