At that time the war stopped in the eastern Mountains’ Front. The boy blessed the sudden calm atmosphere and the quiet feeling, as the noises of shooting and shelling and alarm – have ceased. But Nahumik was not quiet, due to a turn felt in his mother’s attitude to him: Ramona told him that their dwelling location will change… Solomon Kaplansky had known – that his arrivals at her home ‘was not well for the boy’s psychology’, as his room was linked to her bedroom. So, the boy was aware of whispers and movements in the bedroom, while the married couple had been together there for three or four times. The best solution would be, said Ramona, that she and Nahumik both move to Kaplansky’s apartment, which is bigger than her house. The boy will have a separate room there. The toilet and some veranda is at the middle of the photographer’s apartment, so that the boy will hardly know anything about the time that the couple is lovemaking, or hear any of their talks…
Encouraged by her husband, Ramona was hanging notes in two Kiosks and two grocery stores and in Migdalor’s Café; and also hired an advertisment in the newspaper, saying as follows:
“For sale: A farm of hens’coops in this town. Please contact: Ramona, at Kaplansky’s photo store…“ etc.
Two weeks later, there was found a buyer to the coops. The boy was at school at the time of the hens removal: They were gathered, tied in their feet, in order to be taken to small cocks cages. When Nahumik came back home from school – all was over. Only the wooden and tin coops, including the drinking and feeding troughs – have remained.
Ramona’s pregnancy has been already seen then, and all her acquaintances admitted that she should have sold her hens. She told them that she had been too much bothering with the coops, all her matured life – and now she was feeling a relief.
Taking care of living creatures- said Ramona- was a bothering and a permanent listening to whistles and to other noises; and suddenly you’d wonder how you could have lived with that. She would need a good relax, she said. Enough with the memory of her first husband, who loved to work with his hands, and she was disciplined and went in his way, but that’s the end of it. She is not sore due of it, of course, having a living creature in her womb.
Sister Tsipy asked Ramona if she is ready to work as a caretaker of babies – till she would bear her own baby. She refused, though knowing that many new-comers were arriving then to the new State, and she could be of help. But she preferred to sit at her new home or in the photography store, and wait for someone to arrive, in order to sell him the old house…
At that time Kaplansky had already told Ramona that he thought about leaving their town. To where will they move?- He did not mentioned, but she would be ready to join him to anywhere he would go. On the other hand, Nahumik was showing a lot of signs of discontent from losing the ‘status of an only child’ of Ramona. Kaplansky had perceived it, and was trying to befriend him and be liked by him. He brought Nahumik several presents, one of them – a tiny Leika camera. In this opportunity, he asked:
“Dear Nahumik, would you like to study photographing, one day?”
“You won’t be my teacher for anything”, replied the boy angrily. He did not touch the camera.
“Why are you talking to me like that?” Solomon asked him, in rebuke,“ What happened? What have I done?”
Nahumik was silent, and walked red faced out of the room.
Next friday Solomon brought him a new hat, with an arched cap-shade : The boy had known that the competitors horse riders were used to wear such a hat very tightly, in order to prevent wind from blowing, and causing the hairs to hide the race course and their adversaries riders on their sides.
Nahumik took the hat and immediately threw it aside.
“No, thank you,” he said “It’s only for horse riders; and it will remind me poor Horsy – that I want to forget.”
Nahumik got out of the room, while Solomon Kaplasky and Ramona were gazing at him with wonder. Nahumik was thinking about the horse, that was used mainly by Elkano…
Since then, so Nahumik remembered even after many years, he was ‘exposing his rage’ on his mother. Sometimes she would go alone to see her husband in the photo-gallery, and leave him in his room or in the kitchen. Then he would shout at her: ”Why have you disappeared without telling me?” Then he would add:
”You don’t love me any more – I know!”
“My dear son, don’t talk stupidly.” She would answer, “You know I love you as I love myself. You have been my life till now, but you have to know that now we have become a bigger family, and you’ll soon have a brother or sister. Think like a grown up, and I know you are clever. Be considerate about my situation.”
