by Ilan Stavans
“That’s how I learned to make strudel.”
“When did you learn that? Did you learn it at home? Did your mother teach you?”
“Yes, I learned quite a lot from her in Russia. In Tacuba Street, number 15, there was a restaurant and there was a Russian man who had immigrated there recently and he was chief cook, and I don’t know how it came about, but I think I said to him that you could make strudel in the little coal-burning ovens, the portable ones, with two chimney vents and two openings, and they were making strudels and I made one and he liked it a lot . . .”
We go in because it is starting to rain.
“He said to me: ‘Such a lovely young woman, with all sorts of talents, and she’s interested in strudel.’ And I just got on and made it, and I don’t even remember how much he paid me. We used to go to the club in the evenings . . .”
“You and strudel man?”
“No, me and your father. We used to see Mr. Perkis there, and Dr. King and Katzenelson. Everybody changed their names. First they were living in the United States, and then when the First World War broke out they went to Mexico to start again, and they founded the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.”
“With an English name?”
“Yes, English, because they’d just come from the United States, you see, they looked after us, in a way. Dr. King used to give your father dental products. I’ve told you that already. And your father used to teach Hebrew at first to some of the children, our friends’ children when they were preparing for their bar mitzvahs. Some people were very kind, and we were very grateful to people too. Horacio Minich’s father, for example, taught natural sciences in the Yiddish school, but since I didn’t know any Yiddish I couldn’t even teach things I knew about.”
“So what did you know about?”
“Lots of things. I was always learning. I never seemed to stop. Playing the piano, science, art, even singing. But I ended up having to make strudel. That’s the way it is. We brought lots of books instead of clothing. We had a basket of books that weighed sixty kilos. They were very important books and important people used to ask to borrow them and most of them we never set eyes on again. That’s the way it is.”
“Do you still have any of those books?”
“Oh yes, there are a few left but I’m going to send them to Israel. There was a group of non-Jewish Russians here too, some very nice people. They were quite old. Well, at least they seemed quite old to me.”
“How old were they?”
“I don’t know, but they were a lot older than we were. They lived in Xochimilco, which was a big place in those days, very beautiful with a lot of flowers everywhere and boats covered with greenery. They had an herb garden, they were typical Russians, very refined, honest, special people. There were some others who were former nobility. What were their names? How could I forget? Oh, yes, they were called Sokolov.”
“Who were? The ones with the herb garden or the others?”
“No, the other ones, the nobility, were much younger. I don’t remember what the others were called, but they had a little house in Xochimilco. It wasn’t much more than a hut. They made us a typical Russian meal. They were so pleased to be able to speak Russian with someone.”
“Anything else, Mother?”
“Oh, Margo, it all happened fifty years ago. Every night we used to go to the club. It didn’t matter if you were on the right or the left. Nobody bothered. Then Abrams came, and he was an anarchist, a real leftist. It didn’t matter what we did during the daytime to earn a living, because in the evenings we all went to the club.”
“Why didn’t it matter what you did in the daytime?”
“Well, we sold bread, or I don’t know, some people were peddlers, street traders during the daytime, but in the evening we all came together for something better. There were all sorts of people, some as young as fourteen or fifteen. You never knew them. Maybe you did or maybe you didn’t, but we all had to use Yiddish because we couldn’t manage any other way. Some of them had come from Poland and some from Russia and some came from tiny little villages where they spoke a sort of Yiddish, and some even came from the United States and goodness knows what sort of English they could speak. So we all had to learn Yiddish, and when I started I couldn’t understand anything because there were so many dialects, from Warsaw and Lithuania and Romania and Estonia and little Polish villages. I couldn’t understand a word and then I started to learn gradually. Your father used to read to me. He was in bed a lot because he had trouble with his lungs and sometimes he used to cough up blood, and then he had to lie down because that frightened him. Your father used to read me Yiddish books. He used to translate them into Russian and that’s how I learned. I knew the alphabet because when I was a little girl I’d been taught that before I went on to high school.”
