Creature (a story translated by Joan Bernick)
Aleichem, Sholom
SHOLOM ALEKHENKS CREATURE A hitherto untranslated story TRANSIATED BY JOAN BERNICK I. One Friday in summer, several of us were leaving the teacher's house. We walked quickly, almost ran,...
...And blows, Creature would get often, almost every day, from its mother...
...And the river sparkled and rocked, mirroring the blue cap of heaven that shivered in the water...
...We could go to the river for a whole day, to swim and catch fish...
...And Creature could sing, with the voice of a . . .bat...
...But the moment the rebbe or the rebbetsin came back, it was silent and dejected again, just as if nothing had happened...
...The happy warm summer flew away...
...Only sometimes when I remembered the little bird Tzippor ben Balak, the image of Creature came to my mind...
...This too is a 'suffering living thing,'" he would answer her...
...The one thought bored into my mind like a gimlet: Death...
...And still the thought didn't leave me—always the thought: There is no Creature any more...
...Let us do it—Motl and me—we'll catch them quicker," said Red Motl, and he jumped in with Black Motl...
...and a boy "metsutseli...
...bend down, Chayyim . . . toward the bank, Chayyim, toward the bank...
...He kept turning his head toward it, like (forgive the comparison) a cow to her poor little calf, and uttered many deep, deep sighs, many heavy, heavy groans...
...Nobody loved Creature, only pitied it, and most of all its father, the rebbe, Reb Zorachl...
...Not because anyone grudged it its life—God forbid...
...We were free...
...Dovid-Leib the water-carrier had been there with his barrel...
...Come here—why are you running away...
...Dead...
...I tried to think of something else, of something to make me laugh...
...You can go back home, now...
...I made the door squeak, and I gave a cough...
...Creature...
...I stood with Creature under the canopy...
...A dumb tongue, can't talk, all it knows is eating, always eating, always hungry, an endless gut...
...They shone like the sun, they bloomed like roses...
...That is, there were fish in the river, but they didn't swim into the net that the two Chayyims were holding— somehow, they didn't have a desire for it...
...and when the rebbetsin wasn't looking, he would bring it a piece of bread, or a potato, or a drink of water...
...The dear words, "free from school, for a whole week—free...
...What should we do with the little bird...
...A compassion upon living things...
...I opened the door and saw: On the earth lay a something, covered with black...
...Why had it died...
...Home, you little scamp...
...It always sat in one place, for it couldn't move, poor thing...
...he said...
...Want to crack nuts...
...Another answered "chav-chav" like a dog...
...We walked quickly, almost ran, because we were set free for Sabbath...
...Only I alone, I who had known Creature better than all the others, because at one time I ate meals at the rebbe 's—I stood riveted, unable to move from the spot...
...All the windows were open...
...1 reminded myself of the three neighbors with screwed-up faces—it didn't help...
...A poor man dare not be favored, even with thriving children...
...dead...
...you ask...
...Your friends are waiting for you...
...he had filled the barrel, let his horse drink, washed his handsome red face and elf-locked beard and dried himself with the skirt of his greasy coat—and gone away, into town...
...What was life...
...What does it mean, really: dead...
...The bird shivered, fluttered, moved its little wings, opened its yellow beak, like a tiny child when it wants to eat, and chanted, "Tudelihuhu, tudelihuhu...
...The mother couldn't look at it...
...We began to dance for joy, to bleat and moo, like calves...
...A feeling of remorse sprang up in us...
...A terrible sadness came over me...
...water, "tarbeli...
...Deeper, Chayyim, deeper...
...Creature had a language, a few strange words...
...But with the thought of freedom, it came back to me, and stabbed my heart: Creature...
...We all rushed in toward the oven...
...I started toward the house, to look, only from a distance: How does one die...
...Fish...
...That is, if there had been fish, they would have caught them...
...and besides, we were hungry, and we knew that pot roast and fresh, fragrant Sabbath bread were waiting for us at home...
...but when we saw the rebbetsin sitting next to Creature, with red weeping eyes, we felt ashamed, and rushed out again...
...Help...
...Wind is me...
...Then, how Creature would swell with pleasure...
...Not a living soul to be seen, not a peep to be heard...
...From what...
...Will you eat an orange, Creature, an orange...
...Don't be afraid," she said softly...
...then we would make Creature part of the ring, so that it could play with us too, if only from a distance...
...We swam for a long time, until we turned blue, and shivered, and our teeth chattered...
...the twittering of birds and the chirping of locusts greeted my ears...
...For a long time, the bird shivered, blinked its eyes, trembled and fluttered in our hands, and then: it dropped its little head on one side, rolled up its eyes, and—it was dead...
...At first, we schoolboys were afraid of Creature: We couldn't bear to look at its hunched back, or hear its weird laughter...
