Descant, Volume 19, Numbers 3-4, 1979

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Chrysalid

The girl was the only bright object there, behind the infants' wear shop on College Street. A small plot of fenced city yard, grass struggling in an hostile soil. The fence, never painted, appeared skeletal, was ringed with discarded household effects; rusting relics that once had a use and no one had bothered putting out to the trash. And tires, hubcaps, a jack, broken. They might have been holding up the fence.

She lay on a suncot, bikinied, sunglassed, absorbing the sun. Movie and fashion magazines on the ground beside her flapped open in the light breeze. It was hot. She turned to bake on her back for a while, lay with her head cradled in her arms, thinking, thinking of nothing. Her hair, long and slightly curled, curtained her face. It was a pretty, petulant face, framed with filaments of honey. The onlooker, had there been one, would see her face again as she turned over once more, adjusted the cot to a semi-reclining position, tugged at the stubborn ratchet, then sat up.

She lifted her hair away from her perspiring neck and felt immediate cooling relief, then was hot again as she let her hair fall again around her shoulders. Reaching under the cot, she pulled up a bag, took out a bottle of nail polish, let the bag fall. Her teeth pulled in her bottom lip as she concentrated on drawing the brush evenly over her nails. A garish purple that appealed to her, looked good, she thought, with her tan. She paused in the act of turning another nail into a perfectly oval grape. What would she wear tonight? If it was cool enough she could wear her white turtleneck; look good with her darkened skin.

A fly buzzed annoyingly, big and black; kept landing on her. She slapped at it, kept missing. Goddamn! The nail polish was dropped back into the bag, she wafted her hands around, drying the nails. Tentatively touched one; it was dry. Withdrew a bottle of sun-tan lotion out of the bag, began to grease it over herself again, being careful not to get any of it in her hair. Wouldn't have time to wash it tonight. Wish she could have a cigarette. They were there, in the bag, but if her Ma saw, she'd have a bloody fit.

Think of the old bag and there she is, leaning out the upstairs window, shouting 'Sheila!'. Sheila didn't bother to lift her head, made as though she'd heard nothing. Without looking, she knew how her mother would look. Face red, angry. Mouth open in a loud black whine. 'SHEILA!' The girl settled, squirmed back down on the cot, lifted her face to the sun, eyes closed.

"SHEILA! You get up here right now! You heard me!"

Sheila grimaced, lifted delicate fingers to her sunglasses, pushed them up slightly, innocently looked to her mother. "You want me? You calling me?"

"Get up here!"

Bitch! Stupid old bitch she is, the girl thought, looking now at the empty window, the blind grey with dirt, hanging crookedly.

The cot was hers, she'd bought it with her own money; damned if she'd let it sit there so Eddie or Mona could use it. Folded it, took it into the back room behind the store, then went outside again to climb the back stairs to the apartment.

The hall stank with stale cooking odours. The walls, an indeterminate non-colour, frosted with years of handprints, closed in on her. Better not touch them; she could feel herself shrink, repelled; and to think she had, years ago. Filthy mess, like the rest of the place.

It was cool going up the stairs, her bare skin pimpled.

The door opened into the kitchen; the linoleum greasy with spilled suds from the wringer-washer. Her mother, hair-bunned and grim, feeding a sodden mess through the wringer, dripping on the floor.

"Who do you think you are anyway? Laying out there like that! You'd never think to help me, eh?"

"I did the dishes this morning, didn't I?" What the hell!

"I did the dishes this morning", her mother mimicked.

Ugly old bitch, Boobs hanging, stomach sagging. Could even see it through that old rag she's wearing. You'd think she'd be smart enough to colour her hair, not leave it like that.

"There's other things ... there's always other things", her mother raged now, angry with her daughter's face. Deliberately blank. Her mother called her arrogant. Well, maybe she was - tough shit!

"I never sat around like that - when I was a girl I helped my mother!"

You never were a girl, old bag. And no one, no one could help you! Biting her tongue, wanting to say it.

"Yeah, well, what'd you want me to to do? I'll go change now."

"I'll change now - the lady! Sure you'll change! You're going to serve in the store like that? Looking like a tramp?" Fuck you, ma.

"Where's Mona?"

"Never mind where's Mona! She does plenty - more than you. You get going now!"

Down the hall to her room. Hers and Mona's. Her mother's voice following all the way. Who the hell gives a damn what she says? STIFLE! Yelling about her friends. Says who, she can't go out tonight?

One side of the room neat, the other like the rest of the apartment. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate neatness, cleanliness - she did. But why bother in this dump? Her kid sister could go on dreaming, thinking that by keeping her things neat it would make a difference. Well, it didn't, nothing did.

Suddenly her sister's attempts to cope infuriated her. She walked over to the unpainted chest, pulled the top drawer open, looked at the neat piles of faded clothing, pulled them half out, rumpled them. Left them hanging half out of the drawers. The slippers and extra pair of shoes timidly pointing their toes under her sister's half of the bed struck her as assertive. She kicked them under. Pulled the spread cunningly tucked under the pillows to hide the most worn portion, half off the bed.

Why the hell her go downstairs? Always her!

Sheila pulled off her bathing suit, let the pieces drop to the floor and kicked them aside. For a few minutes, she stood naked, admiring herself in the mirror, craning to see all of herself. A big contrast between her natural skin tone and the tan. Too bad she had to wear anything at all. She turned, admired her rear, wiggled, tossed her hair. That's what she looked like. She'd kill herself before she'd look like Ma.

Footsteps coming down the hall - she pulled on a pair of jeans, grabbed a tee shirt.

"What's taking you?" Standing there, hands on hips. "You don't think you're going to wear that outfit downstairs ... get some decent clothes on you."

"Ma ... I need a few dollars ... for when school starts. I need to get some stuff."

"What stuff? I just gave you ten dollars. Didn't I? Her mother raised a suds-lathered arm to push the straggling hair out of her eyes.

"Yeah, yeah you did, but that was last week. I had to get bus tickets, went to a movie. There was a few things I needed - it's gone."

"Gone! Go to work for more if you want it!"

"Okay! Okay, I'll quit school then. I don't mind going to work!"

"You don't, eh? You're only fifteen. Think you're so damn big, don't you? But I don't care, it's your father wants you to finish secretarial."

"Ma, I NEED the money!"

"How much? Never mind, I don't care how much. Five dollars is all you're getting. Hear?"

Back down the hall, footsteps shaking the wall. The smell of the wash, sour and grey, made her feel like throwing up. Good thing she didn't notice the mess on Mona's side. The kid'll go whining to her later, though, when she finds out.

Into the living room. Her mother's purse on the couch. She picked it up, flicked on the television set, the sound turned off. She stood absently for a moment, fascinated by the interior of a palatial home, its inhabitants acting out some peculiar sequence, a man and a woman, gesticulating, soundless, funny. Clicked open the purse, pulling out the small change purse. Fifteen dollars and sixty-five cents. She took fifty cents and a five-dollar bill. Changed her mind, thought a minute, and took a ten, put the five back.

Out through the room, then turned back to shut off the TV. Passing her mother's commitment to gentility, the lovingly polished surfaces of the dearly acquired dining room suite, where no one had ever eaten. Cherry stain. Not bad. She dug into her back pocket for her key and experimented. Running it over lightly, raised a skinny ribbon of wax. Didn't the old lady ever hear of wax buildup ... it was on TV all the time? Digging it in, she drew her breath. A scratch, white. Ruining the surface of the table. She quickly drew several others, a pattern of X's. Listened to hear if her mother was coming.

In the kitchen, moving sideways to pass her mother carrying a basin of steaming clothes to the porch to hang on the line. "Hurry up!" Grunting with the weight of the wet clothes.

"And if you think", her mother's voice shrilled down the stairs after her "that you're going to see that motorcycle bum again, forget it!"

In the store, her father, skinny and drawn-looking, glanced up from a customer. When the store was empty he called her over to him.

"About time!"

"Yeah. Ma only just told me."

"I told you yesterday I had an appointment at the hospital. Said be down by two. What were you doing, so busy?"

She stared at him, the deep ditches in his cheeks, hanging. Voice querulous. She recalled vaguely how, long ago, he'd laughed sometimes.

"Oh yeah, well I thought maybe Eddie would come in."

"Don't think, Sheila! Do like you're told, eh? Learn to do what you're told! Now c'mere."

"Yeah?"

"Christ! Don't you learn how to speak proper English at that school? You forget over the summer? Yes! It's yes, not yeah!"

"Yeah, sure."

"Look, unwrap this new shipment of layettes. Put them out on the shelf. Neat, eh? Don't make a mess of it. I'm going to the bank when I get back, then you can go."

"Okay."

"That's all you got to say to me?"

"?"

"I'm going to the hospital for tests - it's serious. I might have cancer - don't you care?"

"Well yeah, sure! Sure I do."

"How's about a kiss for your poor old Dad?"

A kiss. Yeah, sure.

"Can you spare a few bucks for me? I mean, I have some expenses to cover, what with school and all ..."

"Speak to your mother."

"But ... I ..."

"You know you're not supposed to come to me for money, Sheila. Speak to Ma, she looks after things like that."

She watched him count the money in the till, slip the bundle under the coin container, slam the cash register shut. He looked around the store, mentally ticking things off; satisfied. Outside, she watched his head bob up and down, walking past the window, out of sight.

She began unpacking, stopped to help a customer. Disposable diapers. Then a lady came in to buy some bibs, a diaper set. "Do you wrap?"

"Huh?"

