A Blessing on the Moon Read online

  Praise for

  A Blessing on the Moon

  “An unlikely page-turner … Confirmation that no subject lies beyond the grasp of a gifted, committed imagination.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Brilliant … Astonishing … [Skibell] has turned the full light of his extraordinary talent on one of history’s darkest moments and taught us to see it again.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Luminous … Startlingly original … Recalls the dark, hallucinatory world of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird while at the same time surpassing it.”

  —The Washington Post

  “A story that blends horror with mad humor and heart-stirring pathos. A work of striking originality.”

  —J. M. COETZEE

  “A marvel.”

  —NewYork Newsday

  “As magical as it is macabre.”

  —The NewYorker

  “Dignified, elegant and inventive.”

  —Time Out New York

  “As mesmerizing as a folk tale, as rich as gold itself.”

  —The Denver Post

  “A hugely enjoyable read … A compelling tour de force, a surreal but thoroughly accessible page-turner.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Its extraordinary vision elevates us for a glimpse of something holy: hope out of the ashes of history.”

  —The Sunday Oregonian

  “Incandescent … Ambitious, accomplished and haunting.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “A tale of great spiritual healing and holiness … Reverent, funny, and wise.”

  —RABBI LAWRENCE KUSHNER

  “Oh, what a magical book. I finished it moved, enchanted, saddened, and exhilarated.”

  —SISTER WENDY

  “A jewel of a book.”

  —The Raleigh News and Observer

  “You’ve never read a book like this before—part Holocaust memoir, part ghost story, part Hebrew folklore, part surrealistic road epic … the scope of this singular work will haunt you long after you’ve put the book down.”

  —The Bloomsbury Review

  “Magical … Transform[s] horror and suffering into mystery and enchantment, in ways that mark [Skibell] as a writer of consequence.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “A major talent is revealed in this debut novel … A story that beguiles even as it breaks your heart.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “A fine debut, manifestly infused with deep familial and cultural feeling, and a significant contribution to the ongoing literature of the Holocaust.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Utterly different and surreal, this first novel takes an original approach to the Holocaust and leaves a lasting impression.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  A BLESSING ON THE MOON

  Also by Joseph Skibell

  The English Disease

  A Curable Romantic

  A BLESSING ON THE MOON

  Joseph Skibell

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  WORKMAN PUBLISHING

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  ©1997 by Joseph Skibell.

  All rights reserved.

  First paperback edition, Berkley Books, 1999. First Algonquin paperback, September

  2010. Originally published in hardcover by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1997.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

  Design by Bonnie Campbell.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION-DATA

  Skibell, Joseph.

  A blessing on the moon : a novel / by Joseph Skibell.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56512-179-9 (HC)

  1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Fiction. 2. Jews—Poland—History—20th century—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Poland—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3569.K44B57 1997

  813’.54—DC21

  97-18788

  CIP

  ISBN 978-1-61620-018-3 (PB)

  r97

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  My work on this novel was generously supported by a James A. Michener Fellowship from the Texas Center for Writers at the University of Texas/Austin, and the Jay C. and Ruth Hall Fellowship in Fiction from the Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin/Madison. The first chapter appeared in a slightly different form in Story magazine.

  Heartfelt thanks to Basha v’Ari and the Freer-Skibell-Winston mish-pokheh; the faculty, staff, and my colleagues and friends in Austin and in Madison; los hombres de la junta (it sounds more dangerous than it is); the exquisite Elisabeth Scharlatt and the amazing folks at Algonquin Books; the redoubtable Wendy Weil and her staff; and the novelist James Magnuson—friend, mentor, Dutch uncle, mensh.

  For my great-grandparents

  Sarah and Abe Balk

  Goldie and Lipman Baruch Lezanski

  Gitl and Michael Mintz

  Ester and Chaim Skibelski

  and their children

  And now they do not see light, it is brilliant in the skies.

  —Job 37:21

  For there existed suspicion that at first something that looked to them like the moon had appeared in the gathering clouds, but that the clouds subsequently disappeared and that they had seen nothing.

  —RAMBAM, Sanctification of the New Moon 2:6

  FROM THE MAYSEH BOOK

  1

  It all happened so quickly. They rounded us up, took us out to the forests. We stood there, shivering, like trees in uneven rows, and one by one we fell. No one was brave enough to turn and look. Guns kept cracking in the air. Something pushed into my head. It was hard, like a rock. I fell. But I was secretly giddy. I thought they had missed me. When they put me in the ground, I didn’t understand. I was still strong and healthy. But it was useless to protest. No one seemed to hear the sounds I made or see my thrashings, and anyway, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, because then they would have shot me.

  I was lying in a pit with all my neighbors, true, but I was ecstatic. I felt lighter than ever before in my life. It was all I could do not to giggle.

  And later, as dusk gathered, I climbed out of the grave, it was so shallow, and I ran through the forests. Nobody saw me. I ran with the dirt still in my mouth. I had to spit it out as I ran.