She would embrace him like in his babyhood; and though he did not weep, he felt better.
But in one evening he screamed, so that Solomon would also hear him :
”I despise everything here. Home, School, Rabbi, Photography.”
“Maybe,” told him Ramona, “You want to join the orphanage institute, that some of its inhabitants are your classmates in school?”
“No, no!” he cried, and feared that perhaps Kaplansky had already proposed that idea to her. So, he told himself. ‘From now on I have to be careful about my tongue.’
Ramona asked also the Rabbi to talk to Nahumik about his behavior. He said that probably a religious educational board school will be best for the boy. She thanked him for his advice, and knew she would have to deal with the problem by herself.
A week later she has told Solomon:
“Nahumik has really begun to be carefull about his talk lately. He is afraid we’ll really let him alone somewhere.’
Nahumik was meditating about the brother or sister he was going to get. He understands, he said to himself – that Solomon wants that baby. So nothing could be done against that. ‘But … what Mike has told me just yesterday, was amazing. The bringing of a child to this world is a profanity, a very rude,ungentle act. A Man fucks a woman in her front hole in her ass, exactly like a dock or dog or ox or dock does with its female. And they are enjoying that. ‘Oooops, I can’t believe it’- I said to Mike. ‘You exaggerate.’
So – the liar, unmannered, cruel man, Solomon Kaplansky – has taken my Mom for his ‘flesh pleasure, and all this talking about love is a lie,’ as Mike said. I see it’s like Solomon’s other lies, that I know about! He took my Mom to be his wife, without taking me into account. And I’m still a child, who needs his mother and can’t live by himself. He intends to make me a poor living creature in an orphanage, like in the book of Dickens, that I have read recently. Oh, God: Kaplansky and his baby will surely be preferred by Mom, they’re now dearer to her than me... But I will stand strong. I’ll hold my position and struggle, I must. I hope that my mother will not be so cruel. She has been with me all these years and wouldn’t forget that. Even animals don’t throw away their dear ones. The situation is bad for me than before, but worse that this- is to lie in your grave or in a Brethern Grave…’
Ramona signed a Sale Contract of her house with all the small properties around it. The man who bought it was called Woola Wolf. He had known Judah- Ramona’s husband, and reminded her that he had been one of the two ‘meklers’ agents, who sold that house and ground to Judah, Ramona’s first husband. “It was roundabout twelve years ago, was it?”- he asked.
After Ramona had received her check for her sold property, sge remaind alone in the room – and recollected how her relationship with her Judah had begun:
She was living in her aunt’s flat in Prague, arriving there from her native small town. Her purpose was to study in university, despite her father’s contradiction and protest. He was a Rabbi, and afraid of ‘modern spirits’. But he was symphasizing the small Jewish Zionist Association in his Shtetl, and was paying membership fee. Ramona’s mother encouraged her studies, saying that the girl is talented, and in the big city of Prague – she may find a handsome and good natured bridgroom. Yes, there she had really met the youth who later on came to be her husband. Their first meeting to
ok place in an ‘evening of folklore dancing’ in the unniversity…
He was a well structured guy, with thick hair and strong hands. His nose was a straight one, not characteristic to ‘Jewish Eagle nose’. Judah was an excellent dancer, and had a broad smile and ‘thoroughly penetrating’ look. He was a very serious kind of youth, practical about leading his life forward- as he said. He had a delicate sense of humor, and told Ramona that he had not come for the dancing ‘per se’ but also ‘for looking at the nice Jewish girls here, though the dances are Slovaks’; and he was happy to know that she is Jewish. But not only his legs were well shaped and strong, also his hands were such. ‘I will use them,’ he said in their first meeting, ‘just when I get my Immigration Certificate, to be allowed to reach Palestine-Erets Israel’…
First time she was discussing with a guy along two complete hours. She wrote about that to her mother, and hoped for continuation of their talks. Later on she learned his opinion – how desparate had been the situation of the Jews in Europe, and he mentioned: “what Hitler has done already- was only the beginning. He is so cruel, not only for having reputation as a sensational Politician. If we (he pointed on himself and on Ramona) don’t run out of here, we are stupids and doomed to be dead. Come with me to the land of Israel. I have a knowledge of the agriculture. I was in a Zionist Farm in Poland, and saw that cultivating a farm will make me feel good. I propose to you, dear Ramona. Don’t let me go by myself to make a living…”
Maybe because of his direct words, that were simple, clear cut, decisive – she had soon agreed. They were married still in Chechoslovakia and their parents attended the wedding ceremony with many other relatives. When they arrived in Palestine, Judah had enough money to procure a simple bricks house with a small coop, which he extended afterwards. He taguht Ramona how to handle the chicken, feed them, and when they become hens- gather their eggs; and if necessary – bring them to the butchery… Then Judah volunteered to the Jewish Brigade, and never returned.
