Sunbeams

She was brought to our town from the village of Bikhov, after both her parents had died there. Her sole belongings were a bundle of bedding and a little warmth from her mother’s last caress, which was soon dissipated in the alien chill.

The villager who brought her placed her in the care of the Valley Quarter women, and for several days she was passed from hand to hand like an unwanted object.

Those who did agree to take her in grudgingly allotted her a corner near the stove, but first they wanted to make sure she had no skin disease and that her bundle of bedding was quite clean.

Her eyes round with astonishment--her name was Haya-Fruma and she was five at the time.  She watched her pillows being divested of their pillow-cases and beaten out by the disdainful hands of strangers. Her own hand, missing the one she was accustomed to clutching, hung limply at her side, and she trembled in the chill blast of orphan hood like a leaf whose sheltering parent--tree has been felled.

Moved by pity, an old woman from the uptown hillside quarter took her in; but alarmed by the child’s ravenous appetite, she very soon returned her to the Valley Quarter slum. Here she roamed about in her peasant smock, her faded hair tangled and unkempt, her face devoid of a single endearing feature. Thus she was denied even that grain of sympathy which people are wont to impart to a strange creature if it but pleases the eye.

When she was eight, she slipped and broke her leg one winter morning as she was on her way to a house where she had been promised a meal. The frantic cries she uttered as she lay on the ice in the cold sunrise brought the early congregants rushing out of the nearby synagogue. They carried her into the nearest house and called the doctor. For some time, various families, with the eager willingness of do-gooders, took turns in looking after her, procured a bed for her in the local inn and kept bringing her bread and soup. But no sooner was she up and about than she was again left to her own devices. Again she became a street urchin, eking out her existence, as before, by doing chores for the local housewives. She had lost much of her former nimbleness: her leg had not been set properly, leaving her with a bad limp, and besides, the unaccustomed plenitude of food had made her put on a great deal of weight. But her strong muscles compensated for her slowness, and these she used to the satisfaction of all who employed her.

By the time she was twelve she was able to scour a samovar, lay firewood, kindle a stove, and fetch water from the well, and her bear-like paws scrubbed the laundry a dazzling white. On Sabbath eve she cleaned out the hovels of the poor in the Valley Quarter, whose single living-room served also as a workshop or grocery store during the week. The gleaming window-panes, after she had washed them, reflected the splendour of the world, and people removed their shoes before treading on her newly scrubbed floors. With a few deft strokes she would restore to wooden benches their original colour, as yellow as the yolk of an egg, make the brass candlesticks glitter like gold, beat out the feather pillows till they billowed and reared up like towers at the head of the bedsteads. Emboldened by her strength and her handiwork, amidst the warm, tempting smells given off by the Sabbath delicacies cooking on the stove, and encouraged by the kindly expression of the housewife who was working alongside her, she might for a moment abandon herself to the hope of sharing in the pleasant homely atmosphere that was being engendered here. But no sooner had she finished her work than she would be given her pay in unmistakable dismissal. Letting down her tucked-up skirt, she would pick up her basket and leave.

“There goes crooked Haya-Fruma!” children at play in the street would call after her; but the grown-ups, who appear to ostracize those of unlovely appearance, would not so much as look at her. They seemed to have reeled in the line of contact that usually forms a bond between people. And she, the world empty about her, would go her lame, hobbling way.

The beadle of the synagogue, in whose house Haya-Fruma sometimes washed the dishes, had a daughter whose appearance aroused in her an emotion akin to that dimly evoked by the memory of her mother. She was a good-natured girl of clear complexion, with a gay, sunny sparkle dancing in her eyes whenever she smiled.

One Friday Haya-Fruma watched her washing her hair--a golden cloud that lit up the dingy kitchen. On an impulse, with a feeling akin to awe, she stretched out a hesitant hand and touched the glittering locks with trembling fingers. Somewhat taken aback, the beadle’s daughter without a word pushed back her hair with a gesture of mild distaste. But her mother, who was standing near the oven, advanced on Haya-Fruma in a towering rage, brandishing her baker’s shovel.

‘How dare you crawl all over her with your clumsy paws!’ she screamed.

Haya-Fruma glanced sadly at her large wet palms, then looked up at a neighbour, who happened to be present, as if asking for her support. But the latter, like all the others to whom she looked with longing, pleading eyes, refused to meet her glance--like a blank wall one encounters where one had expected to see a mirror.

