Grandma Abigai’s eyes were red, her eyelids swollen. I thought that perhaps there were no more tears left in her eyes. But Grandma sat down on the stool again and began to cry, burying her face in a handkerchief and slapping her knee lightly. Her three daughters, Marusya, Rosa and Rena sat next to her. The collars of their dresses were slightly torn as a sign of grief. That was an old custom.
Emma and I made ourselves comfortable on one of the long benches near the gate. Our cousins, Robert and Boris, were already there. Boris was my age. He was Uncle Avner’s son, a serious boy who was praised in the family. He had been studying violin for several years.
As I sat down, I looked around. There was an old bed across from us at the door to the house. It was covered with a dark cherry-colored, patterned carpet, attached to the wall and hanging down onto the bed, on top of the korpocha, a padded mattress. Grandpa liked that carpet very much, and now his photograph was attached to it.
The old bed was Emma’s and my favorite place in the yard. We particularly liked to jump on it. Its metal net was just as good as a trampoline; it bent under our weight, then sprang back again. We would jump up and down, up and down, squealing with delight. The bed would answer us in its squeaky voice, kir-rr-kirrrk. It seemed to enjoy stretching its old bones.
Grandpa used to come out of the house at the height of our merriment, holding a bowl of fragrant tea. We would stop jumping. “Ah, you pranksters,” Grandpa would say and sit down on the bed. Flushed with excitement, we clung to Grandpa and stroked his short beard. Grandpa’s face, always somewhat pensive and tired, softened, became smoother and younger when he smiled. Then he would begin our game, which was always the same.
“Your mama is ai!” Grandpa repeated, pinching us lightly on our necks, bellies, chests. He did it tenderly, without hurting us, but we were very ticklish. We squealed and wriggled but didn’t try to break away. On the contrary, we hugged him even tighter.
It seemed to me that Grandpa loved us, but not the way Grandparents usually love. He enjoyed our company as an equal, and whenever we were together, he turned into a child.
There were our two warm bodies next to his, big, worn out, tired… Was it possible that it didn’t just give him joy? Perhaps, it gave him strength.
As he played with us, Grandpa would often begin to cough. His cough was hoarse; it lasted a long time. He bent almost to the ground, trying to clear his throat, but he didn’t always manage to do so. If he did, it didn’t help for long. Hugging him tightly, I felt, almost always, a wheezing and bubbling in his chest.
…I continued looking at the old bed, on which other people were now sitting. Neither Grandpa nor I were there. Never again would he sit next to us there. It was his portrait on the carpet instead of him, as if replacing him on that sad day when we were seeing him off. I wanted to look at his portrait, but it was also scary.
Meanwhile, the remembrance ritual continued the way such rituals were done in every Jewish family. They were not much different on the surface from Asian rituals. Lamentations, sniffling, sad exclamations were heard now and then.
“Why have you abandoned us?” the hunched over old woman exclaimed melodiously. She looked up and rocked, lifting her hands to the sky. She was Buryo, Grandma Abigai’s sister, who had arrived from Samarkand to take part in the ritual, not only because custom required it. Buryo really loved and respected Grandpa, who had helped her and her family generously many times.
Several other women joined in Buryo’s lamentations, including my aunts.
“Father, Father, you’ve abandoned us orphans! Why?” That’s how they lamented, rocking backward and forward, raising their hands to the sky, patting their knees and stomping their feet slightly.
When I was a child, I, naturally, didn’t know much about funeral rituals. It was later that I, unfortunately, became acquainted with them. On that day, we children just watched everything that was going on with curiosity, no more than that. I, for one, mourned Grandpa very much, but I would never have agreed to shout about it in front of everybody, and not a single child would have. Perhaps, tolerance for many customs and understanding the need for them comes with age.
When I saw how sad Grandma’s eyes were when she looked at the old tree in the middle of the yard, my heart tightened. That tree had stopped blossoming and dried up not so long ago. It had grown on the spot laid with light bricks, and it had become almost as light. Slightly bent, with outstretched boughs, it made me think of a figure frozen in the middle of a rapid-flowing stream in a desperate effort to keep its balance. Grandma had been upset when the tree dried up, and she often repeated, “It’s a bad omen.” But her eyes were drawn to the tree now and then. Maybe she remembered about the bad premonition, or maybe she was thinking about her resemblance to the lonely, dried-out tree trunk.
Two hours passed, and Boris and I grew bored with the ritual. Besides, when the mourners’ shouting got very loud, we were amused, but we couldn’t laugh, nor even smile, on such a sad day. They would notice it right away and say that we were heartless grandsons. Boris and I exchanged glances and got off the bench noiselessly.
We sneaked quietly, step by step, to the far end of the yard, to one of the storage rooms. There was the tandir, a clay stove which no one used any longer. There were a lot of old things scattered around that no one needed any more.
I liked that stove. It seemed to me to be a living creature. Every time I opened the door of the storage room, the tandir, when the daylight hit it, smiled at me merrily with its big round mouth, as if it was welcoming me.
Climb inside it, and you could get to the roof through its stovepipe. Even though the stovepipe wasn’t narrow, I felt somewhat ill at ease, uncomfortable, suffocating inside it. I would be covered with sweat, but I would overcome my fear, and, after getting to the roof, I was sure I would never be afraid to do it again… Alas, I was afraid every time I did it.
“C’mon, c’mon!” That was Boris pushing me. He was climbing into the tandir behind me. I had already reached the stovepipe. Just a bit more, and I would be able to grab the bar, shaped like a cross, on the roof above the stovepipe… And there I froze.
That damned enclosure, the boards that surrounded the opening on the roof were all black inside from soot, and I had on a white shirt. How could I forget?
“What’s wrong?” Boris urged me. “C’mon!” Oh, well, I’d take my chances! I would try not to touch it.
I reached for the bar, and, suddenly, a sharp sting pierced my bottom. What was it? A bumblebee? I dashed upwards. Another sting! I yelled, dashed up again, forcing my way among the boards with my shoulders and elbows. As I hung there like a monkey, another sting – it dawned on me that it wasn’t a bumblebee. It was Boris! Boris, that damned traitor!
To confirm my guess, Boris’s loud laughter sounded, booming and sinister, from the tandir. The stomping of his feet was then heard – my cousin had played a cruel joke on me and had decided not to climb onto the roof.
So, there I sat on the slate roof in sorrowful meditation – what should I do? The shoulders of my shirt, the sleeves, the whole of it was covered in black streaks and spots. I wouldn’t be able to go back to the yard looking like that. Everyone would notice and ask, “What’s wrong with you? Where did you get covered in filth?” And if my father saw it…
But I had to climb down. I couldn’t sit there until everyone was gone. Besides, the boys could be heard yelling, puttering around in the clay, looking at something outside the gate near the arik. And Boris was already there, I could hear his voice.