“Didn’t your mother speak Yiddish?”
“Of course she did, but she spoke a Ukrainian dialect, which was completely different. Later on all sorts of very well-educated young people used to come to our house . . .”
“Later on when?”
“In Russia. Before I went to high school. They used to come to Odessa from their little villages to study and take important exams. I remember before the First World War there was one of those students living in our house, a Zionist, who knew Hebrew perfectly. We put him up and fed him and he used to give us Hebrew lessons. He gave lessons to Uncle Volodya, but I don’t remember if Ilusha and I did any. That’s how I learned the alphabet. He went to Israel later. Your Uncle Volodya told me he went on to become minister of finance.”
“In Israel?”
“Yes, in Israel. Uncle Volodya could remember his name, but I can’t. I learned the alphabet and when I learned some Yiddish I wrote a letter to my parents once, just a few words. My mother wrote back in a terrible state because I’d suddenly written to her in Yiddish and she didn’t think it could be me. She thought I must be dead. So then I wrote back again to her in Russian and calmed things down. That’s what it’s like when your children leave home . . .”
I come back to where I once was. I go through the park, past the pools, and everything is damp, mildewed. It is slippery underfoot. There are flowers everywhere. I go over to a prickly-pear tree and try to pluck some fruit. The pear defends itself and sticks its spikes in me. I go back to my room to try and pull out the prickles with a pair of tweezers from my arms, my cheeks, and the side of my mouth, my hands, and my fingers. My father died, early in the morning of January 2, 1982.
Living with someone probably means losing part of your own identity. Living with someone contaminates; my father alters my mother’s childhood and she loses her patience listening to some accounts of my father’s childhood. Once we had all gone to the cemetery on the first anniversary of my uncle’s death and Lucia recalled the attempted pogrom that my father had experienced. So I asked him to tell me what had happened to him:
“I was working in the Jewish Charity Association at 21 Gante Street, on the corner of Venustiano Carranza, which used to be called Capuchinas, and your mother had her shop called Lisette on Sixteenth September Street, number 29, selling ladies’ bags and gloves. I came out of the charity place and there was a big meeting under way (it was in January 1939). I was on my way to the shop when I met a young man called Salas. He knew who I was. He’d been a student in Germany and spoke very good German. He came toward me with two other lads and he yelled ‘Death to the Jews. Jews out of Mexico!’ and I had a willow stick with me, and I broke it over his head and it split into three. He grabbed it out of my hand and tried to push me in front of a tram, but I held onto a lamppost and wouldn’t let go. I don’t know how I managed to break free and run to the shop, which was shut, though the steel door still wasn’t down.
“The police came right away. I don’t remember how many there were. There could have been fifty or a hundred, and Siqueiros’s brother; if he hadn’t been there I’d have been killed. He said to me: ‘They’ll have to get me before they get you, Jacobo,�
�� and he stretched both arms out wide. He was a giant of a man. They had a truck outside full of stones and they were throwing them at the shop and they smashed the shop window and took everything they could get. I don’t know how I got out of there.”
“Where was Mother?”
“She’d gotten out with the assistant. There were stones flying all over the place. I didn’t know where to hide, because everywhere I went there were more stones. I thought I’d never get out of there. I thought I was done for. There was nothing I could do. There were so many people outside and so many stones and I was covered in blood. There was a man called Osorio outside, a Cuban whom I knew quite well, and he stood up on a platform and made a Hitler-type speech, and even though he knew me, he spoke against me and against Jews in general. When they ran out of stones, they went to San Juan de Letran, where your Uncle Mendel had his drinks stand, and they came back with great chunks of ice, which they started throwing at me, and a massive lump of ice hit me on the head and that was a sign from God, because the ice saved me. I was bleeding heavily, because I’d been hit on the head, but that ice was a sign from God. I wouldn’t have survived without the ice.”
“Where were we?”
