A Blessing on the Moon Read online

  4

  That night and for many nights after, I am unable to sleep. I toss and turn in Sabina’s little bed, haunted by the queerest dreams. Not visions, as one might expect. Instead, I feel the approach of others near me, reaching out to me from all sides. My arm is tucked beneath my head, dangling off the bedside. Playfully, they grab onto my hand, curling their fingers around my own. This tickling awakens me. I sit up, laughing, barely understanding why. “There they are again,” I say. It’s a little frightening as well. The covers fall to my lap and I peer curiously into the room, searching every corner, but all I see are blue abstract blotches moving about in the moon-filled dark. My eyes adjust to the dimness and the shapes disappear altogether.

  The Serafinskis sleep throughout the house. Relatives and family friends fill every bed, every sofa, every chair. From all corners, their monstrous breathing rises and falls, vibrating through throats so thickened with sleep, it sounds like a mass drowning.

  I replace the blankets over the Rebbe’s fluttering chest and stand for a moment at the nursery door, wide awake, listening. My fingers fumble uselessly in the pockets of my nightclothes, worrying a small bead of lint. When I was alive, often on a night like this, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d make my way downstairs to the kitchen and grind up beans for coffee. Ester, beside me in our bed, would barely budge as I noiselessly extracted myself from her grip. A tall woman, she shrunk with age and grew stout. The lines in her face were deeply cut and, even in her sleep, she scowled. Ten children had hidden themselves in her body and, over the years, at regular intervals, one by one, they crawled out. Sarah first, then Itzhak and the others, Edzia, Shlomo, Izekial, Miriam, Hadassah, then Laibl, Shmuel, and Eliahu. My first wife, Ida, could have no children, and died trying.

  I navigate the passage to the kitchen easily in the dark. Despite all the furniture and crates carted through my foyer, the house is remarkably unchanged. I have no idea where they’ve stowed everything. I pass all their children’s bedrooms. Their bodies lie twisted, like shipwrecks, in the sheets, as though a great sea had tossed them there. Down the back stairway, to the bottom floor, I press lightly against the kitchen’s oaken door to muffle its notorious creaking. Foolish, I know, these precautions. Why take them? Who am I afraid of waking? It’s beyond their ability to harm me now. Still, what good would rousing them from their drunken slumbers do? Let them sleep, let them sleep. It’s enough, having the house to myself for a night. Soon, morning will pry its way through their windows, forcing its light into their bleary eyes, and soon enough, the harsher light of their own bad conscience will surely stir them with its sharper prick. After all, how long can they continue to live so gaily in another man’s house before one of them sobers up and convinces the others to draft a letter immediately to its rightful heirs?

  In the kitchen now, grinding the coffee, it occurs to me to write this letter myself. With the Rebbe’s help, perhaps I can get a note to one of my sons. Sign it with one of the Pole’s names and include the lease and the thick stack of legal papers. Who would ever know? Surely the Rebbe will aid me in posting it. He’s always finding bits of string here and there, useful odds and ends, and many things for tying up a parcel.

  I sit against the kitchen window, contemplating my plan and gazing up into the night sky. My coffee is long cold. Apparently, I cannot drink it. One more of the disadvantages of being dead. I had spiked the cup with whiskey, hidden years ago in a cupboard, which not even the villagers with their drinker’s noses had managed to sniff out. If only I were drunk, then I would dance around the parlor in my nightshirt, circling around the villagers as they lie, snoring, with their legs and arms sprawled across the sofas and the chairs. Ah, what a fright I could give them! If only they would see me. Whirling around and around, I accidentally knock over a lamp from a side table with the bottle in my hand. “Hunh? Wah?” one of them mutters. He looks about him in the dark, his face lanky with sleep. But he only shrugs and closes his eyes. He clacks a heavy tongue against the roof of his mouth and is snoring once again.

