“Well? What’s wrong with you? There is simply no task you can’t mess up. You’re such a klutz! I’ve told you a hundred times not to pile too many of them on the cart.”
Robert stood in the middle of the yard, a trowel in his hand. He had a bandana around his head, and his T-shirt and pants were spattered with mortar. The exploiter’s words gradually returned me to reality.
I reloaded the damned handcart and plodded along to the construction site. Yes, it was a real construction, small but very active. Robert was the heart of the construction project: he was its architect, engineer, construction superintendent, mason, and … I had to give the exploiter credit – he was well versed in construction. He did everything himself – from the planning and drawings to the plumbing and electrical work.
I also had more than a few responsibilities. I was the loader, handcart operator and brick carrier all in one. In a word, I was the unskilled laborer. It would have been all right if my work had been rewarded, not with money, of course, but at least with some sweets, praise, or a kind word… But no! Even Grandma Lisa praised me when I did something for her, but I couldn’t expect that from the exploiter. On the contrary, he reproached me a hundred times a day – this was wrong and that was wrong.
The construction abutted Robert’s part of the house, so he only had to erect three walls. The apricot tree leaned against one of the walls. The little bathhouse was turning out to be rather tight, but there was still enough room for a boiler to heat water and a shower, with space left over for a tiny dressing room.
Today, we would finish the brickwork halfway up the walls’ height. Robert, after precisely measuring the dimensions of the doorways and windows, laid bricks around them. A trough full of mortar stood at his feet. Bricks were piled up with precision near the duval.
Took-took-took – the handle of the trowel knocked on the newly laid bricks. T-sh-sh-sh – the trowel slid along the wall brushing off any cement that had squeezed out. Splash, splash – the Chief mixed the mortar, picked up the right amount on his trowel and threw it at the wall.
“What are you staring at? It sets fast. Bring more bricks.”
There weren’t many bricks left. Robert laid them faster than I managed to deliver them. Before he finished laying one brick, he already had another one in his hand. Robert would look at it, bending his head and squinting as if aiming the barrel of a rifle at a target, and his long nose moving from side to side looked like a trigger. But he should be given credit for laying bricks excellently. That was confirmed by the plumb line hanging down the wall.
“Bring them faster!”
And I was bringing them, and bringing them, and bringing them. My whole body ached; my legs grew weak; my head felt hazy. Even the handcart squeaked more loudly and piercingly than usual. If it hadn’t been made of strong metal, it wouldn’t have held that load.
I leaned the handcart against the wall of the storage room and stacked another load of bricks on it. I was about to leave when the steps leading to the cellar caught my eye. My feet, all by themselves, took me to the cellar door. “What am I doing?” I thought. “What about the exploiter?” It was either I or someone inside me who immediately answered, “He can wait.” That was all I had time to think about. Then I found myself in the cellar… after the ramshackle wooden door that barely clung to its hinges opened easily, and my burning face was fanned with coolness. The switch clicked, a dim bulb lit the cellar with its low ceiling, earthen floor and walls.
I sat down on the old wooden chair. Kr-ry-k – it greeted me amiably… It must have recognized me.
On such a hot summer day, there was no better place in the yard than this dark earthen cellar. Bliss was all I felt as the coolness of the cellar enveloped me. Bliss absorbed me, relaxing me gradually, plunging me into sweet drowsiness. I felt no remorse or worries about the exploiter waiting impatiently for me somewhere up there.
Let him wait. He felt cool in the shade of the apricot tree. The sun didn’t scorch him. He just stood there laying bricks. How about hauling some bricks across the yard?!
That’s what I was thinking, feeling lazy and sleepy as my sunburned body released its heat into the cellar. Sprawled out on the old chair, feeling drops of sweat drying on my forehead, I suddenly remembered the way the metal roofs of the houses and outbuildings would crack as they cooled off in the evening. Ah, how well I understood their language now.
The cellar where I was in this state of bliss was mostly used for storing potatoes and wine. Potatoes were buried in a hole in the corner. They felt cool in there; one couldn’t find a better storage place, and the potatoes continued to feel alive and tried to prove it as best they could. Closer to spring, thick white roots began to grow out of the potatoes. I liked to study them when I was sent to the cellar for potatoes. Some roots were sticking out, some were dangling, others looked like the legs of a spider pretending to be dead when you picked it up. Put a potato back into the hole, cover it with earth, and its legs would begin to grow and grow…
But the clay jugs of wine, fragrant grape wine made in our yard, were much more interesting for us boys.
The wine that was in the cellar now was five years old, maybe more. No one had bothered to make any in the last few years. But I remembered how it had been made in the old days, how clusters of grapes were put into an apparatus resembling a huge meat grinder, how grape juice would flow into jugs, and how we kids had eagerly drunk that juice, spilling it on our shirts, and how its spicy smell had spread throughout the yard.
After sitting for some time in the jugs, the juice turned into wine. The longer the wine was aged, the stronger and tastier it became, but its quality, of course, depended primarily on the grape variety.
As long as I could remember, Grandpa had grown good varieties of grapes, both red and green. The grape clusters were large, and the grapes, generously filled with juice by the sun, were heavy. Oh, how tasty they were… Pick a grape, bite into it, and your mouth was filled with sweet fragrant juice.
We boys loved the green grape variety called “lady’s fingers” most of all. They grew near the gate. The oblong grapes really looked like little fingers. Pushkin put it wonderfully in one of his poems, “Oblong and tender, like young maiden’s fingers…” The seeds prevented me from enjoying these grapes to the full. So much time was wasted separating the seeds from pulp with my tongue and then spitting them out. One could eat a kilogram of grapes during the season when they were ripe. Yura ate whole grapes; seeds didn’t bother him.
As for the wine, Yura and I were allowed to taste it on big holidays, at Passover, for example. Sometimes, wine was one of the ingredients in holiday dishes, like nishala, cabbage and rice with spices and wine. You could put nishala between two matzos, and it made a sweet juicy sandwich. You ate that crunchy sandwich and thought, “Ah, it’s so good but there’s so little wine in it.” Why were the adults so afraid to give us wine?
We would correct their inexcusable mistake when we managed to get into the cellar.
“I tasted this wine recently. It’s really delicious,” Yura would confess. We would squat near a small clay jug pouring wine out of it into a bowl.
We spoke in whispers since Yura’s veranda was right above the cellar. They might hear us… We were also afraid to turn on the light, so we struck match after match. We felt as cozy as primeval people around their fire. The small but bright flame danced on our faces. Intricate shadows appeared on the walls of the cellar, moved, then disappeared…