The Loves of Judith

by Meir Shalev

“A nafka mina,” replied Mother.

  I was sure that was a Yiddish word, and only when I grew up did I learn it was Aramaic for “who cares.”

  45

  IN THE END, Lady Judith, you’ll be mine.”

  “No, not even if you were the last man on earth.”

  “Lady Judith, you need a man with heart. With money. With a generous hand and a generous heart. Who’s like that here except me?”

  Very slowly, the cunning livestock dealer focused his attempts, his remarks became sharper, all his expertise in human and cattle souls he invested in Moshe and Judith. He started giving her the little something he brought in Rabinovitch’s presence to see how the two of them would react.

  Once he came and when he saw that Judith wasn’t in the yard, he said to Moshe: “Reb Yid, I brought a little something for Lady Judith, you’ll please give it to her when she comes back, and don’t forget to tell her who brought it.”

  Another time, he dared to bend down to Moshe, who was a head shorter than him, and ask in a mocking tone: “Reb Yid, how is it that you live with that woman in the yard and don’t go nuts?”

  Judith and Naomi were crossing the yard, carrying tin buckets to water the young calves. The dealer looked at my mother and said with a coarseness unexpected even in him: “From that udder the doctor wouldn’t reject even the smallest piece.”

  Judith left Rachel to the end. The strong, wild orphan bleated impatiently, and when Judith approached her she stuck her head in the bucket so eagerly she almost spilled its contents. Judith stroked her neck and whispered affectionately to her.

  “Don’t give her so much,” Naomi whispered so her father and Globerman wouldn’t hear. “ ’Cause then she’ll gain weight and Father will sell her to the dealer.”

  “He won’t sell her, Nomele,” said Judith. “This heifer is mine.”

  A FEW DAYS after the albino’s funeral, the Council held a sale of the dead man’s belongings.

  One man—“a weird character,” as the Village Papish defined him—came from Haifa and haggled for hours over the five suits.

  The blind Arab, father of the bandooks from the village of Illut, bought the sunglasses and some empty cages.

  Jacob took the filthy pots and frying pans that nobody wanted, and said he’d go on taking care of the birds; because nobody knew what to do with them.

  And the green pickup truck was sold at auction.

  A special auctioneer was brought from the city and the whole village gathered to see the spectacle, but only two buyers showed up: the treasurer of the nearby kibbutz and the dealer Globerman.

  The treasurer saw who his rival was at the sale and started laughing. “Globerman,” he said, “since when do you know anything about cars? You don’t even know how to drive.”

  But the dealer walked around the pickup truck, gave a few “tappen” on the fenders and the hood, and felt the tires to see if they didn’t have any bones in them. Then he asked one of the men to drive the truck in a circle. Everybody chuckled and somebody shouted: “The truck swallowed a nail, Globerman!” But the livestock dealer stood in the center of the circle, importantly waving his thick baston, listening to the motor, and watching the spinning wheels.

  “It’ll hold two cows in the back and one woman in the cabin?” he asked. And when they told him it would, he was satisfied, pulled the legendary knippl out of his pocket, and everybody stopped chuckling because the thick bundle of notes immediately put an end to the planned auction.

  The pickup truck became the property of the cattle dealer, the embarrassed treasurer went back to his kibbutz, and Globerman gave the auctioneer half a lira and a case of beer for his Benemones Parnussa, and sent him home.

  46

  NOW THAT HIS CHICKS were growing up at Rabinovitch’s farm, Jacob decided he had an excuse to visit there, and after a week of cogitation, he appeared and proclaimed: “I came to see if the chicks are growing good.”

  He asked Judith what she was giving them to eat, made all sorts of recommendations and gave all sorts of advice, and after all that, he gathered up his courage and asked if she wanted to learn how to make paper boats so she could play with Moshe’s children and win their hearts.

  Before she could answer, Jacob took out a few pieces of paper, sat down, and started folding them with a surprising agility, folding them and turning them over and smoothing their folds with his thumbnail, and four beautiful paper boats immediately stood gloriously on the table.