"Do you gift-wrap; this is a gift for my niece," the woman explained, the sharp-nosed face scrutinizing her. She made Sheila feel stupid. Sheila assumed what she felt was a superior air and loftily said, "No, we don't bother. Usually too busy to do that kind of thing." Snappily too, she said it. No time to do 'that kind of thing'; beneath her. Wrap your own crap, lady.

She thought the woman would leave the stuff, walk out, but she paid for everything and didn't even notice she'd been short-changed fifty cents; too busy looking at Sheila.

Let her look, I could be in the movies; probably wishes her daughter looked as good. Let her look, she'll recognize me when she sees me on TV some day.

The store empty, Sheila began rummaging around, looking for tissue paper. She assembled a fair bundle, was satisfied with her efforts, glanced at the disarray on the shelves, outfits haphazardly lying one atop the other, the carefully interleaved tissue paper, smooth and opaque, no longer separating them.

A woman huge with her pregnancy wobbled in, interrupting the speculative thrust of her mind. Sheila turned a warm smile on the woman. Wow! Any day now. She should stay at home so no one'd have to look at her grossness.

"How much is the christening gown?"

"Christening gown?"

"In the window." Sheila turned to look in the direction of the pointing finger. No price on it, not for sale. Her mother's showpiece window dressing.

"Ten bu ... dollars."

"I'll take it!" The woman, her face padded with a triumphant flush, beaming. A real bargain. If she only knew. And Sheila almost told her, wanting to share the joke with someone, anyone; suppressed a giggle.

When the woman walked out clutching the box, Sheila locked the door, pulled the blind. Emptied the till into her bag. A lousy forty-five dollars. Sixty with the sales she'd made. Seventy counting the money she'd taken from her mother.

Going out to the back room hanging over the yard, she locked that door, crumpled tissue paper around the wooden floor, led a trail into the store. The paper caught well, a busy crackling sound, spreading nicely, caressing the cardboard boxes piled in neat rows along the back wall.

She walked back into the store, her feet tingling, feeling as though she were stepping on pins; yet pleasurable, the sensation. She stood there, watching the flames reach, following her it almost seemed, like an obedient pet, reaching tentatively at first into the store, then bolder, seeing her maternal, her prideful look of approval; pet fire ventured closer, finally made its crackling progression into the store.

Sheila jammed a chair against the knob of the door at the back-stairs, leading up to the apartment. Time for Ma's afternoon nap. Beauty sleep. She felt light-headed, giggly, like the first time she'd been humped.

She stood for another moment, mesmerized by the flames; beautiful, hungry pet; nicer colours than a kitten, a canary. The flames, red, blue and hungry, spread to the cartons flanking the walls, licked the counters. Slow to catch, the wood, but getting started, getting into the swing of things; like her at first, slow to like it, but learning fast.

Sheila let herself out the front door, locked it with the key from the till. LOVELY day! The sun still bright, washing the sidewalk with a golden glow. Heat inside, heat outside. College Street looks fine on a day like this. And there's the whole day ahead of her.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Descant, XXV - XVI

30 March 2009 - The Language of Spring

The Language of Spring
Grumpy winter wavers on the cusp of leaving.
Rain washes lingering snow and ice,
releasing the gardens to light and air
hyacinth, tulip and daffodil bulbs
thrust through sodden black earth.

Songbirds burst the air with trills and whorls
waking us to newly bright mornings.
Street hockey nets suddenly disappear;
skipping ropes as suddenly appear.
The bright sounds of children at play
released from winter's snowsuits.

Last summer's chipmunk back at last
searching those same offerings, freed from
hibernating comfort. Tiny red squirrels
sit unscoldingly on tree branches
as we scatter peanuts, wait 'till they
skitter down, turning them in clever hands.

First flush of life on the Corkscrew Hazel.
Fat fuzzy promise of the Saucer Magnolia.
Off with the rose cones. Bushes released from the
cold, dark purgatory of protection thorn
a gash on my eager hands.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld

Threshold, M.O. Publishing Company (2)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Apocrypha

A quaint pastime this, visiting
reconstructions of
old pioneer villages,
revelling in the leisurely pace
convinced that time passed with grace
in that mellow yesterday.

But those who preceded us had
scant time to reflect on their past,
less yet to reflect on a future
where an idle class would while
away free hours in idyllic memory.

Truth is, young women's gravestones
whose hieroglyphs make no mention
of childbirth fever
and those of pale-cheeked
consumptive children. Truth is
the village doctor rolling pills

of false hope. And truth is
hands lopped alongside logs in
lumber mills - and rhythmic racket
of looms driving websters to insanity;
farmers struggling to free the land

for stubbornly unproductive soil;
and fisherfolk lost to a raging sea.
All these and more mark the
realities of their day yet we
unknowing, envy that unenviable

existence when a slower pace
was taken at the cost of tasks
at hand. Our visit here is a
nostalgia whose image we treasure.
That life exists, here, in our heads.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Threshold

Outlook, July-August 1987

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Does Anti-Semitism Exist In Japan?
There has been a spate of articles recently in various news media alleging that anti-Semitism is rampant in Japan - if not rampant, then thriving in fertile soil and about to become epidemic. Could that be so? For what reason?

From my personal perspective here in this intriguing country I have been able to gain some little experience regarding how the Japanese view others and also to formulate opinion based on both my experiences and the reports and counter-reports which have been published. On the basis of those elements, I would have to state categorically that anti-Semitism certainly does not exist in this country. It never did, and in all likelihood, given the nature of the people, their culture and their religious orientation such as it is, it never will take root here.

Buddhism and Shintoism are gentle religions. Neither has attempted to influence unbelievers to share the tenets of their unpervasive and quiet belief. Japanese are not basically 'religious' people; they absorb the tenets of their religion in their everyday lives, their observances, and their adherence to the most basic of moral dictums which suggest that one respect one's neighbour. This is accomplished without any of the overt symptoms generally associated with religious adherence, and there is no 'guilt' associated with this lifestyle relating to religion, merely an acceptance of the way things are, as they should be.

Japanese share all the characteristics, behavioural and emotional, of people from other areas of the world. The emphasis may be slightly different, but it can only be brought home again and again that basically people are the same, have the same needs and desires wherever they live. Japanese have become adept at sublimating their more immediate needs and desires, however, for the good of the society as a whole; the society has a tendency to 'act' in unison, sharing an accord, and a vision of their nation as one unified by shared values to an extent unseen elsewhere. While there is a tendency to racism, then it is a kind of reverse racism in that the focus is on the perceived unitarianism of the people, their common heritage and 'purity of race' (despite its speciousness this is a unifying principle in Japan). Japanese have no wish to dilute the essence of their tightly-knit society. They have no wish to embrace the presence of foreigners, foreign ways or a dilution of their belief in the invulnerability of their cohesiveness. They feel self-sufficient and have a tendency to tolerate the presence of non-Japanese as being quite 'other' than themselves.

Upon coming to Japan a foreigner is faced with opposing wickets, one identified for Nationals the other for Aliens. Through the very structure of Japanese society foreigners may never feel that they are fully accepted as Japanese citizens, and in fact citizenship is denied even third-generation-born foreigners on Japanese soil. Yet the Japanese are generous, kind, courteous and have no wish to appear totally exclusionist to the outside world by whom they often feel beleaguered.

The cause of the furor accusing Japan of being anti-Semitic was the recent publication of several books by well-known Japanese (one actually a member of the Diet ... the Japanese parliament), on the purported social and economic influence of Jews, particularly Jews in America, on the world economy. The authors attempt to point out in their books that Jews control major American corporations such as IBM, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Standard Oil, Exxon, AT&T, and others. One of these books by well-known Japanese author Masami Uno, has sold almost 600,000 copies. Certainly this might seem to represent a sizeable readership, but it's well to remember that:

a) Japan is a highly literate society;
b) its people are curious about almost anything;
c) there has been reason, particularly of late, to make Japanese more keenly aware of the world economic situation;
d) Japanese are aware of and admiringly curious about a perceived Jewish ability in finance, economics and business.

And, not least, the population of Tokyo alone stands at 12-million people. Proportionately, then, not that large a number have read the book in question, and of the number which has, it is ludicrous to assume that the book has been read as anything but a curiosity.

Anti-Semitism has no place in Japan historically; a community of Portuguese Jews existed in Nagasaki as far back as the 15th Century as traders, and there has never been any record of persecution. In Hiroshima, there exists a monument to the Holocaust. During World War II, a Japanese consul by the name of Sugihara issued visas to over twenty thousand Jews in Lithuania, and these Jews were permitted to land in Japan. The background to this is outlined in a book by Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, titled The Fugu Plan - the untold story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II.

At that time, thousands of Jews settled in Shanghai, then held by Japan, and lived out the war in safety. Although Japan was an ally of Germany, when news of the unspeakable horrors performed against Jews came to their knowledge they were horrified. When urged by Germany to annihilate the Jews under its protection,Japan emphatically refused, although she was eager to please her allies in any other manner asked of her.

The most recent article on the issue, published in The Economist, suggests that the books in question aimed to target the Jews as the economic movers and shakers (albeit wrongly) in a surrogate effort to 'get back' at the United States (toward whom Japan is currently struggling in a classic love/hate relationship) which many Japanese believe is actually 'run' by Jews.

Again, this is an uninformed minority, eager to grasp at any straw to explain Japan's current tight position where she is being wedged in and censured on all sides for her trade imbalances and her questionable protectionist trade practises. To imagine that the ideas are shared by a significant number of Japanese is wrong.

