Free The Lion Seeker by Kenneth Bonert Page B

of the snow rose smooth as a dune to the roof edge, white billows of it sweeping the rigid lake in waves of tumbling powder. Branka the Tatar woman stooping to light the pripachik for them on a cold Shabbos morning, the flame playing shadows in the wrinkled crevices of her wide kind face. Bloodhot milk squirting from the udder gripped in his tiny fist. Market days on Wednesdays filling the square with carts, and a goy peasant passed out drunk on the vegetable patch, snoring with his mouth open and he and Rively squatting fascinated, putting sticks and sand on the pale cracked tongue till Mame pulled them inside.
    But of the veil that hid the bottom of his mother’s face there is nothing, nothing except that it was always there, token of some sickness never spoken, a part of her.
    They have entered the part of the service called the Amidah, the Standing, where everyone rises in silence to face toward holy Jerusalem, to address God in the silent chambers of their skulls, their hearts. Isaac feels like he’s suffocating. Feels as if the embroidered cloth on the Holy Ark and the thick ruby carpets underfoot are being pushed down his throat. Mame, Mame—where is Mame, why is she not here? It’s such an obvious question, but he’s never really asked it. Suddenly he wants to ask
her
, more than anything, wants to understand. It’s a question that can’t wait. He turns and starts saying excuse me, edging past the seats, not looking back, knowing his father must be staring at him but also that he won’t break the holy silence to call him back.
    He walks home quickly, agitated. The shop has its
Closed / Gesluit
sign on the door. His hand on the door handle hesitates, he leans to the window glass to look inside. It’s like that time when he was free and little, running barefoot with Skots and them. Remember Skots? What’s become of that lot? He imagines Coloured faces under flat caps, workingmen now, or else loitering gangsters waiting to go to jail, sipping methylated spirits they first siphon through a loaf of bread to filter out the poison.
Auntie
Peaches probably dead of TB by now. How he came back from the Yards with that little dog, that poor little animal. She should have let me keep it, what’s the bladey harm? And here he is again nervous as hell to go in, this time not with a dog but with the guilty sense of having left shul. She’ll try to make me go back like she made me give that dog away. But I didn’t want to give it away, and I don’t have to now. I can tell her no.
    He’s surprised to see her seated at the front desk with her back to the door. He’s never thought about what Mame does when they’re all away. He expected cleaning, fixing; but here she’s motionless, bent over in a posture not so far removed from that of Abel over the guts of a watch. He shifts around, gains a better angle on what she’s doing. The cashbox is on the desk and it’s open and the top level of it has been lifted out and set down, opening a bottom space he never knew was there. He squints at it: empty, looks like. She must be doing accounts except that the cashbook is closed and she’s not writing.
    He watches her for fully a quarter of an hour before she shifts and he sees her hands are folding sheets of paper, a stack of other documents beneath; she pulls another sheet, curls forward again. The way she starts to rock slightly over these papers is familiar, it’s how the oldsters pray in the synagogue, as if they’re on a ship riding swells. Praying: this is what she does while we are in shul. But if she prays then why must she do it alone, why doesn’t she come to shul with us? And again the question so obvious, so massive he’s never put it to himself till this very day: why
does
she never go to shul, not even on Yom Kippur? Why?
    At that moment she lifts her right hand to her face. Paws at her eyes. Her shoulders quiver. God. He has never seen