  “If you’ll go out to the yard with me, we’ll put them in the cow trough,” he suggested.

  The boats bobbed on the water of the trough, looking solid and sure.

  “Boats like these can also sail on the river without sinking,” he promised, and then, with a boldness that surprised both of them, he put his hand on her middle finger and said: “I ain’t no great sage, Judith, I ain’t handsome and I ain’t rich. And when God was passing out brains and beauty, I wasn’t the first one in line. Not altogether the last one, but not the first one, either. But when God was passing out patience, I waited in line until everybody else didn’t have no patience to wait no more. That’s how it is with us Jacobs. I ain’t Globerman and I ain’t Rabinovitch, and I ain’t nobody, but seven years for me is but a few days to wait.”

  And suddenly the cognac in his glass was agitated, tears came into his eyes, his face bent down, he was almost hidden in his plate.

  “And see, more than seven years I waited, until she died I waited. And afterward I didn’t wait no more. What’s there for me to wait for a dead woman? A dead woman you should miss, but to wait? She’s dead and ever since I only think about all the questions. What happened? How did I lose her? And what if I did this, and what if I did that, and maybe that? Everything I did so good, everything I planned by the rules. Maybe she said something to you once, Zayde?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, dreading the next question.

  Jacob squinted at me.

  “I’ve got to go now,” I said.

  “Sometimes a mother tells her son something,” said Jacob.

  “Not that mother,” I said. “You know much more about her than I do.”

  “You were with her more than me.”

  “I’ve got to go, Sheinfeld.”

  Jacob smiled with a grimace of pain.

  “Sheinfeld,” he said, “Sheinfeld …” And a few minutes later, he asked: “How will you go now? After midnight, there ain’t no buses. Here, Zayde, I’ll make up a couch for you in the other room.”

  “I’ll walk,” I said impatiently. “I know the paths and the shortcuts. I’ll get there right in time for the morning milking. To help Moshe.”

  “From here to the village by foot? Through the forest at night? That’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” I laughed. “The Angel of Death is a very orderly angel. He sees a little boy named Zayde and immediately goes off to look for somebody else. Watch out, Jacob, when you stand next to me. Maybe that’s how he’ll get to you.”

  “You ain’t a little boy no more.”

  “I’m not a grandfather yet, either.”

  “The Angel of Death is like a farmer who’s got an orchard,” said Jacob. “Every morning he goes and walks around among the trees and looks for the ripe fruit. There was a goy like that back home. He would tie colored ribbons on the trees as a sign that he had to pick here. And he had another very funny habit, he always took food for the road. Even if he was only going to the store, he would make himself a little bag with bread and cheese and something to drink so he wouldn’t have to ask nobody for a favor, and once—”

  “Jacob.” I stood up. “You’ll tell me some other time. I’ve really got to go now.”

  “You don’t want me to make you the dessert, the Italian one, with egg yolk and wine, that you love so much?”

  “No, Jacob, I’ve got to go.”

  “Then go, Zayde, go. Just don’t say your father forced you to stay.”

  “YOU LIKED IT, the meal?” his shout pursued me.
<
br />   “A lot,” I called back into the darkness as I ran. “It was very good.”

  “I’ll invite you again, and you’ll come, right?” the darkness called to me.

  “I’ll come, I’ll come.”

  I slid down the eastern slope of the hill, stumbled, and tripped on bushes and rocks. I sank into the smell of elecampane in the ditch, I leaped over its pebbles, I climbed the other bank and the ridges beyond it, and when I reached the road, the roar of the truck motor was heard in the distance, and the halo of light was creeping up the hill, and the orange lamps and the glowing triangle were twinkling on the roof of the big horse of the village milk truck.

  The ascent ended, Oded shifted gears and shifted gears again and shifted gears again, and speeded up, and I climbed among the trees to the road, jumped into the beam of the headlights, and waved both hands, because I knew what his braking range was.

  The horn honked in loud recognition, the heavy milk truck just slowed down, and I jumped up, and grabbed the ladder, and clambered inside, excited and annoyed.