...The women had come to help her bewail Creature, but they were really weeping for the living, weeping for the father and mother, alas, whose child had been born a cripple, and had died a cripple...
...he rubbed his forehead and loudly chanted the "Rov Papai says" along with us...
...we all sang and danced—and just then there sprang out of the net right on top of us—a big, gray, ugly, nasty frog, with two stupid watery eyes...
...There is no more Creature...
...The place where Creature sat was between the big brick oven and the wall, in a little corner on the bare earth—there it sat, its feet tucked under it, eternally still and silent, so that days would go by, whole days, and you forgot that there was a Creature in the world...
...VIII...
...Creature lay all scrunched up like a lump, with its eyes closed, and its big frightening mouth open...
...Now, now, now...
...Dead...
...I was very curious to know whether he was crying—HOW DOES A REBBE CRY...
...If someone died—a young woman in childbirth, or a bride before the day of the wedding canopy, or a father of children— Creature came to mind: "What then...
...Not a cloud, not a wind...
...but it had an old wrinkled face, two long lean hands, thin hair and small black shining mouse-eyes...
...Creature is dying...
...and the rebbetsin sat next to it, her feet under her, swayed and wept and cried out, always the same wild chant...
...Creature knew that when its name was called out like that, there were blows coming...
...So we schoolboys, scamps, jokesters, rogues, would tease Creature...
...He is a Mechayei Hameisim, brings the dead back to life...
...A mooncalf, a monster, a heap of scrapings, an affliction for somebody else's sin...
...I said...
...Creature was the child of our teacher, our rebbe, Reb Zorachl, a crippled girl, a pitiful hunchback...
...But Zorachliche insisted that they all knew less than a corpse...
...I'm running to get the sextons from the burial society...
...A summer day: the heavens washed, pure, clear as a mirror...
...I longed to run away—but something in me wanted to see what was happening in there...
...he would say, looking at it from a distance with great pity, and sighing softly...
...It would open its big frightening mouth a mile, and laugh its little weeping laughter...
...But as time went on, we got used to it, and finally it became our friend...
...Basye the healer was here— she said that it's bad, Creature is going...
...He is a great God, He can if He wills it...
...Nu, he took ill and died in four days...
...Tudelihuhu...
...Then we stretched out on the glowing sand, under the hot sun and the blue cap of heaven...
...What was your life in this world, what was it...
...Dogim...
...How "boy" became "metsutseli," I don't know...
...And the rebbetsin wrung her hands and bent over the sick Creature...
...And Jacob-Eli's face looked as if he had just made a business deal...
...It's caught...
...What had Creature lived for...
...apples and potatoes, "topetses...
...she became afraid of it, like a spider "forbidden to touch on the Sabbath because it is ugly...
...Home...
...What had the little bird lived for...
...Her translation of a Sholom Aleichem memoir, "Warshawsky's Songs," appeared in moment in May 1980...
...And it had a mouth so big that a whole apple could go in and disappear...
...VII...
...One like Creature won't die, don't be afraid...
...In town, Creature was well known, was in everyone's mouth...
...Oi, Creature, if I could bury you...
...made my heart leap...
...dead...
...I covered my ears hard, hard, not to hear—but it didn't help...
...The joy in that voice was like the joy in the voice of someone on Columbus's ship, at the moment when they first saw America...
...I saw my friends blinking their eyes, ashamed to look each other in the face...
...It was a warm, bright beautiful summer day...
...All the boys were clapping and singing, "One two three, yodl-lidl-li," and Jacob-Eli with swollen cheeks was jumping on one foot, and the rebbe and the rebbetsin wept and wailed...
...The rebbe slowly raised his head, then, his eyebrows— and I saw red eyes...
...Creature...
...Your eyes closed, you wished, you wished to lie with your wet body on the hot dry sand, eyes half-closed, and look, and think, and doze—suddenly a voice shouted, "It's caught...
...He sat down to study with us, and appeared to be deep in the Talmud...
...A feeling of pity sprang up in us...
...The doctor said, from an inflammation of the brain...
...Creature...
...Sometimes she cursed her husband with death, because he stood up for it, because he pitied it...
...Then the rebbetsin, the teacher's wife, would scream, "Creature...
...They talked this way only from pity, and from the thought that God is a great God, and conducts His little world with much understanding and kindness—but, on the other hand, sometimes—He shouldn't punish me for saying it— sometimes, He does something not quite right...
...Dead...
...Fish...
...God knew what he might become...
...at its head was a lighted candle...
...Stripped naked as Adam, we swam, came out and rolled in the mud like pigs, and back into the river again...
...Opposite her were three women, near neighbors, their hands on their hearts, looking at the rebbetsin with such unnaturally screwed-up faces, that if Creature hadn't been lying there on the ground, you would have had to be stronger than iron not to burst out laughing...