  When I got to our village, everything was gone. A dozen workmen were lifting all the memories into carts and driving off. “Hey! Hey!” I shouted after them. “Where are you going with those?” But they wouldn’t stop. In front of every house were piles of vows and promises, all in broken pieces. How I could see such things, I cannot tell you.

  A villager and his family were moving into our house on Noniewicza Street. Crouching behind a low wall, I watched them, a man and his sons, sweating through their vests. They packed and unpacked their crates, their shirtsleeves rolled up high, carting furniture in and out of our courtyard. Now and then, one would leave off to smoke, only to be derided by the others for his idleness.

  I was afraid if they saw me, they would come after me. Still, I couldn’t stand to see wha
t they were doing. I called to them, my voice escaping on its own. I was shouting. I shouted their names. I couldn’t help it. But they said nothing, merely continued with their hauling and their crates.

  So I touched them. I grabbed onto their shoulders, I pleaded with them. At that, they crossed themselves and shuddered. They muttered their oaths. They were peasants. Superstitious. But otherwise, there was no response. And I realized I was dead. I was dead. But why was I not in the World to Come?

  “Perhaps this is the World to Come.”

  The words came from a black crow sitting in an empty tree.

  “Rebbe,” I said. I recognized the voice as belonging to our beloved Rabbi. “How can that be?” I said. “Strangers are moving into my house. You yourself are a crow. How is it possible this is the World to Come?”

  “Be grateful,” he squawked. “Rejoice in your portion.”

  And he flew away.

  I felt worse than before. I had nowhere to go. Still, nobody could see me, what would it matter if I went home, if I entered my own house? Why not sleep in my own bed? So back to our court on Noniewicza Street I go. In through the front door. They didn’t even bother to lock it. I stand in the foyer, peering into the various rooms. I clear my throat to announce myself, but there’s no doubting I’m as invisible as air.

  The family is sitting around the dining-room table. They are people I know, people I have traded with. Eggs sometimes, bread, linens, goods of this sort. “Look how nice everything is,” the Mama says to her sons, clapping her hands in delight. “So beautiful, Mamuśku, so beautiful,” a daughter says, but she is the one they never pay attention to, and the eldest son says over her, “A toast! To our home and to our table!” The father’s face beams with pride.

  Upstairs are three more sons, big snoring lummoxes, asleep in Ester’s and my bed. Fully clothed they are, with even their boots on.

  It’s like a fairy tale from the Mayseh Book!

  The rooms are filling up. And where can I sleep? They’ve invited all their relatives to come and settle in. No one is in the nursery and so I sleep in Sabina’s little bed with my feet sticking over the edges. The bed we’ve kept from when her own mama, our daughter Edzia, was little and slept in the nursery as well.

  Outside the window, the Rebbe pecks on the shutters to be let in. I open the sill as quietly as possible. “What was that?” a groggy voice from Lepke’s old room echoes down the hall. “Mamuśku, the bed is so big, I’m swimming in it,” one daughter cries. “Everyone to bed, to bed!” the Mama calls out, cross. The Rebbe circles the room, walking from side to side, his wings behind his back. “Chaim,” he says. “Your legs, they stick out over the edges.” I sigh. He settles onto a pillow near me. He tucks his head into his breast.

  I wake up and the sun is black beneath a reddened sky. My head is pounding and my eyes hurt against the light.

  Downstairs, the Serafinskis are exchanging gifts over breakfast, various things they have found in their rooms during the night. The table is festive with ribbons and all the colored packages. “Papa, oh Papa, thank you so much,” the plump daughter says, leaning over the table to kiss her father. The shift she has slept in opens and her small breasts are momentarily revealed. “Don’t disturb your father while he eats!” her Mama scolds. But she herself is made so gay by Ester’s pearls, which gleam around her neck, that she cannot stay mad for long.

  There are pigs now in the shul, and goats. They mill about, discussing methods of underground resistance. I’m amazed I can understand their language. “Can we rely on the villagers for protection?” one of the pigs says, his voice quavering with rage. “Think again, my friends,” a goat warns, shaking his grey beard, although none of them seems convinced.

  I recite the morning prayers outside in the town square, then sit on a bench and throw bread crumbs to the Rebbe.

  “Hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz,” he squawks out the blessing before pouncing on the little I have been able to find for him. He hops onto my shoulder and cackles reassurances into my ear. He turns his head, squinting through a hard yellow eye, to judge the effect his words have on me.

  I nod, I listen, but only from habit. I’m too numb to really hear.

  “And will you migrate, Rebbe?” I finally ask. “Do crows migrate?”

  The question has been burdening my heart.

  “God willing,” he caws. “With God’s help. If it’s God’s will.”

  And he flies up to perch on the ledge of a high roof, spitting a shrill cry from his throat.

