Читать книгу Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories - Blume Lempel - Страница 13

THE DEATH OF MY AUNT

In the early hours after midnight, the telephone sounds altogether different — or so it seemed to me when the metallic jangle pounced like a thief that night, putting a swift end to my dreams and driving me out of bed. I ran down the long, dark corridor to the dining room and reached for the receiver.

“Yes?” I croaked, half asleep.

I couldn’t catch who was on the line. “Who did you say is speaking?”

“The old age home on Howard Avenue,” the voice said.

I felt for a chair and sat down. The spiders that nest in hidden places had come out into the open, tightening the loose strands of their webs with their thin, hairy legs. I clutched the receiver with both hands.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Lempel?” The feigned politeness was infuriating. I was tempted to ask whether he’d called at two o’clock in the morning just to find out how I was. But my throat closed up.

The voice on the other side of the night spoke again. “I’m sorry to say we have some sad news for you. Your aunt — your aunt, Rokhl Halperin, is no longer among the living.”

The flush that had broken out all over my body turned to a chill, and then I was hot again. With the receiver still at my ear, I opened the window. A cold gust of wind swept over me. A car sped by. In the glow of the headlights I could see it was snowing. The grass around the house was already white.

“Mrs. Lempel?”

“Yes?”

“We’ll be arranging for the funeral first thing in the morning. We’d like you to be here then.”

I waited a moment. “When did it happen?”

“Saturday at five in the afternoon.”

His cool demeanor made me want to scream, curse, draw blood. Why, why had they waited until two o’clock in the morning to call me? Why had they allowed her to die all alone?

“Mrs. Lempel, I can tell you’re upset. I understand your position and I don’t want to argue with you. But you must understand —”

I closed the window and tried to understand. Why was he calling on Sunday, when she’d suffered the first heart attack Thursday? From what he said, on Friday she’d improved a bit; then Saturday morning she’d had the second attack. She’d wrestled with the Angel of Death, kept up the fight till evening. . . .

I couldn’t listen any longer. I hung up the phone and went back to bed.

My husband and children had slept through it all. Why should I wake them now?

She’d waited for me, hoping I would come. Why on earth hadn’t they called? Why had they done this to her, to me? Abruptly I sat up in bed. I wanted to call the home and scream: Murderers! Robbers! To save the cost of a lousy phone call you shatter the lifelong dream of a poor old woman?

But instead of going to the telephone, I went to the window and parted the curtains. I looked out at the tree swaying in the wind. The snow had turned into a heavy rain. I saw that the bare branches of my tree were filled with keening women wrapped in black shawls. They had settled on the bushes and on the barbed wire fence, and in my aunt’s voice they were speaking to me: “Remember, be sure to do what I deserve, as I asked you to. . . . Do not disgrace my dead body. . . . No lipstick, no powder. . . . Examine my shroud, make sure it’s not full of mites, God forbid. . . . Do not forget the Willett Street rabbis. I’ve made my donations so they will say Kaddish and study Mishnah in my name. Remember! Remember!”

“I remember,” I answered into the pillow.

I pulled the covers over my head, but the wailing women in the March wind kept up their lament. They commanded me to read and understand the wind-blown pages of my aunt’s life. Eyes shut, I gazed upon the narrow lane where she was born and grew up. Here she is as a little girl, playing with the boys who study at her father’s school. And now she’s a grown woman, sitting at the machine, sewing bridal garments for other women’s weddings. She sews and sews, until white begins to show in her jet-black braids. Then she bows to her father’s wishes and marries a widower with grown children. When her father dies, her husband takes over the school and his children leave for America. My aunt’s mother moves in with her older daughter, my own mother. Just before the Second World War, my aunt and her husband arrive in New York.

Her husband didn’t last long. The strange new country sapped his will to live, and he fell ill and soon died. After his death, his children washed their hands of her. Alone in a strange world, without a relative or a protector, her old home in ruins, my aunt drifted from place to place, hungry, not knowing where to turn, until someone suggested she clean houses for a living.

To ward off the humiliations of the outside world, my aunt took refuge in the secret passages of her own being. There she found a strength that guided her and motivated her to go on with her life. With every punishment in this world of lies and falsehoods, she attained a higher moral standing in the world of truth beyond the grave. She looked forward to the just and agreeable world to come, knowing that there she would be rewarded. Every moment of every day, every day of the year, she prepared herself for the journey to the other world. Mondays and Thursdays, in accordance with the old custom, she fasted half the day.

