Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories. Blume Lempel

eyes to see what was happening here on God’s earth.

      As evening fell, when her room began to grow dark and the shadows pressed in from every corner, after she had finished eating and recited the blessing after the meal, made up her bed and placed a bowl of water on the night table for the next morning’s ritual hand washing — then my aunt would emerge from her room to tell the children a story.

      She’d recount the tale of the little old lady who had lots and lots of children — dark, charming little girls and boys — Jewish children who spoke Yiddish, studied Torah, and feared God.

      Once, when the little old lady had to go into the forest to gather kindling, she warned the children to be good and say their prayers before bed so that no evil would befall them.

      The children did as they were told. They said their prayers and went to sleep.

      Then a brown bear came running, not from the forest but from far away, from the great cities of the civilized world. And this bear gobbled up all the children. But it so happened that the youngest, the weakest and finest of them all, little Yisrolik, was spared.

      Yisrolik was a stargazer. The distant stars called to him. He conducted nighttime vigils high up in the mountains or deep in the valleys. There he read the signs of the Zodiac as they wandered across the heavens. But when Yisrolik came home and saw the disaster that had occurred, he took up his spyglass and set off for the land of his ancestors.

      On Friday nights, with the beginning of the Sabbath, my aunt came to life. A special spirit shone from her gray eyes and her face became smooth and unwrinkled. She bought meat from the kosher butcher who adhered to the strictest standards, stewed carrots and baked a sweet kugel. She took her best dress out of the closet and laid it on the bed, next to the white silk kerchief with golden fringes that she wore to bless the candles.

      My aunt had brought this kerchief with her from Poland. It was the only memento she had from her mother, and she had decided to wear it when the time came to stand before the Lord of the Universe. She had also sewn for herself a shroud with long sleeves and a high, ruffled collar, as befitted a pious woman.

      With every passing day, my aunt became more devout, more observant, withdrawing all the more from the material world.

      “Why don’t you go to the park now and then?” I would ask. “Fill your lungs with a little fresh air, chat with the other women. . . .”

      “I don’t have time, my child,” she’d say. “I still have so much to do . . . and for me the sun is already beginning to set.”

      When our family expanded and the apartment on Ocean Avenue became too crowded, we decided to buy a house on Long Island. Unexpectedly, my aunt refused to come with us. She wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood — maybe it had no synagogue. Now, at her advanced age, she wasn’t about to live among gentiles — not even Jewish gentiles.

      My aunt was seventy years old when she went into the old age home. She turned over everything she owned and began to save again. Every penny I gave her she put away — to support the rabbis, the scholars, long, long after her death. She wouldn’t allow herself a piece of fruit or a dress. Everything went into the little purse that hung around her neck like an amulet.

      My aunt had no children of her own. No matter how much I did for her, she always felt that children of her own would have done better: a son would have said Kaddish, a daughter would have donated to charity to save her soul from disgrace in the other world. The way things were, the entire burden fell on her shoulders.

      Every Sunday, I visited my aunt in the old age home. She was busy there, perhaps reciting a chapter of the Psalms for a sick person or penning a letter for a poor soul who didn’t know how to write. As time went by, I noticed some odd remarks creeping into her speech.

      “You see that woman over there? She’s the youngest daughter of our kosher slaughterer — you remember her from back home. There she was a big shot, but here she’s a sad case, poor thing. She’s ashamed to look me in the eye. She wants me to think she’s from Warsaw — imagine! Well, if it makes her feel good, I don’t mind. . . .”

      This wasn’t the only such example. In fact, my aunt peopled the home with characters from the Old Country. The rope-maker from her town had turned up here and was overseeing the kosher kitchen. The tenant farmer’s son had become the house doctor. The cantor was the same one who used to lead the prayers in the big synagogue. The doctor assured me her confusion was caused by hardening of the arteries, but I had my own interpretation. My aunt was running away from the old age home, escaping back to the shtetl. She was going home, back to her youth, back to her roots. Step by step, as if descending a ladder, she was returning to her beginnings, her own Genesis.

      One Sunday evening, she called me by the name of her sister, my mother.

      “Pesenyu,” she said, “I have something to tell you, but remember, don’t tell a soul.” She moved her chair closer to mine. Her eyes sparkled, and her white hair peeked out from under her kerchief like the unruly curls of a young girl.

      “Listen to this,” she said. “Motele Shoyber has turned up again. How he figured out where I live, I have no idea. Please, Pesenyu, don’t breathe a word to Papa.”

      She looked me in the eye, then smiled as if to someone behind me. I turned aside, not wanting her to see that I knew she was rambling.

      “He’s walking back and forth in front of the window,” she said, “just like in the good old days. I plead with him — ‘How can this be, Motele, you have a wife and children, what do you want with me?’

      “‘You’re my one true love,’ he answers — ‘it was ordained in heaven.’

      “Last night I had just finished saying the prayer for the end of the Sabbath. The lights hadn’t yet been turned on. All of a sudden I hear someone tapping at the window — not banging, God forbid, but gently, pleadingly. I look out — it’s Motl.

      “‘What are you doing here in all this rain?’ I ask.

      “‘Open up, Rokhele,’ he begs me. He flashes a look with his Gypsy eyes. I go hot and cold. I’m scared to death — Papa could walk in at any moment. But Motl won’t give up.

      “‘Rokhele, darling, open the window, I’m dying for you!’ His red-hot eyes burn holes in the windowpane. I cover my face. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see the net he’s spreading for me. I grab the holy book lying on the table. All the virtues of my mother and father come to my aid. And even though I don’t turn around again, I can tell he’s still there — so sad, so forlorn.”

      My aunt cried, and I cried along with her.

      All summer she fantasized about Motele. By the beginning of autumn, she was slipping rapidly. Around Hanukkah, she had become a little girl . . . running around barefoot, washing her mother’s noodle-board in the river . . . setting down the noodle-board in the water and swimming away with the current.

      Her mind didn’t always wander. These excursions into the past took place mostly in the evening, when she would lay aside her prayer book and sit in her room with only the walls for company. She seldom complained about her fate and even stopped envying the women who had children of their own.

      “God works in mysterious ways,” she would say. “We human beings with our limited understanding cannot comprehend God’s ways.”

      I lay in bed thinking about our limited understanding. The March wind had blustered away somewhere, taking with it the keening women who spoke to me in my aunt’s voice. I also thought about the philosopher who said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Indeed, I knew a little. Lately, when she’d begun calling me Mama, I knew that her end was near. I’d even asked the secretary to call me promptly at the slightest change in her condition.

      Well, they had let me know after it was too late, and now God’s mysterious ways were enough to make me lose my mind.

      Again