Debbie Nathan

I Feel Sorry for These Men
by Shira Gorshman
Translated by Myra Mniewski and Chana Pollack

****

Chana didn’t sleep a wink all night. She got up several times to give her husband his drops. He fell asleep and she lay there listening to his breathing. Her glance drifted from Leybele’s crib to the alarm clock as she waited impatiently for Leybke to wake up. It was now exactly time for his first feeding.

He could have been pleasantly distracting his mother but instead, the eight-month-old Leybke was sound asleep. The pink sole of his foot, the size of an egg yolk, peeked out from under his soft green blanket.

Chana quietly slid out of bed, tucked her husband in with the quilt so he would not feel her absence, and went over to the crib to cover the sole of Leybele’s little foot. She pulled over the low stool and sat down, lifted her left breast with her right hand, supported her right hand with her left and shook her head regretfully. Her breasts were sparse and light. She leaned back, folded her hands over her stomach and sat there deep in thought. Even though she had made her decision, she returned time and again to the same issue. Now, her thoughts were more on her mother than on her current dilemma. She was thinking about how Mother used to rush around on Fridays shooing the littlest children away and saying to Chana, “Help me, please, quickly, polish the candlestick holders and set the table. Slice some onions for the liver; your father loves a lot of onions. Give me the knife; I’ll cut the noodles. Get the fishbone ready for Daddy.”

When Father had already left for shul, Mother burst into tears, while lighting the candles, sobbing so it still echoes in Chana’s ears till this day. Call Bobe Malke she said. And when Bobe Malka came the first thing she did was yell to the little ones, “Get out of the house!!!” and to Chana, “Put on the kettle.”

“Don’t desecrate the Sabbath! The samovar is already full of boiling water,” Mother yelled back from the alcove.

When Father came back from shul Bobe Malke greeted him with a big smile, “A very gut Shabes to you Naftali. May you and your valorous wife grow old together. You forgot already what you did. You can pray with fervor, mazel-tov to you; this Shabes has brought you a son. You have a son and we’ve saved you some work. We just cut the cord and the fish is ready.”

With all that, Chana could not recall her mother exuding a single groan, just like she couldn’t remember her mother ever arguing or saying a bad word about anyone.

Chana sat entranced by her memories, her wounds still fresh from her parents having been wrenched from her. She didn’t notice the blueness that enhanced the dark frames of the windows, the wallpaper beginning to shimmer, that Leybele had opened his eyes, thrown off his coverlet and stuck a foot through the bars of his crib, jabbing her under her arm.

Chana smiled and grabbed him, immediately wanting to lay him back down to change his shirt which was soaked through right up to the collar. But she didn’t because he pursed up his lips and she didn’t want him to cry and wake up her husband. She wrapped him in the skirt of her robe and laid him at her breast. “Won’t you look at this, what a khapenish is going on here!” she said quietly, moving him from one breast to the other. When Leybele was done with the second one, Chana knew for certain that it was going to be today. She put Leybke in his crib and walked out quietly. Came back in, went out again and came back in.

When her husband woke up, the shiny teakettle, two small pitchers, and the bread platter, loaded with sliced rolls, were already on the table.

“Good morning to you, Dovid, how are you feeling? No, no, stay in bed! I’ll serve you.” Chana quietly warned, when she saw Dovid getting up.

He meekly laid back down and said, “Chanele, postpone it.”

“Nu, of course,” she cut him off, “I’m just going to run over to the clinic.”

“But you promised. You’ll keep your promise won’t you?”

“Of course,” Chana reassured him.

At breakfast she suddenly asked him, “Did your mother have a lot of children?”

“Just me and my brother, who died in the war.”

“My mother had eight.”

“Bahit zol men vern!” May we be spared.

“It was no bother to us,” Chana mumbled putting on her coat. And on her way out she added from the hall, “There’s a pot of kasha on the windowsill. Drink “shipovnik,” I’ll be a while.”

***

On her way into the clinic Chana thought, ”I came here to get sick.”

“Good, very well, Anna Moysayevna, I can do it right away.” The woman doctor
said cheerfully as if they’d known each other for years.

“I’m ready,” Chana agreed, gazing at an examining table where a woman sat sobbing.

“What do you say to this citizen? Just a little while ago she was weeping, pleading with us to help her. Now after everything is done she’s crying that she wants a child,” the woman doctor mocked.

“I completely understand how she feels,” Chana, growing pale, answered. “Doctor, please hurry, I beg you. My husband is sick again and I’ve lost my milk. I barely squeezed enough out of each of them today, ” she added.

