Wedding in the Cemetery

 

A Wedding in the Cemetery

Pinkas Zamosc pp. 783-787

Written by Mottel Steiner, Montreal,  Canada

Translated by Evelyn Abel, née Chaya Rachel Steiner

It happened in the time of the First World War – 1915 or 1916.

Zamosc was occupied by the Austrian army and as everywhere under German- Austrian occupation – famine ruled the day. Everything was rationed, everything required ration slips. Potatoes – bulbes – were virtually the exclusive staple. It is these times, I believe, that spawned the song “Sunday, bulbes; Monday, bulbes”[1]. Not that even bulbes were in any great supply. People ate potato peels, raw beets and a variety of ersatz flours.

Detergents, too, were few and far between, and scant attention was paid to sanitation. Things were made worse by all the corpses left lingering long after they should have been buried. Scores of human organs littered the countryside, scarcely earning a glance. Numerous cities and towns were laid low by cholera, the epidemic cutting down young and old alike.

Once, in the dead of night, there was a rapping at our door. It was my Zaideh, crying out in the same breath: "Come. Come quickly! Mother [meaning Baba, my maternal grandmother] has collapsed…"

My parents leapt out of bed, threw on their clothes and sped to my grandfather's house. A child of about eight then, I also got dressed and ran to my grandfather's. I saw my Baba lying in bed, unspeaking, uncomplaining. My father was rubbing her hands, her feet, with brandy. My Zaideh sat reciting Psalms and weeping. Some hours later, around dawn, my Baba, Feigeh, passed away. The next day, my seven-year-old sister also died. My parents were grief-stricken.

The New City, as our part of town was called, buzzed with talk: there was nothing for it but to hold a wedding in the cemetery. Here and there – old-timers cited bygone incidents – such epidemics had been stamped out following graveyard nuptials.

The townswomen rose to the challenge with zest. The hunt was on for a suitable couple to agree to such a ceremony. Names were rolled out and bandied about, all poor innocents enumerated, until they hit upon…

…the Kuzmir shtibl’s mute beadle, age and origins unknown. Not so the cause of his handicap, which, as he would explain in sign language, was due to his having fallen from a roof in childhood. Of average height, he sported a fine square blond beard and, through summer and winter, an old goatskin caftan. All was spotless, all meticulously darned. We boys called him the “Mute Dandy”. In the morning, he would see to shtibl needs; in the afternoon, to his own needs, roaming the town in pursuit of "fundraising".

Now, the town also had one Briye the Bookbinder, a certified pauper who made a living from binding religious tomes, prayer books and the occasional Yiddish correspondence textbook. Even before the war, the pittance he earned had barely stretched to bread and water. Come wartime, with many a Hebrew school shutting down – forget it! Who had it in his head to bind books when there was so much woe all around? I forget exactly how many children he had, but two of them I knew very well: a son, Moshe, and a daughter, Gittaleh.

Gittaleh Briye’s, as she was known, must have been about eighteen or twenty then. Though she could easily have passed for thirty-something. What she lacked in height, she made up in breadth and wore only hand-me-downs, a wardrobe that lent her a sorry aspect. Yet her face was not unattractive. Had her living conditions been better, had she dressed in more decent garments, she might have been quite good-looking. Possibly, even a beauty.

Her speech was something else: measured, ponderous. Once she embarked on a sentence, it was a test of patience to hear her out. She worked as a domestic, hiring herself out to wash floors, fetch water from the well and run errands. But she was no beggar. If she were offered something casually, rather than for chores done, she would reply:

“I – don’t – want.”

“Why not, Gittaleh?”

“I – haven’t – earned – it – yet.”

Coming into a house, she would remain standing in the doorway until she caught the notice of one of the family.

“What is it, Gittaleh?”

“Do – you – need – water? – I’ll – get – it – for – you.”

Gittaleh and the mute – so the New City decided – were the perfect pair for the mission at hand.

But plain sailing it was not. Gittaleh wouldn’t hear of it when the matter was broached to her. A number of women who lived near us took it upon themselves to coax and cajole, and I remember the evening that they gathered at our house: Yocheved Rosenzweig, the Scribe’s Wife; Feige, the Milkman’s Wife, and the old Slaughteress, Mother of Hana, the Ritual-Slaughterer.

“Really and truly, Gittaleh, you are not a young girl anymore, straying from home to home…What?! – Your poor father is able to support you? Really and truly, what is to become of you? And he is such a fine young man, too, such a quiet young man, he makes not a sound…”

Gittaleh stood and heard out all the arguments, offering not a word. Her silence was taken for consent. As the women rose to leave, indicating that the affair had been settled, the old Slaughteress piped up: “Ah, Gittaleh, God willing, we will hold a wedding.”

