A Blessing on the Moon

by Joseph Skibell

  Where, I wonder, are my fellow Jews? Where are they lodging for the night? And what sins have I committed that I am parted from them and must sleep instead with this sentimental murderer, forced to hear tales of its boyhood and its youth?

  “Once upon a time,” it begins.

  And there’s no dissuading him.

  “We were chasing two Jews through the woods. Not like you, Herr Jude, but the other kind, the funny-looking ones.”

  I ask him to clarify.

  “With the long coats and the funny hats and the corkscrew sideburns sticking out from in front of their ears. It was comical just to see them run, they look so much like penguins.”

  How painful it is to listen to this head.

  “What do you call them?”

  How little he knows!

  “We had rounded up a whole pack of them, but these two … Hasids …” he tries the word out for himself, “… had somehow managed to escape. That they thought they could flee from us was pure folly, of course. We had our dogs. We had our torches. They made for quite a spooky effect, the light rippling through the trees, the dogs sniffing and pawing. We fanned out, some of the fellows and myself, to surround them, but after a bit, I seemed to be the only one still on their trail. I have no idea to this day what happened to the others. Again and again, I found and lost them, my two penguins, the woods were so knotted, so thick. Finally, I caught them. They were right in front of me, not more than a stone’s throw away. They had reached a river and it was impossible to cross.”

  Poor mamzers, I think.

  “I’m about to shout out to them, to order them to stop, to surrender, when what do we notice right there on the bank? All three of us. We saw it together, at the same time.

  “Can you guess it, Herr Jude?

  “Not a rock, no.

  “Not a cave.

  “Exactly. A boat. A small boat, but a boat nonetheless. Someone had tied it to a tree with a rope.

  “So, Aha! I think, they’ve arranged to meet others, have they? Well, we’ll see about that!

  “Fortunately I hadn’t shouted out or in any other way betrayed my presence, for now I could wait to arrest or shoot them all, whatever was necessary.”

  Whatever was necessary.

  “And I crouch down and wait for them, for these others, the ones who have left the boat, to reveal themselves, but they never do. As far as I can tell, there are no others and the boat is there purely by chance. And the two Hasids, Herr Jude, as you call them, what do you imagine they do?

  “No, they don’t take the boat.

  “You or I certainly would take the boat. But not this odd pair. Instead, our little penguins sit upon its edge and debate whether it is permissible, permissible!, according to the Laws of Moses, for them to take the boat.”

  With these words, I am again a boy in cheder, learning the Law on a cold winter’s day. All the hairsplitting arguments, such headaches they used to give me!

  “One of them is inclined to take the boat,” this the head tells me. “But the other is not so sure. For one thing, they do not have the necessary texts. The one who is inclined to take the boat insists to the other that without the holy books to consult, the only way they can know for certain if they have the right to take the boat is if they do take the boat and survive, and then, having survived, consult the books to see if their actions were permissible.

  “And if they discover that taking the boat was not permissible, he reasons, because they will have survived, they can at least make reparations to its rightful owner.

  “The second one is not so sure. ‘What if we take the boat,’ he says, ‘survive for now, but perish further upriver? Reparations then would be impossible.’

  “‘A good point,’ the first has to admit, one he had not, in his fear, allowed himself to see.

  “‘Plus,’ says the second Hasid, ‘the boat may very well have holes in it.’

  “‘From where do we derive such a supposition?’ says the first Hasid.

  “‘Why else would someone have abandoned it?’

  “‘True,’ the first must ruefully admit.

  “‘Unless it were useless, it’s safe to assume they wouldn’t have left it here.’

  “‘Aha!’ the first one exclaims. ‘But if it is useless, then it’s perfectly permissible to take.’

  “‘But why would we take a useless boat?’

  “I’m lying in the underbrush,” the head tells me, “utterly fascinated and entranced. I’m hanging on every word of this remarkable conversation.

  “‘Look,’ the first one says, ‘if the Master of the Universe, Blessed be He, sees fit to place a perfectly good boat in our path in an hour of terrible need, surely it was not that we might perish without consulting the holy books regarding its permissibility!’

