Oy, Caramba!

by Ilan Stavans

  The music was supplied by an accordion and guitar, and the two musicians were already essaying some popular Jewish pieces. Voices in the crowd were tentatively humming along with them.

  The bride was preparing for the ceremony in the house next to Liske’s. Friends were dressing her, and her crown of sugar was already well smudged from constant rearrangement. Raquel was very sad. No matter how much the other girls reminded her of her wonderful luck—to marry a man like Pascual wasn’t something that happened every day—she remained depressed. She was silent most of the time and answered with sighs or short nods. She was a normally shy girl, but today she seemed truly sad. Those eyes that were usually so wide and clear now seemed as clouded as her forehead.

  In talking about the guests, someone told Raquel that Gabriel had come with other people from San Gregorio. She grew more depressed at hearing his name and, as she put on the bridal veil, two big tears ran down her cheeks and fell on her satin blouse.

  Everyone knew the cause of her weeping. Raquel and Gabriel had come to an understanding months ago, and Jacobo—that wily little know-it-all—had claimed he saw them kissing in the shadow of a paradise tree on the eve of the Day of Atonement.

  Pascual’s mother finally arrived at the bride’s house and, in accordance with custom, congratulated the bride and kissed her noisily. Her voice screeched as she called to let the ceremony begin. Raquel said nothing. She shrugged in despair and stood hopelessly while the group of friends gathered at her back and picked up her lace-bordered train. The future father-in-law arrived with the rabbi and the procession started.

  Outside Liske’s house, the guests were gathered about the tables, while inside the house Pascual, who was dressed in black, waited with friends and the father of the bride. When they heard the hand clapping outside, they went out to the grounds and the ceremony began.

  Pascual walked over to the canopy, held up by couples of young men and women, and stood under it. He was joined immediately by his betrothed, who came escorted by the two sponsors. Rabbi Nisen began the blessings and offered the ritual cup to the bride and groom. Then the bride began her seven turns around the man, accompanied by the sponsors. As she finished, an old lady called out that there had only been six, and another turn was made. The rabbi read the marriage contract, which conformed entirely with the sacred laws of Israel. He sang the nuptial prayers again. The ceremony ended with the symbolic breaking of the cup. An old man placed it on the ground, and Pascual stepped on it with force enough to break a rock.

  The crowd pressed in to congratulate the couple. Her friends gathered around the bride, embracing and kissing her, but Raquel was still depressed. She accepted the congratulations and good wishes in silence. Other guests gathered around the long table and began to toast and drink.

  Old Liske proposed some dancing before they sat down to supper, and he himself began by moving into the first steps of the characteristic Jewish piece, “the happy dance,” to the accompaniment of the accordion and guitar. At the head of the long table, the bride and groom stood together and watched the growing bustle without saying a word to each other. Facing them, standing very erect and pale, was Gabriel.

  The guests called for the bride and groom to dance. Pascual frowned anxiously and shook his head. He did not dance. The calls and applause receded, and everyone stood waiting in embarrassment. Gabriel stepped forward suddenly and offered his arm to the bride. The accordion and guitar began a popular Jewish polka.

  Gabriel tried to outdo himself, and he was a superb dancer. At one point he said something to Raquel, and she looked at him in surprise and grew still paler. People were beginning to whisper and move away. Israel Kelner had taken the arm of the shochet as they both stepped away from the watching circle.

  “Gabriel shouldn’t have done this,” Kelner said. “Everybody knows that he’s in love with Raquel and that she’s not in love with her husband.”

  The shochet pulled at his beard and smiled. “I don’t want to offend anyone,” he said. “I’m a friend of Liske’s and he’s a religious man—but Pascual is a beast. Did you see how mixed up he got when he was repeating the hareiad pledge during the ceremony? Believe me, Rabbi Israel, I feel sorry for the girl. She’s so beautiful and fine . . .”

  Little Jacobo took Rebecca aside and talked to her in Argentine criollo—he was the most gaucho of the Jews, as demonstrated now by his complete gaucho dress. “Listen, negrita,” he began. “Something’s going to happen here.”

