If you think that Moshe drinks, you are terribly, hopelessly wrong.
He doesn’t drink, he has never drunk and he has no intentions to start.
And a tiny little glass of cognac after lunch – that’s not drinking, is it? It’s not even a whiff, it’s just peering in and winking once.
And a tiny Glenfiddich bottle in Sarona, sitting on a bench – I wish everybody were drinking like Moshe! – Those two little sips just slid down his throat and disappeared, leaving a warm greeting on his tongue.
Oh, now you are recalling that little vodka shot last Saturday?
Well, can you believe the pettiness of certain people! It was raining, he got cold and wet, and practically got sick and died already, and even a child knows measures had to be taken right away! Wouldn’t you take measures in this situation? Of course you would, God bless your soul!
No, Moshe Zaigert is not a drunk, not an alcoholic and not a lame boozer, as his late wife Esther used to call him sometimes out of anger.
Her words were really hurtful indeed, but Moshe endured it bravely and didn’t engage, breathing to the side.
He would just blink away his tears and keep silent.
Those were not the tears of insult, as you might have thought; you can’t be insulted if the other person is absolutely and utterly wrong!
Moshe’s eyes welled up with unbearable pity and sadness – because Esther had just few months to live. Moshe heard that from the doctor, Arie Goldberg, and there wasn’t a single reason not to believe him.
Arie Goldberg, just so that you know, was the best oncologist in the city, or maybe even in the entire country.
Oncology! Moshe hated this word. He imagined it as a giant pale insect with huge clacking jaws.
Clack – and his laughing, careless Esthy turns into a thin grumpy old woman.
Clack – and a big chunk of happy, serene and fairly prosperous life falls into a stinking hole, and scary test climbed out of it instead, the ones that open a bottomless pit in your stomach and make you feel like you are falling and falling and cannot stop.
And the insanely expensive drugs, yeah. Moshe didn’t spare a thing, selling the ruins of their once happy life – he only calculated how much more is needed and what else has to be sold…
And he kept quiet, not telling a thing to his sweet dear wife.
She wasn’t even noticing the disappearance of paintings, furniture and clothes.
She was too busy, she was working hard trying to survive – obeying her doctors, taking all the meds, doing chemo. And hasn’t complained even once.
Only this one time she started crying – desperately, bitterly – when her hair started falling out, her beautiful fluffy black hair with not a single gray strand, which she used to be extremely proud of. Oh, I wish they were all gray, Esther was wailing, but remained on my head, instead of falling in chunks on the shower floor.
But she never cried again, not even once.
It’s really important, she was whispering to herself while shuffling to the next scary painful procedure.
“I must survive, or else my dear Moshe will be left alone, living like schlimazel – all neglected, dirty, hungry and depressed.” – She was praying, but apparently, her prayers weren’t heard. And after several months she was gone, leaving her dear Moshe alone and depressed.
So what are you saying, that he doesn’t even have the right to have a little scotch on such a beautiful evening?
The very same evening his Esther can’t see anymore, his sweet cheerful wife, the girl with a name from a Bible and an iron will.
No, Moshe grabs some sandwiches, some tomatoes and cucumbers, spring onions and salt, slips a little bottle of a high-quality booze in his pocket – doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s good – takes a couple of pretty glasses and plods to his favorite meadow in his favorite Yarkon park.
Esther used to make fun of those slanting trees and say they reminded her of Moshe and his friends after the wedding of aunt Pesya, the milkmaid.
And that’s what she used to call this place afterwards – the Drunken Meadow. Let’s go to the Drunken Meadow in the evening? And they would take the picnic basket (no sandwiches though… Esther and sandwiches – come on, how could you even think that?!) – and sit at the Drunken Meadow, and Esther’s laughter still hovers there, among the leaves of funny slanted trees.
And now this schlimazel Moshe Zaigert is sitting alone on his Drunken Meadow, whiskey poured into two pretty little glasses, crying, and telling the other glass, “Don’t you worry, my dear, I’m not drinking and it hasn’t even crossed my mind. I’m just having a little drink so it won’t hurt so much in my chest, where the soul lives, you know? And now you and I are going to have a little drink, my little bird, we’ll get all warm inside, and everything is going to be just fine. Wherever you are now – you are fine, right?”
And he nods and replies to himself, “Of course you are fine”.
Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira