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mallorys_cameraChapter 4
(ii)
My brother Sammy got alarmed. My new antipathy toward Henry Miller threated to have a negative impact on his income. He actually agreed to eat something the next time we met at the automat on Third Avenue.
He stuck a spoon in a bowl of creamed spinach. Swallowed.
“Not bad,” he conceded. “But it looks like something dead puked it.”
“Creamed spinach was on the Titanic’s menu!” I told him.
“I’ll bet it was. So this… misunderstanding…”
I smiled politely.
“You know, he has really nice handwriting. Like he’s, uh, sensitive—“
“What’s going on at home, Sammy? How’s Papa?”
“Gussie’s getting married.”
Gussie! Married!
My sister Augusta had always been my mother’s favorite. Far more beautiful than me. Tall. Light-skinned, thin-lipped, thin-hipped. Her hazel eyes had a greyish tinge; in some lights, they even looked blue. A shiksa—that’s what she looked like—a shiksa who followed tzniut. In all the years we’d shared a bed, I’d hardly ever glimpsed her ankles and never once seen her naked, not even in the mikveh where we went monthly to cleanse ourselves when our wretched female bodies purged themselves of the clots and blood that was our legacy from the temptress Eve, or so our mother informed us.
I’d been my father’s favorite. When Sammy—Sigmund as he was then—baulked at learning to play the games my father used to play in his Pest cafés, my father taught them to me. Chess. Whist. Rummy. Tarok . You needed a special deck of cards to play Tarok, and you could use those cards to predict the future.
My father had grown up in Vizhnitsa, a town with names in many languages: Wiznitz, Wischnitza, Vijnița. I remembered Vizhnitsa as clearly as if I’d grown up there myself although, of course, I couldn’t possibly remember it; it was only that my father’s stories lodged in the same part of my brain that held my own memories. I remembered the formidable stone buildings in the town’s ringplatz where the Jews shopped for Shabbat; I remembered the shul with its oddly baroque circular windows and the strange stone ornaments creeping round its lone tower.
I remembered the stories my father told me when I was young and could not sleep, and he sat beside my cot, stroking my hair—
The forest near Międzybórz sprouted from the same oak that had once branched off to create the heavens, the seas, and all living things. Magic was slow to die there. And so it was that once upon a time, a simple fellow named Israel ben Eliezer met the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite while foraging for mushrooms.
Behold! the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite told Israel ben Eliezer. The children of Israel beyond the River shall never be free until they learn the occult sympathies that resonate through the Torah. And you shall be the One to guide them. And I shall give you my Mark.
The mark of Ahijah the Shilonite was the power to heal and the power to make worldly things vanish.
A dead child lay in the cottage of the candle maker Yitzhak ben Shelomah. Israel ben Eliezer put his hands on him, and the dead child lived.
The daughter of Moishe ben Raysel was covered with weeping pox. Israel ben Eliezer whispered in her ear, and the pox disappeared.
The Cossacks came to the village, and the villagers ignored them even as the Cossacks slit the villagers’ throats.
Israel ben Eliezer was the Baal Shem Tov, but that name was too holy to utter, so he became the BESHT.
And when he died, he went back into the forest to commune once again with Ahijah the Shilonite. When the living men sought the BESHT in these woods, the BESHT spoke to them of the d’vekut, which is the only true faith of those who are chosen.
And so, there grew a schism between those who knew for what they had been chosen and those who knew they had been chosen but did not know what for…
“Shoes,” Sammy was telling me. “The Rosens are in shoes. They’re very, very rich. Mendel is their only son. They don’t want him to marry her, but he saw her outside shul on the High Holidays, and he told them she was his bashaerte. If he couldn’t marry her, he wouldn’t marry anyone. No grandchildren! He’d study Torah and live alone. So—“ Sammy shrugged.
“She’s very beautiful,” I said. And wondered why I’d forced myself to say that.
Sammy snorted. He pushed the stack of translucent envelopes closer to me. “Anyway, here. I’m still snagging them before Ma sees them. That’s gotta be worth something.”
“Burn them,” I said.
“You burn them,” said Sammy. “And if you don’t want me to read them to Ma, my time is worth something.”
I argued with him for old time’s sake but my heart wasn’t in it. He must have seen that because he choked down the rest of the creamed spinach as a conciliatory gesture and patted my arm clumsily when he rose to go.
“Sammy,” I begged him. “How’s Papa? How’s Papa?”
“Papa?” said Sammy. And he spat on the floor of the automat.