  “A fight?” Rebecca whispered with interest.

  “Just what I’m telling you. I was in San Gregorio this morning. Met Gabriel there. He asked me if I was going to the wedding—this one, of course. I said yes, I was, and he asked me about doing something later . . .”

  “A race?” Rebecca interrupted. “You mean to say that you made a bet with Gabriel? Oh, you men! And they said that he was heartbroken!”

  “Oh, well,” Jacobo said. He shrugged his shoulders. “As they say: Men run to races . . .”

  As night began to fall, the paper lanterns were lit, and many guests walked off a distance to see the effect of the lights. It was a special privilege of the rich to have such lights, and the last time they’d been seen here was during the visit of Colonel Goldschmith, a representative of the European Jewish Committee.

  The next item was dinner, a banquet that bars description. The guests were seated and the bride and groom served the “golden broth,” the consecrative dish of the newlyweds. Then the platters of chicken, duck, and fish began to circulate; and the wine was poured to a complete and unanimous chorus of praise directed to the hostess.

  “I’ve never eaten such tasty stuffed fish.”

  “Where could you ever get such roast geese as this?” the shochet asked.

  Rabbi Moises Ornstein delivered the eulogy and added: “I must say that no one cooks as well as Madam Liske. Whoever tastes her dishes knows that they are a superior person’s.”

  Fritters of meat and rice, wrapped in vine leaves, were served next, while more beer and wine quickened the spirits of the guests. The bride excused herself, saying that she had to change her dress. She left the party accompanied by her friends. Her mother-in-law had started to go with them, but Jacobo stopped her. “Madam Liske!” he said. “Sit down and listen to your praises. Sit down and hear what we think of this wonderful banquet. We’ll be mad if you leave,” he said, when she seemed reluctant to stop. “We’re enjoying ourselves very much and we want to share this with you.”

  “Let me go, my boy,” she said. “I have to help my daughter-in-law.”

  “Rebecca will help her. Sit down. Sit down. Rebecca!” Jacobo turned to shout. “Go and help the bride!”

  The old lady sat down—everyone about had joined in the urging—and Jacobo brought her a glass of wine so that they could drink a toast.

  “When one has a son like yours,” the shochet said to Madam Liske, “one should be glad.”

  The toasts were offered and drunk, and this clinking of glasses, lusty singing, and music could be heard over all the grounds. The sky was full of stars, the atmosphere lightly tinged with clover and the scent of hay. In the nearby pasture, the cows mooed and the light wind stirred the leaves. Jacobo got up and excused himself.

  “I have to see about my pony,” he explained. “I think he might need a blanket.”

  “I’ll look after my mare,” Gabriel said, as he stood up to go with him. They moved away from the group, and Jacobo took Gabriel’s arm. “Listen, the bay is saddled and waiting by the palisade,” he said. “The boyero’s kid is watching him and the gate is open. At the first turn there’s a sulky all set. The Lame One is watching there. Tell me, have you got a gun?”

  Gabriel did not seem to hear this last point. He patted Jacobo’s arm and started to walk toward the palisade. After a few steps, he turned to look back. “And how will Raquel get away from the girls in there?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Rebecca’s there.”

  When the girls who wer
e with the bride did return to the party, Madam Liske asked for her daughter-in-law. “She’s coming right away with Rebecca,” they told her. Then Rebecca returned alone and gave the old lady still another excuse. Jacobo was doing his best to distract Madam Liske with toasts. Others took it up, and there was a great clinking of glasses and mumblings of toasts.

  The musicians continued to play and the guests to eat and drink. The jugs of wine were being refilled continuously, and no one’s glass was ever low. Pascual, the groom, looked fat and solemn and said nothing. From time to time, he would dart a quick look at the bride’s empty chair. The gallop of a horse was heard at that moment, and then, soon after, the sounds of a sulky starting off.

  Jacobo whispered into Rebecca’s ear: “That’s them, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” the girl whispered back, “they were leaving when I came away.”

  The continued absence of the bride was worrying her mother-in-law and, without saying anything, she slipped into the house to see. She came out immediately.