The Jewish community in Japan is a small one, consisting of two hundred families. But it is a comfortable community, here in Tokyo. None of its members have experienced anything akin to anti-Semitism, nor is there a belief among its members that such an emotional disease could possibly become endemic here. In an interview with a prominent member of the Tokyo Jewish community, the very idea was discounted as not merely remote, but absurd.

A former resident of Japan, who had spent almost half a century as a trader here, now residing in New York State, when made aware of the recent controversy, wrote the major Japanese newspapers with an open letter for publication, condemning the very thought of anti-Semitism in Japan being possible. His own long-term personal experience, his knowledge of past events, and his exposure to the Japanese people and deep respect for their sensibilities, made him recoil in disbelief at the thought that anyone could possibly believe that the assertions could have some basis in fact.

Although Japan does certainly have some 'faults' in her perception of those other than Japanese (and that, on her own soil) only one without knowledge of the people, the society and its history would ever attempt such a smear - unless the reason for it was purely mischief of a most evil intent.

c. 1987 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Outlook, Vol.25, No.7-8

Threshold, M.O. Publishing Company (1)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Snowshoeing Mud Creek

The wind slaps our faces
as we wide-leg it over the flats
to the ravine. Snow sifts
through our snowshoes as we
wind back up, clasping spruce trunks
dangling cones, the air redolent
with their fragrance.

Under the trees are
nocturnal imprints of
snowshoe rabbits and their
piles of pellets. We slide the slope
then the cusp of the creek
then finally skitter like
day-old foals on the ice.

We walk the frozen creek
below huge snowbanks
where here and here
cedar clumps have slipped down
cluttering the creekbed.

Above, traffic sounds recede
leaving only the cries of
Pine Grosbeaks fleeting the wind.
High above us blasted Pines
dot the banks, their greens
harsh against the shadowless white.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Threshold, 1979

Canadian Jewish Outlook, July-August 1984

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

The Burning Bush: Poems and Other Writings (1940-1980)
by Aaron Kramer, Cornwall Books, 1982

This collection by the American academic, translator and poet, Aaron Kramer, The burning Bush, represents, as his long-time friend and publisher Thomas Yoseloff tells us in his introduction, a "highly subjective" group of poems, "to represent the essence of his forty years of literary output". And, as was the intent in this careful selection, the reader does "come away with a thorough understanding of the essence of the poet's oeuvre".

An understanding, moreover, which leads one to marvel at the sensitivity of Dr. Kramer's perceptions, his intense and burning interest in all which surrounds him, his ability to evoke, through a careful selection of impressions - Everyman. And yet, although he too is Everyman through his detailing of a life - his life - he is yet unique, not only in the way that we all are as distinct personalities shaped by genetic endowment and environment - but this is a scintillating soul which compels us, after reading one group of poems, to go on reading, discovering, and admiring the essence of this person whose legacy to the world is this special creative talent.

The Burning Bush is both reality and metaphor. Dr. Kramer's cultural/historical roots shape his sensitivities and his ability to discern, to cull the precious element from what might appear to be the pedestrian; dross of anyone's existence in a way that celebrates life, in a manner that, in the true creative mind, sings of the glory of life. He is aware of the dark side of life, of human nature, of history. Never forgetting that he still is able to gently move aside the curtain of despair, the cushion of apathy, and find that precious spark in every situation, in any person; surely we all have the potential to perceive, to appreciate as he does?

Many of these poems were published in his previous nine collections. these are poems of joy, of longing, of bitter regret, of fond memory and of despair too in the knowledge that time is such an inexorable and ineffable element; and too little of it is apportioned to each one of us. But there is also present in this collection humour and whimsy and a deep and abiding love. The love of a son for his father, his mother and later, as a motherless young boy, for the sister who would try to mother him.

In the segment titled Family: 1 - the poet speaks of a story his mother would tell him to encourage him to eat, as a child. In A Lunch Remembered, the mother croons a story: "Once, in a forest a mother bird/sang while her babies sat sleeping/Hushabye fledglings! At dawn you fly/over the deep wide waters./Alone I'll die,/but hushabye;/you'll live, sweet sons and daughters..." And the child then asks: "Did they live? The story's finished/Did she die? Eat up the spinach!/What's the matter. Ma? You're crying!"

So it's little wonder that the child grown to a man could write such poems as The Song of the Burning Bush. "It blazes wild, this bush of woe-/not water speaks to its need, nor wine;/only weeping and blood - there grow/such furious berries, that all who dine/go screaming and dreaming over the seas,/seeking an altar for their knees." And this man did, as he promised in that poem, "tear the testaments out of my soul". The poems are his testament. His avowal of a life realized, well lived.

In the group of poems included in The Holocaust selection he writes in The rising in the Warsaw Ghetto: "If a word from Warsaw came,/unsurprised we took the news;/April's sun had set aflame/fifty thousand ashlike Jews". Briefly holding aloft the flame of life, those ashlike Jews affirmed their right and although might briefly triumphed leaving them in a funeral pyre of immense proportions, their actions, their affirmation still lives through the burning lines of a poet.

In the poem Tour, he tells us:
In four languages, the guide
explains as she has twice a day for years,
that we are entering
one of the quaintest sections of the city,
formerly the Jewish quarter.
Inside the synagogue she points out oddities.
'Notice the walls!'
Perfectly arrayed, as if being marched
are names -
seventy thousand Czechoslovak Jews,
their dates of birth and deportation.

"A touch on the shoulder/'Must you always be the last one/back on the bus?" he is asked, when he feels immersed in the memory of his immense black experience which he feels in his very marrow, as though it had happened to him; a brother Jew, knowing it had happened to him, and will continue to be a part of a Jew's experience, his life.

This man, this poet, this son, father, lover, husband, considers himself a fortunate man. Fortunate in the love lavished upon him by a father and mother who cherished their children; fortunate in his memories of them, in his memories of his own children growing up, thriving, in his companionship with his wife. He calls himself, in poems, Mr. Lucky, Mr. Glucklich. In the poem Mr. Glucklich Takes a Shower, we are given an instant history of the fondness of the human memory, as, under the shower which becomes "a world that has only water":

He is thirty-four, circling Lake Garde,
guzzling in his thirst its Giorno blue;
he is twenty-four, wheeling his baby
up to the fountain in Washington Square;
he is fourteen, repaying spray with madrigals
the length of Gravesend Bay;
he is four, above the shadowy Hudson,
on a mountainside across from Newburgh,
joining his mouth to the nipple of a spring;
he is the first breather ever cradled by the sea;
he is the sea god.

Dr. Kramer writes a universal experience, in an exquisite language of understanding. Hindsight is something we are all gifted with, but more, so many of us have experiences which, although we perceive them as being unique to ourselves are but repetitions of limitless human experience; they repeat themselves generation after generation. In Hindsight we are thusly informed:

You kept us safe, you kept us soft,
you trembled when we sneezed or coughed;
you gave your life for our life's sake -
no doubt it was a grave mistake:
but it was a mistake of love
which we are also guilty of.
Our children also figure out
what we are whispering about.
To keep them soft, we too grow hard;
to keep them safe, we too are scarred.
And through our love for them, we see
your love's true shape and quality.

To have been able to read this collection represents an experience of recognition. There is a sublime beauty in the strength of so many of these poems. No man could wish a finer epitaph to leave as a reminder of his own life and experience, and the richness of both. To evoke in the reader the sense of kinship, of empathetic recollection is no mean feat.

Some poems, such as those comprising the first half of Minotaur, although certainly not lacking in conviction, do not, however, quite manage to persuade this reader; there's almost a lack of intensity of experience itself ... a perception which is lifted in the second half of Minotaur when one no longer feels a distanced onlooker, but is once more taken by the poet into the inner circle of experience.

This is a diversified group of poems, to which the reader can only respond with a sense approaching love for a stranger, the writer of these poems, who happens in the end to be no stranger at all.

c. 1984 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.22, No.7-8

The Fiddlehead, Number 123 (2)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Snapshots

There they are
in neat black and white
and decked like cards.
First those of the
children loping wide-legged,
snowshoeing through the ravine
and down the frozen riverbed.

There's one with bare treetops
as though arrested in surprise
that anyone would be so silly
as to fall backward
intent on taking pictures.

Another, your son's mouth
round with anger,
you plaguing him with your
'stand right there
... and look natural'.

And then your daughter,
wearing the apples of your eyes
on her cheeks,
weaving filaments of hair
over her face to hide
from the lens.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Fiddlehead, Fall 1979

The Fiddlehead, Fall 1979

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

I'd Have Kicked Her Out

I've known Willie for most of my life. When we were kids, he used to spend more time at my house than at his own. My mother didn't really mind, but held her breath whenever he was over. She collected all kinds of bric-a-brac and always expected him to break something, although he never did. She was genuinely fond of him but we all knew that if ever anything was to go wrong, it did when he was around. He attracted trouble the way a magnet does iron filings. Not anything particularly serious, just awkward mishaps. And nothing ever seemed to go right for him. My mother used to say Willie was born with two left feet - attached backwards; that if trouble, like a meteorite, landed somewhere by chance, inexplicably Willie would be there to bear the brunt of its weighty misfortune.

I always felt protective towards him, as you would for a younger brother. I think my mother deliberately used Willie as an example to demonstrate to me all the do's and dont's, while at the same time engendering in me a protective kind of pity toward those less fortunate; making me feel, you see, responsible in part, for his welfare. She'll never know how burdened I've been by that; probably she felt, piously, that she was 'doing her duty;', preparing me for the sensitive role of 'my brother's keeper'.

I'm the only one now who still calls him Willie, now that his mother, and mine, are dead. Even Maureen, his wife, called him Bill. She once said to me, "Willie's a great clown's name", inferring of course, that he was just that. But he isn't; only one of life's unfortunate stumblers.