She left the beadle’s house and never returned there. In the other houses where she went to work she now kept her eyes lowered and she stayed as far away from the people as possible.

She preferred to be alone with the inanimate objects at the far edge of the yard or in a corner of the kitchen; for the kettle she was polishing would send back a kindly gleam, and the firewood she kindled in the stove would respond with a gay, dancing flame. By dint of her constant silence her speech became slow and blurred. Over the years, steeped in soap suds, laundry steam and slops, she herself gradually mouldered, like a dark, dank cell that has long been kept shut.

In time, she got a steady job as a drudge at the bakery in the uptown Hill Quarter. It was there that she caught the eye of a vegetable-gardener from the village of Kaminka, a lonely old widower whose children had all married and left home. Impressed by her strength--she was kneading a huge mass of dough in the kneading though he asked the baker’s wife, who was a relative of his, to act as go-between. The woman, who approved of the match, agreed.

She did not put it to the girl during the week, however, so as not to fill her head with idle, time-wasting thoughts; but on the following Saturday afternoon, as they were sitting out on the porch--it was springtime--she broached the matter to her.

‘You’ll be able to bake your own bread there,’ she explained, and some other women who were present, and who had on occasion taken some interest in the girl’s welfare, added, ‘Surely you can’t go on grubbing on other people’s dung-heaps all your life!’

With the little money she had saved up out of her wages they made her a woolen dress and a flowered apron, and bought her some new pillow-cases and checquered inlays for her pillows. When the vegetable-gardener turned up the next market day, they fixed the date of the wedding. It was arranged that this would be held at the house of the baker, who would have the food prepared in his ovens and supply the drinks.

The villager rather embarrassed his relatives when he turned up on the day of the wedding with a cartload of vegetables; but the marriage was later solemnized with due ceremony The velvet huppa was set up in the open, as prescribed by custom, and the girl was led under it, dressed in white and faint from fasting.* After the ceremony the children, also according to custom, accompanied her with loud hurrahs, which were this time possibly longer and more significant than their usual jeers.

The next morning, her head covered by a married-woman’s kerchief, she was seated next to the villager on his cart and driven along the bumpy road to Kaminka. She gazed around her with wide-open eyes, as if seeing some distant reflection of her native village: the same green glow of the luxuriant fields, the same song of birds merging with the blue stillness, seemingly charged with far-away undertones of her mother’s voice. Now and then the old man seated next to her would turn his head to glance at her, his white beard fluttering in the dense smoke of his pipe. Her kerchief, into which she had secretly wept after the ceremony the night before, fluttered back at him.

Arriving at his house, she roamed about for some time, unable to find a place for her chest of belongings. Finally she removed her laced shoes, which, she decided, were the cause of her inner discomfort. Seeing how neglected the house looked, and the day still being young, she changed into her workday clothes and got down to giving the place a thorough cleaning.

The dankness inside her very soon permeated her whole being, filling her with the dark desolation of a long-forgotten dungeon. It was not that her husband was unkind to her: most of the time he was too busy even to acknowledge her presence. He would leave for his fields early in the morning after a hurried prayer, return at noon to snatch a meal, and in the evening after his supper he would light his pipe and sit down to his accounts. And she, after pottering about aimlessly for a while, would lie down unobtrusively on a bench to one side of the stove, feeling rootless and without support--the same stray waif that used to be taken in for the night in the Valley Quarter.

The dining-able in the living room stood on a kind of hummock in the centre, the floor around it sloping down to the walls. Every time she came in from the kitchen with some dish or utensil she would look up there hopefully, like someone climbing out of a dark pit towards the light, as if expecting a kindly look or gesture. But the man seated at the table would go on staring out of the window now spotlessly clean‑at his fields. After he had left she would go outside, only to be confronted by the same indifference there. The houses all along the street turned blank, windowless walls to her, just as their occupants cold-shouldered her. Sick at heart, she would go indoors again and look about her for something she hadn’t polished brightly enough. Again she would scour and buff the copper pots and bowls, or scrub the wooden benches till they looked as if they had been newly planed. This done, she would let down her tucked-up apron, as she used to do after finishing her day’s work in one of the Valley Quarter houses, and unconsciously reach for her basket as if to leave the house.

