A Hot Shabbat Day

It was Shabbat morning. I was still lying in bed. My mother was already up and awake, wearing her clean white headdress. The other bed opposite mine, where my mother would sleep, was already made, piled up high and covered with a clean white sheet. The brass candlesticks stood on the little table. The room was quiet, my father had already gone to the synagogue. It must have been fairly late. The golden face of the sun was well into the sky, right above our opposite neighbor’s roof, staring into our house through the window, filling the entire room with light, shining cheerful brightness into every corner. I jumped out of bed and right into my pants, and then went straight to the window [ . . . ] where the greenish shadow of the vast fields peered into the room, adding some late-spring dark green shade. I stood by that window and looked outside. I saw that our goy, a stout peasant, was already standing behind the wall of the straw-roofed barn hitching up the horse to the buggy with the removable sides that can be used as ladders, ready to go out to the field. He hadn’t even touched the reins yet when the black, jumpy dog with shiny fur and glittering eyes had already lined himself up by the horse, stood there wagging his tail restlessly, waiting for the horse to get going. [ . . . ] I was overcome with a quiet sadness. I went behind the wall of the barn and started picking maidenstears that grew there.

In those days, two months ago, my mother used to take me every day early in the morning, before the sun rose, to the stream trickling in the field to wash my mouth in the flowing water. People said that I had scurvy, that my teeth and gums would soon decay. The fact that my mother took me through the white, dewy fields every morning, that we were sneaking through the grasses quietly at a time when there was no one else there, only my mother and I, when everyone else was still quietly asleep, wrapped in the darkness of night, made me think bad thoughts. I thought that they were seeking out some magic spell for my sake, that they were trying to cast a magic spell on me; even the heavens fell silent, I thought, as they watched the two of us going out to the fields every morning before dawn. This left me sad, and the sadness has remained with me ever since—I can feel it even now as I stand behind the wall. [ . . . ]

Also, one of my little sisters died not long ago. I can still see her all the time: she had been so still, deeply brokenhearted because she was torn from the world at such a young age, torn from her parents, brothers, and sisters with whom she had been so close, and now she is no longer in our family. God ordered her to go up to a distant, unknown world, to heaven, and her face in the grave is still constantly thinking about us and longing to return to us, who are alive. [ . . . ]

By the time I got back to our house from the field the sun was already above our porch—only then did I realize how long I had been lost in my thoughts. The whole area in front of our house was gilded with brightness. Thousands of tiny, radiant spears of glass and stones sparkled and flashed in the pale, glowing sand. At the end of the street, where the Blendever shtibl stood, Jews had already poured out to the street and were standing around in front of the shtibl in their silk Sabbath kapotes; they had already put away their taleysim. [ . . . ]

My father must have gotten home a long time ago, I thought.

Sure enough, he was home already. To my great fortune, however, his good friend Zelig was also there. My father was content, and my mother was also busy with something; thus, I was a little happy too.

They just asked me where I had been running around, and that was it. I don’t remember if I was able to give them an answer or if I just stood there still, but I do remember that I had grateful thoughts about Zelig. I loved him secretly and quietly. He was pale and handsome, had strong, broad shoulders, a small black beard and an intelligent, calm look in his eyes. Furthermore, he wore a nice short overcoat and shined boots that I liked to use as a mirror to look at myself.

I figured that after lunch we would go for a walk, and that is exactly what happened.

Right after lunch—Zelig ate with us, too—I was all ready to go, my heart trembling with joy. I was dressed in my new cloth pants, green calico overcoat and calico hat with a golden star in the front. I took my father and Zelig by the hand and we set out, me walking in the middle.

The yellow sand shot off thousands of radiant arrows. Butterflies fluttered among the tiny tree branches, occasionally landing on a green, glittering leaf, and then moving on to another one. The white fluff of the dandelions that grew in the meadow blew around in the air. Everything, every blade of grass and every single tree, glittered so brightly that it blinded the eyes. I felt like a little boy, completely overwhelmed with the surrounding glare, and I couldn’t open my eyes because of the fiery spears hanging over my head.

But soon we turned into a narrow side street behind the cooper’s house.

