In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (15 page)

“It’s me.”

“My God, I read you every week! I go to the village Friday especially to get the paper, and you won’t believe me, but I read
A Bundle of Facts
before I even read the news. The news is all bad. Hitler this, Hitler that. He should burn like a fire, the bum, the no-good. What does he want from the Jews? Is it their fault that Germany lost the war? From just reading about it one could get a heart attack. But your facts are knowledge, science. Is it true that a fly has thousands of eyes?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“How can it be? Why does a fly need so many eyes?”

“It seems that to nature everything comes easy.”

“If you want to see the beauty of nature, stay here. Wait a minute. I must go and tell my wife who we have here.”

“What for? I’m not going to stay here anyhow.”

“What are you saying? Why not? They are bitter women, but when they hear who you are, they will be overjoyed. My wife reads you too. She tears the paper out of my hand because she wants to read
A Bundle of Facts
first. My daughter also knows Yiddish. She spoke Yiddish before she knew a word of English. With us she speaks mostly Yiddish because—”

The farmer dashed out. His heavy shoes pounded on the steps. The heifer kept howling. There was frenzy in her voice, an almost-human rebellion. I sat down on the mattress and dropped my head. Lately I had been committing one folly after another. I had quarreled with Dosha over a foolishness. I had already spent money to get here and tomorrow I would have to take a taxi and a bus to get back to New York. I had begun to write a novel but I got bogged down and I couldn’t even decipher my own scribbling. As I sat here, the heat roasted my body. If only there were a shade to cover the window! The heifer’s lamenting drove me mad. I heard in it the despair of everything that lives. All of creation was protesting through her. A wild idea ran through my mind: Perhaps during the night I should go out and kill the heifer and then myself. A murder followed by a suicide like this would be something new in the history of humanity.

I heard heavy steps on the staircase. The farmer had brought his wife over. Then began the apologies and the strange exaggerations of simple people when they encounter their beloved writer. Bessie exclaimed, “Sam, I must kiss him.”

And before I managed to say a word, the woman caught my face in her rough hands, which smelled of onion, garlic, and sweat.

The farmer was saying good-naturedly, “A stranger she kisses and me she lets fast.”

“You are crazy and he’s a scientist, greater than a professor.”

It took but a minute and the daughter came up. She stood in the open door and looked on half mockingly at the way her parents fussed over me. After a while she said, “If I have insulted you, excuse me. My father brought us here to the wasteland. We have no car and his horse is half dead. Suddenly a man with a valise drops from the sky and wants to know why the heifer is yelling. Really funny.”

Sam clasped his hands together with the look of a man about to announce something which will astound everyone. His eyes filled with laughter. “If you have so much pity on animals, I am going to give back the heifer. We can do without her. Let her go back to her mother, for whom she pines.”

Bessie tilted her head to one side. “John Parker won’t give you back the money.”

“If he won’t return the whole amount, he will return ten dollars less. It’s a healthy heifer.”

“I will make up the difference,” I said, astonished at my own words.

“What? We will not go to court,” the farmer said. “I want this man in my house all summer. He won’t have to pay me. For me it will be an honor and a joy.”

“Really, the man is crazy. We needed the heifer like a hole in the head.”

I could see that husband and wife were making peace because of me.

“If you really want to do it, why wait?” I asked. “The animal may die from yearning and then—”

“He’s right,” the farmer called. “I’m going to take the heifer back right now. This very minute.”

Everyone became silent. As if the heifer knew that her fate was being decided this minute, she let out a howl which made me shudder. This wasn’t a yearning heifer but a dybbuk.

3

The moment Sam entered the stable the heifer became quiet. It was a black heifer with large ears and huge black eyes that expressed a wisdom which only animals possess. There was no sign that she had just gone through so many hours of agony. Sam tied a rope around her neck and she followed him willingly. I followed behind with Bessie near me. The daughter stood in front of the house and said, “Really, I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

We walked along and the heifer did not utter a sound. She seemed to know the way back because she tried to run and Sam had to restrain her. Meanwhile, husband and wife argued before me the way couples used to argue when they came to my father’s court for a Din Torah. Bessie was saying, “The ruin stood empty for years and nobody even looked at it. I don’t think someone would have taken it for nothing. Suddenly my husband appears and gets the bargain. How does the saying go? ‘When a fool comes to the market, the merchants are happy.’”

“What did you have on Orchard Street? The air stank. As soon as daylight began, the crash and noise started. Our apartment was broken into. Here you don’t have to lock the door. We can leave for days and weeks and no one will steal anything.”

“What thief would come to such a desert?” Bessie asked. “And what could he take? American thieves are choosy. They want either money or diamonds.”

“Believe me, Bessie, here you will live twenty years longer.”

“Who wants to live so long? When a day is over, I thank God.”

After about an hour and a half I saw John Parker’s farm—the house, the granary. The heifer again tried to run and Sam had to hold her back with all his strength. John Parker was cutting grass with a crooked scythe. He was tall, blond, lean, Anglo-Saxon. He raised his eyes, amazed, but with the quiet of a person who is not easily astounded. I even imagined I saw him smiling. We had approached the pasture where the other cows were grazing and the heifer became wild and tore herself out of Sam’s hands. She began to run and jump with the rope still around her neck, and a few cows slowly raised their heads and looked at her, while the others continued to rip the grass as if nothing had happened. In less than a minute the heifer, too, began to graze. I had expected, after this terrible longing, a dramatic encounter between the heifer and her mother: much nuzzling, fondling, or whatever cows do to show affection to a daughter who was lost. But it seemed that cattle didn’t greet one another that way. Sam began to explain to John Parker what had happened and Bessie too chimed in. Sam was saying, “This young man is a writer. I read his articles every week and he is going to be our guest. Like all writers, he has a soft heart. He could not stand the heifer’s suffering. My wife and I cherish every line he writes. When he said that the heifer might disturb his thinking, I made up my mind, come what may. So I brought the heifer back. I am ready to lose as much as you will say—”

“You will lose nothing, it’s a good heifer,” John Parker said. “What do you write?” he asked me.

