Read Online A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell - Free Book Online Page A

thanks to their helpful friends, usurpers of
my
helpful friends and their houses and their homes.
    “While you offer up thanks, why not thank your stars that your true landlords are dead in a pit five versts out of town!” I scream, adding to the silence.
    Now all the thanks have been offered and the meal continues. As the Papa sits, I can’t help it, I pull his chair out from under him. A childish prank, I know, but satisfying nonetheless. He tumbles onto the floor, a look of helpless confusion on his face. But because the family is long used to his drunken misjudgments, they show only the slightest concern, helping him to his feet, until I throw the chair across the room. It shatters against my mother-in-law’s mirror, which she gave Ester and me as a wedding gift. The little group of mourners gasps. They cross themselves, leaving their legs unprotected. I take the opportunity to dash around the table, spilling first this plate, then that, onto their open laps. Down the line I go, one after the next. They stand, the food dropping off like clots of mud from their skirts and pants.
    I’m on the table now, above their heads, dancing. With every kick of my feet, I send a tea cup sailing to the right and to the left. They crashand crack against the walls with the light, tinkling sound of someone noodling on a piano. Lifting a platter, I rain squab down upon their heads.
    “It’s Ola’s ghost!” someone screams, raising a protective arm. But why would Ola haunt this house? Her greatest wish, when alive, was to flee it.
    “No,” says the Papa, sniffing the air. “It’s that crazy yid who used to live here. I can smell him.”
    I have jumped to the floor and am about to rip the curtains from their rods, when the drunken old fool leaps upon the table and does a little mazurka of his own, sending forks and knives scattering in all directions.
    “Get down, Andrzej!” the Mama screams.
    “Look! Look at me!” he sings out. “I’m a dead yid. I’m the ghost of that Jewish yid!” He contorts his face into twisted poses suggestive, I imagine, of my presumed agony. He yodels spookily, like a man whose throat has just been slashed.
    Infuriated, I fling whole drawers of silverware from the sideboard at him. They spill over him, each drawer a small cloudburst of silver rain.
    “Aha!” he calls, ducking. “I’ve got him angry now!”
    In retaliation, he kicks the goose from its platter, sends it flying, once again, across the room.
    “Here,” he says, taking wads of bank notes from an inner pocket of his vest. “I’ll buy the house from you, you christkilling yid! Money, that’s all you care about! If that’s what you want, well, here it is!” Andhe throws the bills about the room, in loose fistfuls. “If that’s what you want, I’ll buy the house from you! Pan Skibelski, can you hear me!”
    Everyone is laughing and applauding him, as he chases round the table. The strain of this sight, however, proves too much for the Mama and she is escorted from the room by two of her daughters. They fill up the doorway, three black ravens clucking their tongues, and disappear into another room.
    The old father continues capering on the table, ringed by the bright shiny faces of children and cousins and neighbors all about him on the floor.
    “Who are you, Andrzej?” they scream up at him.
    “I’m the yid!” he shouts back. “I’m the dead yid!” He leans down, pretending to snatch at them with trembling fingers. “Careful or I’ll seduce you in the night!”
    My heart sinks and the bleeding begins. I’m unable to stand, blood streaming from my eyes and ears, out my anus and my chest. I vomit up whole quarts and sit shaken in a corner.
    “Who are you, Uncle Andrzej?” the children call to him.
    “I’m Pan Skibelski!” he shouts back.
    The room is littered with broken plates and food.
    Janek from next door brings in another cache of his homemade vodka. The mourners, even the children,
everyone!
helps himself