“I don’t want a mute groom! I want a groom who can talk the same as me…”

“Here’s a fresh tsimmes with stuffing for you!” the women recoiled as from burning coals. “My, my, she has airs! The town takes it upon itself to outfit her from head to toe – clothing, shoes, bedding, dishes, everything a housewife could need – and she has her nose in the air. To talk to him, she needs! What will you talk about, Gittaleh? Will you tell him of your father’s fortunes? Of his fleet of ships that plies the seas? Will you discuss Torah, the Sages? To talk to him, she wants! Even with a talking husband, the less said the better when rocking. Let alone with a mute…"

The match, that evening, seemed to have hit an iceberg.

The task of approaching the groom was undertaken by the Kuzmir shtibl's upstanding burghers. Man to man, so to speak. One evening after minha-maariv prayers when the congregation would disperse, when only a handful would stay behind to study a chapter of Mishnah, pore over a page of Gemarah or schmooze idly about politics or men of good deeds – one such evening the mute was taken aside and the match proposed to him in sign language.

Some of the men had mastered the art of signing and other motions so that the mute could quite easily follow their drift. When it came to the part that described the pleasures of wedded bliss – we young lads were shooed away. But even from far we could see the mute’s eyes start to gleam. With a click of the tongue and the neigh of a young colt, he shoved his hand into his pocket and withdrew a small pouch tied with string. To show he had a lot of money. Then, he reached for the men as if to ask: “When – when is it to be?” This side of the bargain, though negotiated with a mute, had gone without a hitch.

The women, meanwhile, had not been inactive. They had begun to reward Gittaleh more generously for her work. Instead of a tattered dress with holes and patches, she now received clean, well-mended items, better shoes, better food as well, all within the limitations of wartime. And every day, just by the way, the women would casually inquire: “You’ll marry the mute?”

Gittaleh would down the delicacies with relish, and ask: “Do you need water? Look, the floor is already grimy”, a response that fielded the posed query.

But the business was not laid to rest. Women, meeting one another by chance, were seen huddling together in secret and speaking in hushed tones. A new offensive was under way, the classified information to be kept from the enemy… As it later transpired, the idea had been conceived by a clever lady: “If it can’t happen through matchmaking,” she had declared, “let it happen through love… we simply have to make her fall in love with him… After all, when all is said and done, he is still a man like any other… so he can’t talk? Nu, love has a language of its own…!”

And so Gittaleh started being sent on errands to the mute: “Take the mute a bit of food, he’s sick, poor man…”. “You’ll have to wash the mute’s floor tomorrow, he can’t do a thing, poor soul…” At first, she received extra pay for these errands, and in hard cash. Later, she no longer required this. Gradually, she grew accustomed to him. He would give her money to do his shopping and when she returned with the goods, he would bestow on her the entire parcel. Gradually, she learned to gauge his meaning and to respond to him in sign language…

As we were the nearest neighbors to the shtibl, living only across the way, one morning Gittaleh dropped in on us to ask for some boiling water. She needed it for the mute.

“Is that so?", my mother feigned irony, "For the mute?”

“Yes, for the mute,” she smiled. “He is such a fine mute!” (In loose translation: he is such a fine man.)

From mouth to mouth, from house to house, the tidings of course swept through the New City like wildfire, and wedding preparations began in earnest. The necessary trappings were soon collected for both parties and household goods were carted into the mute’s home – a rug, chairs, cups, bowls, glasses. Everything was organized quick as lightning. A day and hour were set for the ceremony.

At the appointed time, my mother decked herself out in her Sabbath dress.

“Why the finery, Mameh,” I asked. “It’s not Shabbat.”

“I’m going to the wedding.”

“What wedding?”

“GITTALEH’S AND THE MUTE’S!”

“Me, too. Me, too.”

“No. It’s not for children. The wedding is in the cemetery!”

My mother left with a few of the neighbors and I was left to ponder the matter in my child’s mind. I felt sorry for Gittaleh. Not only had they landed her with a mute for a husband, but they could come up with no better place for the ceremony than a cemetery!

It took less than two hours and the women returned, their faces radiating jubilance like warriors back from a bitter but triumphant battle. “Mazel tov! Mazel tov!”, they congratulated one another.

It was not, however, your usual wedding cheer, when bride and groom are wished long life in health and happiness. Bride and groom were never even mentioned. Just mazel tov, may we know no more sorrow… may the earth be sealed up with a thousand locks… may the Angel of Death relinquish his dominion over us and ours, and may the House of Israel be saved…

The ceremony had been performed by the Austrian military rabbi. That same day, there had also been a number of funerals, all for victims of cholera. Locks had been placed inside their graves – “to swallow up death forever…”

And lo and behold, right after the wedding (and the administration of potent disinfectants by the occupying authorities) the epidemic did actually die down.

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[1] The song continues: “Tuesday and Wednesday, bulbes; Thursday and Friday, bulbes; Saturday in the evening, a bulbes kigaleh [small kugel], Sunday, back to bulbes…”