Not that long ago, Maureen told me, with that whining inflection in her voice that always grated on me, that he had been slapping her around. How it affected their two little girls, I hate to think. She wanted me to talk to Willie, to tell him it's not civilized behaviour. But I felt, why should I? After all, she had driven him to it. He never used to be that way, would never even play hard contact sports, couldn't stand the thought of guys slamming each other into the boards playing hockey.

He liked mechanical things at high school, used to fool around with cars. There was even a small aeroplane in the auto mechanics class he took, where they would take the engine apart, put it back together, kick it around. Though they were never quite certain it would work. He thought he'd like to be a racing car driver, something like that. He sets type now on this city's biggest paper's opposition. We all suffer disappointments we learn to transcend.

Like me, a good sprinter with aspirations to develop my ability, maybe be a long distance runner, compete in international meets. I'm a postie now.

Part of gaining maturity is learning to adjust to reality, but Willie's head still inhabits some other world that disappointed him; that was his first big souring.

I said we were close, and we were. He couldn't understand, didn't seem to want to for a long time, why we couldn't spend as much time together as we had as kids, once I met Susan and wanted to spend all the time I could with her. He was that possessive. When Susan and I got married he used to hang around the place, get on her nerves. He wasn't one of her favourite people, even then. And by the time we were expecting our first child Willie married Maureen who just happens to be a distant cousin of Susan's. Very distant, she reminds me.

At first we spent a lot of time together, the four of us. Even went on a summer vacation together the first year they were married. By then Susan didn't mind him quite so much since he spent more of his time shuffling his feet after Maureen and made fewer demands on me.

That summer we rented a cottage in New Hampshire, a large one. We hiked the White Mountain range, went to visit all the local tourist traps, had an altogether good time.

Then near the end of the second week Susan found Maureen and me together, in one of the bedrooms. Susan had been out picking berries with Willie, but decided to head back. Later, she told me she had felt uneasy, didn't then know why, a premonition perhaps. But there she discovered us in what might charitably be called a compromising situation.

It wasn't exactly my fault. In that I didn't initiate contact. Not that the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Maureen likes to flaunt her ripeness. She's the provocative type. Slutty, Susan says. But there's a great divide between the thought and the act.

I had been nursing a hangover from the night before, lying in bed quite innocently when Maureen came in wearing a halter and shorts and before I could say much of anything, off they came and she stood there, whispering candid encouragement. I'm only human after all. My response was pure reaction. Anyway, that part is old history.

We never did tell Willie. All the screeching and hair-pulling was over before he got back, and although the remaining few days were very cool, he mentioned it seemed as though the girls had seen enough of each other to do them a while. For obvious reasons neither Maureen nor I wanted him to know what had happened and Susan was just there, part of the conspiracy. Silly bugger, not to guess; Susan wasn't talking to any of us, even him, and he couldn't figure it out. God, I was miserable!

He thought that Susan was just being 'reserved' when she refused to see them again after our return home. Likeable as he is, the truth is he is not very perceptive. Because Susan's side of the family had a well-earned reputation for snobbery, and Maureen never let him forget it, it seemed a reasonable explanation to him. He never, after the first few refusals by Susan to get together again, questioned her motives too closely. I think he felt embarrassed for me, that I was married to someone like that. I hoped the situation would never arise that I might have to enlighten him - as much because I regretted my part in the affair, as my hunch that Maureen's overtures to me were no isolated lapse.


More recent history is that I dropped by one day last year and found him in his living room in Centretown, head in his hands, crying. He's the emotional type but I had never seen him quite so shattered before.

"She's gone", he said, sitting there with a woeful expression, red hair standing in spikes, socked feet digging miserably into the shag rug. Although their place was always a slovenly mess Maureen expected everyone to take their shoes off before coming into her house.

"Who's gone?" I asked, knowing who, but stalling for time, wanting to respond in a believable way. So much for friendship and spontanaeity.

"I got home early today" his voice quavered thickly through his hands. "We've gone on strike and I don't know when we'll go back. We think the press is going to lock us out." Dully, dutifully, telling me the story of woe he was preparing to break to her on his arrival home - to an empty house.

"I got home early today" his voice repeated and his tone turned peevish, he raised his hurt eyes "and she's nowhere! So I go looking around, calling for her. There's nothing cooking on the stove, the kids aren't home from school - and she's NOWHERE!"

"Well, what do you mean she's gone?" I said. "She's probably slipped out to visit with one of the neighbours. You know how women are." Hell, I wasn't trying to give him false hope. I really thought she had left, but there was always the possibility.... Because, if you think of it, nothing so good as her leaving him could possibly happen to the poor slob.

He glared at me. "What do you take me for, Steve?" For a moment I was taken aback, thought perhaps he knew more than I had given him credit for, was myself prepared to plead innocence; of knowledge of her behaviour more than anything else; after all, it was mostly guesswork on my part augmented by family gossip which I take to be a vicious instrument of women having too much leisure time on their hands. "I looked", he stressed. "I said I looked around, didn't I? I looked around and half her clothes are gone! The fur coat she just wheedled out of me - gone!" He looked down at the rug, drew his arm across his face, his sleeve absorbing the moisture around his eyes. "No note, nothing! She's just gone and I don't know why. JESUS!" he suddenly erupted "why'd she take off?"

I sat there across from him, wondering myself why. She seemed to have it made here. But I was glad, and hoped she hadn't taken the children with her. He would be better off, as I said, without her. Maybe he'd straighten himself out, pay off some of his debts, stop drinking as much, without her goading him, teasing, threatening him. I know she did all that not only because I had witnessed it but also because he kept asking me if Susan did things like that too. She wouldn't, she just isn't the type, but I recall telling him once women were like that, always trying a man's patience.

I wondered myself, sometimes, why I couldn't be honest with him, tell him what I really thought of her. The thought of her telling him what had happened between us those years back, even embellishing it for effect; she was vindictive enough to do it; held me back. So much for trust and friendship, all those nice virtues that my mother tried to inculcate in me that make a relationship. It sometimes seemed to me that his life was an ongoing drama; he headed toward some unhappy end and I a fascinated yet disaffected spectator. The guiltier I felt toward him the more drawn I was to his side. She mixed feelings I had about Willie I couldn't easily explain to Susan. She calls my attachment to 'that ass' unnatural, 'idiotic'. Well.

A knock, a timid knock at the front door and he looked up, startled, a flush spreading across his face. "Maybe ..." he said, started to get up, then sat back hard and stared at the rug again, a disgusted look on his face. I answered and there was a thin old lady standing there, her mouth a slit of acerbity, long skinny fingers holding an envelope; her manner one of a messenger bearing important news.

In ancient civilizations they used to kill messengers bearing ill tidings. I only flirted with the idea of asking her to remove herself. "I'm here to see Mr. MacLean", she said sourly and I knew she would never allow me to deliver the message to him; she wanted the honour.

I know her type. The kind that always peered through windows hidden by lace curtains, who scuttled crabwise to the door whenever they heard me leave the mail on my rounds. They'd open the door quickly, so no one could look inside, clutch their mail and slam the door. Their lives were private but everyone else's was an open book for them to peruse.

I stepped aside and she came in, walked down the hall to the living room, stopped in the doorway. There she addressed Willie. "I've a letter for you" she said, holding it out, forcing him to rise and take it from her, a puzzled expression on his face. He stood there, holding the envelope, turning it over. He observed both sides were blank and looked at her questioningly.

"From your wife" she snapped. "Gone off to Montreal. With HIM, over there", and she inclined her head sharply to indicate the other side of the street. "I've got your girls, caught them on the way home from school. Don't worry about them, they're drinking milk, eating cookies. They're used to it" she explained with what sounded like satisfaction. "Used to be locked out of the house, sometimes."

She paused and a sneer smeared her wrinkled face. Malevolent old bitch. "Thought I'd give you a chance to get used to the idea. You're a cuckold, man."

Through it all Willie stood there, mouth agape, making strange sounds as though he was strangling on too many questions. She made an impatient gesture with her hand, indicating that he was to sit down again. Then she stood there, hands on crooked hips, looking down at him.

"Seems you had no idea, is it? The whole street knew what was going on and thought maybe you did too." She talked on, telling him in her dry voice about his wife's affair with a man across the street. How he, the man, was over at all times of the day. A young man of some twenty, and you'd think, she said, that a woman Maureen's age would have more sense, a little more discretion what with two small children. Finally she left, said she would send the girls over after dinner. "Give you a chance to bear up" she said grimly.

He was on strike for a lengthy period of time so he stayed home looking after Nora and Dolly. They thought it was a keen new game, mommy away on a holiday and daddy looking after them, walking them to school every morning and preparing their meals. He did a better job of looking after them than Maureen ever did. Even the house looked better.

Willie lost a little weight, looked a little drawn, but otherwise seemed all right. He began taking up his long-lost interest in flying, taking books out of the library, reading as much as he could about the latest aeronautical advances. A harmless past time, it occupied his spare time, was good for him. Kept him from brooding on his other failures.

He heard nothing from Maureen until she suddenly appeared again five months later. Looking a little the worse for wear. And expecting to be taken back. She knew her man. But not entirely, perhaps, because that's when he began drinking more than just a little, and that's apparently when he also began slapping her around. And I'll never know what she told him when she came back, because I've never been able to bring myself to ask, and he has never volunteered the information.

Susan was scandalized when I told her Maureen was back, that she had resumed her role as housewife, mother. She said if Willie was half a man he would have thrown her out. I said I would take her back any time at all if she decided she needed a vacation.

