A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell Read Free Book Online Page B

she lifts her body almost imperceptibly, turning it towards me. Her long flat feet rise to find my shoulders, digging into the wings of my vest. She exhales audibly, her mouth slack, her brow knotted in serene incomprehension. Damp strands of matted hair cling limply to her head. Her mouth opens in a gaping frown and I see that her teeth are as rotten and as crooked as a rabble of thieves. I release the towel, allowing it to lay, where it has fallen, on her belly.
    “Perhaps, Ola, it would be best if … ,” but her fingers find my fugitive hand, returning it to the cloth as a jailer might a prisoner to his cell. And not unlike a prisoner, my hand obeys with a docile resignation, and even slight relief.
    Soon the bed is creaking with a furious monotony. Her feet have pushed beyond the nests they made in the shoulders of my vest and her heels are digging forward now against my back. Her hands flap about her two negligible breasts like birds of prey, then fly away with bits of her innocence in their beaks. If the Rebbe returned at this moment, what a dressing down he would give me! The increasing rattle of her tubercular moaning will, I fear, return her family to the door, pounding to get in. Ola cries out and I nearly jump with fright when her burning hands blindly find my face. Taking my head in her arms, she uses it like a pole to pull her now naked body from the bed. What she has done with her shift, I can’t say. She falls into my lap with such a loose clatter of bones, that I’m afraid she may have broken one of them. She swallows to catch her breath and I can feel the pounding ofher ribs against my motionless heart, against the quiet cavity of my chest. She uses the length of her arm, from her wrist to her elbow, to wipe the streams running from her nose, then slices it in the other direction, like a violin bow, to clear the tears from her eyes.
    Only then do we look into each other’s faces.

15
    Near dawn, Ola finally sleeps. Unable to calm myself, I cross the courtyard to the garage, berating myself all the while for allowing things to go this far. Never while I lived did I place myself in such a compromising circumstance! Not that the opportunities didn’t present themselves. On the contrary, how many times did Siedenberg’s wife send for me in her husband’s name on one slim pretext after another? Usually some far-fetched real estate scheme. I would arrive and immediately be shown into the study by the maid who would return not with Siedenberg but with Rivke, his wife, buxom in a blue or green or purple velvet dress. Fabricating apologies on her husband’s behalf—he has dashed out to this minyan, had been detained at that town council meeting—she would offer me strong Arabian coffee, brandy and mandel bread, and her company as well, until her husband might return. I would extricate myself as delicately as possible, eager not to hurt her feelings, and return to my office where I would kick myself the rest of the day for being such a coward.
    The garage is dark and gloomy and I find the pictures of my daughters, as Ola said I would, hidden away in a locker filled with old rags and oily motor parts. Their faces, peering out from behind the glass, are familiar to me and yet utterly unrecognizable. Would I even notice them, I wonder, if I passed them on the street?
    But Ola is correct. They are beautiful. My Hadassah, my Edzia, my Sarah, and my Miriam. Surely I would notice them, if only for their beauty, so young are they, and with such clear and open faces.
    I remove the photos from inside the frames, my hands trembling, as though I were committing a theft. Once or twice, the glass falls, my hands are shaking so. The sound of its breaking is muffled, mercifully, by a dirty woven rug. Here, too, in the locker, I find pictures of my sons. All but two have sailed away for America. How long has it been since I rode with Elke, my youngest, to the harbor (after he had trifled indiscreetly with a neighbor’s