  “‘Could be, could be,’ the second Hasid excitedly pulls on his beard.

  “‘It’s an insult to the Law not to take this boat!’ the first Hasid says. ‘It’s an insult to God, God forbid, not to take this boat!’

  “What rot! I think to myself, what specious reasoning! They’re back exactly where they started! And yet, to my utter amazement, this last argument prevails and the two eagerly help each other into the small boat.”

  “And did it have holes in it?” I ask reluctantly.

  The head laughs and I can feel its laughter on my thigh. “Did it have holes in it? Herr Jude, be sensible! Of course, it had holes in it! Why else would anyone abandon a boat during wartime?”

  “And so it sank, then, I suppose.”

  “It sank, yes,” the head chuckles, shaking itself. “Of course, it sank. Only not downward into the river, as you might expect, as I myself expected, but upward, into the sky. The holes, it seems, lightened the craft, so that it was able to leave the river and sail into the night air, which I’m told is rather thick at certain high altitudes.”

  “And then what happened?” I can’t help asking him.

  “And then, so engrossed was I in the spectacle before me, two Jews sailing into the Heavens in a boat full of holes, that I didn’t see the thick partisan creeping up behind me with his axe and, as everyone knows, he chopped off my head, and that was that.”

  30

  This story sounds vaguely familiar. I wrack my brain, trying to recall where I may have heard it. Then it comes to me. Did I not tell Ola a similar tale concerning two Hasids who sail to the moon and who end up pulling it from the skies? But that was a bedtime story, one which I myself made up!

  “Where did you hear this story?” I ask searchingly, pulling the head to me.

  Misunderstanding the fervor of my interest, he is pleased to have it nonetheless.

  “I saw these things,” he insists. “It happened exactly as I have related it.” His eyes shine with eagerness, reflecting back my questioning gaze. “But why are you so interested?”

  “A coincidence is all,” I say, and I drop him on my lap. I’m not about to confide the private details of my personal life to a severed head. “It’s only a coincidence.”

  “It’s nearing daybreak, isn’t it, Herr Jude?” he says, squinting into the sky.

  By degrees, the sky has begun to lighten. Above the tree line and through the braided weave of branches, you can discern a growing halo of blue inside the black, but it’s deceptive. If you blink, it disappears.

  “Herr Jude,” the head repeats, persisting so, that I must fold my arms against my chest. Already, even from our short travels together, I can recognize that tone in his voice, when it loses its edge. He is after something and has left my lap in order to address me more directly.

  “What now, little head?” I sigh.

  The head clears its throat or at least the upper reaches of it.

  “Should I die, Herr Jude,” he says, “I mean really die—not this intermediate state of wandering—will you bury me?”

  Bury him?

  “No,” I say, “I can’t promise you that.”

  “I understand,” and he looks away. />
  “The ground is frozen. It will be ages until the spring. I have no tools or shovels.”

  “Of course.”

  “It would be unfair of me to promise.”

  He licks his lips.

  “Perhaps you have wondered why I kidnapped you.”

  I am grateful to him for this change of subjects.

  “Ah yes! This preposterous kidnapping!” I say with a false heartiness. A lot of good it has done him. “To tell you the truth, I assumed it was merely something your people did by rote, like calisthenic exercises.”

  The head grimaces. In the increasing light, I can make out the expression as it distorts his face.