She gave me a definitely unpleased look. "Ver-ry funny! I shall keep that under advisement", she said scathingly. I knew I had gone too far. I just couldn't resist it. Her genteel family had discussed Willie's misfortune ad infinitum. It had been the main topic of conversation, like some exotic objet d'art somehow finding its way into their otherwise stolid existence - and still they always used the euphemism 'on vacation' to describe Maureen's desertion. After all, she was one of them, albeit somewhat removed. They discussed her with that peculiar kind of emphasis the morally superior employ when comparing and elevating their virtuous lifestyles above the common.

Later, when Greg came home from school he was made official intermediary. Susan saying things like: "Greg dear, ask your father if he would like to come in for dinner" and he looked from her to me as though we were all mad when he saw me come sauntering in with Joanne saying: "Tell your mom, son, I'm here". He was relieved when we both began laughing at the absurdity of it all; reconciled.


Even though, since Maureen's return, Susan penalized me for dropping by Willie's place by withholding sex for a few days after each visit, I began going over a little more often, if only to get him out of the house. With two adolescents of my own and a disapproving wife it was difficult, but I felt I owed it to him.

We would go to a neighbourhood bar and just sit around talking, or not talking, whatever suited his mood. I even thought then about telling him to kick her out because it had seemed to me that once he got over the initial shock of her leaving him last year for that ... well, whatever he was, her paramour, he'd adjusted fairly well, seemed happy enough just himself and the girls. Since she had come back he had become progressively more drawn and seedy looking, morosely introspective. And as I mentioned earlier he had been beating her. I felt a little apprehensive that the situation would eventually worsen, that his violence might erupt into something more serious.


A few weeks ago I drove down Willie's street looking for a parking spot when I noticed Willie on the bottom step of his porch, appearing to be swaying somewhat. Dusk was beginning to settle and I couldn't quite make out his expression but his mouth was a dark shadow, wide open and he was yelling what seemed to be incivilities as I drove by, unable to find a vacancy. I glanced across the street as I passed, toward where his rancour seemed to be directed, and saw a hefty man walking across, yelling back. For the merest split second it occurred to me that this was Maureen's - Christ, what would you call him, her lover? But I'd known, don't remember who told me, that he was living in Montreal. I remember thinking it must be, it must be him. I felt like pushing the gas and driving on, just going on home. Willie hadn't seen me and I didn't want to be involved, felt suddenly sick of the whole sordid affair.

But eventually I found a spot, parked, and then rushed back up the street, my heart thumping. things had happened swiftly; the interval between seeing them at first and my eventual parking seemed a long time of my own personal indecision, but I knew it had only been a matter of minutes.

As I ran up I saw the man whack Willie on the head, back and forth. Willie ineffectually beating the air about the other's head; he easily dodging Willie's drunken efforts. Then the man reached down and pulled Willie's legs out from under him. Even from where I was, pounding the pavement a few hundred yards down the street, the thunk was sickening as Willie fell. I saw the man kick Willie's head. Once, twice, and a final time. My legs felt like lead. It was like one of those recurring nightmares when you're running and just not getting anywhere. I heard myself yelling "hey, HEY!" in the direction of Willie's attacker. He stopped midpoint on the road and began to walk back, said "mind yer bizniz, eh? You want some too?"

I felt my face drain, seeing his heft bulging under a tight sweatshirt, his face impassive, the eyes dead looking. I turned and made for Willie, muttering 'bastard' under my breath.


There was one adjournment of the trial and when it was eventually called months later, the defence attorney explained convincingly that yelling obscenities had been tantamount to inviting the assault, that Willie had indicated by his behaviour that he was willing and prepared to fight. But the Crown Prosecutor demurred just as convincingly, emphasizing how drunk Willie had been, how imhumane it had been to kick Willie when he had been down like that, breaking his nose.

Then the defence went to introduce the ... punk, that's what he was ... the punk's mother, his sister, asking them questions regarding the defendant's character. They testified as to his good character, naturally; completely objective witnesses. The whole family looked like a degenerate lot; revolting slobs. The prosecutor attempted to introduce the history of bad feeling, the reason for it, but the judge ruled that evidence inadmissible, said he was only interested in the immediacy of the event. The prosecutor looked mildly frustrated, but I knew this was just a routine case for him; he hadn't really put that much effort into the prosecution.

The defence attorney had more to gain from the outcome but even he looked bored to hell, couldn't really have believed in his own assertions. Any nit could deduce that Willie had been the victim of a vicious assault.

He tried to discredit me. I had been careful to speak as objectively as possible in describing what I had seen.

Through it all that creep sat there like an eel, ready to strike, muscles taut. Watching him from time to time, I felt a momentary twinge of, I suppose, fear. I felt it was only his surroundings that restrained him, that he'd remember this, all of it, and exact some kind of primitive revenge. I felt personally vulnerable but angry too that that kind of intimidation could exist in the kind of work he inhabited; threatening me, a casual interloper casting a reluctant shadow on his netherworld.

The court perused his record. A long one. More recently he had been in custody in a minimum security institution near here for the last two months, awaiting trial. This then, had been his second hearing of the day. The first, in the morning, I learned, had been on a charge of forgery. His sentence was handed down, the judge sitting impassively, removed from it all, an oracle pronouncing his shadowy future. A year for the forgery. Six months for the assault. The assault to run concurrently with the forgery. Just Willie's cockeyed luck; his beating treated as a minor misdemeanor and the forgery charge seen as a more serious crime against society.


Willie's nose looks fine, now. Maureen is gone. He finally threw her out, just after the trial. He's been doing a lot of talking recently about taking flying lessons. Planning eventually to buy a plane of his own. He's taking it seriously; minor things like the wherewithal don't seem to occur to him. The girls listen to him wide-eyed, think it's glamorous. When they get a little older, he'll look to them just the way he looks to the rest of the world; a stumble-bum.

As long as he doesn't give up his job, that's all. but through all that self-generated enthusiasm, all the delusions, he still retains some sense of responsibility. I suppose he can afford to behave a little erratically now and then, to get him over the hump of adjustment; now that it's permanent. And now I'm tired of thinking about him all the time, told him to count me out of any plans he has, don't want to bother. I'll see him still, from time to time, just to check on things. But the less frequently, the better.


I keep thinking that thug is going to get out eventually. I keep remembering that look on his face. God, there are a myriad of such faces haunting me in my dreams ... nightmares, like a teasing echo ringing hollowly in some secret place in my head.

As I said, Willie is fine now. But things could be going a little better for me. Susan has begun for some reason dredging up the past, angry with me retrospectively again, about that time years ago.

"Creep!" she called me yesterday. "You probably started her career."

It wasn't my fault" I protested. I didn't do anything to encourage her. In fact, if you hadn't burst in I would have kicked her out!"

"Likely!" Her face set in a hard ball of anger.

So help me", I said desperately. "I was just about to throw her out of there, that's what I was doing, honestly!"

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Fiddlehead, Number 123

Fischbach Etc., Review

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Fischbach Etc.
Basil Mogridge
Editions du Centre cultural de Differdange (Luxembourg)
Available through Prospero Book Stores

Basil Mogridge teaches at the German Department of Carleton University. This is his first collection. Mr. Mogridge is the editor of an impressive new poetry magazine distributed throughout Canada and Europe. Reenbou is a plurilingual magazine publishing the work of international poets. Mr. Mogridge carries his passion for poetry and for languages over into his own work.

Some of the poems in his collection, Fischbach Etc., are written in French, German and Portuguese. A frustrating exercise for the interested, unilingual reader and one that Mr. Mogridge need not really subject his audience to, for the foreign-language poems in this collection could also have been translated into English as they are not that numerous and place could have been found for them on the scattered blank pages that intersperse the English-language work.

There is a quote on the frontispiece of this collection by Jack Spicer which says in part, "Poems should echo and re-echo against each other. They should create resonances." Nice, very well put. Basil Mogridge seems to have an ear for resonance and an eye for the beauty in nature and the nature of man's monuments. At times, however, his observations are so subtle as to become almost trite. While many poems on this collection are imbued with an elegant simplicity, some appear to be mere observation and as such, banal.

These poems, however, are also exotic, as in "pennine landscape/picture postcard/Dillenburg/The red blood of the copihue flower/Unfolding/remembrance/pippel/Rwanda". And again, instances where the faraway is intermingled with the familiar as in: "La belle province/Caroni at dusk/Cayenne/February, west of Lisbon/February north of Lisbon/Vilnius/Tartu/North Owl"; that kind of wistfulness of the traveller-born.

Yet and again there are too many poems in this collection which are more observation than poetic rendition. They stand as mute reminders that poets are rarely able to view their own work often born of fond memory, with anything approaching the cold objectivity of the critic.

Happily, Mogridge redeems himself with such sharply etched pictures as "Snow, opaque, enveloping/thwarting, threatening/wisps cavorting/in a harsh wind/squeaky protests under boots and tires/the downtown skyline/sharp/a bulbous moon". And he presents us also with an urgent sense of place, an affection that is infectious, of the splendid grandeur of baroque Europe: From "Vilnius":

Crowning the wooded hill, the ancient Gediminas Tower;
below this town "born of the howl of a wolf".
St.Anna's soaring facade,
brick Gothic in miniature splendour
(Napoleon's greedy eye was clear).
St. Peter and Paul, jubilant baroque;
high, within, its ship of light.
The Old Town's pastel colours, courtyards,
studious tranquility.
In Gediminas Square a building gravely monumental:
beyond its classic portals paintings, rustic crosses,
solemn music: white and gold,
cathedral organ and attendant angels,
playing to a land of amber
and of green.

