Харлан Эллисон - More Wandering Stars - An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Americans,” whispered Berek.

“No need to whisper now,” Stephen said. “We’re safe.”

“Guards could be hiding anywhere,” Viktor said. “I haven’t slept in the grave to be shot now.”

They walked into the camp through a large break in the barbed-wire fence, which had been bit by an artillery shell. When they reached the compound, they found nurses, doctors, and army personnel bustling about.

“You speak English,” Viktor said to Stephen as they walked past several quonsets. “Maybe you can speak for us.”

“I told you, I can’t speak English.”

“But I’ve heard you!”

“Wait,” shouted an American army nurse. “You fellows are going the wrong way.” She was stocky and spoke perfect German. ”You must check in at the hospital; it’s back that way.”

“No,” said Berek, shaking his head. “I won’t go in there.”

“There’s no need to be afraid now,” she said. “You’re free. Come along, I’ll take you to the hospital.”

Something familiar about her, Stephen thought. He felt dizzy and everything turned gray.

“Josie,” he murmured as he fell to the ground.

“What is it?” Josie asks. “Everything is all right, Josie is here.”

“Josie,” Stephen mumbles.

“You’re all right.”

“How can I live when they’re all dead?” he asks.

“It was a dream,” she says as she wipes the sweat from his forehead. “You see, your fever has broken, you’re getting well.”

“Did you know about the grave?”

“It’s all over now, forget the dream.”

“Did you know?”

“Yes,” Josie says. “Viktor told me how he survived the grave, but that was so long ago, before you were even born. Dr. Volk tells me you’ll be going home soon.”

“I don’t want to leave, I want to stay with you.”

“Stop that talk, you’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Soon you’ll forget all about this, and you’ll forget me, too.”

“Josie,” Stephen asks, “let me see that old photograph again. Just one last time.”

“Remember, this is the last time,” she says as she hands him the faded photograph.

He recognizes Viktor and Berek, but the young man standing between them is not Stephen. “That’s not me,” he says, certain that he will never return to the camp.

Yet the shots still echo in his mind.

If you have been blessed with a Jewish mother, then you know there are four things she wants for you: ( 1 ) You should be healthy; ( 2 ) you should be successful, a doctor, maybe, or if you have to choose second best, then a lawyer, but you must make enough money so you should have a good life and make the neighbors and relatives grind their capped teeth with envy; ( 3 ) and now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, you should marry a nice girl who can make you a nice family, even if she can’t cook as well as your mom; and ( 4 ) this is the most important, she must be Jewish.

Now it’s up to a mother to give her son a little push here, a little push there, to make sure he’s doing the right thing. Isn’t that right? And a mother who loves her son would try to help him even if, with God’s help, she passed away into the next world, for what kind of mother could rest in Heaven knowing that her son wasn’t settled…?

IN THE LIVING ROOM, the family was eating. The card tables had been set up and tante Elka had laid out her famous tiny meat knishes, the matzoh meal pancakes, the deli trays of corned beef, pastrami, chopped liver, and potato salad; the lox and cream cheese, cold kippers (boned, for God’s sake, it must have taken an eternity to do it), and smoked whitefish; stacks of corn rye and a nice pumpernickel; cole slaw, chicken salad; and flotillas of cucumber pickles.

In the deserted kitchen, Lance Goldfein sat smoking a cigarette, legs crossed at the ankles, staring out the window at the back porch. He jumped suddenly as a voice spoke directly above him.

“I’m gone fifteen minutes only, and already the stink of cigarettes. Feh.”

He looked around. He was alone in the kitchen.

“It wasn’t altogether the most sensational service I’ve ever attended, if I can be frank with you. Sadie Fertel’s, now that was a service.”

He looked around again, more closely this time. He was still alone in the kitchen. There was no one on the back porch. He turned around completely, but the swinging door to the dining room, and the living room beyond, was firmly closed. He was alone in the kitchen. Lance Goldfein had just returned from the funeral of his mother, and he was alone, thinking, brooding, in the kitchen of the house he now owned.

He sighed; heaved a second sigh; he must have heard a snatch of conversation from one of the relatives in the other room. Clearly. Obviously. Maybe.

“You don’t talk to your own mother when she speaks to you? Out of sight is out of mind, is that correct?”

Now the voice had drifted down and was coming from just in front of his face. He brushed at the air, as though cleaning away spiderwebs. Nothing there. He stared at emptiness and decided the loss of his mother had finally sent him over the brink. But what a tragic way to go bananas, he thought. I finally get free of her, may God bless her soul and keep her comfortable, and I still hear her voice nuhdzing me. I’m coming, Mom; at this rate I’ll be planted very soon. You’re gone three days and already I’m having guilt withdrawal symptoms.

“They’re really fressing out there,” the voice of his mother said, now from somewhere down around his shoe tops. “And, if you’ll pardon my being impertinent, Lance my darling son, who the hell invited that momser Morris to my wake? In life I wouldn’t have that shtumie in my home, I should watch him stuff his face when I’m dead?”

Lance stood, walked over to the sink, and ran water on the cigarette. He carried the filter butt to the garbage can and threw it in. Then he turned very slowly and said—to the empty room—“This is not fair. You are not being fair. Not even a little bit fair.”

“What do I know from fair,” said the disembodied voice of his mother. “I’m dead. I should know about fair? Tell me from fair; to die is a fair thing? A woman in her prime?”

“Mom, you were sixty-six years old.”

“For a woman sound of mind and limb, that’s prime.”

He walked around the kitchen for a minute, whistled a few bars of “Eli Eli,” just be on the safe side, drew himself a glass of water, and drank deeply. Then he turned around and addressed the empty room again. “I’m having a little trouble coming to grips with this, Mom. I don’t want to sound too much like Alexander Portnoy, but why me?”

No answer.

“Where are you… hey, Mom?”

“I’m in the sink.”

He turned around. “Why me? Was I a bad son, did I step on an insect, didn’t I rebel against the Vietnam war soon enough? What was my crime, Mom, that I should be haunted by the ghost of a yenta? ”

“You’ll kindly watch your mouth. This is a mother you’re speaking to.”

“I’m sorry.”

The door from the dining room swung open and Aunt Hannah was standing there in her galoshes. In the recorded history of humankind there had never been snow in Southern California, but Hannah had moved to Los Angeles twenty years earlier from Buffalo, New York, and there had been snow in Buffalo. Hannah took no chances. “Is there gefilte fish?” she asked.

Lance was nonplussed. “Uh, uh, uh,” he said, esoterically.

“Gefilte fish,” Hannah said, trying to help him with the difficult concept. “Is there any?”