After about a year had gone by like this and springtime had come again, her husband told her that he had just bought a milch cow at a neighbouring farm. A few days later he led a young reddish cow into the yard; she had just calved for the first time and was struggling to break loose and get back to the calf she had left behind at the farm. The old man, after tying the cow to a post in the lean--to which was to serve as a cowshed, warned his wife not to go near the excited, skittish animal, and went back to his fields. The cow kept on lowing plaintively--to Haya-Fruma it sounded like weeping, and she could not resist the urge to peep into the cowshed. The cow did not seem in the least enraged or violent. On the contrary, as Haya-Fruma entered, the animal turned to gaze at her as if seeking sympathy, mooing piteously all the time in the direction of its native farm. Gently she stroked its flank and spoke to it soothingly, using the few words of endearment that came back to her from the mists of her early childhood. Then she fetched some grass from the meadow, made a bed of fresh straw, and later led the cow out into the yard, where she would be able to keep an eye on her as she worked in the kitchen.

During the first few days, when it was still too soon to send the cow out to the common pasture in case she should bolt, Haya-Fruma led her every day to a little meadow beyond the bridge where the grass was rich and plentiful. The cow--she was called Rizhka--seemed to have calmed down and no longer looked sad, and Haya-Fruma, too, began to feel a sense of release as though the warmth of the sun and the freshness of the spring breezes were dispelling the long accumulated dankness inside her. And when one evening, as she sat alone in the doorway of the cowshed, the cow turned to her and affectionately licked her hand with its rough tongue, she--who had never known laughter--felt as though her inner being were pervaded by a broad smile, and the dark dungeon was suddenly filled with dancing sunbeams.

One day, her husband--still a vigorous man despite his age--suddenly fell ill and died. The rainy weather had kept him home in enforced idleness that day. Feeling strangely tired, he had lain down to a rest from which he never arose.

His three sons, who had farms in the vicinity, and his daughter, who lived in a nearby village, came to spend the Shiva at the house, and the miller from across the river came over with his sons every day to make up the minyan. Haya-Fruma prepared dishes of vegetables, which she picked in the garden, and respectfully served meals to the mourners in between prayers. She moved about silently, having removed her shoes in mourning, like them.

She particularly earned their gratitude by the way she behaved over the division of the inheritance. Whenever their arguments became heated she would slip silently out of the house, and she even looked the other way when one or other of the heirs slipped some object of value into his traveling-bag. When her turn came to state her claims and she was asked to produce her ketuba, she did so, but timidly asked whether she could keep Rizhka the cow instead of getting the money due to her. The heirs agreed.

She stayed on at the house until it was sold and its new owners came to occupy it. Then she sent her belongings by the greengrocer’s cart to the township, and followed on foot with her cow. That same day, she rented a wooden shack (long-abandoned for fear of floods) down by the river, near the flour-mill, and partitioned off part of its single room for a cowshed.

She easily readjusted to the old life. Every morning she placed the cow in the charge of the common cowherd and went to work in one of the houses in the long Valley Quarter street, or up on the hillside. Again she scrubbed floors, washed dishes, kneaded dough at the bakery. Wherever she went she would pick up crusts of bread and vegetable peelings and put them in her basket. Returning home in the late afternoon, she would mix them in a tub with bran, salt and hot water and stand in the doorway to await the cow’s return from the pasture. Then she would place the tempting mash in front of her and sit down beside her with the milking pail.

For both of them this was an hour of silent communion, as it were, a reciprocal bond between them, wondrously precious, such as only those who are doomed to silence can savour in their hearts.

Very soon the neighbours would come over with their jugs and pots to buy their milk, and the sweet stillness would be broken. Haya-Fruma would ladle out each one’s portion, then go for a short stroll with the cow down to the river bank, or up the hillside. Her reddish coat gleaming gold in the rays of the setting sun, the cow would round off her evening meal by cropping the grasses along the hedges. Passers-by would stop to admire her.

‘Did you bring her from Kaminka? they would ask.

‘Yes, from the village,’ she would reply. ‘But she was born on the Grafin’s farm.

‘A fine animal,’ they would say--words of approval for which the woman had yearned all her life.

There were all sorts of worries and anxieties, too, of course: the summer rainstorms when the herd was out at pasture, the danger of floods when the river grew swollen, and the fear of cattle diseases which sometimes ravaged the herds. And one morning, when she went out to the yard, she found Mottie the butcher sizing up her cow speculatively. It was a festival, and the butcher merely happened to be passing on his way to synagogue; nevertheless a shudder ran through her and her heart almost stopped beating.