  “Rebecca, have you seen Raquel?” she said.

  “I left her in the house, Señora. Isn’t she there?”

  “She’s not.”

  “That’s funny . . .”

  The old lady spoke to her husband and to her son, Pascual. The guests were beginning to whisper among themselves. They saw that something had gone wrong. The accordion and guitar went silent. The guests began to stand up; some glasses were tipped over, but no one paid any attention. A few of the guests moved toward the house. Others asked: “Is it the bride? Has something happened to the bride?”

  The shochet of Rajíl asked his friend and counterpart from Karmel about the point of sacred law, if it was true that the bride had fled.

  “Do you think she has?” the shochet of Karmel asked.

  “It’s possible. Anything is possible in these situations.”

  “Well, I think that divorce would be the next step. The girl would be free, as would be her husband. It’s the common course.”

  Meanwhile, the excitement was growing all around them. Old Liske grabbed the gaucho’s little son. “Did you see anything out there? Out there on the road?” he said.

  “Yes. Out there, on the road to San Gregorio. I saw a sulky, with Gabriel—he was driving it—and there was a girl sitting with him.”

  “He’s kidnapped her!” Madam Liske screamed. Her voice was close to hysteria. “Kidnapped her!”

  Shouts and quick talking started all over the grounds now. Most of the crowd was genuinely shocked and surprised. When old Liske turned to abuse the father of the gaucho boy, the man stood up to him, and they were soon wrestling and rolling in the center of pushing and shouting guests. The table was overturned, and spilled wine and broken glass added to the excitement.

  The shochet of Rajíl mounted a chair and shouted for order. What had happened was a disgrace, he said, a punishment from God, but fighting and shouting would not ease it any.

  “She’s an adulteress!” shouted the enraged Liske, as he sought to break out of restraining hands. “An infamous adulteress!”

  “She is not!” the shochet answered him. “She would be,” he said, “if she had left her husband ‘after one day, at least, after the marriage,’ as our law so clearly says it. This is the law of God, you know, and there is no other way but that they be divorced. Pascual is a fine, honorable young man, but if she doesn’t love him, she can’t be made to live under his roof.”

  The shochet went on in his usually eloquent and wise way, and he cited similar cases acknowledged by the most illustrious rabbis and scholars. In Jerusalem, the sacred capital, there had occurred a similar case, and Rabbi Hillel had declared in favor of the girl. At the end, the shochet turned to Pascual: “In the name of our laws, Pascual, I ask that you grant a divorce to Raquel and that you declare, here and now, that you accept it for yourself.” Pascual scratched his head and looked sad. Then, in a tearful voice, he accepted the shochet’s proposal.

  The crowd grew quiet and the guests soon began to leave, one by one, some murmuring, some hiding a smile.

  Well, as you can see, my patient readers, there are fierce, arrogant gauchos, wife stealers, and Camachos, as well as the most learned and honorable of rabbinical scholars, in the little Jewish colony where I learned to love the Argentine sky and felt a part of its wonderful earth. This story I’ve told—with more detail than art—is a true one, just as I’m sure the original story of Camacho’s feast is true. May I die this instant if I’ve dared to add the slightest bit of invention to the marvelous story.

  I’d like very much to add some verses—as was done to the original Camacho story—but God has denied me that talent. I gave you the tale in its purest truth, and if you want couplets, add them yourself in your most gracious style. Don’t forget my name, however—just as our gracious Master Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra remembered the name of Cide Hamete Benegeli and gave him all due credit for the original Camacho story.

  And if the exact, accurate telling of this tale has pleased you, don’t send me any golden doubloons—here, they don’t even buy bread and water. Send me some golden drachmas or, if not, I’d appreciate a carafe of Jerusalem wine from the vineyards my ancestors planted as they sang the praises of Jehovah. May He grant you wealth and health, the gifts I ask for myself.

  * A shochet is a ritual slaughterer—Ed.

