Changing the Sky

Fury was rising inside Semyon, the likes of which he had never experienced. As his body trembled with rage, blood rushed to his face, tinting it a peculiar dusty-maroon color. For a moment the hue of his countenance resembled a brick from the Kremlin wall. His hands involuntarily formed fists so tight that his nails began cutting into the soft skin of his palms, right below calluses he earned while apprenticing at Uncle Leiba’s woodworking shop. He could not figure out why the words, all of which he had heard before, albeit aimed at others, produced such a violent reaction when directed at him.

“What did you say?” Semyon hissed, leaning in. “Repeat your words!” He exerted as much threat as his fifteen-year-old body could muster.

“You heard me the first time,” nonchalantly replied the scrawny boy, placing hands on his hips. The pale child had a tiny head, squinty eyes that reminded Semyon of the black markings found on birch trees, and matted hair so caked in dust that Semyon was not able to determine its natural color. The boy’s grimy shirt had lost its original shape and hung loose around his bony shoulders, while his rough pants, the kind worn by the men in the village for fieldwork, reached just below his knees. Semyon would have assumed the child was younger than his nine or ten years were it not for his eyes, which bore the weariness of a grownup exhausted by constant anxiety. The top of the child’s head barely reached Semyon’s chin, but he stared back so insolently and with such hatred that Semyon shivered.

“Repeat your words!” growled Semyon menacingly.

“Fine,” grinning sinisterly, the young boy acquiesced, “You is a Christ-killer, and your papa is a Christ-killer,” he sighed exasperatedly, “and your mama is a Christ-killer.”

“Don’t touch my mama!” screamed Semyon. “Don’t you touch my mama!” he cried in a falsetto as all the threat evaporated from his voice, which suddenly resembled the bleat of a goat rather than the roar of the lion he was so awkwardly trying to emulate. Then, without fully realizing what he was doing, Semyon felt his right arm fly out, punching the boy’s nose with a satisfying thump. The youngster fell on his hindquarters and a tiny streak of blood streamed from his nose to his mouth and chin. As Semyon stared down at the bleeding child, his body-controlling rage was quickly replaced by the infinite sorrow he felt every time he was reminded of his mother.

The boy grinned, exposing a gap where a front tooth was missing. Semyon turned around and was walking away when a hoarse voice behind him grumbled, “Wanna hassle someone your size, chickenshit? Or you Jew-boys only hit the weak and small?” Unlike Semyon and his feeble attempt to sound intimidating, the speaker made no effort to appear anything other than what he was: a genuine menace.

Realizing he had been set up, Semyon’s sadness sharply transformed into an all-encompassing fear that rose from his loins into his chest and throat. He thought about running away but decided he was way too far from the shtetl where he could seek protection. After calculating his nonexistent chances of reaching relative safety, he opted to face the consequences head on rather than provide his adversaries an additional excitement of the chase. Cautiously turning back, Semyon came face to face with four village boys, each of whom rivaled him in height but easily exceeded him in girth. As they stood around the child on the ground, all five pairs of eyes bore into Semyon. “The Jew-boy get…like…walloped. The Jew-boy get…like…thwacked,” chanted the boy. “Good price…you know…for hitting a defenseless orphan,” the child joyfully whimpered, displaying a predatory smirk as he got up from the dirt.

The irrepressible dread filling Semyon’s body propelled his feet forward and forced his hands back into fists. Without forethought, his animal’s instinct kicked in and Semyon swung out, aiming for the face of the gang leader, the one with the raspy voice. But before his arm could fully respond to his fear’s command, a massive fist flew at Semyon’s face, connecting sharply with his right eyebrow. Semyon felt a small crack the sound of which reminded him of the noise made when snapping a chicken bone in half at Passover Seder. The right side of his face instantly erupted with fire and his eyelid was forced down by a swelling of throbbing pain, preventing him from seeing half of his attackers. The second blow caught Semyon in the lips and metallic taste of blood quickly filled his mouth. Sensing the warm streaks running down his chin, he thought how his current predicament mirrored that of the small boy’s, but on a much grander scale. A third blow connected with Semyon’s cheek, swinging his head violently to the right and sending his kashket down the dusty road. Semyon fell to his knees just as a bare foot rose and shoved his body, knocking him back. He quickly rolled onto his side, pulled his knees to his chest, and tried to use his arms to cover the more delicate parts. His assailants moved in and continued to rhythmically kick exposed areas as Semyon, who was by nature quite squeamish, suffered waves of nausea as their cracked black toenails drew close to his face. Still, their filthy feet were no match for their hard fists, and he barely felt the fresh onslaught as his position on the ground protected the most vulnerable organs.