Then there were the anxious days when the cow was ‘expecting’, and the yearly calving in spring, and the sad ordeal of having to separate her from her young, the tiny cow stall being too small to house more than one animal.

On no account could Haya-Fruma be induced to hand over the calves to the butchers. Instead, she sold them to be raised on neighbouring farms. With the money she bought a churn and vats to make butter and cheese, for the cow was giving an abundant yield, which could not always be sold the same day. She also installed her own oven in the shack and there--instead of slaving for others--she baked rye bread and millet cakes, which were eagerly bought up by the children when they came out of heder and by the peasants who came into town on fair days.

The patch of ground around her shack became green with beds of sprouting radish and onion, and the whole yard was filled with the fragrance of a village farm. On Sabbath, this blended with the singing of Sabbath hymns, for on that day a blind old scholar, who had no family, came to take his meals at her table. A man of deep learning and wisdom, despite his blindness, he was able to pave a path of light to the dark recesses of the woman’s soul. It was due to him that she started attending synagogue services and doing acts of charity among the needy.

She now went about dressed in a wide, pleated apron, which gave her a matronly look; and her face, framed in her coloured kerchief, beamed with the light of the deprived who have at long last come into their own, like a long, empty lantern in which a lighted candle has been placed. All who saw her going down to the Valley Quarter on some errand of mercy, wrapped in a fine shawl like a well-to-do housewife, her limp barely noticeable any more, would stare after her in wonder, as if to say: ‘Can this be Haya-Fruma?’

What they did not realize was that even the salty, arid soil of the desert, if only it be watered from living springs and fertilized, will eventually become enriched and burst into bloom.

Eight years had now passed since she had come back to live in the Bridge Quarter. She now owned the shack and the plot of ground around it, and her cow had brought forth its seventh calf. One day she was racked by a sudden stabbing pain, but never having known what it was to be ill, she paid it no heed. Very soon the pains became more frequent, however, and she began losing her appetite and grew thin and emaciated. It was then that she realized that a malignant illness, like a cankerous worm at the core of a fruit, was gradually consuming her. Calmly, with the same provident husbandry with which she had managed her affairs all these years, she took stock of her situation and started setting her affairs in order.

She handed over her bakery to a neighbour and stopped churning butter and making cheese, selling all the milk fresh. This gave her far more leisure to engage in charity, or listen to the blind old savant, whose wise words opened up new worlds to her.

She had a banister made for the steps of the Valley Quarter synagogue and bought a candelabrum for the women’s gallery, so that they should no longer be obliged to pray in the dim light that filtered up from the men’s section. When the month of Ellul came round and the blast of the so far reverberated through the township, she heard it as a kind of warning, for the pain was now lacerating her chest, like a saw cutting through a tree-trunk.

This made her decide to do what she felt could no longer be put off.

She sent word to the city contractor’s family (she had heard they had a proper cowshed built of bricks) informing them that she was prepared to sell them her cow. The fame of this animal having reached them, they readily agreed, particularly as their own cow had died some time before. The contractor’s elegant wife came over in person and concluded the deal with hardly any haggling. She placed her diamond ringed hand on the cow’s reddish-gold flank, as though to finalize the purchase, and the intelligent animal, seeming to understand what was going on, turned its head to her and mooed contentedly.

‘You’ll be very pleased with her,’ was all Haya-Fruma could say, gasping weakly.

That same day she put on her best clothes and led the cow down the path that ran beyond the pastureland to the back gate of the contractor’s yard, where a stout peasant girl--she had a kind face-- HayaFruma was pleased to note--was already waiting for them. She went over to peep into the cowshed, which really was built of brick and had a stamped-down floor like a human dwelling, looked back at the footprints on the path, along which she and the cow had taken their last walk together, then crossed the yard and left by the front gate.

She stayed in bed the next morning, there was no milking to be done, and drank down the analgesic drug the doctor had prescribed. Her pain vanished instantly As she sank into slumber, she felt as though she were becoming enveloped in the golden haze of an unseen sunrise. This radiance that dawned on her, as the blind old man had predicted, awaits all those who have been refined and burnished by suffering in this world.

* The bride and groom usually fast until after the ceremony, then immediately go into a separate room where they have their first meal together.

Dvora Baron

Translated by Joseph Schachter

The Oxford Book of HEBREW SHORT STORIES, Edited by Glenda Abramson

Oxford New York, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996