“You were all very little. I don’t think you ever saw any of that. General Montes appeared later and he put his cloak around me and said, ‘Don’t cry, Jew. I’m here to save you.’”
In the Name of His Name
ANGELINA MUÑIZ-HUBERMAN (b. 1936)
Translated from the Spanish by Lois Parkinson Zamora
An audacious interpreter of mystical texts, this Mexican critic and novelist of Sephardic ancestry has made a career of telling allegorical tales. This one, from her award-winning collection Enclosed Garden (1985), is a tribute to Sephardic culture, especially Kabbalistic imagery, but also to Mendele Mokher Sforim, particularly his novel The Travels of Benjamin the Third, and to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s story “The Rabbi’s Son.” The river the protagonist dreams of crossing, which supposedly ceases its flow on the Sabbath, is taken from Jewish folklore. Compared to Seligson’s “The Invisible Hour,” this tale has a clear-cut symbolic code. Muniz-Huberman is also the author of The Confidantes (2009) and A Mystical Journey (2011), among other works.
ABRAHAM OF TALAMANCA pondered long upon the word of God before making his decision. He had studied the signs and portents of the world. He had read and reread the Great Book and sought its revelation. Somewhere he would find the divine word. He felt a profound anxiety, though he did not know why; he knew only that the answer was there somewhere and he could not find it. Not that the world was mute but that he could not understand its language. Not that God was silent but that he could not hear Him. He continued to search and time continued to pass. To be possessed by a certainty that cannot be explained, a truth that cannot be proven. A sound that has no time. A color that cannot be painted. A word that cannot be deciphered. A thought that cannot be expressed. What then does he possess? How can one live by doubt, divination, foreshadowing?
Abraham of Talamanca senses his ideas spinning round and round in the confined and infinite chaos of his mind. Arrows fly in his head and at times he supports his head in his hands, so heavy it seems to him. And then comes the pain. It begins with his eyes, which, as a source of enlightenment, embrace much and suffer much. He who does not see does not weep. He who does not weep does not ache. A sword stroke at the center of his skull. Pain that makes a fiefdom of his arteries, a whip of his nerves, and a torment of his muscles. Abraham, who loves light, flees into darkness; he searches for the word and flees into silence. Pain imprisons half of his head, while the other half struggles for lucidity. But the battle is never won; pain triumphs, and with his hands Abraham covers his eyes: no light, no word. Thus he loses days, which turn to nights, nights of the soul, which become darker and darker.
But the answer does not appear. After thirty days of constant pain, in which the unafflicted side of his head rested no more than the afflicted, he made his decision. He would go in search of the Sambatio, the distant river of the Promised Land, the river that flows six days a week and ceases on the Sabbath, or perhaps instead flows on the day of the Sabbath and ceases on the other six. The frightful roar of the rushing river, which carries rocks, not water, and sand, and which on the seventh day, shrouded in clouds, keeps total silence. The river protects, for him who crosses it, the paradise inhabited by the Ten Lost Tribes. If he should manage to reach it, Abraham the Talamantine, and if he should manage to cross it.
He would leave behind his books, his studies, his prayers, his meditation. He would try the paths and byways of pilgrims and wanderers, soldiers and vagabonds, merchants and adventurers. Tranquility and wisdom would be lost along the way. He would go unrecognized and lose himself among the rest. To be lost and alone and so to find himself more deeply. And with the cool of the dawns and the dust of distant places, he would forget that search for the unknowable. He would breathe deeply the air of mountain and sea. He would belong to nothing, to no one. The absolute freedom of one who has only himself. He would try for once to be God. Impossible to be integral; always dual; always the divine presence. I speak to myself and He answers me, spark of eternity. Can’t one be alone? Absolute solitude? No, no, no. He always appears, God, the One without a name, the One sought after, desired, never found, He who requires perfection. So we wander, with Abraham of Talamanca, in search of the unsearchable.
