by Ezra Glinter
You’ll return to me—my heart promises me,
my heart promises me.
I’ll remain true to you—a little flower from your wreath,
a little flower from your wreath.
Of course the music grabbed me, as it always did when I let myself be lulled by the sounds that intertwined like vines swaying back and forth, and I with them . . . no time, no space, no hustle-bustle. That’s the way it had been when I had the occasion to sit in a concert hall or listen to a record. Here Miradora was playing and singing just for me, and the tender, sad melody slowly led my gaze to her uncovered, rounded shoulders and the downy bundle of black hair on her neck. I squeezed into my armchair, as if any movement on my part could disrupt the scene.
The song finished, but my dream, woven from silence and air and entwined with sunbeams, still persisted for a few moments before my eyes, and then also dissipated.
I was apparently supposed to say something, as is the custom when one finishes listening to a piece, or at least to show some sign that I was still there—that I hadn’t run away or fallen asleep. But it was Miradora who spoke. I heard a word that I had never heard before in my life and didn’t know the meaning of.
“Kama Sutra—do you know what that means?”
I felt as if my brain, until now saturated and overrun by the beautiful music, had suddenly frozen, had been transformed into a block of ice—as if someone had laid a cold compress on the spot where I had just recently received a blow. I felt that I mustn’t let myself be diminished in the eyes of this big-city girl, so I said whatever occurred to me at that moment:
“Of course—Kama Sutra is a type of Japanese wrestling.”
I was astonished at how easily and with what certainty that foolishness slipped out of me.
But Miradora seemed to know in advance that I simply couldn’t know the answer. The explanation for the strange word was already on the tip of her tongue.
“Kama Sutra is a sort of poetic book about the art of love. It was written in India, hundreds of years ago. Kama was the name of their god of love.”
My knowledge about love, at that time, had been nourished only by occasional boys’ stories, told furtively by someone in a corner of the courtyard or on a bench tucked away in the dense bushes of the municipal garden. Sometimes there was a bit of gossip about a neighbor’s daughter who strayed from the straight and narrow path, who went dancing at the officers’ house and hung around with soldiers—in a word, acted like a whore. There were stories about “pinching” and “touching” girls from the next class while sitting in the movies; there was even a fascinating story, told with all the details, about how someone spied on his older sister rolling around in bed with her fiancé, both of them naked, before they were married. Once someone pulled from his pocket a packet of wrinkled photographs that looked like playing cards but were actually cheap pornographic pictures, with little marks of the four suits in the corners.
The titillating chatter and nonsense didn’t last long in our overstimulated circles; we quickly switched to other talk and fantasies, which were certainly not lacking. But they used to return at night in our beautiful dreams, and there, without fear or shame, they would flare up and seize all our senses and limbs with burning heat.
Miradora got up from her stool next to the piano, and with several soft steps came over to the armchair in which I was still sitting, sunken into the depression in the cushions that Doctor Tsipkin had made with his fat back and heavy behind. She sat down on the soft arm and was quiet for a moment, casting her eyes down at my hands. I was resting them on my legs, covering my bare knees with my palms. I had worn shorts almost all summer; my mother used to sew them for me herself, or, more accurately, re-sew them from pants that had gotten too short.
Now, when Miradora was sitting so close to me, I suddenly felt how short my shorts actually were, and I was ashamed of my naked thighs.
“You have beautiful hands,” I heard her quiet words, “long, thin fingers like my singing teacher’s.”
Miradora took my hand and laid it on her own knee, the way she might have carried a kitten from a basket of rags to her lap. And just like a helpless little animal, I obeyed her wishes. My shorts had suddenly gotten tighter and were cutting into my flesh. Miradora bent down to me and touched my forehead with her lips . . .
One time I had wanted to test whether my flashlight’s dead battery was good for anything else. Following my friend’s advice, I touched the tip of my tongue to the narrow little strips of tin that stuck out of both sides of the battery, a short one and a long one. The moment I did so, I felt as if a bolt of lightning had cut through my whole body, from the top of my head down to my toenails. Until I tore my tongue away from the two little strips of tin, it seemed to me that my eyes were themselves burning like two electric lights. I felt just such a lightning bolt now, after Miradora’s lips touched my forehead. But my eyes were closed, as if a short circuit had occurred; I didn’t see anything. Her hands had freed me from the oppressive tightness of my shorts. The heat from her mouth spread across my knees, and when I tried to cover them with my hands, my fingers touched the downy bundle of hair on her neck . . .
That night I dreamed, not about just anyone but about the Indian god of love—Kama. He and the well-known movie star Raj Kapoor, who acted in all the Indian films that were shown in our city, were alike as two drops of water. My mother used to come home from those films with red, weepy eyes but satisfied, because there was always a happy ending. And appropriately for an Indian film, a few of which I also had the occasion to see, Kama-Kapoor was dancing and singing in my dream; he danced to Mozart’s “Turkish March” and sang “Solveig’s Song” in a light, feminine voice.
