the knife with the
rosewood
handle

The story that I am about to tell, a story born in doubt and perplexity, has only the misfortune (some call it fortune) of being true: it was recorded by the hands of honorable people and reliable witnesses. But to be true in the way its author dreams about, it would be told in Romanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, or Yiddish: or, rather, in a mixture of all these languages. Then, by the logic of chance and of murky, deep, unconscious happenings, through the consciousness of the narrator, there would flash also a Russian word or two, now a tender one like telyatina, now a hard one like kinjal. If the narrator, therefore, could reach the unattainable, terrifying moment of Babel, the humble pleadings and awful beseechings of Hanna Krzyewska would resound in Romanian, in Polish, in Ukrainian (as if here death were only the consequence of some great and fatal misunderstanding), and then just before the death rattle and final calm in her incoherence would turn into the prayer for the dead, spoken in Hebrew, the language of being and dying.

A POSITIVE HERO

Miksha (let’s call him that for now) could sew on a button in ten seconds. Light a match and hold it between your fingers; between the time you light it and the time it burns your fingers, Miksha would have sewn a button on an officer’s uniform. Reb Mendel, for whom Miksha worked as an apprentice, couldn’t believe his eyes. He adjusted his glasses, took out a match, and said in Yiddish, “Come on, do it again, Herr Micksat.” Reb Mendel smiled as he watched Miksha thread the needle again. Then suddenly he threw the match out the window and spat on his fingers. Miksha, who had already sewn the button on Herr Antonescu’s uniform, said triumphantly, “Reb Mendel, one single match could blow up all the oil fields of Ploesti.” While he imagined the distant future illuminated by a huge blaze, Reb Mendel, with two fingers still damp, quickly pulled at the button on the uniform and twisted it as if it were the neck of chicken. “Herr Micksat,” he said, “if you didn’t have such foolish thoughts, you could become an excellent craftsman. Do you know that the oil fields of Ploesti are estimated to have several million gallons of crude oil?” “It’ll be a wonderful flame, Reb Mendel,” said Miksha enigmatically.

THE OUTWITTING OF REB MENDEL

Miksha didn’t become a master craftsman. For two more years he sewed on buttons at Reb Mendel’s listening to his Talmudic reasonings, and then was forced to leave, sent off with a curse. One day in the spring of the notable year 1925, Reb Mendel complained that one of his Cochin hens had disappeared. “Reb Mendel,” said Miksha, “look for the thief among the Jews.” Reb Medel understood the force of the insult and for some time didn’t mention his Cochin hen. Miksha was also silent; he was waiting for Reb Mendel to conquer his pride. The old man struggled within himself, each day sacrificing a hen on the altar of this Talmudic haughtiness. With a stick in his hand, he kept vigil in the chicken coop until dawn, frightening away a skunk by barking like a dog. At dawn he fell asleep, and another hen disappeared from the chicken coop. “Let the great Righteous One smite me, He who said that all living creatures are equally worthy of His care and mercy,” said Reb Mendel on this ninth day. “Is it possible that one Cochin hen worth at least five chevronets is equal to a skunk who robs the poor and stinks far and wide?” “It isn’t, Reb Mendel,” said Miksha. “A Cochin hen worth at least five chevronets can’t be compared with a stinking skunk.” He said no more. He waited for the skunk to destroy what it could destroy, and to prove to Reb Mendel that his Talmudic prattle about the equality of all God’s creatures was worthless until justice was achieved on earth by earthly means. On the eleventh day Reb Mendel, exhausted by futile vigils, swollen and red-eyed, his hair full of feathers, stood in front of Miksha and began to beat his breast. “Herr Micksat, help me!” “All right, Reb Mendel,” said Miksha. “Brush off your caftan and take the feathers out of your hair. Leave this matter to me.”

THE TRAP

The trap that Miksha slapped together was a distant replica of those his grandfather used to make long ago in Bukovina: a murky and nostalgic memory. Apart from this, it was a simple box made of hard beech planks, with a lid that opened from the outside but not from the inside. As bait he placed an egg that (as he had made absolutely certain) already held a Cochin chicken, rotting as if in a coffin. In the morning, as soon as he stepped into the back yard, Miksha knew the animal was in the trap: the stench carried as far as the gate. Reb Mendel, however, was nowhere in sight. Worn out by his long vigils, he had yielded to sleep and to fate. With his heavy peasant hand, Miksha patted Reb Mendel’s one remaining hen, which was petrified with fear, and let it into the back yard. Then he raised the lid, which had teeth of bent nails, and in the split second the animal’s moist muzzle appeared through the crack, he slammed the lid down with his fist. No less skillfully, he pushed a rusty wire through the skunk’s nostrils, tied its paws, and hung the animal on the doorpost. An awful stench. He made one slit around the neck, like a crimson necklace, then two more at the base of the paws. Peeling back the skin around the neck, he made two more slits, like buttonholes, for his fingers.

Awakened by the terrifying shrieks of the animal or by a nightmare, Reb Mendel suddenly appeared. Holding his nose with the skirt of his wrinkled caftan, he stared with bloodshot, horrified eyes at the live, bloody ball suspended on a wire and writhing on the doorpost. After wiping his knife on the grass, Miksha stood up and said, “Reb Mendel, I have released you from skunks once and for all.” When Reb Mendel finally spoke, his voice sounded hoarse and terrible, like the voice of a prophet: “Wash the blood off your hands and face, And be damned, Herr Micksat!”