Abraham prepares his departure, taking few possessions, fulfilled in himself. The pain has disappeared. Now he knows what he seeks; he seeks the name of God and he knows that it will appear when he crosses the final river at the end of the long journey. He seeks the meaning of the word, that which is beyond asking. He cannot accept the imperfection of the sign. The difficult connection between things and their names. The attempt to enclose in the space of a word the idea of perfection, of unity, of infinity, of creation, of plenitude, of supreme good. God is a conventional sign. How can one find its true essence? Baruch ha-shem. Blessed be His Name.
To approach immensity little by little. Slowly twining the links of the chain. More slowly still ascending the steps toward illumination. Losing ourselves in the partial and fragmented reflection of a thousand facing mirrors. And still aspiring to rise higher and higher. That longing to fly that is only achieved in dreams. To climb the mountain. To arrive at the summit of pure air and blue sky. Below, seas and rivers and lakes.
Through open fields and enclosed gardens, along paths and byways, up and down, the road unwinds before Abraham the wanderer. And when the land runs out and sand borders the water, he furrows the water and creates light foam and soft waves, which, uncreating, erase his vain steps. The sun is ensconced in an immense blue cradle, and the four phases of the moon as well. When at length the sea loses its freedom and the high rocks force it to recede and close upon itself, the foot of the wanderer again falls upon the worn sand, so often trod, so often shifted and displaced.
The Holy Land he touched not only with his feet but also with his hands, raising the fine dust to his lips, kissing it. Only then did he begin the pilgrimage. Eyes, feet, hands, lips, eager. Whether the ancient tomb, the golden rock, the stones of the desert. And then, northward, in search of the Sambatio. In search of the revealed word. But the river is a mirage. It appears and disappears. It recedes and overflows. It sings and is silent. It approaches and withdraws forever. For years, hope detains Abraham. Then certitude detains him. Meanwhile, the Word has sounded. He knows that it is there, that it circulates within him: like the blood that flows through his body, it fills him to overflowing. It encourages him, nourishes him, gives him life. It has no form but that given to it by the vessel that contains it. It moves freely, flawlessly, smoothly. It has no equal.
Abraham no longer speaks. He no longer writes. The Word has eliminated words. The Name is. The Revelation cannot be communicated. Silence fills everything, finding its proper form.
Abraham has stopped searching for the Sambatio. The name of His Name fl
ows in his veins.
Like a Bride (excerpt)
ROSA NISSÁN (b. 1939)
Translated from the Spanish by Dick Gerdes
The author of two semiautobiographical novels, Like a Bride (1992) and Like a Mother (1996), Rosa Nissán writes about Sephardim in a predominantly Ashkenazi Mexican Jewish community. Her work has been adapted into film. The following is the first part of Like a Bride.
EVERY NIGHT I kneel down by the window and look at a bright star that just might be my guardian angel. Then I recite “Our Father” to God and say a “Hail Mary” for the Virgin. I hope that one of them will protect me like they do my classmates, even though my parents are Jewish. Today I prayed that I wouldn’t have to change schools. They want to put me in one only for Jews. Where do Jews come from, anyway? Dear God, please help me stay at the Guadalupe Tepeyac School, and please make sure that I’ll never leave this place, and especially now that I’m going to start the last and most difficult year of elementary school. Only here, and with your help, can I make it. I promise to do whatever you want—follow the Ten Commandments, go to catechism on Saturdays, and whenever I die, I’ll be a guardian angel for anyone you want. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
At eight o’clock in the morning, just before beginning our studies, we pray. We put the palms of our hands next to our mouths, close our eyes, and recite the prayers together. I like the way it sounds. We make the sign of the cross with our right hand, and then we sit down to study. The school desks are neat—the part we write on lifts up, and we put all our stuff inside. I have a little Santa Teresa picture glued on the top, in the middle, and other little flowered virgins are in each corner. I spend a lot of time giving them little kisses with my finger so they’ll protect me.