In the morning, I woke up late, so I grabbed something to eat from what my mother had prepared for me before leaving for work and then I ran to my teacher. On the way, I realized that in my haste I had forgotten to take my folder, with all the paraphernalia I needed for my solfège lesson. I stopped and stood there, torn by doubt. “What will you do there without the folder?” one part pulled me to go back. “Don’t you already have better things to do there without the darn folder?” the other part teased me. Pulling up my pants, which had slipped down to my hips, I continued to run. I found a compromise: “Miradora will decide herself what to do.”
Miradora did indeed find a solution. She proposed that we spend more of our time on intervals; that, she said, was a weak point in my preparation. After the two previous classes, I felt more at home in Doctor Tsipkin’s office. As evidence of that, I immediately sat down on the floor, which was covered with a soft Persian rug, and tucked my legs beneath me. Miradora just shrugged and sat down at her instrument.
Was I only thinking then about intervals? The previous night I had unexpectedly sampled a taste of Kama, and a worm of curiosity was gnawing at the pit of my stomach, just like when I had a craving for sweets. My mother always recognized it from my beggarly appearance and searching eyes. She had a certain nook, as she used to call it, where she hid various candies, cookies, and a handful of pistachios or raisins—not only for herself, of course, though my father had crowned her with the nickname “nasher.” 171
Apparently, as I was guessing the intervals, my face also showed signs of searching for a little “nash,” similar to last night’s taste. Finally my teacher exclaimed: “OK, that’s enough Solfège for today.” She went over to the bookcase, opened the glass door and pulled out a thick book. I was astonished—did she want to start reading with me? Probably poetry, yet. That was all I needed!
She sat down on the floor next to me and laid the book on her knees. She kept it there for a few moments, as if deliberately, so I could look at it and remember the beautiful red cover, on which artfully entwined letters were stamped in gold. She did that later too, at our subsequent meetings, as if it were part of some sort of ritual whose consummation would come later. My gaze clung to the long, curlicued inscription, and I mouthed each letter, with a quiet, drawn-out K-
a-m-a S-u-t-r-a.
Miradora maintained her poise. After leafing through several pages, she quietly but clearly read a passage: “Each person who lives for about a hundred years must at various times practice Dharma and Kama. He must do so in such a way that they will harmonize with one another, and must not misuse them. He must master Artha, understanding the world, in his childhood; in his youth and mature years, he must follow the teachings of Dharma and Kama.”
Understanding very little of what I heard, I asked hurriedly: “Why only ‘a hundred years’? My mother always says ‘until a hundred and twenty years.’” 172 Miradora apparently took my question seriously. She rubbed the bump on her nose with two fingers and tried to answer: “Perhaps the early Indians didn’t live as long as the Jews . . .”
She quickly returned to her reading: “Kama is the art of receiving pleasure, with the help of all five senses, led by wisdom and the soul . . .”
Cuddling with one another, we were not lacking then in any of the five senses about which the Kama Sutra preached, but our curiosity led us to follow its teachings. We hungrily turned the pages of the old book, discovering colorful pictures of men and women resembling the dancing couples in Indian films. They were wrapped in airy, transparent garments, and were surrounded by dozens of beautifully embroidered pillows. They held our gaze, infecting our imagination and our bodies with a previously unknown feeling of pleasure. Even more shameful: throwing off our skimpy summer clothes, we clumsily followed the wise advice of the great Kama.
I started to run to my Solfège classes the way our tomcat ran to catch mice in our attic, and like the tomcat, I would come back home tired, exhausted and happy. Eating quickly, I was eager to lie down on our couch. My mother was astonished: “He’s never slept in the afternoon—the preparations aren’t easy for him, poor thing.”
Almost two weeks passed that way. I was probably not a bad student—both with respect to Solfège and with respect to the teachings of Kama. I was already cracking the intervals like nuts and transcribing the dictations accurately on the five lines of my notebook. After playing them twice, I would hand the transcribed melodies to the teacher to grade. And, as we had up until now, after the musical introduction we would lie down on the soft rug.
At that time I didn’t yet have any idea about yoga or meditation, but the old book Kama Sutra—a bargain for any dealer in secondhand books—apparently possessed hidden strength that embraced us and carried us away the minute Miradora opened it. That strength flung us way up to the high heavens and then let us fall like two full vessels bound together. That’s the way it happened more than once in my dreams, and when it seemed to me that at any moment I would crash into the thick crust of the Earth, I would wake up in a cold sweat.
We didn’t want to wake up and separate from one another, and if we did have to, it was only to catch our breath and then again let ourselves be carried along by the magical power of Kama.
We never once kissed each other on the lips, like lovers, or touched a lip to a cheek, nose, forehead, as happens when playing the piano and one’s finger strikes the wrong key. We were both studying a new, unknown work, written hundreds of years ago so it could now be revealed to us. We were playing the revived song, and we were inspired by the sounds to an overwhelming rapture.
But the eventual end of my lessons had been haunting me since my first encounter with Miradora. I didn’t know how long she would be visiting her uncle, and I didn’t dare to ask her. It was like a game: you know it will come to an end someday, but you don’t want to think about it. That day caught up with me.
