Histoires d'Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy

I want to go back.

I want to go back.

I want to go back.

I want to go back.

I want to go back.

Life is wonderful.

I don't miss anything.

I'm just looking at the stars on the sky.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Life is wonderful.

There is nothing missing.

Sleep my child.

I will change the way I soften your breast.

When you suffer, you will see that life is mocking you.

Let me live the way I want to live.

I'm a child.

How much longer?

I will be with you forever and ever.

You changed your mind and spoke your mind in your house and in your home.

I will be with you forever and ever.

A rabbi always passed through a village

to get to the forest and there, at the foot of a tree,

and it was always the same one, he began to pray, and God heard him.

His son too always passed through the same village to get to the forest,

but he could not remember where the tree was.

So he prayed at the foot of any old tree and God heard him.

His grandson did not know where the tree was, nor the forest.

So he went to pray in the village, and God heard him.

His great-grandson did not know where the tree was,

nor the forest, not even the village.

But he still knew the words of the prayer.

So he prayed in his house, and God heard him.

His great-grandson did not know where the tree, nor the forest,

nor the village were, not even the words of the prayer.

But he still knew the story, so he told it to his children,

and God heard him.

My own story is full of missing links, full of blanks

and I do not even have a child.

I loved him as no woman could ever love a man.

We did everything together, we earned a good living together

and each of my thoughts was only for him.

He was such a handsome and warm-hearted man.

If I wanted to, I could talk to him.

If I wanted to keep quiet, he respected my silence.

One day, quite suddenly, he died,

leaving me alone with our 13-year-old daughter.

My world fell apart.

I sat down on a chair, looking straight ahead.

My eyes were tearless.

I was senseless.

Only when it was night and dark could I cry.

I sat on a chair crying all night long.

But at daybreak, I had to get up to make breakfast

for my daughter.

I thought to myself, at least I do not

have to get dressed, as I never got undressed that whole night.

I thought of my mother, who had remained in Poland

and from whom I had no news in such a long time.

Were they all dead over there?

What was happening in my old land, terror gripped my heart,

but I managed to chase it away.

I said to myself that everything had been easier for her.

Her parents had married her off at the age of 16 to a man

she did not love without even asking her opinion.

She got used to him, to this man, to my father.

When he died, life went on as before.

Anyway, so it seemed to me I was still a little girl.

My daughter and I had breakfast in the kitchen,

a little bread and tea.

I thought to myself, he is dead, and here we go on eating.

I felt like throwing myself out the window,

but I held myself back.

I thought he will never eat with us again, ever.

He's lying very peacefully on a bed in the bedroom.

It was as if he had known he was going to die.

He had taken out a very heavy life insurance.

But what was I to do with all that money?

It was his way of saying to me, when I'm gone, life will go on.

You will have enough to live on.

America is a big and beautiful country.

You see, I have not abandoned you.

I am with you still.

We had lived through pogroms, hunger, cold.

It was even said that today in Europe,

people were being taken into slavery.

But so many things were said.

In the end, what we knew was this.

We could live here without being afraid,

without creeping along the walls.

And then he had to die.

And everything was nothing.

and I came to take him away.

They put him in a coffin.

Then I fainted.

Yossi, my husband's best friend, came

to take us to the cemetery.

He brought me back to life with a little cologne attached

at the temples at the wrists.

My head felt as if it was going to burst.

And Yossi held me very tight by the hands.

When they closed my husband's coffin,

I became hysterical to stop them from putting him into the grave,

and Yossi held me back forcefully from the grave to calm me down.

I think that I screamed.

I do not know how it happened,

but on the way back from the cemetery, on the way home,

Yossi and I were alone together.

Serala, my daughter, must've been in another car.

I began crying again.

I had hoped so much that some miracle would happen,

something, but now he was buried.

What could ever happen?

Yossi did everything he could to comfort me.

He was such a nice boy, my husband's best friend,

a good friend.

He spoke to me softly to comfort me.

Yeah.

took me in his arms and whispered in my ear.

Then as he spoke, he kissed me.

Sweet kisses, very tender kisses as one kisses a child.

I felt tears running from his eyes.

He was crying, too.

We were both crying.

Then I felt his mouth meet mine, and he kissed me the way

a man kisses a woman.

And I was so tired and confused that I let him kiss me.

And without even thinking of my own actions,

I kissed him back.

I was so exhausted.

I did not know where I was.

It was dark all around me.

I let myself continue to cry.

Again and again, he kissed me,

but I had no strength to resist.

He spoke to me, he said many things, but I heard nothing.

They were words of love, but I did not hear them.

I was unconscious in his arms, a living corpse.

When I got home, my daughter had already arrived.

She looked at me with big questioning eyes.

I could not bear to look in those eyes,

but she stared at me.

And it was as if she had guessed everything

and was asking me why.

Her stare pierced my soul, but I had no reply.

But who has an answer, anyway?

And what kind of woman had I become?

Six months ago, I brought my fiancee

to this country from Poland.

I tore her away from her family.

Her parents did not want her to leave.

For them, she was no longer among the living,

and they sat Shiva for her.

She had no one else left in the world but me.

I had to earn a living, so I shaved my beard,

and I cut my side curls, and I closed my prayer books,

and I went out into the world.

And I said, God will forgive me.

There was nothing else I could do.

I had to earn a living.

When I went to meet her at the boat, she hardly recognized me.

without my beard and dressed like an American.

And we were married that same day.

There was no family,

but a few of my friends from work were present.

And I said to her, we will build a family of our own,

and we will have our own children.

And later they will have children

who will have children of their own.

Anyway, we could not stay over there.

That was no life.

And then I told her that one day we would have enough money

and we would bring over the rest of the family.

And she listened to me silently, her face

weighing in her eyes big.

And she smiled.

But I felt that she was not able to believe me

and that she was suffering.

I mean, everything was strange to her and upsetting.

I mean, this unknown language and these new faces,

it all upset her.

Anyway, that next day, she fell ill.

And I had to go to work, or I'd be fired.

My boss had already warned me.

And that night, when I returned to our unheated room,

Things were not any better.

And the following day, they got worse.

I mean, she stayed in the bed, still being silent,

with her eyes looking up to the ceiling.

But she didn't cry, and she didn't complain.

Fortunately, that following day was Saturday,

and I didn't have to go to work.

So the doctor came.

And although he didn't know the cause of her illness,

he prescribed medicine.

So I had to go back to work.

I mean, how could I pay for the medicine if I didn't?