A week after Ramona’s house had been sold, Nahumik was strolling in its desrted courtyard. Maybe because of that, he had understood very well the poem that Ramona would write five years later, and show him :
“Home is the place to where I will myself take -
even at the time in which it won’t exist any more.
The home of my childhood was growing a snake
but I will be longing to it – despite tears and sore.
I miss it, like I miss my Pa, that to him it was clear
he should follow the Angel of Abyss without a fear.
And though I try to drive him out of my dream,
he has remained in my consciousness’ stream.”
In the new apartment Nahumik was satisfied with his new room. But one night, after he had waked up to piss, he went barefooted to the toilet. Through the narrow wall he became curious, while listening to some loud debate that Ramona was having with Solomon: “That makes me wonder,” said Ramona.
“What are you hinting? That I had forgotten her?”
“Maybe. You have hardly mentioned her once.”
“Leave me alone,” said Solomon, “D’you want to remind me of a woman who’s passed away?”
“You behave and talk like you haven’t ever been married. Like you haven’t lost your wife, and never mourned…even her memory. Didn’t you love her?”
“Oh, please, stop that.” Kaplansky said in a low voice.
“And maybe also all your passionate words of love and desire and sympathy to me – had been also just pretence? Something that your mouth utters, but inside your heart it’s not really meaning anything! Maybe you can’t fall in a fervent love – in your age and health situation? …Oh, no. I don’t mean it. But you can … You should… Can you understand me, in my situation?…Can you also perceive my position regarding your behavior?”
“Enough is enough!” Nahumik heard the photographer’s harsh voice; and he got out very quietly from the toilet room, just thinking why he was so confused.
What he had not heard, were the next sentences of Kaplansky:
“I restrain my grief. If you had heard me talk about Elkano, it was because you had been involved … And I won’t talk about my family’s disaster. I swear: I want only to face the future – not look back to the dead past. It should be buried. This is my point of view, and you know that. I am not strong enough to weep and break my heart. I am an atheist and ‘anti ceremoniac’: I won’t strike my chest with my fist, to show God that I beg from Him not to be punished but forgiven. I despise those Jews who do that, seeming to tell God that their sins were tiny, and they were worthy to have His mercy”…
Nahumik told himself, that it could not be that Kaplansky had not loved his wife. Otherwise he would hate Elkano. Though Mom was partly right in what she said: I have never seen his wife’s photograph anywhere. .. Maybe mother asked him also about that, and he gave her his usual argument why he should not bother with his past… Mom told me, that Solomon wanted to forget many bad things, that happened to him recently, in this country. That’s all about. Not that in any other place he would have had better life or chance, she said. But it’s too hard for him here, so he was telling her. He could just collapse from all his reminiscenses…
‘It was a lie,’ added Nahumik to himself, ‘what I’ve heard him just telling Mom. Like his other lies. He had manipulated photos and documents… He is a negative person, and his son Elkano had worshipped and loved him too much. Maybe Solomon was the killer of his first wife? who knows. I warned mother from him. Hopefully- after this night’s debate she takes it more seriously. But no! She can’t, she’s already married to him. Maybe she’ll send him to a ‘mind diseases’ physician, who is called: a psychiatrist.’
CHAPTER 27