See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

a yeshiva bucher!” her father screamed whenever he saw her “ruining her eyes” with her reading. He was a sprightly man, coarse and friendly, who loved his daughter and pitied her. Perhaps it was because he considered her a bad match that he consented to her marrying Wasserman with the hump, who was also—disconcertingly—almost his own age! Wasserman tells me dryly that they spent the honeymoon in Paris, obviously the least suitable place in the world for them. Paris had been chosen for them by the father of the bride. He paid for the wedding trip, in the hope (no doubt) that the City of Light would brighten the blushing, always earnest couple. Wasserman staunchly refuses to discuss that week in Paris. I can imagine how lost and helpless he must have felt sometimes as they wandered the busy boulevards at each other’s side. He was angry with himself for being such a clown, for betraying his solitude and the understanding silence between him and his life.

Now families group together, and parents call their children around them. They smooth a child’s wrinkled garment, moisten their fingers with spit to groom a stray curl. They are intent on trifles. Wasserman wants to stick his head into the loose earth. Jews, camp inmates from the “blue” group, welcome the new arrivals on the platform. They calm them, smile at them. They have their own reasons for wanting the process to run smoothly and quickly, which is why they help the hoax along. The passengers begin to thaw. The illusory station deceives them. It has everything: a small ticket office, an information booth, signs pointing to the TELEGRAPH OFFICE, RESTROOMS, BIALYSTOK TRAIN, VALKOVISK TRAIN, as well as a list of departure times, a restaurant, and the big, punctual station clock.

Wasserman tugs at my sleeve. He wants me to listen. He has things to tell me. Now. Right now.

After their return from Paris to Warsaw, things started to improve. Sarah was an intelligent woman, and she saw into his heart. She did not bring change into his household. She did not overstress her presence. She sensed the hidden threads of his routine and was careful not to tear them. Summery suppers were served at the table on the tiny veranda; sometimes she played tunes he liked on the recorder. At his bidding she read the books that were important to him (Errors by Lilienblum; Fliegelman by Numberg; the stories of Sholem Aleichem,Gordin, Asch, and, of course, Tolstoy and Gorky. And again our own Peretz, and Mendeleh Mocher Sephorim, of whom he was very fond). Her small, gay sketches, drawn in very fine pencil, gradually surrounded him. She accompanied him on a visit to his parents in Bolichov, and rejoiced with him when he spouted a fountain of memories. From his old mother she learned to bake rugelach and strudel, and biscuits that tasted just like hers, till he felt a vague, irrational annoyance with her for cooking as well as his mother.

At such moments I try to get all the information I can out of him. I suggest a phrase and wait for his reaction. I already have some idea about their life together, but occasionally I make a mistake, like the time I said, innocently enough, “But I was never a good husband to her, ai, a good husband I was not, Shleimeleh.” He was perfectly furious with me, and only after I appeased him did he correct me. “I was a good husband to her. I did everything she wanted, I gave her everything she needed. Only sometimes I was also, eppes, a bit of a miser. In love, that is,” and a moment later, to himself, “Nu yes, yes. But who was a prophet then to know we would have such a short time together?”

On another occasion he elaborated still further: “But yes. I was a cheapskate, a miser in love. And I should have been happier and more forgiving than I was. Happy with her, that is. But I, may I atone for her little fingernail, even when I wanted to show her my feelings, once in a great while, all my feelings for her, nu, I would choke with a kind of swelling in the throat, like the ruffles on a stuffed turkey, which condemned me to silence and made me turn my loving countenance away from her. And why? I do not know. Perhaps I feared to show her how much I needed her. Sometimes it seemed to me that I would burst, heaven forbid, into a thousand pieces if ever I allowed my love for her to peep out the width of my little finger.”

And I help him with all my heart. “And maybe it was a kind of childish anger, too, at the humiliation. The silly, imaginary humiliation: after forty years of self-sufficiency you were now enslaved to her. To the sound of her voice. To the way she smelled after her bath. To the way her hand brushed her hair away from her eyes.” And Anshel Wasserman, touched by this, reciprocates with a hint, which only I, knowing him so well, can fully appreciate. “And the flesh, begging your pardon, how shall I say it, Shleimeleh … the body, that is”—and I quickly rush to his assistance—“and the body, too, the body needs her so much.Her youthful agility, her flesh taut across her bones with the wild power of life and passion. The disorientation engendered by the new, not quite ripe, wholly imaginary geography of her young breasts, and her waist and belly and thighs, and sometimes, too, Grandfather, after all the words of wisdom, how great is the solace two people bring each other with their bodies …” And he: “Even on the way here, may a curse fall upon my head, Shleimeleh, nu, it is a little difficult for me to talk about …” I provide him with the words: “And we were crowded together on the train through the night and she