MATZOS
                                                    Translated from Russian by the author                                          Lev Gunin
The ceiling is flipping, whirling, spinning round, the dusty shadows are banched in the middle of the room. She must support herself by touching the surface of the table: not to fall down. “Vus arbeistu nit, vus shlofstu? - Why are you not working, why are you sleeping? - this exclamation in Yiddish overtakes her as a lash. They know that she speaks Yiddish but they treat her as others: without mercy. Another cloud of blackish smoke rises to the ceiling. Some of the woman are coughing. “ Did you sleep this night, - addresses Luba, a fat Ukrainian, to Natasha’s neighbor, - on or under your husband?” She’s the most strong among them. She was a champion in discus throwing. Her face is like a peace of a fresh meat, and she looks like a mountain. But even her hands look terrible; she suffers from pain - and she wants to hide it in her jokes. An invisible, frozen column of time grows slowly, too slowly for all of them. From the other hand time is a sword in their bodies. Each minute it plunges deeper and deeper into their bodies. They feel the taste of blood into their mouths even if they don’t lick the blood off their bleeding palms. Two bare lamps hang down from the high ceiling. Their yellow, tiny light just irritates but not illuminates the place. Natasha bends more down to hide her condition. She’s closer and closer to a swoon. She’s thirsty, her lips are dry as a desert. Everything inside her burns. But the oversees don’t let the woman drink. “Not to fall,- she whispers to herself, - just not to fall…” A scratching voice which orders something saves her. According to religious rules they must wash their hands now. She moves with the others as in a dream. Sounds around her are like stones. They break some delicate, tender membrane inside her - and strike, and strike!.. She’s remembering her native city somewhere in Belarus. Her grandfather was a rabbaj, her parents were keeping Yiddish and some religious traditions dispute the danger from the evil communist power, which forbidden Jewish culture and traditions just in all spheres of life.
When her mother was 16 the communists closed all Yiddish schools in her city. They arrested and killed Yddish teachers, actors, poets, writers. But even then they loathed that city, which some of them called "Little Jerusalem". On the other hand they didn't care to supress all the customs and peculiarities from the former epoch. They didn't let them to be developed and kept them as an anachronism of the previous era. When everywhere in the former Soviet Union just any private enterprises were forbidden - in her native city small, tiny private stores, privet shoes repairing points existed. Private “balagolas” - carters - looked strange and ridiculous in the 1970-s with their skinny horses, but were allowed. The Old City - the former Jewish town - was treated the same way. They didn't destroy it completely as they destroyed other big cities in Belarus, but they didn't repaired it: turning the Old Town into ruins. They also leveled the architectural appearence of many of its buildings changing them consciously into ugly "boxes".
Natasha could walk in the Old City for hours. She usually took the direction to the marketplace, passing pre-Revolutional huge complexes in ugendstile, in "modern" style and in eclectics. She remembers a special light of these streets, their black-and-white colors simular to Ostroumova-Lebedeva's drawings. This world was the world of Dostoyevsky and Nabokov, and the time was the turn of the last century. When a rare sun colored the streets from the top of the roofs they looked as if they were really alive - but they weren't; they were more dead then a dead men, more dead then the Egiptian pyramids, more dead then a peace of an extra-terresterial meteorit. They were strangers and enemies here. And she felt herself a stranger, too. She used to pass old synagogs, turned into ruins, huge beautiful areas little by little turning into slams.
Circle by circle she went closer and closed to the market. There was a square near the market: an old square with haughty old buildings. She saw nothing in her life so beautiful, so unique. The market square led to the market gates: a huge iron constructivist’s construction. That enter was an enter to a different world, it gave something that was taken away from two last generations: the sense of Time. She loved wandering here - to feel a special mood of the crowd in this place, to see gestures, eyes, clothes different from everything from outside, to be drawn deeply into another life… She loved wandering in passwalks, in miriads of old streets, in backyards which were connected somehow. She inhaled the breath of this frozen city, its odor. It was a smell of death, a smell of devastation.
A noisy clucking sound brings her back to reality. She sees the source of that sound: round pieces of wood in womans’ hands. The same rolling-pin is in her hands, too. The woman are standing around a long, enormously long table. She has an impression that they execute a strange and mysterious procedure. The rolling-pins are like strange tools in members’ of a mysterious sect hands. A sudden thought shocks her. Yes, they really commit a horrible barbarian procedure. They give away their lives here as in a satanic sect because this slavish exhorted labor slowly kills them.
The same repulsive voice reminds them that they have 15 minuts to eat something. They go no-where -because there is no other place, no other room here. They must eat standing on their foot in this dirty from smoke and soot room. Every women takes out her dinner. They doing it in a hurry because it is a single break during the day here. Only when they eat they realise where they are. She realise now that she's no longer in Belarus, neither Israel. Her consciousness returnes - and that worrying her. Because when she goes back to reality she feels pain in her palms, in her wrists: an unbearable pain, whild and burning. Her palms are
bleeding, her hands are dangerously swollen.
According to Jewish rules the matzos production must be immidiatly stopped in an occasion like that. Not only a direct fall of blood in matzos, but even a contact with a surface which contains dropped blood makes matzott not kosher. "How ridiculous to order us to rinse our mouths after the dinner-break, to wash the hands every 15 minutes, - thought Natasha, - to pray in the beginning of each circle, if they violate the very basic rules and Commandments?" Everything what happened in that room looked as a horror movie. The only difference is that it was real. Too real to believe. And that's why Natasha had an impression (since she began to work here) that she's still in Bnei-Brak, not here, in Montreal, in Outremont.
They were taken to Israel from Moldova. She visited her cousin in Tanuspol, a small Moldovien town, when fightings between Moldovians and Russians errupted. It was a true war. How many people were killed then - only God knows... She and her relatives escaped in panic. Everything was lost behind. Even the documents were lost. They ran without property, without identity. They lost their personalities and became just Human Beings - different from stones and from grass only biologically, not intellectually. At least they didn't know where to go, they were completely lost, and dangerous sounds of a distant battle have reached their ears.
There were about 30 more people with them. In that moment three man in clean and fashionable suits appeared. They were fresh shaved, their white shirts were new and expensive. A deputy and a chairmen of a local Jewish council were among the man. "We came to save you, - they said. - We must evacuate you from here - because that place is dangerous". (Like if they had no chances to know that themselves).
- Let's go to the buses! (There are were buses behind them in a little forrest really).
- Let's go out of here!
The only person who was suspicious towards the three man was an old invalid, a war veteran. "Where are you taking us to? - he cried.
But his words were ignored. Nobody listened to him. Less then 12 hours seperated them from a knowlege that he was the most clever person among them.
Because after 12 hours they were already in Tel-Aviv.
She remembers her first impression from an anormous and croudy room.
                                             (be continued)