Katerina Read Free Page B

drive them away with whips. Once, in their flight, they left behind a pair of colorful stockings. When I showed them to my mother, she said, “Don’t wear them now. Save them for the holy days.”
    Mostly, they would sell until evening. Then they would pack up the remainder of their wares and disappear. Once a Jew stood in our courtyard and offered us his wares. He was tall and thin, fringed with a black beard, and his neck was slender and long. Such a bare neck I had never seen in my life.
    Afterward, I got used to them, and sometimes I would steal a piece of cloth or a little packet of candy. I particularly remember those thefts. There was a kind of victory over fear in them and a repressed joy, because you were allowed to steal from them—or as my mother used to say, theft from a thief is permitted.
    Once my cousin Maria called to me, “The ghosts have arrived, and you’re here?”
    “What ghosts are you talking about?”
    “The ghosts with the suitcases.”
    “You frightened me, Maria.”
    “No need to be frightened,” she said coldly. “If you get used to them, you can get just what you need out of them.”
    My cousin Maria was seven years older. She had worked for the Jews, and she knew them at close hand. She, too, like all of us, despised them, but she already knew that they weren’t openly harmful, that they didn’t poison you. She had dresses and underwear she had received from them. Once she brought an embroidered slip and gave it to me as a present.
    My cousin Maria, may she rest in peace, was, God forgive her, as cold as ice. She didn’t know the meaning of fear. More than once I saw her stick a pig. She stabbed it without repugnance, and when the poor thing squealed, the expression on her face didn’t change. I once heard her cursing like a man. In the spring, I remember, she went up to one of the booths, chose a pretty shirt, and asked its price. The Jew named a sum.
    “I don’t have any money today,” she said. “Next time I’ll pay you.”
    “I won’t sell it to you,” said the Jew.
    “What do you mean, you won’t sell?” She spoke to him softly and firmly. “You’ll be sorry.”
    “I haven’t wronged anyone.” He raised his voice.
    “If you don’t give it to me, my brother will slaughter you in the field,” she hissed.
    “I’m not afraid,” the Jew shouted.
    “Too bad to die for a shirt,” she whispered, running away with it. The Jew was about to run after her, and he did take a couple of steps, but he didn’t go far. That very night Maria explained to me, “The Jews, unlike us, are afraid of death. That fear is their undoing. That’s their weakness. We’ll jump off a bridge, but they won’t. That’s the difference, understand?” Maria, God forgive her, was a brazen woman. I myself was afraid of her.
    In the village, the Jews used to appear at any time and in places you wouldn’t have expected them, near the lake or behind the chapel. The way they dressed made them very conspicuous. People would beat them or run after them, but, like the crows, they used to return, in every season of the year.
    “Why are they like that?” I once asked my mother.
    “Don’t you know? They killed Jesus.”
    “They?”
    “They.”
    I didn’t ask any more. I was afraid to ask. They filled my dreams and blackened many nights. They always had the same look: thin, swarthy, hopping on birds’ legs, and suddenly rising up. Once, I remember, a Jew crossed my path in the middle of the field. He handed me a piece of candy, but so great was my fear that I took to my heels as though fleeing a ghost.

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    F OR TWO DAYS I trampled along. Fall was everywhere, rain and thick fog, but more bitter than anything was my father’s indifferent gaze. He abandoned me the way you abandon a sick animal that you don’t want put down right away. I wasn’t afraid of dogs. I was used to dogs. Every time a dog crossed my path, I stood still and made friends with it, for I understand the language of