As the teenagers focused on their grounded quarry, they made hacking noises and swung their arms wildly in the air. Semyon's mind detached from the reality of his predicament and began wondering. He imagined that from a distance an unwitty observer might assume that a group of farmhands was busy splitting wood, except they had no axes and a wood-chopping party in the middle of a dusty road made no sense. Without saying a word, the young hoodlums effusively exerted themselves while Semyon endured hot drops of their sweat as his physical pain steadied and his humiliation grew unbearable. The child, who had been running around, cheering on the assaulters, now pushed his way between two of the larger lads and kicked Semyon, aiming right at the tailbone. Shortly after that, the louts lost interest and abruptly sauntered away without so much as a backward glance. The child lingered long enough to swiftly kick Semyon in the face with his hard, little foot. “Lesson for ya, Yid,” he bent down and hissed, leaving Semyon queasy from the smell of half burned vodka and sour breath.

Finally left alone, Semyon gauged his physical damage and, after a moment of bemused reflection, decided no vital organ was impaired and his gasping body was operational, except for his right eye. He spat out more blood, rolled onto his back, and stared into a blue sky where a few clouds floated gently. One of them looked like an old man with a patchy white beard, reminding Semyon that his father would soon become worried if he was not home. This thought forced him into decisive action and he gingerly pushed himself up from the ground. His head spun and for a moment he had to pause, sitting on his haunches. Obviously, he could not show up at home in this condition, so he cautiously got to his feet, picked up his kashket, shook off the dust, and placed it back on his head. Wincing, he started to walk in the direction away from his house and the shtetl, towards the village wellspring.

After a few minutes at a gradual pace to ensure everything was still in a working order, Semyon began to accelerate and was nearly running by the time he arrived at the shadoof. Most villagers made their daily trips to the waterhole early in the morning or late in the evening and, given that it was the afternoon, he hoped that nobody would be there. Jews were not supposed to get water from this well as the shtetl had several water sources of its own, so he was disappointed to find a young woman, almost a girl, pushing the well-poll with its attached bucket down the mouth of the artisanal draw-well.

On the ground next to her feet, Semyon saw two buckets and a short beam with hooks on both ends. By fastening the buckets to the ends of the beam and placing its center on their shoulders, village women managed to carry pails of water that were too heavy to lift by hand. Jewish water bearers used similar devices, but they hooked their buckets to the ropes, hanging down from the ends of the beam, thus allowing them to pick up their loads with a small squat, practically a dip, while Ukrainian women had to squat until their buttocks nearly touched the ground. Watching the girl at the well, Semyon considered how Jewish water carriers were all men, while in Russian and Ukrainian villages mostly women attended to that task. For a second, he wondered about the reasons for such specialization, before deciding he had more pressing matters to consider.

The moment the girl turned her back to him to focus on the task of pulling the bucket from the well, Semyon began sneaking toward the bushes that provided the only cover in the overall flat landscape. His furtive maneuver failed, he knew, when the girl abruptly turned around with a start, the well-poll slipping out of her hand sending the half-full bucket up in the air spraying her dress with water.

Staring intensely into the bushes where Semyon was hiding, the girl slipped her hand under the white kerchief covering her hair and pulled out a long metal bodkin. This move loosened the blonde braids folded around her head and a plait fell to her shoulder. “What are you doing here?” With a threatening gesture, she jabbed the bodkin toward the bushes. “Should not you use di krenitse for water?” Her voice had an undertone of concern, rather than of fear or of annoyance.

The Yiddish word for the wellspring on the lips of this Ukrainian girl surprised Semyon. “Do you speak Yiddish?” he asked, dumbfounded, scrambling out from his hiding place.