...They had artfully tied two shirts together by the sleeves to make a net, and they were catching fish...
...The rebbetsin herself gave it food and drink, but she did it without pity, without heart, pushing food into its hand as if to say, "Here...
...Have you been singing...
...Say your prayers and go outside...
...The rain knocked down the tombstone and buried the grave, and the story of the bird was forgotten, as all that the earth covers is forgotten...
...Why was it needed in the world...
...It was good—endlessly, boundlessly good...
...Thus Big Chayyim directed Little Chayyim, and both fishermen, bent over, up to their necks in the water, dragged the net slowly out to the bank, looked and looked into the shirt—no fish...
...A soul...
...not a cloud, not a wind . . . the sun smiled, the sun baked...
...I looked again—it wasn't Creature at all...
...Everything was still...
...For example, the same Reb Zorachl had had a son, named after the great Rabbi of Berdichev, Levi-Yitzchok...
...The rebbe isn't here...
...Is a poor man allowed to have something...
...Of course, it ended in laughter, and we were even livelier and happier than before...
...It called bread "dead...
...Its feathers drooped, and the poor little thing was trembling, fluttering, raising its wings, constantly opening its yellow beak, like a tiny child when it wants to eat, and uttering a hoarse little "PI...
...The sun smiled, the sun baked...
...Fish...
...Creature looked pitifully into my face, and imploringly reached out to me its thin little hand with the bent dry fingers...
...This too is a soul...
...What did God have against your soul, your guiltless soul, to bring it down from His holy seat, down here to suffer, to be an affliction for somebody else's sin, a scourge upon me...
...We rolled in the sand, we wallowed in the mud, we splashed in the river...
...The two new fishermen went eagerly, step by step, bent far over, almost crawling on the river bottom...
...I shut my eyes, hard, hard, so as not to see...
...and when the rebbe came home with the orange, he found us like statues, and praised us, saying that we were fine boys, to sit so still...
...Reb Zorachl said, from learning—from studying too much...
...Suddenly, a boy cried out: "Oh...
...You know what...
...Another minute, and everything would die away...
...Two of us, Big Chayyim and Little Chayyim, were still in the water...
...said Jacob-Eli, the rebbe's son, a stupid boy with swollen cheeks...
...The two fishermen were holding the net, and one shirt sleeve was jumping about...
...Summertime . . . the heavens washed pure, clear as a mirror...
...One said, we should throw it up high in the air, and it would fly away...
...Gevalt...
...For the sake of what, for the sake of whom was it created...
...It looked like a lump on the ground, until you saw a little head on top, with a yellow beak—a baby bird...
...We all ran together to the river, to swim and catch fish...
...Zorachliche, when she felt gloomy, would pour out her whole bitter soul on Creature...
...and Creature would pull its little head between its shoulders, like a turtle, and be silent...
...From then on, Creature was even more talked-of in town, and suffered even more at home...
...Buttons to play with...
...Jacob-Eli said to us the next morning, jumping toward us on one foot...
...You shut up, Creature...
...We were stunned...
...Be a good advocate for us in Heaven, for your father and mother, for the other children, for all our dear and true ones...
...On the other hand, such joyful news: we would be free for a whole week...
...Father and Mother and all of us have to sit and mourn for the seven days...
...I saw Creature covered over with black...
...Why did I live so long, that I have to bury you...
...For a whole week—free...
...If you gave it a piece of bread, it would stretch out a long, dry arm, with thin, strangely bent, dry little fingers like a monkey's, snatch the bread and quickly carry it to its mouth...
...What is it like, when someone dies...
...Creature is dead . . . dead...
...When no one was there, it would venture to open its wide mouth, stretch out its thin neck, and sing something that no one could understand, always ending, to the chant-tune of the priestly blessing, "Tudelihuhu...
...For whose sake had it lived...
...It was only a young little bird, with a yellow beak, Tzippor ben Balak...
...Remorse for what...
...V. One morning, the rebbe's son, JacobEli, the stupid boy with swollen cheeks, met us with a joyful face, as if he were going to tell us great news...
...And I ran out to my friends...
...These thoughts pecked at my mind, and found no answer...
...A dumb tongue...
...If the rebbetsin came in, she would scream, "Creature...
...Why did I have to bear you— a plague upon me, a heavy plague...
...We formed a funeral procession in honor of the little bird, dug out a grave in the garden, wrapped it in a shroud (half of a white handkerchief), buried it and placed a tombstone over it—a small board inscribed here lies the little bird tzippor ben balak...
...Its entreaty went through me: My soul struggled...
...slowly, now...
...Even the frogs we had heard until then, with their kerrrkerrr and their bulbulbul—had gone to sleep...
...One boy screwed up his face like a monkey, and mewed like a cat...
...Over in a corner on a little bench, sat the rebbe, his head hanging down, his hands on his knees...
