The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) by David Bergelson Page B
Authors: David Bergelson
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examinations … She’d felt so unwell there … She could hardly wait to escape from the place.
Suddenly the young folk from the adjoining room rushed in all together in hot pursuit of Tarabay’s younger son, the student at the science-oriented school, seized him, and boisterously dragged him back to where they’d come from:
—Why didn’t he want to recite? What harm would it do him to recite something?
Someone totally unknown to her approached Mirel and began complaining about the science student:
—Only a few weeks before he’d recited magnificently—at a soirée in the metropolis he’d declaimed splendidly.
But by now Mirel was extremely put out by the fact that her former fiancé’s newly arrived parents had settled themselves in the salon. She stood on her own with her back pressed against the wall, raised her melancholy face a little higher and saw:
Sitting with Nechama Tarabay at a nearby table laden with newly laid-out refreshments was the obese woman who was to have been her mother-in-law, breathing heavily like a fat goose on the run and complaining, between gasps and groans, about her asthma:
—It makes life a torment … an absolute torment …
A little farther to Mirel’s right, cheerful little Tarabay popped up in front of the chair in which her former fiancé’s big-boned father was seated and tried to bring a smile to the studiedly grave face of this unlettered parvenu who’d only recently acquired a veneer of refinement:
—What need is there for so much concern, Reb Avrom-Moyshe? Surely the children are all provided with marriage portions by now, thank God? … So one marries them off and waits for the grandchildren, eh?
Then Tarabay rushed away for a while to see out an important guest, and with a cigarette in his mouth, Avrom-Moyshe Burnes, this darkhaired, studiedly genteel ignoramus, made his way over to Tarabay’s elder son, the student at the polytechnic, and began repeating to him a newly minted bon mot of his own:
—He’d only just this moment posed a riddle … He’d posed this riddle to his father only a moment ago.
Of average height, with simian forehead and nostrils pinched in arrogant disdain, this student had been silently sneering at everything for some time now; all in all, he intensely disliked both his own parents and their assembled guests. And now this studiedly genteel ignoramus Burnes was pestering him with his silly riddle:
—What exactly is the difference between the Count of Kashperivke and Vasil, his lackey?
Mirel took several steps toward the open, brightly lit dining room and, in low spirits, with her cheek pressed against the door, she stopped and saw:
Yet again the unusually long table was being laid, and plates were clattered together so often and so cheerfully that a few of those assembled had their appetites whetted anew. Some of the young people were drifting about there, while others gathered in small groups, and the newly arrived midwife Schatz, her face freshly colored by the cold outside, stood opposite the visiting polytechnic student smoking one of his cigarettes and smiling:
—She knew them … She knew them intimately, these dissolute polytechnic students who liked nothing better than chasing after girls.
Slowly and in an oddly despondent frame of mind, Mirel went up to the midwife, embraced her and, like a small child, pressed her whole body closely against her, her voice trembling:
—The midwife Schatz could hardly imagine how grateful she was to her for having come now! She, Mirel, would explain the cause of this gratitude another time.
Wine was drunk from a variety of sealed bottles which had earlier been carefully passed from hand to hand with smilingly appreciative comments on the information conveyed on their labels and lead foils.
Drinking went on uninterruptedly, both during the meal and afterward when plates were being cleared from the unusually long, damask-covered table, and Tarabay’s cousin Notte, a remarkably
Suddenly the young folk from the adjoining room rushed in all together in hot pursuit of Tarabay’s younger son, the student at the science-oriented school, seized him, and boisterously dragged him back to where they’d come from:
—Why didn’t he want to recite? What harm would it do him to recite something?
Someone totally unknown to her approached Mirel and began complaining about the science student:
—Only a few weeks before he’d recited magnificently—at a soirée in the metropolis he’d declaimed splendidly.
But by now Mirel was extremely put out by the fact that her former fiancé’s newly arrived parents had settled themselves in the salon. She stood on her own with her back pressed against the wall, raised her melancholy face a little higher and saw:
Sitting with Nechama Tarabay at a nearby table laden with newly laid-out refreshments was the obese woman who was to have been her mother-in-law, breathing heavily like a fat goose on the run and complaining, between gasps and groans, about her asthma:
—It makes life a torment … an absolute torment …
A little farther to Mirel’s right, cheerful little Tarabay popped up in front of the chair in which her former fiancé’s big-boned father was seated and tried to bring a smile to the studiedly grave face of this unlettered parvenu who’d only recently acquired a veneer of refinement:
—What need is there for so much concern, Reb Avrom-Moyshe? Surely the children are all provided with marriage portions by now, thank God? … So one marries them off and waits for the grandchildren, eh?
Then Tarabay rushed away for a while to see out an important guest, and with a cigarette in his mouth, Avrom-Moyshe Burnes, this darkhaired, studiedly genteel ignoramus, made his way over to Tarabay’s elder son, the student at the polytechnic, and began repeating to him a newly minted bon mot of his own:
—He’d only just this moment posed a riddle … He’d posed this riddle to his father only a moment ago.
Of average height, with simian forehead and nostrils pinched in arrogant disdain, this student had been silently sneering at everything for some time now; all in all, he intensely disliked both his own parents and their assembled guests. And now this studiedly genteel ignoramus Burnes was pestering him with his silly riddle:
—What exactly is the difference between the Count of Kashperivke and Vasil, his lackey?
Mirel took several steps toward the open, brightly lit dining room and, in low spirits, with her cheek pressed against the door, she stopped and saw:
Yet again the unusually long table was being laid, and plates were clattered together so often and so cheerfully that a few of those assembled had their appetites whetted anew. Some of the young people were drifting about there, while others gathered in small groups, and the newly arrived midwife Schatz, her face freshly colored by the cold outside, stood opposite the visiting polytechnic student smoking one of his cigarettes and smiling:
—She knew them … She knew them intimately, these dissolute polytechnic students who liked nothing better than chasing after girls.
Slowly and in an oddly despondent frame of mind, Mirel went up to the midwife, embraced her and, like a small child, pressed her whole body closely against her, her voice trembling:
—The midwife Schatz could hardly imagine how grateful she was to her for having come now! She, Mirel, would explain the cause of this gratitude another time.
Wine was drunk from a variety of sealed bottles which had earlier been carefully passed from hand to hand with smilingly appreciative comments on the information conveyed on their labels and lead foils.
Drinking went on uninterruptedly, both during the meal and afterward when plates were being cleared from the unusually long, damask-covered table, and Tarabay’s cousin Notte, a remarkably
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