When we arrived in America, we tracked down my aunt on Powell Street in Brownsville. She was living in a dark cubicle; the landlady kept the toilet locked. That very day, we moved her in with us on Ocean Avenue. We gave her a room with a window overlooking Prospect Park. My aunt, who was barely sixty years old, was already well along on the road to the other world. She didn’t meddle in the running of the household. She cooked for herself in her room, kept kosher, prayed in the morning and in the evening. Forever bent over her holy books, she rarely lifted her eyes to see what was happening here on God’s earth.

As evening fell, when her room began to grow dark and the shadows pressed in from every corner, after she had finished eating and recited the blessing after the meal, made up her bed and placed a bowl of water on the night table for the next morning’s ritual hand washing — then my aunt would emerge from her room to tell the children a story.

She’d recount the tale of the little old lady who had lots and lots of children — dark, charming little girls and boys — Jewish children who spoke Yiddish, studied Torah, and feared God.

Once, when the little old lady had to go into the forest to gather kindling, she warned the children to be good and say their prayers before bed so that no evil would befall them.

The children did as they were told. They said their prayers and went to sleep.

Then a brown bear came running, not from the forest but from far away, from the great cities of the civilized world. And this bear gobbled up all the children. But it so happened that the youngest, the weakest and finest of them all, little Yisrolik, was spared.

Yisrolik was a stargazer. The distant stars called to him. He conducted nighttime vigils high up in the mountains or deep in the valleys. There he read the signs of the Zodiac as they wandered across the heavens. But when Yisrolik came home and saw the disaster that had occurred, he took up his spyglass and set off for the land of his ancestors.

On Friday nights, with the beginning of the Sabbath, my aunt came to life. A special spirit shone from her gray eyes and her face became smooth and unwrinkled. She bought meat from the kosher butcher who adhered to the strictest standards, stewed carrots and baked a sweet kugel. She took her best dress out of the closet and laid it on the bed, next to the white silk kerchief with golden fringes that she wore to bless the candles.

My aunt had brought this kerchief with her from Poland. It was the only memento she had from her mother, and she had decided to wear it when the time came to stand before the Lord of the Universe. She had also sewn for herself a shroud with long sleeves and a high, ruffled collar, as befitted a pious woman.

With every passing day, my aunt became more devout, more observant, withdrawing all the more from the material world.

“Why don’t you go to the park now and then?” I would ask. “Fill your lungs with a little fresh air, chat with the other women. . . .”

“I don’t have time, my child,” she’d say. “I still have so much to do . . . and for me the sun is already beginning to set.”

When our family expanded and the apartment on Ocean Avenue became too crowded, we decided to buy a house on Long Island. Unexpectedly, my aunt refused to come with us. She wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood — maybe it had no synagogue. Now, at her advanced age, she wasn’t about to live among gentiles — not even Jewish gentiles.

My aunt was seventy years old when she went into the old age home. She turned over everything she owned and began to save again. Every penny I gave her she put away — to support the rabbis, the scholars, long, long after her death. She wouldn’t allow herself a piece of fruit or a dress. Everything went into the little purse that hung around her neck like an amulet.

My aunt had no children of her own. No matter how much I did for her, she always felt that children of her own would have done better: a son would have said Kaddish, a daughter would have donated to charity to save her soul from disgrace in the other world. The way things were, the entire burden fell on her shoulders.

Every Sunday, I visited my aunt in the old age home. She was busy there, perhaps reciting a chapter of the Psalms for a sick person or penning a letter for a poor soul who didn’t know how to write. As time went by, I noticed some odd remarks creeping into her speech.

“You see that woman over there? She’s the youngest daughter of our kosher slaughterer — you remember her from back home. There she was a big shot, but here she’s a sad case, poor thing. She’s ashamed to look me in the eye. She wants me to think she’s from Warsaw — imagine! Well, if it makes her feel good, I don’t mind. . . .”

This wasn’t the only such example. In fact, my aunt peopled the home with characters from the Old Country. The rope-maker from her town had turned up here and was overseeing the kosher kitchen. The tenant farmer’s son had become the house doctor. The cantor was the same one who used to lead the prayers in the big synagogue. The doctor assured me her confusion was caused by hardening of the arteries, but I had my own interpretation. My aunt was running away from the old age home, escaping back to the shtetl. She was going home, back to her youth, back to her roots. Step by step, as if descending a ladder, she was returning to her beginnings, her own Genesis.

One Sunday evening, she called me by the name of her sister, my mother.

