Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue - стр. 15
«But you just tell me what I should cook for you today. Ninety’s not all that much when you can boil your own potatoes and go to the store for milk. Well, okay, they bring milk to me – potatoes too, and I don’t boil them for myself very often. That Gentile, Galka, cooks pretty good. But I can say what I think!…
«What are you so quiet for? You were always quiet – when you should have talked. And when you should have been silent, you would keep on wagging your tongue without stopping.
«No, I’d better go moisten my cloth – I don’t like the way you look.»
She headed over to the tap – they hadn’t yet cut off the water for the winter – and wiped the face in the photograph, just as she had wiped his face so many times whenever he came down with a temperature. And each time she did this, just like now, the same thought would come to mind: «And who wiped your face while you were in prison? You can’t tell me you didn’t come down with a temperature the whole eighteen years!»
She neatly folded the cloth, placed it on the pediment behind the granite headstone, then straightened up and whispered directly to his face: «Konnst schon ein bissel rucken – ich welt sein bald – ja, ja! (You can start moving over, I won’t be long now – yes, yes!)»
The light had already dimmed quite a bit, and the workers who had passed by her quite a few times in their mini-truck decided they ought to tell Filippovich13 that this old woman had been sitting a long time there without moving. At first she had been chattering away and swaying back and forth the way all Jews did, but now she was sitting there stock still, like a statue. Who knows whether she might have died right then and there – it was pretty cold.
Filippovich let out an oath, pushed the table away with his bulging belly, and got up with a groan. As he ambled along the central allée he thought: everybody dies the same death. Still, it was rare for people to go together. It was always a lot harder for the one left behind.
«There she is!» whispered a voice from behind his back. The worker who had been trailing him pointed. «She just sits herself there and don’t budge.» Filippovich paused by the low fence and coughed. The old woman wasn’t even moving a muscle.
«Hey, lady!» Filippovich called out softly, but with no response. «Hey, lady! The grounds are closing. Do you need help?» He was starting to get involved – you could hear it in his voice.
The old woman slowly turned her dark face toward him and tried to get up, leaning on her walking-stick, but she couldn’t move.
«Give us a hand here!» Filippovich gestured to the man behind him, and the worker, wearing a warm jacket, stepped out from behind his back.
«I’m all stuck here. Can’t do it!» he explained. Then the rotund Filippovich, who had a hard time bending over himself, leant forward and tried to take hold of the old woman’s elbow. She managed to get up, only to drop back to the bench.
«Hoo, boy!» By this time he was really upset, not so much because of the elderly woman’s infirmity as the unexpected challenges that had come his way. «How come you’re all alone here, and on the Sabbath yet?»
«No matter,» came the reply. «I’ll get up. I’ll get there. I wanted to do it on my own, ’cause…» She was wondering whether it was worth the effort to continue speaking, when Filippovich interrupted her: