You know, Margit, how much I love to have the fried liver well done, you know very well.
And it doesn’t matter if it burns a little and becomes a bit crunchy.
Deathly silence followed; perhaps this was already too much, too many instructions and explanations for the woman.
For her, his words could mean that according to her husband she burned the liver and ruined his food. She paid no attention to anything; she could not be expected to fry liver properly, and, according to these facts, Gottlieb married a woman from Munkács who spoils the creations of the Creator.
Now something was again about to happen between them. Should she tolerate such nasty slander from this wretch from Mohács.
In the tense emotion-filled space, Gottlieb completely forgot he had come home because of his missing hat, and that Madzar must be waiting in vain for the three sleepers to be sent to his home.
He had developed a special ability in himself.
Within a split second, he was able to withdraw attention from his wife. Accompanied by the singsong high falsetto, he fell back into the sought-after text. In the prayer books, he liked checking those prayer fragments that involuntarily cropped up in his mind during the day, while waves of the senseless singsong words broke pleasantly above his head.
Even after several decades, he still did not think he knew the prayers by heart. How could he, when throughout his entire bitter childhood he had been beaten so much. His father of blessed memory beat him, his teacher lifted him out of his seat by his side locks, and her gentle mother shrieked as she pummeled him, because the raw matter in his brain instinctively protested against receiving verses whose sense, despite all his well-intentioned efforts, remained vague and elusive.
He knew nothing, though he should have been able to rattle off all the prayers by heart. There were constant complaints about him — that he was not paying attention, that he was always busy with some nonsense under the bench, his mind wandering elsewhere.
He fell asleep on the bench so he wouldn’t have to hear things of which he understood not a word.
They beat him.
Yet it seemed more pleasant to put up with the beatings than to absorb the Hebrew passages, because no matter how he had tried to follow them with his ears he could not catch them, let alone memorize or recite them by heart as the other boys did. When he was about to catch one verse, another was already pouncing on him. He did not understand how the brains of other boys coped with this speed. But he learned quickly enough that it was no use complaining about headaches. Even though the dreaded effort to somehow fit in the words of the hurrying Hebrew verses among the sounds of Hungarian and Yiddish words, and to fix them with their own meaning, had his head throbbing. The throbbing produced white circles through whose center he saw into a space of unfamiliar color. If he succeeded, if among the illuminated circles he managed to reach the inviting darkness, if past the dazzling of his own pupils he managed to glance into the red and green, then inevitably he awakened to being doused in water and beaten at the same time; and he knew that he would be beaten again at home, yanked and shoved around for a good long while.
He could not have said when all this became pleasurable, because neither before nor after this period did he know a parallel world in which things were or could have been some other way; yet he enjoyed it. The eternal obscurity never dissipated, and throughout his life his mind searched for certainties, whether or not he understood well or truly knew some things; and though he had been unable to obtain these certainties — he had not enough education for solid knowledge — he did enjoy the endless act of searching.
While he perused the Hungarian footnote on the Musaf prayer, which he had no problem locating and according to which the prayer’s origins were to be found in the written legacy of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, Germany, he did not acknowledge that his wife winced, slammed the dough angrily back into the bowl, insolent, how shameless, just keeps reciting to himself aloud, and I am frying liver for such an impudent character and then, with her mouth slightly open, stared at him.
As if asking whether such insolence was even possible.
For a little while Gottlieb also fell silent within himself, and he stared back at her.
Such an ungrateful, insolent man, brazen, and I didn’t just buy him a whole liver, bought him the nicest liver in the entire butcher shop, but I’m also making soup out of fresh, completely fresh mushrooms, she said after a long silence. But I did see that he left his hat at home, don’t worry, I did notice it, you wretch, you addle-brained old man, she shouted and then laughed. Her laughter echoed weirdly in the empty rooms. He left with his head uncovered, she laughed, this never happened before, but now he let that happen too. I said to myself, when I saw it happen, something like this could never happen in a normal Jewish family. What tsuris. He eats properly, just as he should, unselfishly I take good care of him. At least once a week I make him beef broth, still, he’s a complete idiot.
Then suddenly her laughter abandoned her.
At least I’ll cook the mushrooms for him, for this idiot, I’ll do that.
Expecting some kind of response, however brief or small, a word of abuse or thanks or just a yell, for all the sacrifices she had been making for her husband, she stopped talking. She fell silent as if to pray. I beseech you, I am begging you for anything. She would have been content with the slightest of signals, which throughout a lifetime she had been unable to force out of this man, insensitive to the marrow of his bones.
A little bit of compassion. Just a tiny bit, out of love.
She knew him well. He needed no introduction.
He had no secret she did not know.
I am making dumplings for you, with plenty of eggs, she added, and still you show such ingratitude toward me. Did I make them with a parsley roux, I certainly did, what more should I do for you. I’m telling you, I’ll moisten them with some beef broth. Don’t be afraid, one day I’ll tell everyone all your little secrets.
After a while, the emotional silence became dangerously loud and tense in Gottlieb’s ears, though it would not have been advisable to evoke, by silence, Margit’s thirst for revenge.
With his glance, therefore, he quickly returned to the first sentence of the footnote, though he was still unfamiliar with the end of the story.
In the city of Cleve, in that vast lowland where the Maas, the Niers, and the Rhein flow toward one another, there lived a rabbi named Ammon, he read the footnote out loud, and he smiled as if he had found a liberating, happy ending in his book. Listen to what I’ve found, Margit. I don’t think you’ve ever heard of this Rabbi Ammon. I know I haven’t.
And I’m telling you, you listen to what I am telling you. If once, just once, for a single moment you listened to what I say, what I say, I, responded the woman almost threateningly, surprised in her endless marital daydreams, not only liver, I’m telling you, how could I tell you more clearly, you mean, wicked, accursed man, that I’ve also bought sponge mushrooms for you.
Mushrooms, she said, pronouncing the word with her entire mouth, because not only did she like to take on her lips the image of liver swollen with blood, but it also felt good to pronounce the word mushrooms with big, long vowels.
I bought the morels from Jews, don’t worry. I don’t buy a single mushroom from the goyim. I should buy what they already touched and felt all over with their filthy paws. Wicked ones, they spoil everything. I don’t buy those mushrooms.
Gottlieb took one look at this complete stranger, this unkempt, desperately ill woman who was incurious about anything she did not already know. With profound conviction, she guarded her ignorance, yet occasionally she seemed to know surprising things. It may have been possible that she did in fact know the story of Rabbi Ammon. Her adored father of blessed memory, an ugly, rather mean and violent man, was cantor and schoolmaster in the service of the Munkács Jewish community, and thus, in her parental home, where the stable and the classroom both opened from the salon, Margit had picked up many things.