“I fail to …”

“Spare me.” Felix holds up his hand, defending himself.

His mind wanders to home. For the sake of equilibrium, perhaps. Emmy is straining the leashes that bind them to home and heart, so now, it is up to him to balance out her rebellion with obedience. “For my father?”

Wilhelm shakes his head. “Now if it was my father, then your second argument would hold but your first argument would collapse. At present, you have submitted two arguments with as much substances as… as an otherworldly spirit.”

Felix lifts a stone from the ground and throws it. It hits the bark of the tree. “My reputation? My prospects? To impress a future bride?”

“No, no, no.”

“Because I enjoy contemplating the meaning of life?”

“Definitely not. There are far more important things to consider. Such as whether or not man can communicate with souls. Remind me to take you to a séance one of these days.”

A face comes up in his mind. His uncle Shneur, sitting by a volume of the Talmud, singing quietly to himself, peace around him like an aura that could almost be touched. “To make my mother happy?” he says eventually.

“Getting closer,” Wilhelm says. “Keep at it. Perhaps by the time you’ve sprouted your first gray whiskers, you’ll be near to understanding why you’re torturing yourself this way.”

***

The clock on the wall ticks, the hand moves, the small doors fling open, and the cuckoo springs out, and begins calling out the time. Cuckoo, cuckoo.

Hannah looks up at the little bird, bobbing on its piece of wire, and smiles. When they had received it — a wedding gift from Ernst’s fellow violinists — she had been enamored of it, and came running into the living room each hour, in time to see the cuckoo burst out of its little wooden chalet. She had written to Mama, describing it.

Mama had written back, hoping that her daughter was not going to be drawn after frivolities. She had underlined her words in black ink. On the page, Mama had translated the clock into scoopfuls of beans, bags of grain, loaves of bread, hungry families, empty bellies. When she had received the letter, Hannah had been ashamed of herself. So fast had she forgotten her pangs of hunger, for Papa had given away their own bread to the neighbor Guttfried, whose money was all spent on the doctor.

So the clock became a guilty pleasure.

Now, the bird announces that it is 11 o’clock. Felix is at the theater watching his father. Ernst is performing at a special concert tonight —150 years since the passing of Vivaldi — with a program he has been practicing for a month. He won’t be home until after midnight. But Emmy. Emmy had told her of a literary evening. Surely she should be home.

Hannah takes out her Tehillim and retires to her bedroom. In her nightclothes, under the covers, she begins to recite her favorite chapter. “Thos who dwell in the shade of the Almighty…”

Slowly, the words tangle in her tiredness, and then cease. Her hand goes slack, the Tehillim is heavy, and then it falls onto the bedcover. She jerks awake, picks up the volume and places it on her bedtable.

Where is Emmy?

She should say Krias Shema, but she is waiting.

Her eyes close again, a heaviness creeps over her limbs.

From the other room, she hears the clock ticking, the sound of a carriage swishing past in the street. An owl hoots. Silence.

And then, the noise of the front door opening. Hannah blinks. She sits up, pushes slippers onto her feet.

Emmy.

Ah, Emmy, home. Maybe they will have a cup of tea together, Emmy will tell her about the book they read from, or they’ll simply sit in companionable silence.

But there are other voices coming from the kitchen. A clink of glasses. A bottle placed on the table. Wine? Is Emmy drinking wine with her friends?

The shout of laughter. “Hush,” comes Emmy’s voice. The hum of talk. A squeal, a muffled giggle.

Hannah leans forward slightly, listening. Who has Emmy brought home with her? And what are they doing?

The bump of chairs, and all of a sudden, a note on the piano.

Emmy: “Hush, please, you will wake my mother.”

It seems that no one takes notice, for a moment later, the piano is thumping out chords, a melody, a strange song. Nothing that Ernst plays, nothing she would recognize. It must be what Ernst calls a vulgar show tune.

And then there is thumping. Dancing. Hannah bites her lip. Emmy and her friends are in her living room, dancing to some vulgar music, drinking wine, and she is powerless to stop it.

The cuckoo sounds again — 12 calls, midnight, surely Emmy will take note and all will end. But the noise continues on and on, until a carriage clatters to a halt outside, and Emmy bundles her friends out of the house — the door opens and closes, and opens and closes, while Emmy prepares to dutifully greet her father and congratulate him on tonight’s performance, which all the town is saying was a triumph.

The next morning, while Emmy sleeps, Hannah sets the breakfast table for her and Felix. Ernst never eats in the morning, he simply drinks a coffee in the coffeehouse beside the theater, and then overeats at lunch.

For herself, she has a bowl of oat porridge. Felix has toast and marmalade. By the time Felix comes in, and sits down, she has lost patience for niceties about last night’s concert.

“Felix, may I ask you something?”

“Of course, Mama.”

“What do you think of your sister?”

He looks at her steadily, “In what way?”

“I know that this is what is expected of her, of her friends and family and society, but when I see an intelligent and capable young woman doing nothing but worrying about which hat to take to the theater and walking and riding and tea parties, I feel distressed.”

Felix butters a slice of toast. “What would you have her do?”

“When I was her age… I was at the store. Measuring out dried beans and marking down the accounts and making small talk with the customers. It may have been village talk, about the people who died, and those who were ill, and those whose daughter was in shidduchim. It wasn’t about books or poetry or philosophy. But all the conversations today — they feel like… like the reflection in a river. Throw in a stone and you’ll see that there’s nothing there.”

Felix throws back his head and roars with laughter. “Is that what you think?”

“There, we always had something to do, whether a good deed or a mischievous one. A woman who had just had a baby, or a lamb to bottlefeed, or the village drunk to follow around and call names at.” She stumbles, unsure of what exactly she is trying to say. “I know… it sounds…”

“Unsophisticated?” Felix offers.

“More than that. Primitive, you may call it. Compared to your book readings and your lectures and your teas and the great discussions that you all have.” She breaks off.

Felix chews slowly. “Go on, Mama.”

She looks at him gratefully. “It’s just that… at the end of each day, I slept well in my bed. And that counts for something.

“I don’t know that Emmy can say that about her life, and I want to give it to her. There are few enough things I’ve been able to give her in life, I’d like her to know something of this. That there is such a thing as a good day’s work and there is such a thing as the peaceful slumber that accompanies it.”

“I am not entirely sure I understand what you want from her, Mama.”

Hannah takes a deep breath. “I would like to her train to become a teacher.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 673)