“Nah, not really,” The girl shook her head. “Just a few words here and there. My father hires Jews for work in his fields.”

“Ah, I see.”

“What happened to your eye?” she asked, her lips screwed into a smirk.

“I fell,” Semyon answered hesitantly.

“Aha, and your mouth, too?”

“Very well,” conceded Semyon, “I was in a fight.”

“With who?” the girl continued her third degree.

“They failed to introduce themselves,” responded Semyon bitterly.

The girl gave his battered face an appraising gaze, then sighed heavily. “Yea, this is the worst time of the year. Until the planting season begins the boys will be seeking any thrill.” She shoved the loose braid back under her kerchief and reinserted the bodkin. “Now I see why you came to the village well, instead of the shtetl’s di krenitse. You are trying to clean yourself up, so your family does not find out?” Semyon only nodded in response. “You understand, no amount of scrubbing will fix that bump?” She pointed at his eyebrow. Using three fingers, Semyon lightly touched the apple-sized bulge above his grossly swollen eye, trying to make sense of it.

“Come here,” the girl waved her hand. She filled the bucket and motioned for Semyon to look at his reflection. Semyon bent over and with horror saw a monster, a hideous dybbuk with a purple semi-sphere where, just this morning, his eye had been. The one-eyed imp stared back at Semyon from the bucket, two curved dark-red sausages appearing in the place where most humans have lips, as he apparently attempted to scowl. Only slightly less repellent was the wretch’s left cheek that looked as if he had tried to beautify himself using beet-colored rouge but was interrupted before he could blend the application or add any to his other side.

“A chorbn!” Semyon uttered, whistling. At least he tried to whistle, but the creature in the bucket refused to pucker his sausages, and instead made an unsightly blubbering noise that sounded like flatulence. Pink saliva flew up from the dybbuk’s lips, striking the water surface and obscuring the reflection. “I am so sorry,” Semyon quickly brought his hand to his mouth.

“Don’t be. Those buckets have seen worse.”

“What am I to do?” lamented Semyon, without addressing his question to anyone in particular.

But the girl readily responded, “You have two ways of dealing with this disaster. You could let it be and in a few weeks the bump will go away on its own—but, meanwhile, you won’t be able to see from that eye—or you could punch a hole in the swelling to let the blood out. You would probably have a small scar, but you will be rid of the knob, right away.”

“A few weeks? I can’t wait that long!” Semyon exclaimed, “I have to work.”

“Good,” The girl nodded with an approving grin. “That’s what I would do if it was my eye.” Once again, she pulled out the sharp bodkin from her hair.

“Oy, vai!” Semyon could not restrain his astonishment.

“Da,” the girl winked, “sometimes I walk the country road alone. Do you have matches?”

“Of course,” Semyon reached into his pocket. No fifteen-year-old boy in the shtetl would be caught without matches.

“Here, light this,” she pulled a small candle from her dress pocket. Semyon set fire to the wick and the girl proceeded to heat the sharp point of the bodkin in the flame. Then, with a sudden and startling motion, she plunged the big needle into what appeared to Semyon to be his eye but was in reality the taut skin half an inch above his eyebrow. The girl just as quickly pulled the metal out and jumped back as dark blood jetted from the puncture, squirting the grass in front of her feet. To his surprise and relief, Semyon felt no pain from the prick. Instead, the throbbing ache that badgered his head started to subside and soon only faint remnants of it lurked inside his skull. From another pocket, the girl took a clean white cloth, folded it in quarters, and pressed it to Semyon’s wound. “Hold it until the bleeding stops,” she placed Semyon’s hand over the cloth.

Now, with both eyes functioning, Semyon could see the girl better. She was nearly as tall as he, with pale, almost ivory skin, a wide face with high cheekbones, and ample, honey-colored eyebrows. Her mouth was a bit large for her face and its puffy, pink lips made her appearance seem permanently coquettish. Her snub nose was the kind that children in the village would teasingly call pug-nose, though Semyon doubted that anyone would dare to mock her like that. She was wearing a grey sarafan fastened with a rope around her waist. The rope-belt was slightly unusual, not a common hemp cord with tassels, but a soft layered linen interlaced with colored threads and two carved button-like toggles in the form of blue bellflowers at either end. Recently Semyon’s life rotated around woodworking and carving little figurines from soft wood became his favorite pastime, so seeing familiar objects adorning the girl’s belt felt heartening to him.