  2

  The Rebbe is not his usual self, that much is clear. Before, you could always see him, dashing through our narrow streets, his black coat flapping behind him, a holy book clutched against his spindly chest. He was everywhere at once, counseling, joking, wheedling, pressing Talmudic points into our children’s stubborn skulls. Now, I crane my neck to look at him hopping about the roof of the Hotel Krakowski, his bone-like feet curling and uncurling around its rusted gutter pipe. How distracted he looks, how ruffled and how weary. He doesn’t understand our new condition, I fear, or its dangers. Were it not for a small collection of pebbles I’ve taken to flinging at them, for instance, the Rebbe might easily have been devoured by any number of neighborhood cats. “Shoo! Go away! Scat!” I cry. “Are you crazy?” I shout at them. “Do you want to eat the Rebbe!” And they slink off, chastened, licking their wounded paws.

  The soldiers seem to like our town, with its sleepy squares and the many bridges crossing its rivers. The worst of their work is over and they can finally relax and enjoy their stay. I stroll among them with my cane, searching for the ones who shot us, but their faces are unrecognizable. Gone are the tight grimaces, the tensed piano wires that stood up in their necks when they barked out their commands. Now they are all sunniness and light, and even when they catch someone hiding in a garret or a cellar, they are able to beat and kick the poor wretch happily and shoot at him as though it were all a trifling canard, without unpleasant yelling.

  This is how it was with Lipski the butcher. The woman he had traded his house to for a hiding place reported him at once. And who can blame her? With Lipski curled into a circle below her staircase, she was in danger and her family as well. But the soldiers danced him out in that jolly way of theirs, flushing him so merrily from his hutch and into the bright streets that even Lipski had to laugh, as they beat his head into the curb.

  In the late afternoon, a thin man in a homburg stands upon a hastily erected platform to give a ringing speech. He congratulates our town on its spirit of heroic cooperation.

  “Never before …” he pounds his delicate fist against the podium.

  “So often in …” he cries.

  “Young men giving …” he thunders.

  I try to listen, but the words are lost on me. The crowd pushes forward eagerly. Men from the region’s newspapers jot down notes in little books, to print in their papers the following day. So busy is everyone listening to the speech that no one notices a large black bird swooping down, like a shadow, from the trees to peck at the speech-maker’s eyes. A purplish iridescent whirl descends about the poor man’s hat and he raises two bloodied fists to protect his shredded cheeks. Those near to him laugh, once, as people will, before realizing the true extent of his distress. Recovering their somberness, they move in from all sides, offering their help. The mayor, various townspeople, more than a dozen soldiers swat at the Rebbe, but no one is able to stop him as he tears the man’s finger from his hand and flies towards the forests, a golden wedding band glinting in his beak.

  3

  “Rebbe! Rebbe!” I run through the crowd after him, the guns shooting over my head. Away he flies, deep into the forests, far from our little town. That I am able to run so fast, a man of my age, it’s difficult to believe, even with the aid of my stick. The trees, black against the darkening sky, scratch at my collar and tear at my neck. I keep tripping over roots and stones, the forest is tangled and so dense.

  “Rebbe,” I shout up at him.
“You have stolen something that doesn’t belong to you, something that must be returned! This isn’t proper!”

  But on he sails, high above the treetops, ignoring my every word.

  I follow him into a small clearing, where he begins gliding in circles, his wings long and stiff. He lands unsteadily near a small pond and struts on his wiry legs to the water’s edge. A twitch of his head and the ring is tossed in with a gentle liquid plink!

  “Rebbe,” I say, laughing. “What a terrible thief you are! If you had wanted to conceal your crimes, you should have dropped it from the air above the middle of the pond. But now, let me see what have you stolen.”

  I reach into the water.

  The blues and the pinks of twilight stain the surface of the pond, and through them I see, for the first time since I was shot, a reflection of my face. One side is entirely missing, except for an eye, which has turned completely white. Barely hanging in its socket, it stares at itself in an astonished wonder. My grey beard is matted thick with blood, and broken bits of bone protrude here and there through the raw patches of my flesh.

  I look like a mangled dog carcass.

  The Rebbe squawks.

  “Why have you shown me this?”

  “Chaim, Chaim, Chaim,” he shrills in a piping tone. “Never in my life have I behaved like such an animal! What has happened to me? And look at you! Look what they have done to your face!”

  “Rebbe,” I say, “Rebbe,” comforting him.

  He caws softly. I suppose he is unable to cry. I nuzzle the top of his black head against my partial cheek.

  Inside the ring, I see, is a small inscription. To Johannes From His Margarite, Undying Love. I slip it onto my finger so that I will not lose or misplace it before it can be returned.

  Shadows gather in from behind the trees, inking the forests, until everything is black. Wolves snicker somewhere not far off. Together, the Rebbe and I offer up our evening prayers. He sits upon my shoulder and we walk home beneath a bright canopy of stars.