Dr. Josef's Little Beauty by Zyta Rudzka

Author:Zyta Rudzka [Zyta Rudzka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: literary fiction; realistic fiction books; fiction; novels; fiction books; jewish; religion; religious books; literature; books fiction; jewish books; jewish fiction; jewish novels; jewish fiction novels; german; war; coming of age; eastern europe; love; translation; drama; roman; romance; classic; historical; music; russian; realistic fiction; mystery; book club books; family; modern; art; philosophy; wwii; short stories; crime; friendship; relationships; french; psychology; dark; 21st century; death; 20th century; dystopia; race
ISBN: 9781644213766
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2024-02-20T18:00:00+00:00

A few days after the Kiss of Eden had taken Benia’s body away to the funeral home appointed by her family, a welcome wind arose.

The residents poured onto the terrace. They snuggled into the canvas of the deck chairs, billowing in the breeze. They wore carelessly done-up clothing. Too warm. Threadbare. Not fresh. Like museum exhibits. Their faces looked like marble, inanimate, petrified in a single grimace. Transparent. Weathered. The gaze aimed deep inside the body, a network of tiny veins exposed, a cobweb of blood vessels, bruises, blemishes, subcutaneous bleeding. Other faces were too mobile. Overstimulated. Criss-crossed. Shredded by abruptly changing emotions. They resembled animated gargoyles on the fronts of buildings.

They were looking forward to their cherries. Getting bored, they kept thinking about cherries. Complaining of the endless summer. Taking their temperature. Awaiting their families. Suffering. Looking at the pelargoniums in the boxes and the rubber plants in the pots.

Now they talked of nothing but cherries. In staccato sentences. In scraps. Syllables. Each person’s favorites: large with thin skin, small, sweet, watery. Stringy, tart, like sour cherries. Or light, white or also dark, purple, fleshy, almost mealy. Pretty, compact, a pity to eat them. Shapeless, pecked by starlings. Gone bad, too moldy to eat, like a bitter, watery bladder. With tiny stones, flimsy peel. Or else huge, hard, well-padded with pulp, enveloping all the sweetness.

Henryk was no longer there. There was no one to delight with his memory of the mangoes he’d eaten in Africa. They missed his wise-guy talk about their thick, sickly-sweet juice slowly trickling down his chin.

They groaned: Cherries, our cherries. Each person wanted to tell about the ones they’d had in childhood. The men boasted of the high trees they’d climbed. Quickly. Barefoot. Knees hugging a rebellious trunk. How they’d picked the fruits from the very top, while the branches shook, bending to the ground. The women fondly remembered twin cherries. They’d hooked them on their ears. Worn them with pride, like ruby earrings. They wouldn’t let each other speak. Each one wanted to be heard. Once, long ago, they had eaten the best, the most wonderful cherries. From Grandma’s basket. From Grandpa’s rough hands. From Momma’s lips. From Father. From a lover. A fiancé. A newly married wife. A stranger.

The wind was not a herald of rain. In the afternoon it became stuffy, dense. It burned their cheeks. Blocked their mouths. Filled the larynx with sand blown in from the drive. It gave no respite. Made it impossible to breathe. Stung the eyelids. Flushed the cheeks. Overturned the deck chairs and tipped up the boxes full of withered pelargoniums. Yanked at the wilted shoots of the vines.

Some of the residents were knocked over by these gusts. For their safety they were forbidden to leave their rooms.

More and more often, Leokadia went to take a look at the oldest residents.

They lay in a large room. The staff called it the Supercentenarians’ Crypt, and the manager’s name for it was the Waxworks Museum.

Smoking a cigarette on

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.