I was surprised that such warmth didn’t accumulate in my body. I was also astonished that Grandpa would fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, as if someone had turned him off. I tried to close my eyes and fall asleep, but it didn’t work. I think that Grandpa got very tired, especially in winter when he spent the whole day in his cold, unheated shoemaker’s booth.
That’s what I was thinking as I began to doze off, soaking blissfully in the aura of heat emitted by Grandpa. It was so good. And if Grandpa Yoskhaim didn’t snore, the night would be just splendid. That night was exactly that way, or perhaps I fell asleep so quickly that I didn’t hear Grandpa’s snoring. Now, after adjusting the blanket, Grandpa sat down on the edge of the bed and set about his morning routine – it would be more correct to call it a ritual.
He began it with a slow, sweetly resounding scratching, just the way he did it before bedtime. Then, came the delightful long yawning as Grandpa’s mouth stretched into an oval revealing two rows of white teeth, his beard dipping and beginning to tremble, as if informing other parts of the body that morning had arrived and they would soon need to start moving. Then, he squinted, joining his eyebrows together, slightly wiggled his neck, bent his head down and uttered a long, quiet, almost inaudible sound that resembled a moan. After that, he yawned and closed his mouth, but not for long. The next ritual was yawning accompanied by smoothing out his face. His mouth became an oval again. At the same time, he put his palms on his forehead, then slid them down his face and, after rubbing his cheeks, slowly lowered his hands. It seemed to me that a miracle happened every time he did it: Grandpa’s eyebrows straightened and became thicker. His eyes got bigger and sparkled. Even his wrinkles became less noticeable, another moment and they would disappear.
The last step was dedicated to the beard. Grandpa Yoskhaim held his beard in his hand and, still yawning, pulled it down. Perhaps, he was saying hello to his beard this way, or simply giving it the necessary shape.
After he finished with his beard, he began to dress. That ritual entertained me no less than the previous ones, especially during cold weather when, watching him, I thought, “It’s clear why Grandpa is as hot as a stove.”
He shuffled his feet as he walked to the window, where there were two chairs. He sat down on one of them next to a pile of clothes on the other. He looked serious and concentrated as he picked up the padded pants from the chair and pulled them over his blue drawers. He also put on a warm long-sleeved shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt. Then he stood up and tucked his T-shirt and shirt into his pants. After that, he tightened the string of the padded pants and pulled on over them another pair of pants, which was, naturally, a size larger than the ones he wore when it was warm. With all those clothes on, Grandpa should have looked like a head of cabbage. But no, he didn’t. He looked stocky but still well-built and quite handsome.
With the same serious air, without losing concentration for a second, Grandpa sat down on the chair and crossed his legs. Socks? Oh, no, no socks. Grandpa always wore boots, that’s why he wrapped his feet in a cloth. Grandpa wrapped the cloth around his feet, loop after loop, first around the heel, then the ankle. After the last loop, he had a neat white cocoon in front of him. It wasn’t easy to thrust it into a boot. Grandpa’s neck became taut, his face flushed… I tensed along with him. Oop! And the boot was on. Now, it was the other foot’s turn… Done. Grandpa was ready.
Before going to work, Grandpa usually stopped at the storage room to pick up materials and tools. It wasn’t safe to store them at his street booth. I was dozing off a little when I heard the front door squeak: Grandpa had returned to the house for some reason. And then, Grandma Lisa’s voice squeaked much louder than the door:
“Oh my! Your boots are covered with snow! Stand on the mat! Don’t walk around! I, a sick person, will have to clean up after all of you… What do you need?”
Grandpa mumbled something in reply. He didn’t dare disobey Grandma. If he, God forbid, had stepped off the mat, she would have raised hell.
“Valery! Grandpa needs you! Hurry!” Grandma commanded.
I hurried to the hallway. Grandpa stood obediently at the front door. His cap with the earflaps was pulled down over his eyebrows, and he looked funny. His beard looked like a snowball stuck to his chin.
“There’s a bag near the storage room. I won’t be able to carry everything. Why don’t you and Yura bring it over before lunch time,” Grandpa asked without looking at Grandma Lisa.
A small puddle had accumulated on the mat. He arranged his bag, stepped outside, and the door squeaked again.
And again, Grandma Lisa’s voice squeaked louder than the door as she wrung out the wet mat:
“I, a sick person, have to clean up after all of you.”
Back in the bedroom, I made myself comfortable by the window, that very window at which Grandma the scout often sat behind the tulle curtain. I looked at the delightful winter yard covered with snow. Grandpa Yoskhaim, the bag on his shoulder, approached the gate. His deep footprints stretched over the virgin snow across the entire yard. They branched off toward the outhouse near which Grandpa performed his usual morning washing, despite the cold weather. There weren’t any other footsteps in the yard but Grandpa’s. Even Jack didn’t get out of his house to see his old master off – it was too cold. Only a courageous sparrow had hopped a little in the vegetable garden. I could see the thin tracing of its footprints.
It was cold in the yard. The trees and bushes covered with snow had frozen into intricate sculptures. Now, it had fallen to Mother Nature the sculptor to create this unimaginable beauty. That morning, the snow was light and fluffy. Here it was, falling from one of the cherry trees, first from the top onto a branch, then onto another, then to a third until, suddenly, the whole tree was wrapped in a veil like a bride…
It was so quiet in the yard. Long bluish icicles hung from the ends of the gutters, which stuck out like tongues, protruding from under the roof. When it got warmer, they would begin their ringing song: drip-drip-drip… But now they were silent. It was too cold. And the grapevines were wrapped in a tarpaulin bound with wire.
“Aren’t you going to have breakfast?” Grandma Lisa asked, entering the bedroom.
The question was asked without any good reason, to preserve convention: it was very early, and Grandma had not yet washed herself. Her hair, arranged in a small bun on the back of her head, now almost completely gray with a few red streaks, was neatly combed but not yet covered with a headscarf. That was why Grandma returned to the bedroom. She sat down on the bed. Her feet didn’t reach the floor, and her legs dangled in a funny way like those of a little girl. She arranged the headscarf and put it around her head. Then, groaning and rubbing her lower back, she went to the chest of drawers, to her father’s picture.
The Jewish religion doesn’t permit images of God. None can be found in synagogues or in people’s homes. Pious Jews pray with a prayer book in their hands. It was impossible to imagine that Grandma Lisa saw a sacred image in the photograph of the man she hardly knew, who, on top of that, had hurt her mother. Yet, hadn’t she turned him into a domestic idol, offering up prayers to him every day? But maybe, when she offered up prayers looking at the photograph, it seemed to her that she was also praying for her father to purify his sinful soul.