...Once in a long while, Creature did make a sound, and then it was a strange-sounding laughter, that might be laughing, or crying, or coughing...
...I'll bury you...
...Why did it die...
...Perhaps an orange...
...The laughter didn't come...
...I covered my head with the quilt, said the Sh'ma Yismel, and fell asleep...
...How old it was, I don't know...
...Get up now," they said to me...
...the rebbetsin called out to us...
...In the late afternoons, when the rebbe had gone to the House of Study for afternoon prayers, and the rebbetsin was in town, we would play avinu-melech, and kammer-kammer, and ekach-and-mekach—games that you could play with girls—and Pesl, the rebbe's daughter, would dance in the ring...
...my heart shrank, and tears choked me...
...On one hand, such terrible news: Creature was dead, poor thing...
...I myself don't know—but remorse...
...Such a little Levi-Yitzchockl was he, that when he was only 11 years old, the town rang with him...
...then came the wet autumn, with weeping cold days...
...The child, she said, had died from an evil eye...
...My two sisters, pretty girls with red cheeks like peaches, were standing near me, wearing white and green dresses, their braids woven with red ribbons...
...and every sigh and every groan tore out a piece of my heart...
...God knows what He is doing...
...You should have run out of my belly, the belly of your mother, before 1 bore you for my great sorrow...
...mustn't study a whole week, because Creature is dead...
...Sh'ma Yisroel...
...I fell asleep, and I saw a black wedding canopy...
...the end...
...And one argued that we must take it home, because it was a pity, a "compassion upon living things"—and to this we all agreed...
...And the fifth gave himself three slaps on both cheeks, just like that, without a word, and went running crazily out just anywhere—and all the other urchins started out after him...
...Why...
...I ran as if my feet came right from my shoulders—far, far away "to where the black pepper grows...
...Choke yourself...
...People begrudged her, she said...
...Do you want a roll with goose-fat...
...But we could see that his mind was not on the Talmud, not with Rov Papai, that his whole soul was over there, next to the oven...
...The rebbe's gone to buy an orange...
...What do you want, Creature...
...and we all stopped...
...Today you're free from school, for a whole week—free...
...Its dry lips moved, and it let out a hoarse little shriek, like a sleeping bird: i . . .i...
...Give you a piece of gingerbread...
...Everyone jumped up and tore down to the waterside...
...Jews...
...Creature never answered, but always stretched out its lean arm with the thin little fingers, and looked into our eyes like a hungry dog when it thinks that you are just about to throw it a bone...
...And we brought the little bird home, forgot we were hungry, and tried to nourish it, gave it water in its little beak...
...And all of us who had conducted the interment signed our names: Berl, Yosl, Dovid, Motl, Kalmen, Getsl . . . Joan Bernick writes prose, verse and song lyrics, and translates literature and opera...
...The two or three washerwomen who had been standing by the river, slapping their little boards on the wet laundry, had picked up the wash on their shoulders and gone away, into town...
...Creature isn't dead yet...
...And when he saw us sucking a piece of candy, or cracking nuts, he would say that if we wanted to do a good deed, we should give Creature a few nuts...
...Still was the water, still the heavens, still everything around and around...
...A bright eternity may you have, a bright Garden of Eden...
...Creature is still alive . . . and even now, if God, Blessed be He, wishes it, He can...
...A little bird...
...Zorachliche would say...
...While Creature lived, we had felt it, just a little, as a responsibility on our heads...
...One said, we should let it sit on the ground, and its mama would come...
...When I reached the door, I heard weeping, a fearful wailing, and the wild chant of a woman's lamentation: "Woe is me...
...III...
...We took to our books...
...A fever seized me...
...I woke up...
...Everything was at rest...
...Why does such a thing live in the world...
...We all stood there, our hearts torn by this news...
...What was death...
...We all ran hendem-pendem up the bank, over the glowing sand, shrieking, "Gevalt...
...Looking at Creature, I remembered the little bird with the yellow beak that we had once found on the ground...
...That night in bed, when the lights were out, I saw Creature covered over with black, and the rebbetsin's crying and wailing rang in my ears...
...died last night...
...and now when we heard that Creature was dying, it seemed to us that we hadn't done as much for it as we should have...
...A third quacked like a duck, and a fourth spun round on one foot and sang, "One, two, three, Yodl-lidl-li...
...I thought...
...The town?— The world rang with him...
...Creature is dead...
...only, there weren't any fish...
...1 heard the rebbetsin's crying and wailing...
...I longed to run out to my friends...
...We had never seen her so loving...
...And I saw the rest of the rebbe's children, sitting on the ground, weeping quietly, except Jacob-Eli (he had jumped away on one foot to tell the sextons to bring a stretcher, as joyfully as if they had sent him for musicians...
Vol. 8 • May 1983 • No. 5
