In the Beginning...
In the Beginning...
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS - June 12, 2018 • By Isaac Bashevis Singer
LARB presents Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story “In the Beginning,” translated from the Yiddish by David Stromberg. This is the story’s first appearance in English. It is featured in the LARB Print Quarterly Journal: No. 18, Genius
A heat wave spread across Tel Aviv. The “veterans” — the ones who’d lived there for a while — called it a hamsin. But for the newcomers it was hard to tell the difference between a hamsin and just plain heat. A hot, dry wind blew in from somewhere, reminding Liza Fuchs of flames from a furnace. At night, while she slept, her mouth and throat became dry, and her nostrils filled with sandy dust. The sun went down as flaming red as coal, and for a long time after sunset blazing tongues continued to rise as from a heavenly abyss on fire. The moon was unusually large, blood red, a burning globe mapping otherworldly lands. The nights were not still. Voices could be heard in the middle of the night — just like in Warsaw. Young men cried out in Hebrew. Young women laughed. Cars and trucks passed in the streets. There was no war in the country, but neither was there peace. The Polish-language newspaper that Liza bought each morning reported tension on the border. There were skirmishes in the Negev, near Gaza, or whatever those places were called. Against the shine of the moon you could see military trucks and motorcycles driven by soldiers in helmets. A silent mobilization had begun.
At dawn, Liza stood at the window, stark naked. A light wind, smelling of dead fish and sewage, blew in periodically from the sea. Liza’s body was both shivering and sweating. Over the flat roofs of Tel Aviv hung little bundles of stars, like fiery bunches of grapes. Cats meowed. A few light poles shone with a yellow light reminding Liza of the lanterns that were carried behind coffins in Warsaw. It was strange to think that she had found herself in the Jewish state, Palestine, Israel. But what good was all this Jewishness to her? She would never learn their Hebrew. She’d tried taking Hebrew classes at an ulpan. But right in the beginning, the grammar made her head spin. The Hebrew words, with their khets and their khafs, got stuck in her throat. Perhaps, if she’d come when she was younger, she might have managed to learn a little. But she was over 40. She could just as well forget about understanding anything.
Yes, she might as well say goodbye to everything. She’s left without a job, without a husband. She no longer goes to the cafe where the Polish-speaking Jews gather — the Warsaw Manjeks and Salczes who greet each other with servus and kiss the women’s hands. They leave her sitting alone at her table. The men don’t even look at her. The women throw sharp glances at her. The waiters are impolite. They scoop up the few coins she leaves for a tip and don’t even say toda — thank you. Liza had even tried going to a kibbutz. But she didn’t last there more than a week. The sun left a rash on her face. In the dining hall she was eaten by flies. She couldn’t stand anything there: the aluminum spoons, the bare tables, the half-naked servers who slammed the plates and bowls, the scent of disinfectant, used to wash down the tile floors. A thick darkness reigned at night, a tropical blackness which no lampposts could illuminate. Snakes slithered in the grass. Bats flew overhead. The frogs quacked with human voices. The crickets didn’t chirp — they sawed invisible trees. The jackals howled as in childbirth. Arabs lurked on the other side of the mountain. At the cultural center, the beit tarbut, the newspapers and magazines were all in Hebrew. The men at the kibbutz were either too young for her — sabras who knew no language other than Hebrew — or old men who smelled of garlic and groaned when they spoke Yiddish. Here in Tel Aviv, Liza at least had her own apartment, though it didn’t have a bathtub or a shower, just a toilet on the roof. She could wash herself at the sink. And even for this rooftop apartment she had to pay 800 lira in key money.
Liza had already done all kinds of work here: cut women’s hair, ironed shirts at a cleaner’s, even cleaned the rooms of a two-star hotel. But she was now, again, without a job. Her entire fortune consisted of 12 lira and a few coins. She had already stopped making lunch, satisfying herself with bread and lebenya, a kind of sour milk that had an aftertaste to which Liza could never quite get accustomed.