With poems such as these, he gifts us with the vicarious pleasure of his travels. An auspicious collection, in all.

c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld

Enter Ye

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Be Not Afraid

Step you forward, Stranger. Why look you so, upon me? Ah yes, curiosity is a strange, unquenchable thirst, is it not? Doubtless you've heard ... strange stories. Approach: Have no fear I will do you naught. There: Look you to your fullest .... Ah, you do not shrink back. Be at your ease, Stranger. I see many questions hovering on the lips of your curiosity, still unsatisfied. You have but to ask, it shall be my pleasure to deliver you of the pricklesome burden, this quest which has taken you to these far corners. Exactly ... seat yourself. Be comforted in my presence. ...And, you are named? Aenid? Know then, Aenid, you who have come so far, that I do herewith grant to you the freedom to ask what you will. such a journey as yours should have its reward.

I am She, Rheeta. There is none other of that name extant. The name is the Sign; she who bears it bears also the burden of the Sisterhood. Although my time will come as surely as it has done my predecessors, there will always be another and yet, another, Rheeta. This, that you see engraved, etched and lovingly portrayed upon my countenance is the past. Upon my visage is the past always present. The shades of carmine are the hues of carnage. That which was once visited upon this Sisterhood.

Your own face, lovely Aenid, wrinkles in dismay. I speak in riddles, you say. Such has always been the wont of the Motherhood of which I am the Superior. This archaic tongue is our sacred language. I shall, however, forsake it for the sake of your complete understanding. For it is meet that you do understand, you whose presence has a meaning and an urgency beyond your ken. Do you hark unto me, Aenid....

This is now, on the surface at any rate, a peaceful country. Did you see unrest or indication of any kind of material want on your way here? No, you would not. Did you stop at one of our ale-houses ringing the common? Ah, you did. Well, these are our meeting places; where the men of the Keep and the women of the Sisterhood mingle. In public those, our ale-houses, are the sole places which permit social interchange.

It is there, in these places which serve both our people, that the two solitudes meet, become personally aware of one another on more than an abstract level of the separation imposed upon us by sad history ... and where, if like minds meet, representations can be made toward future joinings. I still speak in riddles? Why is there that separation? And what do I mean by 'joinings'? Yes, of course, it is history, background which is needed to introduce you to our culture.

You come from Beyond, there where, as the Lore tells us, the cataclysms that shook this portion of the world had little effect. Your world, and your people, were thought millennia ago to have evolved later and separately from this place. And so, the level of your civilization was held back; you were thought by the ancients to be what they termed a 'stone-age culture'; that is, without advanced technical support-systems. These words, you must understand, are as a litany. I do know what they mean, but I cannot envisage exactly what advanced technology was, so long ago - other than what the Lore vaguely permits us to know. Some things - many things - are known only to the priestly caste. It is they who interpret the Lore and it is they who decide how much we should know and what to withhold from us.

Suffice it to say that when our segment of this world went into swift - and many thought - irremediable decline, yours was miraculously unscathed ... and so you continued in your own leisurely fashion to evolve. We have actually very little curiosity of the places which exist beyond our borders. We pay obeisance - as we must - to the priesthood for they are the Keepers of the Lore ... and we assist the Keep to pay tribute to the Overlords for they are the Keepers of the Peace. Both, the Lore and peace, are essential to our continued existence. We have been threatened in the past, on many occasions, by the attempted incursions of outside aliens.

The attempted invasions have been sparked both by a lust for our women whose beauty and industry is well known and for the plentiful gems which the men of the Keep mine and use as barter and Tribute. These gems cannot be found elsewhere. It has been said variously that these lands were once rained upon by a burst of heavenly bodies colliding, showering our mountains and plains with the bounty which has since named this place Feldspar ... and it has also been rumoured that the gems occurred through some strange alchemy of destruction brought about by the awesome weaponry which once great powers used in their ways, one against the another.

It is true that we are the remnants of a once-powerful and proud nation. The Lore tells us that great multitudes lived in these lands once; their numbers were legion and they had evolved a way of living that was much unlike ours. In many ways it is even now difficult for us to live together in harmony. So that I can almost imagine how difficult it must have been for so many people as were reputed to have lived then, to agree with one another and respect each other.

And as the Lore would have it, there came a time when agreement and respect evaporated and in their place reigned fear and hatred and an unreasoning wish for revenge - for what, I cannot say. And thus was unleashed a horror that rid the earth of its inhabitants. Yes, I know it had little effect in your places, but ours were affected. Even now, in the marshes beyond the forests fencing in this land no one wishes to go. A strange phosphorescence glimmers over the waters; they assume strange shapes and we hear eerie sounds as of the weeping of multitudes.

That is the history, such as it is. What we discovered also is that the men and women could not live happily together. For some reason, after the coming-together again of those who survived, there was much bitterness. The men accused the woman of goading them to war and the women accused the men of deserting them for the glories of war. This, at any rate, is what the Lore tells us.

Over a period of time, a rift ensued and a sharp division of labours came about and with it, a drifting apart of men and women. So that, eventually, we became as you see us now ... the central place and the outlying settlements. The central place is the Keep, inhabited by the Thane and his men. The settlements consist of Sisterhood villages. Over the fields are the mountains and plains which yield our famed gems. The mining and other aligned industry is the men's province. Spinning, weaving, animal husbandry and farming belongs to the women. As does the care of the creches, the instruction-houses. Indeed, that separation of duties, the Lore informs, is no innovation; it has been so, from time immemorial - we have only taken it a step further with our imposition of the physical separation of male and female.

We have our problems but for the most part, the arrangement is a congenial one.

We have a Council of Elders in our Sisterhood, commonly termed the Motherhood. These are comprised of women who have seen much and their counsel has stood us well in times of need. I am the titular head of the Motherhood. I stand alone, however, in never having mothered children. I am the recognized Mother of all, nonetheless. In my place, when my time comes, will be another, groomed from childhood to take her part in our history. We are one, the succession of Rheetas and as such, faceless. this is the reason why that portion of the Lore which tells of man's brutality to women which comes about through close daily living together, is etched on my face in this vermilion dye.

It was done, that scarring, when I was past childhood and I remember nothing of the ritual. I did not go through childhood with this face, but wore a common and quite unremarkable countenance so that I could mingle with the other children and not be kept apart. In this way could I know my people and share their thoughts. Were I to have been known as one set apart, those thoughts and the freedom which comes from consorting with one's peers, would have been withheld from me.

It was with the ascension of my role, my place as Mother Superior, that that other face was removed and my identity revealed. All my predecessors, as I myself will be, were ceremoniously plowed back into the earth from whence they came; to enrich the soil and ensure the bounty of future harvests. It is our way, one which has a long and honourable tradition.

We seek to please that Ultimate Superior, whom we all faithfully serve.

c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld

Ariel, Volume 9, Number 3

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Coming Home

Hidden under your papers
in the old bureau drawer
.... an old love letter
squeezed into its faded envelope.
Squares hanging together; it
was opened/unopened so many
times and the writing faded like

memories. A symbol a symptom
/reminder of an early time.
And I am jealous of that
.... other time but there is
nothing I can do but wish it
were and not now. Even if

you aren't the type to speak
of the dangerous lip on the seas
and even if you don't declare
fellowship with passing rooks
.... fanning the febrile night winds
I might have known/ should have

guessed that behind that calm
the casual glance and passing touch
you cherished another more memorable
face. And sitting here reading
that letter I can hardly recall

the occasion that you caused me to
write telling you that all is
well and the children miss you
.... and when will you be coming home?
Will you be coming home
.... coming home.
c. 1978 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Ariel, A Review of International English Literature, July 1978

Marching Into Spring, 2009

Marching Into Spring

March arrived gloomily
icy-winded and bad-tempered
acting the lion
eschewing the lamb
still grumpy
this first day of Spring.

The snowpack has begun
its long melt
the streets finally clear
little girls out
skipping rope. Where
the gardens have
struggled free
there - and there see them?
the red probes of new life.

Canada geese have launched
themselves back into
their reversal. Great
honking vees
flinging themselves northward.
Gulls are back, skimming
the lakes and rivers.

So too are the red-winged blackbirds
clinging to rushes
singing their praise
of the near future's warmth.
In the ravine the snow shrinks
and glaciers broaden
in the recalcitrant iciness
of this March Spring.

Squirrels are newly
energized loopily chasing
one another in exuberant
matches and anxious nest-building.
Three robins - count them
one female, two males. She
sits serenely waiting

the outcome of her suitors'
spring-launched disagreement.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld

Waves, Vol.8, No.3

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Friends of a Friend

In her shabby living room; sitting, the four of them. Annette not meeting her eyes, refusing to answer her first whispered questions.

"Yeah, Mary - nice place you got here."

He looks like a cretin. Anything might look good to him. Who the hell is he? Just "This is Jack ... I've told you about him, and this is Armand". That's all Annette said; like that was all there was.

Grinning at her, this Armand. And ugly as a troglodyte. "Where's the kid? You got a kid, Annette said, where's he?"

Mutely, Mary pointed down the hallway.

Don't talk much, do ya? Okay, where's his father, the kid's father."

"I'm not married."

A sneer pasted itself on his face. "Yer not married! Just like that, eh? Imakulid konsepsion eh? Don't you got no morality?"

She flushed, shifted on the sofa. The idiotic grin remained plastered across his face.

"Got a good job, eh? She says, Annette, you got a good job, Parliament Hill. Big shot eh? You make good money?"