“Pesenyu,” she said, “I have something to tell you, but remember, don’t tell a soul.” She moved her chair closer to mine. Her eyes sparkled, and her white hair peeked out from under her kerchief like the unruly curls of a young girl.

“Listen to this,” she said. “Motele Shoyber has turned up again. How he figured out where I live, I have no idea. Please, Pesenyu, don’t breathe a word to Papa.”

She looked me in the eye, then smiled as if to someone behind me. I turned aside, not wanting her to see that I knew she was rambling.

“He’s walking back and forth in front of the window,” she said, “just like in the good old days. I plead with him — ‘How can this be, Motele, you have a wife and children, what do you want with me?’

“‘You’re my one true love,’ he answers — ‘it was ordained in heaven.’

“Last night I had just finished saying the prayer for the end of the Sabbath. The lights hadn’t yet been turned on. All of a sudden I hear someone tapping at the window — not banging, God forbid, but gently, pleadingly. I look out — it’s Motl.

“‘What are you doing here in all this rain?’ I ask.

“‘Open up, Rokhele,’ he begs me. He flashes a look with his Gypsy eyes. I go hot and cold. I’m scared to death — Papa could walk in at any moment. But Motl won’t give up.

“‘Rokhele, darling, open the window, I’m dying for you!’ His red-hot eyes burn holes in the windowpane. I cover my face. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see the net he’s spreading for me. I grab the holy book lying on the table. All the virtues of my mother and father come to my aid. And even though I don’t turn around again, I can tell he’s still there — so sad, so forlorn.”

My aunt cried, and I cried along with her.

All summer she fantasized about Motele. By the beginning of autumn, she was slipping rapidly. Around Hanukkah, she had become a little girl . . . running around barefoot, washing her mother’s noodle-board in the river . . . setting down the noodle-board in the water and swimming away with the current.

Her mind didn’t always wander. These excursions into the past took place mostly in the evening, when she would lay aside her prayer book and sit in her room with only the walls for company. She seldom complained about her fate and even stopped envying the women who had children of their own.

“God works in mysterious ways,” she would say. “We human beings with our limited understanding cannot comprehend God’s ways.”

I lay in bed thinking about our limited understanding. The March wind had blustered away somewhere, taking with it the keening women who spoke to me in my aunt’s voice. I also thought about the philosopher who said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Indeed, I knew a little. Lately, when she’d begun calling me Mama, I knew that her end was near. I’d even asked the secretary to call me promptly at the slightest change in her condition.

Well, they had let me know after it was too late, and now God’s mysterious ways were enough to make me lose my mind.

Again and again I imagined her despair. She’d been counting on my last visit. She’d had so much to say, so much she wanted to hear. I imagined how she’d wrestled with Death, mounted her resistance, waited and hoped that at any moment the door would open and I would arrive. Until five in the evening she held off the Angel of Death. When night fell, her thoughts became muddled as usual, her wits distracted. Then, only then, was she defeated.

If only they had called me in time, I could have been standing at her death bed, perhaps wearing the white wings of the Angel Gabriel. I would have opened the gates to the Garden of Eden for her. With all due ceremony, I would have shown her to the seat she so richly deserved, where the patriarchs and matriarchs and all righteous men and women sing the Song of Praise before the Throne of God.

At daybreak I arose, ironed the garment she’d sewn for herself, wrapped it in tissue paper, and set off for the funeral. In the lobby, the women fell upon me: “How could you have been so cold-hearted? Her wailing could have moved a stone, but you chose not to respond. They said in the office that they’d called you — the poor woman was waiting for you until the moment her soul departed.”

I followed a man who led me down to the basement to identify my aunt’s body. She was lying in an open coffin, wrapped in cheap linen basted together with big stitches.

Frozen with fear, I stood and looked at her. I had to do it — I had to — the demand took hold with iron claws. I looked at my escort. “Get out!” I said in a voice that allowed no opposition. He stared at me, startled, but said nothing.

When he had gone, I unwrapped the shroud with its ruffled collar and frilly sleeves. I pulled it over her thin frame, all the way from her feet to her blue lips. I covered her head with the special burial cap, and over the cap I placed her mother’s white silk kerchief edged with golden fringe. I pulled the kerchief over her closed eyes. Only her long, pointy nose poked out at me.

Bracing myself against fear, against death, against my own feelings, I touched my lips to the silk kerchief, and it seemed to me that with this gesture I freed the imprisoned soul, which then rose, fluttering softly, and wafted away to the exalted place for which it was destined, leaving behind the body as a gift for Mother Earth.