The only
thing that mattered now was to beat the Pole
The sight of me learning the Word of God so diligently was a
source of indescribable joy to my mother. She struggled to
suppress her feeling, but from time to time a sigh would escape
her, as though the rush of happiness was too much for her heart
Alas! this happiness of hers was not to last much longer
BOOK III I LOSE MY MOTHER CHAPTER I IT was Purim, the
feast of Esther. Our school-boys were celebrating the downfall of
Haman, and they were doing it in the same war-like fashion in
which American boys celebrate their forefathers' defiance of
George III. The synagogues roared with the booming of
fire-crackers, the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim
rattles. It was four weeks to the great eight-day festival of
Passover and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened
bread. She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day, so that she
often dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer exhaustion. But
then she earned far more than usual. Including tips from
customers (the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families
whose flour he transformed into fiat, round, tasteless Passover
cakes, or "matzoths") she saved up, during the period, a little over
twenty rubles.
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