Forced herself to smile, answer civilly. "No. I'm just a steno. They don't pay us any more than they have to."

"Sure now? You sure ya don't get paid for anythin' else but typing and stuff? I bet you broads is all the same. All them big shots in politics're the same. Everyone's on the take! I heard about them chicks in the States - they don't get paid for typing. They shack up an' get on a candy payroll. You don't get any of that?"

He had to be kidding. She creased her face in the semblance of a wry smile at his little joke.

"Where ya from? Like I mean, not from Oddawa, eh?"

"Arnprior, I'm from Arnprior. My mother lives there, my whole family's there."

"Oh yeah? Hick town! Liddel girrul goes to the big town? Well, le'me tell ya, Oddawa's a hick town too, under all the federal crap. How 'bout comin' to Montreal, have a look around, eh?"

What appeared to be a normal conversation was going on between Annette and Jack. Beside her, the man with head bent toward her, waiting for a reply. Mary stood up, began to walk toward the hall.

"Where's she going?" Jack jerked his head sharply in her direction, asking Annette.

"Ask her" Annette said.

"I ... I'm going to see what my little boy is doing. He's playing in his room. He's quiet ... when they're quiet they're usually getting into trouble."

"The kid's quiet, leave him alone. We don't want any kid in here, making noise, yelling. I can't stand kids yelling. G'wan sit back down with Armand, he likes your company. Armand likes virgins. Talk to him, Virgin Mary."

"I left the washing machine going. I really should go see about that" she said, fumbling her fingers in her skirt. Jack looked at her again "don't be a bloody nuisance". His voice tight.

Nuisance? In her own house? Could she just say she'd had enough; Annette and her friends would have to leave. Would they?

Armand got up to pull the curtains aside. He stood back, looking out. "It's okay, Yves's back". Was that a gun, was that what she saw when his arm lifted?

Annette's brother; he had never been in in her house before, but now he opened the front door without knocking, strode into the room, a parcel under one arm, a liquor bag in the other hand. Jack took the parcel, unwrapped it. He slipped the handgun into his waistband, slapped Yves on the back. "Now I feel better. More ... dressed, you know?

Yves sat down, ran fingers through his hair. The three men laughing, almost rolling on the floor. The bottle half empty.

"Did'ja see that guy, the bald one, when I picked up the shotgun? See him run? that son-of-a-bitch! All them months him bugging my ass!"

"Yeah, all of them buggers ran like hell ... guards, Christ! I couldda did a better job! They just about crapped their pants and here we was worried it might not work!"

Turned to her. "How about something to eat? Hey, Virgin Mary, we're starved, what've you got?" Jack rose, stretched.

"Whatsa matter your friend, Annette? She sure don't say much" Armand observed.

"How about you girls go on in the kitchen and get us something to eat, hey?"

Stevie's voice, whining. He came down the hallway, his blanket held by the satin binding against his cheek, trailing on the floor. Right thumb stuck in his mouth, face flushed with sleep. Sleep and fever.

Eyes wide, he stood in the doorway. Looking not at her, but at the men. She stepped toward him, bent and picked him up, wiped the sleep from his eyes with the edge of the blanket.

"Stevie" she murmured, "had a good sleep? Feel better, Stevie?"

He ignored her, kept staring at the men; shifted his eyes to Annette, then back to the men. The men sat still for a moment, watching her and Stevie.

"I'm going to dress the baby" she said. "I'll be right back."

In Stevie's room, she pulled on his dressing gown, put his feet in his slippers. He kicked them off, hated to wear them.

"Who are they, Mummy?"

"Men, just men. Friends of Auntie Annette. And Stevie, you be a good boy, not to bother them. They're very busy and they don't have time for a little boy, all right?"

He wanted to flush the toilet himself. She made to pick him up again, but he insisted on walking.

Later, in the kitchen, she watched the men sitting on her old wooden chairs at the table, waiting for her to serve them their sausages and eggs. Almost out of coffee and milk. She watched, fascinated, repelled, as Armand lifted mounds of food to his mouth, spitting it out as he talked. When he caught her eye, she quickly looked away.

"What we need's some beer, eh?" Armand nudged Jack. "Y'got any beer?" he asked her.

"No."

"Zatso? Well, we gotta do something about that."

She walked up to Rideau Street, passing Mrs. Bronson. The old woman nodded, arms heavy with packages, trying to hold an umbrella. Another time, Mary would have helped her, walked back to the house next door to see the old woman home.

She had tried to sound casual. "Okay if I take Stevie with? He hasn't had a breath of fresh air all day." Annette had looked at her, disgusted.

Jack ignored her, but Armand snorted "Jus' like that, hah? You and the kid and then you'll come back with the beer and we'll all have a party, eh? Have some fun, eh?" He leered at her. "Some mother ya are! Ya said the kid's sick and here ya wanna take 'im out inna rain! Dincha know it's raining? 'Course we can't letcha take 'im out. It's raining! Even if yer a lousy mom, we'll look after the kid fer ya."

How could she walk so normally, she wondered, as though nothing was wrong? East on Rideau, toward the beer store. The pavement glittering, black, wet. Traffic heavy, windshield wipers clicking a steady staccato.

Across the street, a Green Hornet circling a car. Meter run out. If only .... What if someone was watching - Yves maybe? What if they were testing her? the parking control officer was young, looked like a kid. Dark glasses, he was intent on writing a ticket. A green Chevrolet.

She walked on, stopping before the store. Looked for a moment into its neat interior. A nightmare - she would soon wake up.

Mary going into the store. Mary carrying home a case for her friends.

c. 1978 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Waves, Fall Edition

Mamashee, Issue No.1, Volume 5

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Compassion For Hire

She is seventy-three
sits awkwardly
before me
reciting a spiritless litany
of wrongs done her
...... lonely
and confused
voice caressing
thought of the poor creature
so little understood
...... a one
whose each day is a travail
of survival
until life becomes a mockery
of the past
when a tenuous companionship
was hers
and hers cared.
Now she is the only one
who cares
...... for her
and she does,
a great deal
yet dedication cannot
allay the futility of coping
in such a cold world.
I listen
and murmur support
think of myself
in thirty years
and hope for better. I
offer her
sincere encouragement. She
offers me the gratitude of cold
hard cash.

c. 1981 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Mamashee, Summer Issue 1981

State of Peace: The Women Speak

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Reduction

The retired general
spat with rage
said he'd never send
.... "his boys"
into battle alongside
female recruits.

"Why that would detract
from the matter at hand...
the 'boys' would either
protect or violate
the women."

In one
fell swoop and so
delicately put the whole
gestalt of the sexes
reduced to saint and sinner
virgin and whore.

A solution rears
its obliging head.
Why not let all militarily inclined
male and female
on both sides
go to it on the battlefield.

As for the rest of us
reasonable ones
war resisters
pacifists, gentle lovers
we can go it in our way
two by two.

c. 1987 Rita Rosenfeld
published in State of Peace: The Women Speak

The Antigonish Review 37

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Inheritors of Priapus

They spend their callow days
dreaming seduction by corrupt
... virgins who after frantic
nights rise again like the
Phoenix transformed by the blaze:

gone through the crucible
of purification to become always
cherished (or is it cherried)
virginal vessels. The dream
grinds on in rushes of aproned

domesticity. Hairbunned
and chaste they sweep daily
the dust of the universe from
dreamers' sacred hearths
keeping banked the fires of

ritual. Little do they know
these dreamers that they play
the game of Vesta. Foxy ladies
glowing burnished hair and
... fingers stabbing diament;

encapsulating in their
webs of careful purpose the
frail design of pathetic Lotharios.
They shuffle the tarot
and whisper chatty of uxorious

boredom. Run fond tongues
over memory of casual misalliances;
lithe acrobatics of
... Vesta's unforgotten temple.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published by The Antigonish Review, Spring 1979

Canadian Jewish Outlook, March 1981

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Transplants

Just after the turn of the century, Shmuel received a notice of conscription to fight in the Russo-Japanese war. He and his family lived in Lagov, Poland. Deciding to evade the draft, he fled to Canada, leaving behind his wife Rayzl, two daughters, and an infant son.

After a number of years had gone by he returned to Poland and said, "Pack, Rayzele. You are coming to Canada." Rayzel, not wanting to leave her family and friends, objected "but where will we find a husband for Dvorele in such a strange land?"
"What do you think, Rayzele", her husband scoffed, "that it is a land of savages? There are there too, Jews."

The son, Chaim, was now ten years old and the younger daughter, a marriageable sixteen. An older daughter, herself a mother of several infants, stayed with her husband in Lagov.

Both youngsters were excited about removing to Canada; they had heard villagers referring to the country as the "Goldene Medina" - the land of gold. "and will we be able to pick up gold from the streets?" Chaim marvelled. His sister, though, thought of other matters, of young men more worldly than the ascetic Talmudists and timid tradesmen that inhabited Lagov.

The journey across the Atlantic was a joyless affair. They were forced to spend most of their time ill, in the cramped and poorly-ventilated steerage of the ship, along with other emigrants.

By European standards the family was a small one, and they soon found living space in Toronto with another family, in rented quarters. Shmuel, they discovered, had become a chicken peddler. He owned a horse and cart, and travelling on the perimeter of their new town, he visited a regular circuit of farming communities.

Before long other Lagovers emigrated to Canada. Some to Toronto, where they formed a Lagover Society, a group of people bonded together by a common past and an eager desire to succeed in the new country. From Poland they brought their concept of community life. Life revolved around the shul and the home.