“The milk will return soon after this is done,” the doctor placated her.

***

In a short while Chana was in a bed on the ward, impatiently looking at the door. As soon as she saw the doctor walk in she sat up.

“Lie down, kranke [sick person].”

Chana, holding her hospital gown closed, got out of bed. She spoke quickly and quietly, “I must go home this minute. I’ll say I left without your permission. I promised my husband I’d put this off. I have money. I’ll take a taxi.

“Ach, Anna Moysayevna, now you tell me. Why didn’t you say something before? Nu, calm down, you’re as white as the wall. I’ll get one of our cars to take you. But be careful! Remember a sick husband needs a healthy wife. I’ll send a nurse over to your house this evening,” the doctor promised and left the ward.

***

On her way into the house, before she even had the door closed, Dovid approached her and whispered in her ear, “Chana we have an unexpected guest.”

Chana didn’t even ask who the guest was but sternly said, “Enjoy your guest Dovid, but get in bed—this minute!”

Dovid obeyed. Chana threw off her coat. Her day had begun, just like any other.

The guest overstayed; ate supper with them; skillfully discussed the sputnik; told about the bonuses he gets every month; and didn’t notice the looks Chana exchanged with Dovid. Leybke did his—Chana walked out with wet diapers and came back with dry ones; remarked several times that Dovid needed rest; put the kettle up again because the guest was thirsty after the broiled mock-meat; poured tea; and kept looking at the floor.

“Why are you looking at your feet so much?” Dovid asked her.

“I broke a glass yesterday, I’m just making sure I swept up all the shards.”

“Oh yeah,” Dovid replied remembering.

Finally after another three glasses of tea the guest’s thirst was quenched and he left.

****

“Chana, sit down, something’s not right with you.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” she quickly came up with an excuse and went to answer the doorbell, which was ringing. She feared it was another guest but when she opened the door and saw the lady doctor from the clinic standing there she broke out in a smile.

“How are you feeling Anna Moysayevna, how’s it going?”

“Great! I’ve been resting all day.”

“Molodyets!” Way to go. You must take care now, all the nurses are busy, you must take good care of yourself! I’ll stop in again tomorrow.”

“No, no, don’t bother, don’t even think about it! Thank you so much,” Chana said escorting her out.

“Who were you talking to out there?” Dovid asked her.

“A shlimazl, ringing the wrong apartment,” Chana had her answer ready as she picked Leybke up.

Dovid watched her nestle the boy and happily said, “Zol zayn…davay, let it be! Leybke should not be an only son. Nu, why are you so quiet?”

Chana felt both of Leybke’s hands under her robe. Her heart melted in soft gloom. She sat down on the bed next to Dovid. She didn’t notice the light dimming, Leybke’s green coverlet turning dark, the blackness of the window frames distinctly abutting the evening twilight. With one hand on Dovid’s palm and the other on Leybke’s foot, Chana thought to herself, “I feel so sorry for these men. What gullible, weak creatures they are…”

***

Here is biographical information about the author. It’s taken from work by Faith Jones. To see more of Jones’ essay on Gorshman, see here.

Shira Gorshman was born in Krakes, Lithuainia in 1906. In 1920, at age 14 she left her unhappy home in Krakes to become a freethinker, utopian socialist, and—eventually—a writer. At 16, she became a mother.

After ending her first marriage, she moved to Palestine to join the commune G’dud ha-Avodah (The Labor Battalion). When G’dud ha-Avodah split ideologically, Gorshman followed the left-wing faction to resettle in Crimea, in the Jewish commune called Via Nova (New Way). When she arrived there in 1928, she found the work almost as difficult as it had been in Palestine.

In 1931 she met and fell in love with Mendel Gorshman, a young painter who had been sent from Moscow to paint life in the communes. Shira left the commune with him and her three daughters to relocate to Moscow, where exposure to his community of artists and writers launched her writing career. Her first stories were published in Yiddish newspapers and literary magazines in Kiev and Moscow.

Gorshman continued to write and publish in Yiddish, despite the Russian government’s strong condemnation of doing literary work in that language. Her work also managed to express longing for the traditional Jewish life of the shtetl as well as criticism of modern, urban Soviet existence, not an easy feat in the Stalin era.

Gorshman returned to Israel in 1990, after her husband’s death, to be with her daughters. There she made contact with the small community of Yiddish writers and publishers. Between 1990 and her death in 2001, Gorshman published five books in Yiddish; one was translated into Hebrew.