I Poor Esther Hirsch, Mende Speismann thinks, as she lies on her back and tucks the wrinkled clipping from Hamagid under the mattress. Three healthy fledglings she's got? She said so herself. One hundred and fifty roubles in her pocket? At least! Not so shabby. Then why the rush to put an advert in the paper? Why give out her name and the name of her family so publicly? With that kind of money, one could hire a gentile investigator, a fearless brute who would pursue her Meir-Yankel and not give the man a moment's peace, even in his dreams, and knock out all his teeth, save one for toothaches. Mende pulls out the clipping again, careful not to move the shoulder on which her son, Yankele, is sleeping. She stretches slightly to relieve her cramped neck, which her daughter, Mirl, has been jabbing with her elbows. The heavy breathing of her inlaws, may they live long, drifts in from the next room. Soon, Mende knows, she must get up, light the stove, dress her children while they are still half-asleep, and serve them a bit of milk in a tin bowl with grains of spelt. They will complain about the stale taste, as they always do, and she will ask Rochaleh, her mother-in-law, for a teaspoon of sugar, just one for the children to share. And Rochaleh will look back at her with disapproval that stretches her wrinkled face and scold, "No sugar! Nit! The party is over!" But after a few moments she will sigh in resignation. Every morning, a single teaspoon of sugar is grudgingly brought out. And what is it about this notice of the loss suffered by poor Esther Hirsch that has made Mende check and reread it constantly for the past fortnight? Although she would never admit it, this advertisement gives her pleasure, as do the two others that ran in a previous issue of Hamagid (one entitled "A Cry for Help!" and the other "Urgent Appeal!"), and the dozens of other similar notices that keep coming, day after day, from across the Pale of Settlement. Women who have been left behind, women chained to a husbandless marriage, miserable women, schlimazel women abandoned by their husbands with deceitful assurances and charades. One husband leaves for America, die goldene medina , with promises to bring the family over to New York; another sails for Palestine to be burned by the sun; a man tells his wife he is going into town to learn a trade, only to be swept up in the intellectual circles of Odessa; a father swears to his daughters that he will come back with a hefty dowry and, all of a sudden, one hears that he is "kissing the mezuzahs" of Kiev bordellos. Mende knows that only fools find consolation in the knowledge that others suffer the same woes as they, and yet contentment steals over her as she reads, overcoming any sentiment of feminine solidarity that she might have felt with these women. She is not like them, she will never be like them. She has not rushed off to publish advertisements, she has not complained to the leaders of the community, and she has not circulated descriptions of Zvi-Meir Speismann, the man who tore her life to pieces. She will never do any of this. Mende's limbs are aching even though she is still in bed, as if she has strained herself in her sleep. The sour odour of sweat wafts in from the room of her elderly inlaws, God bless them. Even the reek of her husband's parents is cause for thanking the Blessed Holy One. True, their house is only a dark, dilapidated old cabin of rotting wood, with two small rooms and a kitchen. But the walls are sealed against draughts, and it has a clay floor, wooden roof shingles, and thick-paned windows. And sometimes, a small living space can be an advantage, particularly if the kitchen stove has to heat the entire house. True, chicken is never served here, and the Friday-night fishcakes contain little by way of fish and plenty by way of onion. But borscht and rye bread are served every lunchtime, and cholent stew without meat on Shabbat is not so terrible. The Speismanns could easily have turned their backs on Mende. After all, they couldn't stand their son, Zvi-Meir, as it was. When he was young, they had hoped that he would make them proud, and they sent him to the illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva with the notion that he should become one of its top students. But after his first year, they heard that their son was openly declaring that the yeshiva's rabbis were all hypocrites, and that the Vilna Gaon himself would have been ashamed of them. "They are a bunch of good-for-nothing wastrels," Zvi-Meir said. "No more than dishonest schemers masquerading as hakhamim ." So Zvi-Meir left Volozhin, declaring that he would be better off as a poor pedlar than a Torah sage, if being a sage meant that he had to be officious, greedy, and aloof. This change of career notwithstanding, Zvi-Meir still found plenty of reasons to blame and complain. He would bring his pedlar's cart to the market but never encourage passers-by to buy his wares. He would stand there like the congregation's rabbi, convinced that people would flock to his cart as they flocked to synagogue on Shabbat. But the "congregants" walked on by, thinking: If he does not behave like a vendor, why should I behave like a customer? So the Speismann household was one of the poorest in Motal. By the time Zvi-Meir abandoned his wife and children, they had already hit rock-bottom. They lit their house with oil instead of candles, and ate rye bread with unpeeled potatoes. When Mende tried to reason with her husband and give him business advice, he told her: "When the hen starts crowing like a rooster, it is time to take her to the slaughterhouse." That is: never you mind. Heaven forfend, there's nothing more to add. #### Pressure on her chest is disrupting Mende's breathing. Her children cling to her on her narrow bed. She keeps her body still, lest her fledglings awake, as her soul cries out, "Why are these children my concern?," only to be immediately beset by guilt--"God Almighty! My poor babies! Heaven protect them!"--and she prays to the good God that He leave her body intact, so that she can provide for her children and offer them a place to rest their heads, and that He unburden her from the heretical thoughts that rise in her mind like the Yaselda in springtime, as it overflows and floods the plains of Polesia, turning them into black marshes. Another indigent morning lies in wait for her and the children, begging at the gates of dawn. Yankele will go to the cheder and Mirl will help her with the housekeeping at the Goldschmidt residence on Market Street, where the rich of Motal live. Together, they will scrub the floor tiles of the jeweller's opulent stone house, and once again, they will ogle Mrs. Goldschmidt's pearl necklace worth three thousand roubles, the value of an entire lifetime of only just making ends meet. From there they will go on to more of the same at the Tabaksmann household, and then they will walk to the tavern: perhaps they will need a hand there too, and perhaps Yisrael Tate, the landlord, will treat Mende to another old issue of Hamagid that no one wants to read anymore. Cloths and rags, scourers and buckets, floor tiles and ovens, tin bowls and sinks. And so their fingernails peel away the time, one house after another, the smell of detergent clinging to skin and soul. Their toil ends at sundown, leaving them just enough time to regain their strength for the next day. And so the waters of the Yaselda surge on. Excerpted from The Slaughterman's Daughter: A Novel by Yaniv Iczkovits All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