“Oh, facts in a Yiddish newspaper. I am trying to write a novel too,” I boasted.

He remarked, “Once I was a member of a book club, but they sent me too many books and I had no time to read. A farm keeps you busy, but I still get
The Saturday Evening Post
. I have piles of them.”

“I know. Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders.” I tried to show erudition about American literature.

“Come into the house. We’ll have a drink.”

The farmer’s family came out. His wife, a darkish woman with short black hair, looked Italian to me. She had a bumpy nose and sharp black eyes. She was dressed city-fashion. The boy was blond like his father, the girl Mediterranean-looking like her mother. Another man appeared. He seemed to be a hired hand. Two dogs dashed out of somewhere and, after barking for a few seconds, began to wag their tails and to rub up against my legs. Sam and Bessie again tried to explain the reason for their visit, and the farmer’s wife scrutinized me half wondering and half with irony. She asked us in, and soon a bottle of whiskey was opened and we clinked glasses. Mrs. Parker was saying, “When I came here from New York I missed the city so much that I almost died, but I’m not a heifer and nobody cared about my feelings. I was so lonesome that I tried to write, even though I’m not a writer. I still have a few composition books lying around and I myself don’t remember what I put down in them.”

The woman looked at me hesitatingly and shyly. I knew exactly what she wanted and I asked, “May I look at them?”

“What for? I have no literary talent. It is kind of a diary. Notes about my experiences.”

“If you have no objections, I would like to read them, not here, but back at Sam’s farm.”

The woman’s eyes brightened. “Why should I object? But please don’t laugh at me when you read the outpourings of my emotions.”

She went to look for her manuscript and John Parker opened a chest drawer and counted out the money for the heifer. The men haggled. Sam offered to take a few dollars less than what he had paid. John Parker wouldn’t hear of it. I again proposed to make good the difference, but both men looked at me reproachfully and told me to mind my own business. After a while Mrs. Parker brought me a bundle of composition books in an old manila envelope that smelled of moth balls. We said goodbye and I took their phone number. When we got back, the sun had already set and the stars shone in the sky. It was a long time since I had seen such a starry sky. It hovered low, frightening and yet solemnly festive. It reminded me of Rosh Hashanah. I went up to my room. I could not believe it but Sylvia had changed my linen: a whiter sheet; a spotless blanket, and a cleaner pillowcase. She had even hung up a small picture with a windmill.

That evening I ate supper with the family. Bessie and Sylvia asked me many questions and I told them about Dosha and our recent quarrel. Both wanted to know the reason for the quarrel, and when I told them they both laughed.

“Because of foolishness like this, a love should not be broken,” Bessie said.

“I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Call her this very moment,” Bessie commanded.

I gave Sylvia the number. She turned the crank on the wall phone. Then she screamed into the phone as if the woman at the phone company were deaf. Perhaps she was. After a while Sylvia said, “Your Dosha is on the telephone,” and she winked.

I told Dosha what I had done and the story about the heifer. She said, “I am the heifer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I called you all the time.”

“Dosha, you can come up here. There is another room in the house. These are kind people and I already feel at home here.”

“Huh? Give me the address and phone number. Perhaps this coming week.”

About ten o’clock Sam and Bessie went to sleep. They bid me good night with the gay anticipation of a young couple. Sylvia proposed that we go for a walk.

There was no moon, but the summer night was bright. Fireflies lit up in the thickets. Frogs croaked, crickets chirped. The night rained meteors. I could make out the whitish luminous band which was the Milky Way. The sky, like the earth, could not rest. It yearned with a cosmic yearning for something which would take myriads of light-years to achieve. Even though Sylvia had just helped me make peace with Dosha, she took my hand. The night light made her face feminine and her black eyes emitted golden sparks. We stopped in the middle of the dirt road and kissed with fervor, as if we had been waiting for each other God knows how long. Her wide mouth bit into mine like the muzzle of a beast. The heat from her body baked my skin, not unlike the glowing roof a few hours earlier. I heard a blaring sound, mysterious and other-worldly, as though a heavenly heifer in a faraway constellation had awakened and begun a wailing not to be stilled until all life in the universe shall be redeemed.

Translated by the author and Ruth Schachner Finkel

Grine Felder—A Place in the Country

Martin Boris

I
t must have been quite pastoral back in July 1938 when Isaac Bashevis Singer first glimpsed the bungalow colony grounds after a long, tedious drive from Manhattan. He might have stood at the entrance off the narrow serpentine road, beneath a jade-green canopy of tall, resin-scented cedars. Ahead of him lay a flowing, even more verdant landscape rising sharply into a series of tree-studded hills. But Singer must surely have questioned what he was doing in this “wilderness” so far from his tiny, one-room flat in lower Manhattan and why he’d allowed his young friend, Zygmunt Salkin, to inveigle him into journeying up to the country.

Three years earlier, Salkin had waited at Ellis Island with I. J. [Israel Joshua] Singer, Isaac’s older brother, to welcome the 39-year-old Polish immigrant to America. Since his arrival, the younger Singer hadn’t fared as well as he wished in his writing career, so when Salkin, a budding theater director, approached him with a plan to move his fledgling troupe to a Woodridge, N.Y., bungalow colony to rehearse an English version of I. L. Peretz’s
At Night in the Old Marketplace
, Isaac consented to oversee the project.