The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo García Ortega Read Free Book Online Page B

Yakov had been working as an apprentice for him.
    Yakov has loved Sofia and Sofia has loved Yakov ever since they were adolescents. They have pledged to live happily, “come what may.” They will work together. They will protect each other from all evil. They swear that under the
chuppah
, the wedding canopy. “You will listen to me.” “I will listen to you.” “You will take my hand.” “I will take your hand.”
    After their wedding, they go to live in the same house where the unfortunate Elias lived when he was alive. He had secretly bequeathed it to his nephew before committing suicide. Apart from a workshop with all the tools a mechanic needs, there are around a hundred hens, enough to make a little business from the sale of eggs. “If those German dogs don’t make their lives impossible,” comments Rachel, Yakov’s mother, when someone rhetorically asks about the young couple’s future.
    It is an austere wedding: there is hardly any wine although they do have beer and the local mead that is brown and sweet. It is held at the Pawlickas’ house because the Cèrmik’s house has been flooded by the swollen waters of the River Wislok. “Don’t worry about the dowry,” Simon Cèrmik tells prospective father-in-law Samuel Pawlicka. “My daughter’s money didn’t get soaked.” “It’s not your money that will make my Yakov happy.” “No, it won’t be the money.” “He and the lot of us will be happy if those dogs forget us.” “May God will that.” “May He indeed.” Samuel repeats wearily as he looks up at the sky.
    While the two men talk, Yakov has started to sing. He sings very well, everybody agrees, his is a powerful, melodious voice. His best friend, Pavel Ramadian, a mustachioed joker from Armenia who came to Rzeszów with his parents to work in the Carpathian woodmills accompanies him on the violin.
    Sofia is proud and blushes when Yakov sings. The song he sings speaks of a falcon that flies alone until it falls in love with a pigeon, but the pigeon is afraid and flies far away so the falcon can’t reach her.
    Then Pavel sings an impish song to make the women laugh.
    There aren’t many guests at the wedding because nobody in the town is in a mood to celebrate. It is not a wedding full of happiness yet there is laughter and a will to live. They all congratulate and hug each other as if wanting to keep at bay the ill omens that give them sleepless nights, and congratulate the families of bride and groom and wish the couple a long life and healthy children who can pray for them when it is time to die.
    Few people are actually there, not because the Cèrmiks and Pawlickas are not much loved in Rzeszów—they are families the community appreciates highly—but because over the last year many neighbors have begun to flee further south with all their belongings, toward the Danube, Bulgaria and Greece, and from there to Palestine. Few people attend because few have stayed on.
    But those who do come to Sofia and Yakov’s wedding do so to feel they are leading normal lives with their friends, if possible for one last time. They eat with relish the geese reared by Raca and her single sisters. They dig into the tender flesh of roast kid, and trays of aromatic black pudding and devour the desserts—figs with honey, clusters of walnuts and blackcurrants in bittersweet sauce.
    They eat to drive away thoughts of when the plague will reach their door. They eat in silence. A silence broken by Yakov’s songs and Pavel’s sad music, Pavel who is drunk and sobbing. “It’s the bride. She is young and beautiful.”
    Pavel suddenly climbs onto a chair, and tells the children who are making such a din on tables at the back to be quiet, and offers a solemnly worded toast to the newlyweds. It is a long, poetic toast and he asks them to celebrate this wedding every ten years, all together in bigger and bigger parties. “So that the house may prosper and our souls as well.”
    They all raise their