  “What are you doing here, Zayde?” shouted Oded. “Where did you come from all of a sudden? You got some chick in Tivon?”

  “I haven’t got a chick anyplace.”

  “You were with your idiot again?”

  “If you talk like that about my father, I’ll talk like that about our father.”

  “Did you eat delicacies?” shouted Oded. “Did you at least bring me some leftovers?”

  Life with a big diesel engine had made him used to speaking at a shout both in and out of the truck’s cab.

  “There are hitchhikers who get scared of my shouting and ask to get off in the middle of the road.” He laughs. “And that goes on at home, too. I remember how my Dinah used to get mad at me. ‘Why does the whole village have to hear what you say to me?’ she used to say. ‘I’m right here, right next to you, I hear everything.’ But what can I do? One day, coming up from Wadi Milek, I discovered that even when I talk to myself I don’t hear one single word, so ever since then I shout.”

  This is how I heard my history. From Globerman with money, from Jacob with treats, from Rabinovitch with straightened nails, from Menahem with the notes of mute uncles, from Naomi with caresses, and from Oded with shouts.

  “One of these days you’ll write about all those things,” he used to shout at me. “Otherwise, how come I’m telling you everything? About my father and about your mother and about Naomi and about Uncle Menahem and about Globerman and about all that? You’ll write down all those things so everybody’ll know, you hear, Zayde? You’ll write!”

  THIRD MEAL

  47

  THE THIRD MEAL I ate at Jacob’s house twelve years later. Two of those years I spent at the university in Jerusalem and ten in Rabinovitch’s cowshed.

  Moshe chose to leave me the farm and Oded didn’t resent it. He preferred the truck to cows, and went on taking me to Naomi’s every now and then.

  No longer did I fall asleep on the long nocturnal trips. I was an attentive ear for the memories and hopes and dreams he told in loud shouts, with surprising candor, and always with the demand: “You’ll write this, Zayde, right?” I loved to ride with him and listen to him, and that’s why I didn’t tell him I didn’t intend to do what he asked.

  Moshe decided to limit the scope of his work. He leased the field to the village cooperative growers and left himself only the milk cows and a pen of calves for meat. I put on my mother’s old apron, tied the blue kerchief around my head, and like her, I worked in the cowshed and the kitchen and the house and the yard.

  I didn’t desert the crows. One of my teachers in Jerusalem, the red-haired professor, the one Naomi called the “head rook,” sensed my disgust with the laboratory and my penchant for watching and appreciated my ability to climb, endanger myself, and observe. One day, a few months after I dropped out of school and went back to the village, he showed up at our house and gave me some follow-up work to do for him in the Valley, mainly on the subject of the crows’ processes of settlement among human beings and the damage they did to the local population of small songbirds.

  In those years, the villagers had already despaired of me. They watched me while I watched the crows, they added my name and my seclusion to that, seasoned it with memories of my mother, stirred it and tasted it, and determined my character. In that community, whose most important doctrines were fertility and furrows, I, too, was considered a rather strange bird.

  ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, in 1963, I was still studying zoology in Jerusalem. I state that simply as a chronological fact, because my studies neither add to nor detract from the story I want to tell. The laboratories of Terra Sancta and the Russian Compound bored me. Out the window I saw the crows gathering and hatching eggs in the thick pine trees, and my soul yearned to climb up and peep into their nests instead of into the preparations placed under my microscope.

  “I hate their microscopes,” I told Naomi. “Everything I need to know can be seen with the eye.”

  “And what do you love?” asked Naomi.

  “You I love, Naomi,” I said. “You I’ve loved from the day I was born. I remember the first time we met. I was zero years old and you were sixteen. I opened my eyes and saw you. I looked at you and I told you.”

  “And what are you waiting for now, Zayde?” she asked.

  “I’m waiting for you to get to my age,” I said.

  Naomi laughed. “I know what you’re waiting for,” she said. “For me to be old so that I can’t get pregnant, that’s what’s scared you all the time, that you’ll have a son, then a grandson, and then the Angel of Death, you’re such an idiot, Zayde.”