  In Honor of Yom Kippur

  SAMUEL ROLLANSKY (1902–1995)

  Translated from the Yiddish by Alan Astro

  Samuel Rollansky (also known as Shmuel Rozhanski) came to Argentina in 1922. He wrote a daily column for Di Yidishe Tsaytung of Buenos Aires from 1934 to 1973. His lifelong contribution to Yiddish literature is the one-hundred-volume anthology Musterverk fun der yidisher literature. Rollansky died in Buenos Aires in 1995, the year after the terrorist bombing against the AMIA, the city’s Jewish community center. “In Honor of Yom Kippur” is a vignette on life in Buenos Aires on the holy day of Yom Kippur.

  TOGETHER WITH HIS family, Mendl finally made it over to the home of their old friends, Yosl and his wife. For a long time they had been promising to come over but never had gotten around to it. Now sitting with Yosl, Mendl apologized: “You understand, we’re so busy, and it’s so far away.”

  Yosl concurred, saying: “I’ve started to believe that living in different areas of Buenos Aires is like being in two different cities. It’s exactly one year since you came over, last Yom Kippur.”

  “It’s great to be together,” the friends and their wives agreed. “Today we don’t have to work, so we can throw a little party. Fortunately, there’s such a thing as Yom Kippur, if you work for Jewish bosses as we do.”

  Mendl and Yosl, who had already been friends back in the old country, had the same political and antireligious leanings. True, they had had their sons circumcised, but not because they wanted to.

  “After all,” they said, justifying themselves, “there were family considerations, our fathers . . . We couldn’t cause the grandfathers such heartache. What could we do, if those were the circumstances?”

  Mendl and Yosl were happy to get together on Yom Kippur and reminisce about holidays in the old country.

  “We’d eat chocolate cookies that we’d buy from the Russian! People would rip them right out of his hands! His store was packed! All the young people would sneak out of synagogue and grab a bite.”

  While they remembered the old days, they watched their wives putting some sponge cake and brandy on the table. Smiling, they pointed out: “It’s a holiday, after all! Yom Kippur, to be precise!”

  “Do you really think,” Yosl confessed, “that if you had come over on some ordinary Sunday, my wife and I would have treated you as honored guests? Well, sure we would, but we wouldn’t have served up such delicacies. Sponge cake and brandy on an ordinary Sunday? We offer Sunday visitors a cup of tea, a cookie, a piece of chocolate.”

  As he spoke, Yosl motioned toward the table, indicated with his eyes that his friend should a
pproach, and extended to him a glass of brandy and a plate of sponge cake. Mendl hesitated, as though he wondered whether he ought to imbibe, but then accepted.

  “As you no doubt recall,” he apologized, “I am opposed to alcohol, but today I won’t refuse. I never take a sip of brandy, but in honor of Yom Kippur . . . How many times a year, after all, does Yom Kippur come around?”

  Mendl took the drink, sipped it, and his eyes watered. “Wow,” he choked, “that’s strong stuff.”

  Nonetheless, he drank. It burned his palate, but he recovered. Yosl refilled his glass. Though his head felt swollen and stiff as though imprisoned by iron bars, he still couldn’t refuse. Yosl smiled at him fixedly. Mendl answered with a hiccup: “Hap-hic . . . py Yom Kip-hic . . . pur! Sor-hic . . . ry!”

  And Mendl drank. His feet and head felt leaden, but he drank.

  He sat down when the floor started to bend. In order to take the brandy, he himself had to bend. His sleeve brushed a glass, and the contents spilled on the tablecloth. Mendl heard Yosl’s laughter blending into his words: “Yom Kippur, ha! Once a year, ha!”

  Sitting at the table, Mendl watched Yosl’s wife cut him a piece of roast suckling pig. Mendl’s eyes felt dry and sticky. He rubbed them and tried to focus. In his blurred vision, he made out the head of a pig, its chin and big broad lips that seemed to slobber.

  “Eat!” said Yosl’s wife, elbowing him. “What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?”

  “Me?” said Mendl, with a start, as though he had taken fright. “That’s for me? Thanks, uh, but I won’t eat that. Not because it’s pig, but because I don’t eat meat.”