  I ascend the stairs and make my way to the nursery and crawl into bed, hoping that the Rebbe might be awake, so that I may tell him of my plans for the letter to my sons. But he isn’t there. The little bed is empty and a small, warm depression is all that remains. Because he complains that I move around too much in my sleep, he has been building a nest for himself behind the old rocking horse, where it is unlikely anyone will find it. I move the horse and a tin ball and a small mechanical monkey to see if he is there, but his unfinished nest is empty as well. There is a note written in a scrawl I cannot decipher. A sharp cry pierces the night outside the open window. The curtains move. With my hands on the casement, I lean far into the purple darkness, but can see nothing. I stare up at the full moon and, to my astonishment, it falls from the sky! The orange ball simply sinks and disappears behind the trees.

  5

  In my office, I have found a ledger book beneath a number of things in the back of an old desk drawer. Now that the Rebbe is gone and I have no one else to talk to, I have taken to crossing the courtyard and spending my nights here alone. The office is exactly as I left it. Or so it appears to me. If someone has changed it in the meantime, it’s impossible to say how. As always, the maps of the river routes, along which we sent our lumber, are still in place, still in their frames along the walls. My wooden humidor still rests upon my large oak desk, although, of course, without breath, smoking is a bitter and a useless frustration.

  Here, no one intrudes and I can sit with my feet on the desk and lean back. I can stare out over the Niemen and the Bobre and watch the dawn begin above their moving waters. Or I can sleep on the daybed, undisturbed.

  Even if I oversleep, the new owners, of course, do not see me. Usually, I’m up and out well before their workday commences. But once or twice, I shuffled out of my office as many of my old employees were shuffling in. For a moment, so vivid is the impression of being alive and among them in my old place, that I very nearly greet them.

  “So you survived, did you?” I can almost hear them say. Mendel the office clerk takes my walking stick, and the staff manager my hat. “Welcome back, welcome back! Everything is as you left it. Grab the boss a cup of coffee, would you, Felice? Hurry up! Hurry up!” and my life resumes, exactly where it left off, as though I had not died, but only journeyed to see my daughters in Warsaw or in Lodz.

  “So you survived then, did you?” the staff manager asks ironically, taking my hat and handing my stick to the clerk. He follows me to my office, inadvertently stepping on my heels. “I have daughters, too, as you know, as you well know,” he says. “And grandchildren, grandchildren! How they can devour you! But you survived, and thank God for that. Visits to one’s relatives can be treacherous, treacherous.”

  I imagine myself joking with him, not impatiently as usual, my mind already half on work, but warmly, even sentimentally, as though the tiring familiarity of his worn jests could somehow knit my broken body and return me to my former life.

  But, no. On those mornings when I have slept too long on the daybed and have arisen to find the office staff settling in for another day, I pass among them unnoticed, unfelt, possibly unremembered, not unlike all their colleagues who disappeared that day into the pit. To them, it is no different than if I had sold the business and taken half the workers with me. We are gone. Simply. No one cares where.

  I try to put these thoughts in the ledger book on the nights when I can’t sleep. I sit at my desk, threading through its pages, my right hand caressing each sheet slowly, each line with a methodical and even stroke. Its first few pages are dotted with numbers, we had only begun the new year, and many of the pages towards the back have children’s drawings on them, left, I’m certain, by my grandchildren. When my own children were small, I allowed them to draw and paint in the unused portions of these books. Round lemony suns. Blue rhomboidal houses. Winged horses grazing in fields of red wheat. It became a family tradition. It did no harm as far as I could s
ee but, for some reason, it distressed my accountants, Shumski and Matulski.

  “These are not toys, Pani Chaim!” Matulski rails.

  “These are your company’s ledgers!” Shumski needlessly points out.

  “Official documents,” Matulski stresses.

  “What will people think?”

  “What people?” I tell him. “You and Matulski are the only ones who see these books.”

  “And what will we think?” says Shumski, hiding behind his glasses.

  “Exactly,” rails Matulski.

  “But if it makes the children happy,” I try to console them.

  “That there have been children drawing in these books, children!” Shumski points wildly at the floor. “That’s what Matulski and I will think!”

  For myself, I rather like the little drawings. I write the story of Shumski and Matulski right over the flying boat and a sleeping moon Izzie or Solek must’ve drawn. Absentmindedly, I find I have even added my own sketch—an inky portrait of Shumski and Matulski flailing their arms at me in disgust, throwing their hands into the Heavens.