  “I have done things, Herr Jude, during the last days of my life, that I never dreamed possible, things which, as a child or even as a young man, I would not have believed myself capable. I don’t need to detail them to you. You are only too familiar with the kind of thing I mean. Although I am dead, I fear I haven’t much time. After all, how long can I sustain myself without a body? I can’t see anything, although I’m used to that. I’m nearsighted, as you know, but this is worse. I’ve tried to convince myself that it is only a matter of finding my glasses, but I can’t lie to myself any longer. My sight is dimming. Is it possible that I am really, finally, going to die? Oh, Herr Jude, it seems like ages since the peasant chopped off my head. My body is lost. We’ll never find it, although it was kind of you to humor me. You must believe me when I tell you I kidnapped you for a reason. Not for glory or for country, nor from habit, as you suggest. I assume you are being facetious, although you are right, you are right to chastise me. Only hear me out! I had been watching you for days. For days! It’s true. Perhaps because you were less rotted than the others, I was able to persuade myself that I recognized you from that morning. I needn’t explain, I’m sure, which morning I mean. Perhaps it is foolish of me, Herr Jude, to believe that I killed you. But I do. There. It’s been said. And is it really so unreasonable an assumption? You look familiar to me. And when I noticed you yesterday, alone, on the edge of your camp, I seized the moment. A ridiculous enterprise, considering my state! And yet, and yet …”

  “What do you want from me?” I say.

  “I need to be forgiven, Herr Jude. Forgive me. Won’t you?”

  So this is the face of my killer.

  “I sicken myself when I think of the things I have done!”

  Taking him by the ears, I return him to my lap. He is shivering and perhaps also weeping. It’s hard to tell. Apparently, his tear ducts have been severed from the source of their waters in his body, and so if it can be called a weeping, it is a dry weeping. His eyes are cloudy and vague. He is nearly blind and he squints past my face with a tentative, imploring, slightly embarrassed smile on his long and moving lips.

  I wrap the scarf tighter around his neck for warmth.

  “Little head,” I say, “when you killed me, you took everything. My home, my wife, my children. Must you have my forgiveness as well?”

  31

  There is nothing to do with this head.

  The ground is too frozen to bury it properly, and even if it weren’t, I have no shovel, no axe, nothing but my bare hands with which to dig a grave. I consider leaving it in the trees and letting the ravens peck at its eyes. And why not? These eyes which aimed this gun at me, the gun which I now hold stupidly in my own hand, why should they not make tasty morsels for the birds? Still, I can’t bring myself to do it. The head is dead. What gain could I derive from its desecration? Neither, though, do I wish to be carting it around until spring! The rivers are frozen and even if they weren’t, even if they were flowing freely, would letting the fish, instead of the birds, nibble at its eyes and cheeks make any difference?

  I walk for I don’t know how many versts, carrying the head by its tangled hair with my good hand, the gun strapped across my chest, contemplating this dilemma.

  “Look what you’ve done to me!” I’ve taken to addressing the head, although thankfully it no longer answers back. “It’s bad enough you kill me. Now you leave me with your head!”

  God only knows if the poor body is still wandering about, ignorant of its own demise. I half expect to find it crouching behind every other tree. That the head should perish, while I myself persist, is a mystery. However, it was no different for Ola. I have to remind myself of that. Her body lay like a broomstick, inert on her bed, while her soul flew to the supernal realms. I witnessed it myself. Only we Jews seem destined to haunt this long continent, wandering its lengths, until God, in His wisdom, decrees otherwise.

  32

  The gun, too, is a problem. I feel absurd toting it about. What a ghastly sight I must make, with my rifle and my severed German head! If I happened upon another Jew or any traveler who could see me, how I would frighten them. I have no idea what makes it shoot or how to determine whether it is loaded, and yet, I feel a very real reluctance to surrender or abandon it. Why leave it to rust in a snowdrift where it will do no one any good? If it succeeds in merely frightening away the wolves, it will have served a purpose. I keep a wary eye out for them each dusk, but either they have not returned or else they have chosen not to reveal themselves. At times, I cannot shake the eerie feeling that I am being watched. A crash will sound in the tall cold grasses and I will turn involuntarily, searching out its source. But they are sly, these wolves, and treacherous. Still, let them come! I’ll shake my German’s head at them and rattle my gun in their faces, as fierce a sight as they might hope to see!

  Perhaps I would have been happier being born a wolf.

