would bring Leslie Senzatimore, that pillar of goodness, down. Maybe Masha could even help me. I smelled the truth in these people; I needed to scratch until I found it. Two wounds, like a snakebite in the white thigh of Hashem.
11
A side from the evening meal, every aspect of my married home life was to be maintained by Hodel. She prepared my ablutions in the morning, washed my linen, cleaned our room, and laid herself out on the bed for me each evening like a nightdress. Yet I had the impression, when we coupled, that she was holding her breath. The only time she seemed happy was when she took out her dolls and induced me to play house with them. It was a pathetic image: a young man and his bride feeding invisible porridge to a couple of rag babies. I was being sucked into her little world of the imagination, and actually began to feel paternal toward these poppets. We slept with them between us at night, made them speak in baby language, moving their heads and arms in a lifelike way. When we had intercourse, they lay with us, their bored button eyes fixed on the ceiling as if waiting for us to finish up.
After a few weeks of marriage, Hodel began to have attacks of an explosive intestinal nature. Mornings were spent almost entirely in the latrine. Her gas smelled like rotten meat. She lost weight. Her skin became pale, her face gaunt. I was increasingly repulsed by her. I hawked my merchandise through the city day after day, spending extra hours working in order to stay away. At night I bundled myself atmy side of the bed and shut my eyes, conjuring delights of the flesh with plump, healthy women I had seen on the streets, and trying to ignore my wifeâs toxic night flatulence. When I overcame my revulsion and mounted her, I kept imagining necrotic stalactites of excrement clinging to the inflamed lining of her intestines. Her fits of homesick weeping rained down on my ears like needles. When I managed to fall unconscious, I slept fitfully in a slick of erotic dreams oozing one after another into my head. Often I woke sticky with nocturnal emissions. I would wash myself off and try to cheer up poor tear-stained Hodel by feeding her dolls their breakfast. Given the state my life was in, itâs no wonder that I turned to religion.
My cousin, Gimpel Cerf, had come to Paris from Mezritch, in Poland, to try to make a little money selling merchandise with my father and me, and in order to raise awareness of a radical new type of Judaism. They called themselves the Hasidim, the holy ones. They were known for their dancing and singing, a joyous form of worship. They put less emphasis on learning than we Talmudic Jews. For them, the simple were most beloved by God. I first met Gimpel in my parentsâ apartment one Saturday. My mother liked me to come to eat the last Shabbat meal with her, my father, and my brother every few weeks. I was grateful for a respite from dinners at the Mendel household, and walked up the rickety stairs of our tenement the first Saturday of every month without fail. Hodel rarely accompanied me on these visits; either her bowels were liquefying, confining her to the latrine, or she said she needed to help her motherâwho of course would have liked nothing better than to be rid of her for a day.
The first person I saw when I walked into the room was my little dumpling of a mother, the crisp lace of her Shabbat bonnet framing her scrubbed, full face, her small, upturned mouth and pointed nose giving her the look of a cheerful fox. I hugged her, drinking in herintoxicating aroma until my sinuses were filled to the brim. My mother worked in a bakery. The nooks and crannies of her headâthe soft cartilage valleys behind her ears; the neat crease where the solid flesh under her chin joined her neck; the downy napeâsmelled of challah, every day of the week. It was her perfume. When I was a boy, I imagined that my mother was originally made of challah dough. Instead of being born like
11
A side from the evening meal, every aspect of my married home life was to be maintained by Hodel. She prepared my ablutions in the morning, washed my linen, cleaned our room, and laid herself out on the bed for me each evening like a nightdress. Yet I had the impression, when we coupled, that she was holding her breath. The only time she seemed happy was when she took out her dolls and induced me to play house with them. It was a pathetic image: a young man and his bride feeding invisible porridge to a couple of rag babies. I was being sucked into her little world of the imagination, and actually began to feel paternal toward these poppets. We slept with them between us at night, made them speak in baby language, moving their heads and arms in a lifelike way. When we had intercourse, they lay with us, their bored button eyes fixed on the ceiling as if waiting for us to finish up.
After a few weeks of marriage, Hodel began to have attacks of an explosive intestinal nature. Mornings were spent almost entirely in the latrine. Her gas smelled like rotten meat. She lost weight. Her skin became pale, her face gaunt. I was increasingly repulsed by her. I hawked my merchandise through the city day after day, spending extra hours working in order to stay away. At night I bundled myself atmy side of the bed and shut my eyes, conjuring delights of the flesh with plump, healthy women I had seen on the streets, and trying to ignore my wifeâs toxic night flatulence. When I overcame my revulsion and mounted her, I kept imagining necrotic stalactites of excrement clinging to the inflamed lining of her intestines. Her fits of homesick weeping rained down on my ears like needles. When I managed to fall unconscious, I slept fitfully in a slick of erotic dreams oozing one after another into my head. Often I woke sticky with nocturnal emissions. I would wash myself off and try to cheer up poor tear-stained Hodel by feeding her dolls their breakfast. Given the state my life was in, itâs no wonder that I turned to religion.
My cousin, Gimpel Cerf, had come to Paris from Mezritch, in Poland, to try to make a little money selling merchandise with my father and me, and in order to raise awareness of a radical new type of Judaism. They called themselves the Hasidim, the holy ones. They were known for their dancing and singing, a joyous form of worship. They put less emphasis on learning than we Talmudic Jews. For them, the simple were most beloved by God. I first met Gimpel in my parentsâ apartment one Saturday. My mother liked me to come to eat the last Shabbat meal with her, my father, and my brother every few weeks. I was grateful for a respite from dinners at the Mendel household, and walked up the rickety stairs of our tenement the first Saturday of every month without fail. Hodel rarely accompanied me on these visits; either her bowels were liquefying, confining her to the latrine, or she said she needed to help her motherâwho of course would have liked nothing better than to be rid of her for a day.
The first person I saw when I walked into the room was my little dumpling of a mother, the crisp lace of her Shabbat bonnet framing her scrubbed, full face, her small, upturned mouth and pointed nose giving her the look of a cheerful fox. I hugged her, drinking in herintoxicating aroma until my sinuses were filled to the brim. My mother worked in a bakery. The nooks and crannies of her headâthe soft cartilage valleys behind her ears; the neat crease where the solid flesh under her chin joined her neck; the downy napeâsmelled of challah, every day of the week. It was her perfume. When I was a boy, I imagined that my mother was originally made of challah dough. Instead of being born like
Similar Books