  But I have been daydreaming. It must be late. Although I carry my pocketwatch, the numbers no longer make any sense to me. The golden sticks whirl around and around, chasing each other, but I have forgotten how to understand the little races they daily perform.

  Sighing, I close the ledger book. Its heavy leather casing is cool to the touch. Although my senses have survived intact, since my death I must say the sensation of touch never ceases to surprise me. Holding the closed book before me, I see several tiny convex reflections of my ruined face in the bright brass buttons that form a border around the binding. I hide the book away for the night, tucking it under the cushions of the daybed, and go out to stroll along the river.

  6

  The bleeding has begun again. There is apparently nothing I can do. I imagine I have lost everything and am completely drained, when I feel it gurgling down my neck, leaking from the wounds in the back of my head. The spillage collects inside my shirt collar and I tighten my necktie in the hopes of stanching its flow. Because I no longer breathe, I’m able to pull the knot remarkably tight. But the blood simply reroutes itself and emerges from the star-like pattern of holes across my back and chest. It drains into my pockets and pools there, eventually cascading over like a fountain. My shoes fill with the stream issuing from my anus. My feet slide and stick in the puddles I leave, until the shoes pull off, despite the suction created by the fluids in them. I hobble around, searching for a comfortable position and, like a tubercular uncle, I leave scores of dampened handkerchiefs, little poisoned roses, all about the house.

  Instead of suffering politely and considerately this time, waiting for the wounds to drain, in the tub, for instance, or in the garage with my old car on top of the straw, I walk through the house, leaving trails in the hallways, through the rooms, on the staircases. I roll around like a dog on its back in the beds, smearing the sheets. I leave red handprints on the patterned wallpaper, at every level, so they cannot be missed. Crimson palm prints on their family photographs. They’ve lined them up on the mantels of the fireplaces and on the piano top. For these, I rummage with two fingers inside my opened skull, leaving bits of brain in the stain like a painter’s impasto.

  I open the kitchen drawers and shake my moistened sleeves over their utensils and their pots. My blood rains down in a vibrant cascade. May they eat with it in their mouths!

  I mark a slanted vermilion slash across every lintel and on the doorposts of their house, and upon their gates. But, of course, they do not see it.

  They never will.

  A cup out of place or a toppled lamp, these they notice and shrug over, but my blood is invisible to them.

  Eventually, my fury abates and I am exhausted. I struggle but can barely keep my eyes open. My throat burns. It’s on fire, like a burning desert. This is how it is every time I bleed.

  I stumble up the stairs, holding on to the railings for support. My socks, slick with the drying blood, slip on every other stair and I bang my knees and shins when I fall. Drowsy, my head spinning, I drop, barely conscious, in a heap, like a bag of soiled laundry, on the threshold of the nursery. Across the room, the white sheets of Sabina’s tiny bed look like a brilliant snowy mountain. My emptied wounds burn as the air whistles through them, whistling through the drying passages in my body’s empty cavity. If only I could sink into the bed, into that mountain of white, and lie in its cooling sheets, like a hiker stranded beneath an avalanche, forgetting everything, even my name. But unpleasantly I am awakened.

  One of the daughters is screaming.

  7

  “Mama! Mama! Mama!” she shrills.

  “Ola, calm down!”

  “Blood! Everywhere!”

  “Ola, what is it?”

  “Everywhere! Mama, it’s everywhere!”

  “There is no blood. Look! There is no blood!”

  “Mama, you’re covered with it! Mama, the house! All the houses in the courtyard, Mama, look!”

  All the houses in the courtyard? I wasn’t that ambitious. Clearly, the poor girl is raving.

  “You’re dreaming, Ola. Little Ola, you’re dreaming.”

  The daughter, quivering in her mother’s thick arms, twitches in convulsive spasms, as she tries to wipe my blood off her translucent shift.

  “Mama, please, it’s in my mouth. Mama!”

  “Ola, enough of this nonsense. Andrzej, help me!”

