Where the Bird Sings Best Read Online Free PDF Page A

lived, destroying wealth, between the hatred of the people and the contempt of the aristocrats.
One day, after counting up his savings and looking at himself in the mirror, he was so disgusted by his reflection that a tumor sprouted in his left eye. In less than a month, he was blind in that eye. Then his hands became covered with warts, his back with sores. He stopped eating until he died, skinny and white, like a paraffin candle. My father received the leather coffer, two-thirds full, as his inheritance. After burying David, he fled toward the Ukraine and settled down in Odessa as a moneylender. The gold coins multiplied at the same rate as the rancor of his debtors. Finally, a nobleman who refused to pay had his hounds bite my father and his servants daub him with hog excrement. Moisés, naked, foul smelling, and bloody, reached the synagogue looking for consolation. In despair, he recited Psalm 102: I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. The rabbis chanted along with him: I watch, and am as a sparrow alone on the roof. Mine enemies reproach me all the day. Moisés, counting on the support of his coreligionists, who covered him with a tallis, bellowed out the end of the psalm, straining his vocal chords, while the white silk became blotted with red. Just at that moment, a bee flew through the window and, after fluttering around the sacred candelabra, landed on the chest of the wounded man and for no apparent reason—he made no abrupt movements, concentrated as he was on communicating with God—buried its stinger in his heart. My father felt that all his blood had settled in that organ, then that his chest was exploding, and then that a boiling flood washed over his brain. He fell to the floor, trembling like an epileptic. For half an hour he howled and then lost consciousness for three seconds. When he awoke, he was a different man. His narrow personality split open, allowing a sensitive, much vaster being to appear. He announced that God had given him a message by inoculating him with a love for bees. The filthy money he obtained from loans would be exchanged for perfumed honey. He forgave all debts and became a beekeeper. He hid the jewel box full of gold in a hive, promising himself he would never use it as long as the honey business gave him enough for him and his family to live on. His wife, Ruth, could not accept the change, felt terrified about the future, and after converting to Christianity, ran off with a Cossack, leaving her only child, me, in the cradle. The brutish Cossack, during one of his drinking sprees, realized that she was drunk on a Saturday and cut off her head with a slice of his saber. I think it was then that Death put on my mother’s face as a mask. And from then on, Moisés lived covered with bees in order to erase his body from the world. For me, he was only a blur of vibrating insects. I can’t even tell you what color his eyes were, so hidden were they by the shimmer of beating wings. When did he die? I never knew. One day, I realized that the human form composed of bees was empty. Perhaps when he felt himself dying he asked the bees to eat him. I went among them, filling the space my father had left and taking my turn. I never had to use a single one of those coins.
     
—Abraham Groismann
     
    Alejandro and the Rabbi were moved. They could not imagine how my grandmother clung to the leather coffer.
    “Let’s just leave things as they are, Teresa. We’ll use only a few coins to rebuild the house and put the rest back into the hive. Let’s live off the honey, the miracle of these bees, organized and peaceful as perhaps human beings will one day be if they learn to work together.”
    “Enough!” interrupted Teresa. “I am not a professional victim. If we stay here, they’re going to slit our throats, with Adonai’s good wishes. The Union of Russian People is accusing Jews of stealing blood from Christian children, and The Protocols of the Elders of