After a few years had elapsed, Shmuel and Rayzel bought a house on Markham Street, just above Dundas Avenue, close to their shul. The house was red-brick, two- storied, attached to a twin, with a wide wooden porch. On the front lawn stood a huge old Catalpa tree; its long finger-shaped pods littered the lawn in the fall. Behind the house stood a roomy barn with a woodshed attached. "There we can keep the horse", Shmuel said to Rayzel. "And in the back you can make for me a vegetable garden", she breathed contentedly.

Chaim began accompanying Shmuel on peddling trips. He learned from his father how to befriend the farmers, how to assess the weight of poultry, how to inspect a flock for illness. By handling a suspicious-looking bird, Chaim learned to determine the manner of its illness and to cull it from the herd. He was shown how to crate the poultry for transport to the co-operative that disposed of the poultry. His father was a share-holder in the co-op, like others of his fellows. "When you learn, when you have your own wagon and route, I will buy you shares", Shmuel assured his son.

Soon a robust young man came calling on Dvore. Her parents had seen his face before at the shul, and friends attested as to his family background. A wedding was discussed.

"But I won't shave my hair off!" Dvore warned her parents. They turned shocked glances on Moishe, her fiance. But he spread his hands good-naturedly and said "here, in this country, it is not seen as an act of impiety".

Rayzele turned to her daughter. "You will shame your husband!"

"Mother", Dvore replied, "who will see me? - the cows?" For it was Moishe's aspiration to become a farmer, an occupation outlawed to Jews in Poland. And with the help of her parents, the young couple bought a farm near Kleinburg, Ontario, and there they began to raise their own family.

In time, apple-cheeked Dvore's hair turned gracefully grey, while her mother, with her deeply-lined face still wore the same brunette peruke.

"This Canada, this country, teaches Chaim bad ways", Rayzele wrung her hands. "V'ays mir!" For his part, Shmuel took more direct action, beating his son for his absences from home. "Hunt! I'm told you like to gamble! How is this, a son should stray so far from custom?" But the boy was growing up, he became fond of expensive clothes, developed a taste for hard liquor and began to avoid synagogue attendance. His absences were a cause for anxious gossip. Shmuel mumbled excuses.

Then a young woman arrived from Poland, with her sister and brother-in-law. The couple started a small kosher butcher business, living above their shop, and the young woman worked at a garment factory on Spadina Avenue.

It wasn't long before Chaim began spending more time at home. The old couple hoped that marriage would reform their wayward son.

"I want a place of my own", Sara said, soon after their marriage. "Your mother watches me all the time. I have no privacy. And anyway, we will need more room soon." Delighted with the news, Chaim rented a set of rooms at Kensington Market, just across the street from where he generally played pinochle, in the back room behind a delicatessen.

Now Shmuel and Rayzele lived alone, without any of their children. they rented out the whole upstairs and kept their front room for entertaining. Dark furniture glistened from constant polishing, and antimacassars lay on the arms of the sofa. When their daughter's children came to visit, they would enjoin them to "study and learn!". With education comes everything", they told the children, convinced of the unlimited opportunities in this land.

Shmuel was now the 'Zayde' and Rayzele was the 'Bubbe' and so they were addressed by their grandchildren. The Zayde continued to go to shul every day, twice a day. And the Bubbe would prepare his tea in a glass with sugar cubes and sliced lemon, served with sugar cookies to refresh him. As his beard grew wispier and whiter, he continued to use a horse and wagon despite the growing use of motor vehicles. As the neighbourhood slowly changed, and a new flood of immigrants took the place of the old, she kept more and more to her house.

By correspondence the old couple learned that their older daughter lived now in Warsaw and her husband had a small mercantile business there. Their children were grown and had graduated from a gymnasia and the boys prepared to enter their father's business. They had felt no interest in emigrating to Canada at the urgings of the old people.

Then it was too late, and the war years permitted little concrete news outside Europe.

Despite that, Chaim worked hard, had bought a truck and developed his own chicken peddling route. Sara found it hard to make ends meet from the meagre dollars he rationed out to her. She often borrowed money from her sister, and her brother-in-law the butcher gave her meat from his store. Chaim refused to eat poultry. "I hate it", he growled. "I ate so much of it at my parents' house, I thought I'd grow feathers and cackle!" But the loans also became gifts; Sara could never manage to pay them back.

Sara never did learn that her husband visited his parents from time to time, whining that bills were due, that his wife over-extended the family's finances. The old couple kept giving their son temporary loans which were also never repaid.

Soon after the birth of her son, Sara took a factory sewing job, leaving the boy in the care of an old woman who lived downstairs in the same building. The old woman would chew up food with her hard gums, then place it in the little boy's mouth. "Eat, my little darling", she would croon to the infant. "Eat, my little orphan."

After a few years, the child, Itchele, learned the short route to his grandparents' home and from the time he was four, he came daily to stay with them, keeping them company. His mother was usually at work and when she was home, had no time for him. He had quickly sensed that Chaim had no use for him. "Out of my way!" was what he heard most commonly from his father.

Entering the house on Markham Street, the little boy would come across his grandmother rolling dough for egg-noodles in the kitchen. "Hi Bubbe", he'd kiss her and ask for his Zayde. She would indicate with her flour-covered hands the door leading to the cellar. On his way downstairs a disembodied voice floating upward would call "Itchoo, are you there?"

Itche watched his Zayde shovel coal into the flaming mouth of the furnace. He'd watch the old man turn a spigot on one of the barrels lining a cellar wall. "Don't you do it, Itchoo, just watch Zayde". He'd watch his Zayde drain off a small amount of the bright liquid and 'test'.

Zayde loved to dig in the backyard, to feel the lumpy dirt in his hands, and Itche dug with him. Zayde enjoyed fresh radishes just pulled out of the dirt and Itche, wrinkling his nose, tried to eat them too, but Zayde said fresh rhubarb sprinkled with sugar was better for little boys.

Rummaging around in the boxes of metal scraps in the shed, Itche would hear the Zayde's horse banging about in its stall. "Itche, be careful, sonele. Don't go behind the horse, no? He might kick you."

Sometimes the old man would encourage Itche to take snuff from a small horn snuff box, its top pulled by a metal ring. "Take! Go ahead, like this - take a little bit - here on your hand." He would show Itche how, saying "it's good to sneeze. It will help you to think better."

The boy went to shul with his grandfather and there the Zayde's landsmen, other old men with long wispy beards and gnarled hands, wearing capel and tallis, would playfully tease the child's cheek. "A sweet child!" They would ruffle their dry hands through his hair and offer him candy.

When the war come to an end, rumour became fact. The rubble of war yielded a relative handful of Jews; former inmates of death camps were removed to displaced-persons camps. There were long waits while enquiries poured in from all over the world; people searching for their relatives and friends.

The Bubbe and Zayde were told by the Jewish Agency that there remained one member of the older daughter's family; the youngest son.

At last, a tearful reunion. Of course, no one recognized anyone else. But Bubbe knew her daughter's son. "You look just like your mother", she said, leaning on the painfully gaunt young man, water welling from her sunken eyes.

The refugee came to live with the old couple, his grandparents, and Itche had to adjust to the idea that he had to share their attention. Bubbe was more demonstrative with the newcomer than anyone had ever seen her before. She stroked his poor thin face and asked him questions about his mother. He pleaded for patience; he wanted to forget his terrible ordeal first. She understood.

The young 'greenie' found a job in the shipping department of a clothing manufacturer. He paid room and board and bought little gifts for the family's children and the Bubbe. They lived this way for years, the young man slowly improving his position, learning English, establishing himself as a garment cutter with the clothing firm.

Once, Itche, soon to be bar-mitzvahed, was scrounging about in the scrap boxes in the cellar. He was alone, had earlier heard his father come into the Bubbe's house. For that reason, he lingered in the cellar, unwilling to go up until his father left. For the first time, Itche overheard his father saying "I need money."

"What for?" his grandfather replied. "We gave you money only last week. From where will we get so much money? We are old people!"

That evening the greenie told the old couple he was not really their daughter's son. He tried to explain to the incredulous old people that all their family had perished. Tried to talk beyond the anguish in their eyes.

"I met your grandson in Auschwitz. He died from starvation. We were part of a work crew." He told them in a barely audible voice that he had taken their grandson's identify and so had made contact with them through the Jewish Agency.

"I needed a sponsor, don't you see?" he begged. "I couldn't stay there any longer! I felt I was going crazy, don't you understand? I wanted a chance to live!" He told them he loved them, he would do anything for them.

Silent at first,her grey face stricken, the Bubbe succumbed to a new grief. The Zayde had compassion, would have forgiven, but the Bubbe would not be moved. She hated the young man now with the burning passion she had reserved for her family's slaughterers. Her shrieking curses followed him out the door of her house.

No one was allowed to speak his name again.

Life carried on. Their backs became more stooped, their chests hollow. Their voices faltered; they were less likely now to smile, to laugh.

At Itche's wedding the old couple walked haltingly down the aisle, leaning on each other, to sit before the wedding canopy. The Zayde cut the huge challah with his trembling hands and the tiny pieces were handed out traditionally, to all the guests.

When they could no longer look after their house, Itche drove them out to live on their daughter's farm. But because they were so frail, before long a family council decided they would be better off in a home for the aged. They were moved back to the city, where they shared a room in a huge new building that housed aged residents.

One of the daily newspapers in Toronto did a cover story on the old-age home. A big photograph of the Bubbe and the Zayde headed the story. Her head lay inclined toward his chest. His arm hung protectively over her shoulder. Her wig was still dark, a kerchief was tied jauntily under her chin.

In the picture, they were smiling.

c. 1981 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.19, No.3