The Garden of Ruth by Eva Etzioni-Halevy

Author:Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

The cut between Adah’s thighs caused her blood to wash out over her legs and the sheet underneath her. But since her inundation in blood was soon followed by the emergence of the baby’s backside, which the Jerusalemite guided out of the passage with deft hands, no one protested. As they all realized, although the infant’s emergence had to be bought at the price of some of its mother’s blood, she had not been mortally wounded.

The midwife called out proudly that the bloodied little creature in her hands was male, but this aroused no response. For the infant was as silent as the grave, and it could be seen that under the blood that covered him, his lips were blue. The Jerusalemite severed the cord that bound him to his mother. Then, holding him by his feet, she suspended him upside-down in the air and briskly spanked his bottom.

The women held their breath, but for a while nothing happened. Then the infant expelled the lusty scream they had all been waiting for, and it was greeted with cheers of joy.

The new mother briefly regained her senses, and her grandmother raised her head so that she could see her son. But, with her face still bloodless, Adah fell back on her pillow and sank into nothingness again, only now it was the nothingness of relief.

Hagith ran out and shouted the glad tidings to the men in the front room, and howled it at the moon, which at that precise moment emerged amid the clouds with a smiling face.

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