The skirt of the dress reached to the tops of her short brown leather boots, which were rare as most of the peasant girls in the village walked barefoot or wore homemade bast shoes. “Of course,” thought Semyon, “she mentioned her father hires Jews for fieldwork. Yes, she must be a daughter of a wealthy farmer. Why would a daughter of a rich farmer be getting her own water?” But before he could come up with an answer for that question his attention refocused on her outfit.

On top of the dress she wore a dark grey shawl around her shoulders, despite it being a warm spring day. At this point, she tugged off her kerchief, exposing the braid wrapped around her head. Since the bodkin was no longer securing the tresses, the braid dropped, easily reaching below the girl’s waist. Semyon thought the color of her hair reminded him of something. Yes, of course, it resembled the bluish white tint of the flax flowers carpeting the fields he often traversed when running errands for Uncle Leiba.

“Tomorrow, you will be able to work,” she smiled. “And don’t worry about the lips. You may have trouble kissing for the next few days but then you will be fine,” she stared straight into Semyon’s eyes as she delivered her assessment. Suddenly, the young man supposed his injuries were more severe than he had previously estimated, as his legs buckled, and he nearly lost his balance. After a dizzy moment, he realized the cause of vertigo was not his contusions, but rather the cold blue fire of the girl’s eyes, the brilliance of which bewildered Semyon who was used to varying shades of brown or gray. Recalling his father’s stories about his visit to Odessa and descriptions of the Black Sea, Semyon now pictured the sea to be the color of the girl’s bottomless sapphire eyes.

To steady himself, Semyon put his hand forward and unwarily grabbed the girl’s arm. As he felt her bicep flex, he experienced the sensation, which had been plaguing his dreams recently, but never his waking hours. The lower part of his stomach swelled with a warmth that quickly poured down into his pelvis, forcing an erection, which his dark heavy trousers concealed, but only partially. He started to place his other hand over his crotch then just as quickly jerked it away, deciding this would only draw attention to the source of his profound indignity.

And then the girl giggled. To Semyon’s ear the sound was like the tinkling patter of a rain hitting an empty metal barrel. Although he couldn’t specify why, Semyon was certain he wanted to hear her laughter for the rest of his life, even if each time he had to pay for it with personal humiliation.

As Semyon was thinking all of this, the girl wrapped up her braid, secured her bodkin, and replaced her kerchief, once again hiding her hair. Then, without saying a word, she helped him wash the blood from his shirt, as Semyon’s hand was still pressing the cloth to his forehead. Whenever he caught her occasional glance, Semyon felt his face flush up.

Next, the girl rinsed her buckets, filled them with fresh water, and squatted deeply to get her shoulders beneath the beam which forced her ample bosom forward against the delicate material of her sarafan, revealing the points of her nipples. Semyon realized with considerable discomfort that his eyes, despite his best efforts to look elsewhere, were staring at her breasts. She noticed, smiled, straightened up, lifting the weight of two buckets with ease, before turning around and walking away.

“Wait, wait!” yelped Semyon. “What’s your name?”

The girl stopped and slowly turned around. “Marianna,” she said, giggling again, but this time her laughter made Semyon melancholic. With deep despair, he recognized the same sadness that came over him whenever he thought about his mother. He sat down on the ground next to the well and stared at the retreating girl’s broad shoulders and straight back while imagining her long legs under the skirt. Her next step was wider than normal as she tried to avoid a pothole, giving Semyon a glimpse of the skin above her shoe as her dress slipped up a few inches. He was hoping she would turn and smile or wave or giggle once more, so he could press her features and her laughter into his memory, but the weight of her carry prevented her from fulfilling his unspoken wish. Semyon continued to sit and stare at her back as tears that began running down his cheeks and dropping onto his shirt, finally blurred his vision to the point where he could no longer separate Marianna’s silhouette from the surrounding landscape.