(ii)
My brother Sammy got alarmed. My new antipathy toward Henry Miller threated to have a negative impact on his income. He actually agreed to eat something the next time we met at the automat on Third Avenue.
He stuck a spoon in a bowl of creamed spinach. Swallowed.
“Not bad,” he conceded. “But it looks like something dead puked it.”
“Creamed spinach was on the Titanic’s menu!” I told him.
“I’ll bet it was. So this… misunderstanding…”
I smiled politely.
“You know, he has really nice handwriting. Like he’s, uh, sensitive—“
“What’s going on at home, Sammy? How’s Papa?”
“Gussie’s getting married.”
Gussie! Married!
My sister Augusta had always been my mother’s favorite. Far more beautiful than me. Tall. Light-skinned, thin-lipped, thin-hipped. Her hazel eyes had a greyish tinge; in some lights, they even looked blue. A shiksa—that’s what she looked like—a shiksa who followed tzniut. In all the years we’d shared a bed, I’d hardly ever glimpsed her ankles and never once seen her naked, not even in the mikveh where we went monthly to cleanse ourselves when our wretched female bodies purged themselves of the clots and blood that was our legacy from the temptress Eve, or so our mother informed us.
I’d been my father’s favorite. When Sammy—Sigmund as he was then—baulked at learning to play the games my father used to play in his Pest cafés, my father taught them to me. Chess. Whist. Rummy. Tarok . You needed a special deck of cards to play Tarok, and you could use those cards to predict the future.
My father had grown up in Vizhnitsa, a town with names in many languages: Wiznitz, Wischnitza, Vijnița. I remembered Vizhnitsa as clearly as if I’d grown up there myself although, of course, I couldn’t possibly remember it; it was only that my father’s stories lodged in the same part of my brain that held my own memories. I remembered the formidable stone buildings in the town’s ringplatz where the Jews shopped for Shabbat; I remembered the shul with its oddly baroque circular windows and the strange stone ornaments creeping round its lone tower.
I remembered the stories my father told me when I was young and could not sleep, and he sat beside my cot, stroking my hair—
The forest near Międzybórz sprouted from the same oak that had once branched off to create the heavens, the seas, and all living things. Magic was slow to die there. And so it was that once upon a time, a simple fellow named Israel ben Eliezer met the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite while foraging for mushrooms.
Behold! the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite told Israel ben Eliezer. The children of Israel beyond the River shall never be free until they learn the occult sympathies that resonate through the Torah. And you shall be the One to guide them. And I shall give you my Mark.
The mark of Ahijah the Shilonite was the power to heal and the power to make worldly things vanish.
A dead child lay in the cottage of the candle maker Yitzhak ben Shelomah. Israel ben Eliezer put his hands on him, and the dead child lived.
The daughter of Moishe ben Raysel was covered with weeping pox. Israel ben Eliezer whispered in her ear, and the pox disappeared.
The Cossacks came to the village, and the villagers ignored them even as the Cossacks slit the villagers’ throats.
Israel ben Eliezer was the Baal Shem Tov, but that name was too holy to utter, so he became the BESHT.
And when he died, he went back into the forest to commune once again with Ahijah the Shilonite. When the living men sought the BESHT in these woods, the BESHT spoke to them of the d’vekut, which is the only true faith of those who are chosen.
And so, there grew a schism between those who knew for what they had been chosen and those who knew they had been chosen but did not know what for…
“Shoes,” Sammy was telling me. “The Rosens are in shoes. They’re very, very rich. Mendel is their only son. They don’t want him to marry her, but he saw her outside shul on the High Holidays, and he told them she was his bashaerte. If he couldn’t marry her, he wouldn’t marry anyone. No grandchildren! He’d study Torah and live alone. So—“ Sammy shrugged.
“She’s very beautiful,” I said. And wondered why I’d forced myself to say that.
Sammy snorted. He pushed the stack of translucent envelopes closer to me. “Anyway, here. I’m still snagging them before Ma sees them. That’s gotta be worth something.”
“Burn them,” I said.
“You burn them,” said Sammy. “And if you don’t want me to read them to Ma, my time is worth something.”
I argued with him for old time’s sake but my heart wasn’t in it. He must have seen that because he choked down the rest of the creamed spinach as a conciliatory gesture and patted my arm clumsily when he rose to go.
“Sammy,” I begged him. “How’s Papa? How’s Papa?”
“Papa?” said Sammy. And he spat on the floor of the automat.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-21 10:33 pm (UTC)