The door was opened, as always, by Miradora. I didn’t get to open my mouth before she indicated, by putting her finger to her lips, that I should remain silent. Once we were in Doctor Tsipkin’s office, she explained that late the night before her uncle had brought Nyuntshik back from the dormitory and that he was now sleeping in his room.
“Unfortunately, it won’t be possible for us to have our Solfège lesson today,” Miradora said in explanation, and added even more quietly: “Tomorrow Nyuntshik’s mother too is coming home from the sanatorium.”
I felt a lump in my throat that tried to find a way out through my tears. I tried hard to swallow it. Miradora was now standing facing me, so close that we both had to cast our eyes down. For the first time our lips touched and locked.
We now had no need for the Kama Sutra’s advice. The rug seized us and, as in that Oriental story, carried away our young, entwined bodies to the heavenly regions. The flight was so fast that my every limb burned with a fever and my sweat, mixed with tears, couldn’t cool it down. I heard the sounds of a Chopin nocturne, indeed from the same piece I had played. The music penetrated me so deeply and substantially that I felt the coolness and softness of the keys . . . Suddenly the music was disrupted by strange, false sounds, as if a string had snapped. I trembled, but Miradora’s hot breath in my ear didn’t stop. I heard the familiar whisper “Shh!”—how every mother quiets a suddenly upset baby. Nevertheless, I managed to turn my head and saw the sleepy face of Nyuntshik. He was next to us, on his knees, with his underpants down, masturbating. Miradora’s hand was moving across his fleshy, black-haired thighs like a white, lost snake. And in my ears I again heard “Shh!”
Miradora went home the next day. I found out from my mother, who greatly regretted it, poor thing: “I never got to thank the girl . . . I bought a big box of chocolate candies for nothing.” Perhaps that’s a good thing, I thought—Miradora wouldn’t have touched the candy anyway; she had once told me that chocolate is poison for a singer. But the box of candy, even though my mother hid it in her “nook,” was quickly emptied.
169 Pianist Emil Gilels (1916–1985).
170 Pianist Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter (1915–1997).
171 Yiddish for “snacker.”
172 In Jewish tradition 120 years is considered to be the ideal life span, based on the age of Moses.
TRANSLATORS
Ellen Cassedy is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). In 2015 she was a translation fellow at the Yiddish Book Center.
Kathryn Hellerstein is associate professor of Yiddish at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586–1987 (Stanford University Press, 2014), which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies, and is coeditor of Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (W. W. Norton, 2001), among other books.
Ellen Kellman is an assistant professor of Yiddish at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the Yiddish periodical press and publishing industry.
Eitan Kensky is the director of collections initiatives at the Yiddish Book Center and chairman of the board of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. He received his doctorate in Jewish studies from Harvard University.
Jessica Kirzane is a doctoral candidate in Yiddish studies at Columbia University. Her translations have been published in In geveb, the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, Pakn Treger, and Jewish Fiction.net.
Jordan Kutzik is a staff writer and social media coordinator for the Yiddish Forward and the editor of its blog for young writers. His journalism, fiction and literary translations have appeared in Yiddish and English in publications in the United States, Europe, and Israel.
Curt Leviant is a translator and novelist. His most recent books are Kafka’s Son (Dzanc Books, 2016) and King of Yiddish (Livingston Press, 2015). His work has been translated into seven European languages and Hebrew.
Seymour Levitan’s translations of Yiddish stories, memoirs, and poems are included in numerous anthologies and journals. Paper Roses, his collection of poetry by Rachel Korn, was the 1988 winner of the Robert Payne Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University.
Rachel Mines is a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors. She holds a doctorate in Old English from King’s College London and teaches at Langara Coll
ege, Vancouver.
Myra Mniewski is a poet, translator, and teacher who lives in New York.
Anita Norich is the Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She teaches, lectures on, and writes about Yiddish language and literature, modern Jewish culture, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature.
Ross Perlin is a writer, linguist, and translator, and the author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy (Verso, 2012). He currently serves as assistant director of the not-for-profit Endangered Language Alliance.
Sarah Ponichtera finished her doctorate in Yiddish language and literature at Columbia University in 2012, and now works at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research as project manager of the Vilna Collections Digital Initiative. She is currently translating Aaron Zeitlin’s spy novel, Brenendike erd (Burning Earth).
Chana Pollack is the Forward’s photo archivist. She frequently researches and translates original Forward material for the newspaper’s special historical sections.
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of four books of poetry. He was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for a Best of the Net award.
Ri J. Turner is a master’s student in Yiddish literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is a three-time alumna of the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program at the YIVO Institute in New York, and served as a translation fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in 2014. Her translations and original writing have appeared in the Forward, Afn shvel, and Outlook: Canada’s Progressive Jewish Magazine.
Rose Waldman holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University. She is currently working on a translation of Chaim Grade’s The Rabbi’s House, which will be published by the Knopf Doubleday Group. Waldman was awarded a translation fellowship from the Yiddish Book Center in 2014 and 2016.