  And the Papa trundles up the stairs, annoyed to be called away from his game of Sixty-Six. He wipes his hands against his vest.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he bellows. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Papa, the hallways are filled with blood!”

  “Put her to bed, Andrzej. Help me carry her at least!”

  Together, they lift the skinny girl by her arms and her legs. She flails uselessly against them, crying out. I watch through one eye, my head on Sabina’s bed, the dried blood causing my ear to stick to the pillowcase. I fall asleep again, but am wakened moments later. The Mama and Papa have laid the poor girl into bed, but of course there is blood over all the sheets and her shrieking has started again. She is nearly out of her mind. Finally, a slap and some harsh words from Papa put a stop to the whole drama, followed by the daughter breathing too fast to catch her breath. The Mama and the Papa thump down the hallway, bumping into one another, passing accusations back and forth between them like an unwanted shoe.

  “… she’s always been this way …” “… but she’s sick. You shouldn’t have hit her …” “… blood in the hallways. Ridiculous!” “… how long is she going to be sick? She can’t stay in bed her entire life …” “… it’s not her fault if she sees these things!” “… you spoiled her. So of course, it’s not her fault …” “… you’re the one who insisted she was too frail to work. Me, I wanted to hire her out long ago!”

  Ola is curled up in a rocking chair, sucking her thumb, shivering, staring through the window, although there is really nothing to see from where she sits, besides an empty sky. I have dragged myself along the corridor to take a peek at her. I lean against her door, grab onto the knob and raise myself up. I see her through the keyhole. She is about thirteen or fourteen, with large black patches underneath her eyes. Her skin is pale with red blotches and her brown hair lies lank and stringy against her bony shoulders. The shoulders, like her knees, which are pulled up to her chest, have little knobs on them. Did I say her chest is bony? It’s practically concave.

  Her weeping is interrupted by a coughing fit so violent it nearly shakes her off her chair. She covers her mouth with two flat hands. Her knobby elbows rise and fall against the sides of her chest. Her throat scrapes against itself like a rusty hinge.

  When she lowers her hands from her mouth, they are smeared with a bright pink blood. “Oh God,” she moans. “Oh God.” I look on, horrified, as she rubs the blood violently across her face and into her hair.

  8


  The day is clear and crisp. The chilled smells of autumn fill the air. Lonely and with nothing else to do, nothing to keep myself occupied, I have come for a stroll in the forest. The sun pours its thickened light, like honey, through the trees. It must be nearing the month of Cheshvan, but without the moon, who can tell for sure?

  I’m not certain what draws me here, to the mound the soldiers made when they covered our pit. I had worried the place might be difficult to find, but the ground virtually rolls and buckles from the bluish gases erupting in balloons beneath my feet.

  Leaning on my cane, I lower myself and sit upon the mound. I haven’t been here since I climbed out, scrambling over the edge, looking back only once, and quickly at that. Their bodies, still writhing, lay twisted in great heaps like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, unassembled, on a parlor table.

  The wind blows carelessly through the trees, tearing the leaves from their branches. I dig with my fingers, softly, into the dirt.

  My lumber business used to bring me to all parts of the forest, but looking about now, I can’t recall if I was ever here.

  It’s not a long walk from our house and yet it must have been more strenuous than I had at first thought, for suddenly, I find I have no strength at all and can barely remain sitting up. I lean over, lowering my ear to the ground, resting my head against it.

  Faintly at first, but then more and more distinctly, I’m able to make out the sounds of Yiddish being spoken. How is this possible? I crawl about the mound, keeping my ear flat against it. Directly below me, mothers are clacking out tart instructions to their daughters. I nearly weep to hear it! To my left, there must be a cheder, for a class is clearly going on. The teacher remonstrates with his students, spitting out the alef-bais for the hundredth time. Below me, to my right, two men argue passionately. About what, at first it’s difficult to hear. But so persistent are they, each one repeating his entrenched position over and over again, that soon I understand their disagreement concerns the price of trolley fares in Warsaw. I laugh, holding my sides with joy. I can’t believe it. In a far corner, a deep voice drones a portion of the Mishnah in a lilting cantillation. How long has it been since I’ve heard the mother tongue!