  A curious thought, but I find I cannot shake it from my head. Running with a pack, my beard overgrown and shaggy, rutting with a musky mate, we’d produce children who are hard and wild, with cruel and tearing teeth. How they will tear at your throat when you come for them with your specious laws and your cold metal guns.

  “Nonsense!” I say aloud. “A fantasy! It’s absurd! I am dreaming!” I tell this to the head, whose glazed eyes stare at nothing.

  My hand, swollen and infected, aches at the memory of the wolves. The teethmarks, barely discernible now in the puffy flesh, emit an oozing pus. Occasionally, I plunge it up to the wrist in snow, and the biting cold soothes it. I can hardly curl my fingers, and the flesh is turning black.

  I will never be a wolf.

  I will never be anything other than a dead and mutilated Jew, without even a moon to howl at overhead.

  I am lost when the heavy snows begin to fall.

  33

  I nearly jump, startled by the great whoosh of feathers so near to my ear. He flies up, disappearing into the extraordinary whiteness of the sky, and is suddenly before my eyes: a huge black ink spill. Two feathers drop from his plumage into the blood-spattered snow at my feet. I can’t take my eyes from this sight, so stirring a picture do the black feathers and the red drops of blood make on the canvas of white snow. I am lost, mesmerized, in its radiant, shimmering asymmetries.

  I have been bleeding again. This, together with my own fatigue, the heavy snowfall, and the burden of the head, has left me paralyzed. Long ago, it seems, I stopped walking, unable to move.

  “Chaimka! Chaimka!” the Rebbe screams into my ear. I hear him, as if from a distance. My thoughts unravel like a badly knitted garment, until nothing remains but a meaningless tangle. For a moment, I have no idea who I am or what I am doing here. As I stare into the crimson and sable patterns at my feet, they begin to shimmer and move, forming into a face with coal black eyes, ivory skin, and red and dimpled cheeks.

  “Ida?” I say. My first wife. She died in childbirth, a girl herself.

  “Chaimka,” she calls my name, so sweetly, so sweetly, but her distant voice is shrill and piping.

  “Ida, I’m cold,” I say.

  “Chaimka,” she says. “You must move! You must move!”

  The Rebbe digs his claws into the shoulder of my coat, piercing with them sharply into my skin, forcing me awake. Ida’s face is gone. I’m surrounded, I see
, by ice-covered trees. The pounding snow is so thick!

  “Rebbe, I’m freezing!” I say. “I can’t walk! I don’t know what to do with this head!”

  The Rebbe squawks and caws wildly.

  “I don’t understand you, Rebbe!” I shout. “Speak in Yiddish, so I can understand!”

  From between the spaces in the trees, men appear.

  “Careful, careful,” each one cautions the others, as though he alone knows what he is doing. They lift and carry me through the woods. Do they have a bier? I cannot tell. My body has lost all feeling. I seem to be lying on my back in their arms. I can see the tops of the trees and the sky moving backwards, behind their shoulders and their heads.

  34

  Above me an ashen sky of faces, with eyes shining like dark stars. Apparently, I am lying on my back, on a bier of some kind, encircled by a ring of concerned friends and townspeople. Their mouths open and they shower their words down on me, like rain falling from the Heavens.

  “Reb Chaim,” they shout, as though I were deaf. “You’ll soon be all right.” “Can you hear us?” “How are you feeling?” “Give him room, give him room, don’t crowd him!”

  I manage to raise my head a little and see that they have covered me with filthy blankets and have bandaged, as best they can, my infected hand. Beneath the covers, my other hand is empty.

  “The head,” I whisper.

  “Sha, save your strength,” one of them says.

  A man kneels next to me and murmurs in my ear, “Don’t worry, Reb Chaim. We have placed the head in a burlap sack and will carry it with us for you.”

  After many days, my strength returns and I am able to walk unaided. The men who have carried me, I can tell, are grateful to no longer have me as a burden. I don’t blame them. Their kindnesses were more than sufficient. The snow beats down upon us with an unceasing fury. The wind whistles and howls, like a congress of dybbuks. Pushing forward is impossible, but so is standing still.