Obviously, she didn’t understand. Even Emma and I noticed it, and we made fun of the way Rena answered Grandma when the latter asked her for help.
“Rena,” Grandma would begin, “why don’t you wash some dishes.”
Before Rena could open her mouth, Emma and I would yell together in her place.
“Holle! Byad!” which meant “It can wait! It’s not urgent!”
Despite all her peculiarities, which kept Grandma angry and grieving, Rena inherited the family kindness. She and I were fond of each other.
I remember a scene from my early childhood, maybe even my infancy. I lay in a wicker basket lined with blankets. I was laughing loudly and stroking my bare legs with my hands. And Rena, squatting by the basket, was tickling me, pinching my cheeks lightly, and crying out joyfully, “Oy! Oy!”
I was very amused and happy.
Years would pass, and Rosa and Rena would get married. They would experience joys and troubles. They would have their own children. Rosa would also adopt children. Grandma Abigai needn’t have worried. But that would be later.
During the days I am writing about, both sisters lived at home. Rosa was the only person my grandparents could rely on. When she returned home from the factory, no matter how tired she was, she would begin doing chores right away – cooking, cleaning, attending to her father.
And now, after washing that terrible jar, which I was even afraid to look at, she fussed around Grandpa Hanan, speaking to him softly. She adjusted his bed and called to me, “Pour some hot tea for us.”
I had already poured tea into Grandpa’s bowl and carried it, trying not to spill. For those who have asthma, tea is better than any medication. Of course, I knew that because my father had asthma.
Rosa bent over Grandpa – he sat on the bed pressing his palms against the bowl – and raised it carefully to his lips. Grandpa looked at me, smiling tenderly. His smile was very meek, hardly noticeable. He patted his bed with a hand, inviting me to sit down. His eyes came alive; they even began to shine as before. And they were telling me, “I’m so glad to see you. I love you. Joni bobo.”
I loved Grandpa Yoskhaim no less than Grandpa Hanan. I’d grown up in his house, but still, my feeling for Grandpa Hanan was different: it was special. I never called him Grandfather, only Grandpa. I would never pull him by the beard. I would never play any tricks on him like the ones Yura and I devised in the old yard.
One could say that I felt more respect for him. But for some reason I don’t want to use that word – it seems somewhat cold.
Did I, perhaps, feel more pity, more pain for him?
Chapter 39. Parting with Grandpa Hanan
It sometimes seems to me that memory is like a sack of old things stuffed into a storage room or the corner of a closet. When you want to find something, you begin to rummage in the sack, pulling out one thing after another. And as you do it, you remember everything related to these things, and you feel pain somewhere in your chest. And you remember everything that was dear to you. The longer you look at an old thing, the longer you hold it in your hands – be it a dress, worn shoes or a small broken box – the more you remember people’s faces, colors, sounds, even smells. And those are not just snatches of reminiscences that drift before you but whole scenes from the past that had seemed forgotten and hidden at the bottom of the sack. All you need to do is take it out of the closet and rummage around in it.
It’s cold in the house this morning. I put on Mama’s warm cardigan, throw her favorite red scarf on top of it, and put on the skull cap, a present from Muhitdin, the doctor from Namangan who fought so long to save Mama’s life. Dressed like that, I sit down at my desk to work in the blue pre-dawn expanse of a cold October morning, and I hear Mama’s voice, “Get up, son, get up…”
Why today? Mama’s scarf… early in the morning, just as in the old days when Mama’s tender voice would wake me up… or at an even earlier pre-dawn hour, just like today…
“Get up, Valery. Get up!”
Mama was shaking me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes and squinted from the bright electric light… Had I overslept? No, day was just breaking.
Mama didn’t go to the kitchen to fix breakfast as usual but sat down on the edge of my bed. That was strange… She was pale, her hair disheveled. That was also strange. She usually did her hair after getting up, and then she woke us up. She propped her disheveled head on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee, and said quietly, “Grandpa died…”
Perhaps, in a child’s mind there isn’t, nor can there be, the feeling of the loss of a relative that adults experience. Nor is there the feeling of despair that something in your life is over for good and will never come back, an almost physical feeling of loss, of horror in the face of something that is beyond repair, in the face of nonexistence.
My feeling of loss was quite different.
Grandpa Hanan was gone. It meant that I would never hear the joke with which he always greeted Emma and me, “Your mama is ai.” And he liked to say it even after we grew older. I wouldn’t see the way he stuck his hand under his skull cap to scratch his head. And suddenly, I visualized that, and many other scenes, as if on a screen.
“Get dressed, quickly,” Mama’s voice was now heard from the kitchen. I hadn’t noticed that she was no longer sitting next to me. “Get dressed, wash yourself. We’re going to Tashkent.”
Grandpa had died today. It meant that his body had to be committed to earth today. That was the Jewish custom, and those customs were observed very strictly by our branch of Jewry in these parts.
Our whole family, the four of us, set out on our journey.
Our bus station had just received new Icarus buses made in Europe, which were big and comfortable. Those Icarus buses seemed to us a miracle of technology and embodiment of beauty compared to the old, run-down, domestically made buses, which resembled slow crawling beetles, which were stuffy, crowded and shaky. The Icarus buses ran smoothly and fast.
This time, it seemed to me that our bus was going terribly slow. The forty-five-minute ride from Chirchik to Tashkent seemed to last hours. Even the trees along the road, which usually flashed by quickly outside the windows, slowed their run.
At last we were there. We walked across Old Town along the familiar Sabir Rahimov Street. In the schoolyard on our right there were many children, a long recess must have begun. The laughter and squealing were so loud that they rang in my ears. Girls were skipping rope near the metal fence. They were carefree, unlike us, as they skipped and counted, “Bir, ikke, uch…” Girls, with sun-burnt faces, wearing skull caps, their myriad thin black braids bouncing down their shoulders and backs… This was an ethnic school. Classes there were taught in Uzbek. And I remembered that Mama had also attended an Uzbek school. She had worn a skull cap and made many braids. Her father was still young: Grandpa Hanan…
“Ester!” a familiar voice called to Mama. A car that was going in our direction put on its brakes near the sidewalk, and Uncle Avner, Mama’s brother, looked out of the window. “Ester, we are taking Papa to Samarkand. Will you go with us?” “Already?” Mama whispered, gave her travel bag to Father and ran to the car.
It was quiet in Grandma Abigai’s yard, even though there were many people. Grandma, wearing a black dress and a headscarf, got up from a low stool when she saw us. She hugged my father, gave Emma and me a pat on the head and asked quietly, “And where’s Ester?… I see… She’s gone with him… Yes, he’s gone, he’s no longer with us…” Grandma nodded her head and looked at us, as if answering our question, “Where’s Grandpa?”