  She and Meir have one child. He was born when I was ten, and I’ve already said that I don’t want to tell about him. Especially since he was born very close to my mother’s death and he doesn’t have anything to do with the history of her life.

  After staying in Jerusalem a few months, I already knew most of the groups of crows there. I regularly visited the flock at the Moon Grove and the Leprosarium, and the big group of the cemetery in the German Colony and the small group of the Beit-Israel neighborhood. From Yemin Moshe, I peeped at the assembly tree in the Armenian Quarter, over the border.

  And at the end of the second year, I left them and my boring studies and the cold city, and returned to the village.

  48

  AT OUR FIRST MEAL, Jacob was about fifty-five years old, I was twelve, and the two of us were very embarrassed.

  At the second one, after I got out of the army, I was amused and mocking and Jacob was older than his years.

  This time, I’m over thirty and he’s over seventy, I held the invitation to the third meal in my hand, and my heart clenched. It was a printed invitation, rather florid. I knew he had gone to the printer to print this solitary invitation, and I was filled with affection, compassion, and excitement.

  “I’m waiting for you outside in the cab,” said the driver who came to get me, the same driver who had brought me the invitation to the second meal, and who still drove Jacob to sit at the bus stop.

  “Come in and have a drink while I get ready,” I suggested to him.

  “No need. I’m used to waiting for him.”

  I told Moshe I wouldn’t be with him at the milking that night; I polished my shoes, took a shower, shaved, put on a white shirt, and went.

  • • •

  THIS TIME, JACOB greeted me in a suit he had inherited from Rebecca’s second husband. Splendid and expensive it was, but on him it looked like a rag. As he walked around his big, state-of-the-art kitchen, he looked like a beggar who had chanced on a house of philanthropists. But his trembling hands and his shaking head that threatened to slip out of joint hid the adroit movements of a virtuoso. He knew how to turn over a steak with an imperceptible flick of the wrist and skillet, could estimate the internal redness of a roast with his eyes closed, and when he kneaded the dough for the kreplach, he rolled up his sleeves and worked with all ten fingers, the cushion
s of his palms, his middle fingers, even his elbows.

  “It’s important to do many things together. To work with two pots and a skillet together on the stove,” he said. “ ’Cause that way you use the time good.”

  “Not just in the kitchen,” he added later. “People think time goes just with them and just for them. But at the same time that you’re milking the cows in the village, in the meantime the grapefruits on the tree are turning ripe, and the laundry on the clothesline is drying, and somebody’s soul is leaving him real slow. And while you’re sleeping, the earthworms are working in the ground, and clouds are slowly sailing in the sky, and a child is growing in his mother’s belly, and somebody in America is riding on a train to another woman. And in the summer, real slow, the fruit on the roof dries. So know, Zayde, at the same time that one apricot is drying itself out, a bird has time to lay eggs, to grow chicks, and to look for a new bridegroom. Once, in the war, I read in the paper: the Allies are attacking on all fronts. I liked that a lot. At the same time and on all kinds of fronts, all the Allies are attacking all together. Just imagine if every one of them would start only after the other one got through—till today, the war would still be going on. And if that’s how you see the world, all of a sudden you can get a lot more time inside that little box. Did you ever think about that, Zayde?”

  The pots boiled, aromas of evaporation and seasoning, delicate and slow, rose from Jacob’s hands to the skin of my face. He preferred to acquire flavor by touching and curiosity, not through conquest and assimilation. Experience and dexterity didn’t fill him with pride, but with respect—for the green cucumber, the fresh egg, meat, and fruit.

  “I already told you who taught me to cook? It was my fat worker, who used to dance and do voices of people and animals, and was a very great chef. You knew that? He told me that feelings in the heart should be mixed together one into the other, but seasonings in food should be one next to the other. And that’s why, Zayde, cooking salt is better than table salt that dissolves altogether. But in the soul, love with worry and with hate should be mixed together, and anger with longing with fear with a little joy should be mixed together. Otherwise, it cuts you up in pieces.