I was very happy when we started to climb up the high mountain: white, smooth stones rolled around under my feet and rasped under my father’s and Zelig’s tread . . . and the peak of the mountain spread its brightness all over the mountain back. The crevices in the earth glittered with yellow sand. It cracked under our feet as we climbed higher and higher, to the very top, where I caught sight of the green fields spread out at the feet of the mountain.

And up there it was so still, so spacious. . . .

The blue sky encircled the vast fields and forests . . . still and quiet . . . tranquility flooded my whole body. [ . . . ]

And God only knows what is going on in the old castle. . . . It has been enchanted since the days of Creation, and maybe there is a captive princess in there, too! A princess with a pale, royal face and golden locks, chained to a wall. I am suddenly overcome with great pity for her. [ . . . ] What can I do, how can I rescue her now? If I at least had a long sword, like the ones princes have, and a horse with a golden bridle so I could tie him up behind the castle . . . but I don’t have such things. . . . And on top of it I am on a faraway, deserted island . . . and the sun is blazing overhead with a hellish fire that almost burns my eyes out. Zelig is fanning his burning face with his white handkerchief, he is so hot, and my father has unbuttoned his kapote; he, too, is dying of the heat. He bends down to me and asks if I am hot, too. . . . I tell him that I am thirsty. Then we come to a place where the mountain takes a sheer drop above a wide, sandy path that cuts across the middle of the mountain. We descend through a side path on the left. Now we are between two mountains, between two identical walls. The walls are blocking the sunshine; they cast some shade over the sandy path where we walk. Here it was cool, finally. Here the sun was not burning so much, and we saw only a streak of blue sky overhead. We walked and walked until we heard the rushing sound of a stream. . . .

The stream ran in a green valley, flowing and bubbling with millions of glittering eyes; it poured under a fence and flowed with a silver-sounding murmur into a wooden carriage, overgrown with moss, that had sunk into the ground behind the fence.

My father, Zelig, and I were all faint from the heat by then. We knelt down and bent over the stream, stretching our mouths toward the cool water and drank.

But it was very hard to drink like this. The walls had sunk into the wet grass. So my father came up with an idea. He took off his hat, filled it with water and drank from it. Zelig and I did the same thing. I took off my hat, filled it with water up to the star, and drank. This is how one drinks on the road, in a faraway, deserted place where there are no people. . . .

This is how, my father told us, he had drunk once when they went on a maneuver in the Caucasus Mountains. . . . It was very hot, 50 degrees C, the piercing sun was burning our eyes and peeled the skin off our neck. Soldiers fell one after the other like flies from the heat and from thirst. We came up to a pool of green standing water covered with white worms. Our unit commander, a tall man with a moustache of a knight, was the first to go. He took off his hat, filled it with water, and drank. . . .

And that is exactly what we did—my father, Zelig, and I drank just like people in the Caucasus Mountains drink. . . .Then we started to look for some shade where we could cool off. The sun just burned and burned, and we could not find any shade. The fields and the trees are wilting, yearning for some cool wind—just a breeze! Every blade of grass and every leaf is faint and weary from fatigue and thirst. [ . . . ]

Until we passed through and came to a bright big open square where we caught sight of the small houses at the edge of the town. The square was so bright and the sand was glowing so much that we could not keep our eyes open. Here people were building a house, and they worked so quietly as if they were doing something secretly while the town was asleep. The wide street in the middle of the town lay sunken in stillness. The street is asleep, all shutters closed; only the scorching stones glitter. In the square where we stand some walls are already halfway up. They are building a brewery, my father said. Some workers stand upright relaying the bricks while others are bending over the walls and laying the bricks; and all this is happening very quietly . . . above them the heat is burning, and they are doing their job quietly, attentively. But they are so tired and so sleepy that you would think they may fall asleep any minute, like the town, and continue to work in their sleep. . . . One hand raises a brick, another hand swivels the trowel—and then quiet again, stillness. . . . The workers who stand upright in a line hold their heads toward the sky; they pass the bricks from hand to hand with such devotion as if they were passing on the world’s greatest secrets, or as if the world had made them into a secret and exhibited them here in order to enchant the entire square and cast it into a sunken stillness. . . . And the low blue sky is stretched out over the entire square.

The town is asleep, the sky is silent, the sun is silent, quietly observing the silence of the workers grow ever deeper. [ . . . ]