Upon the Head of the Goat by Aranka Siegal

Author:Aranka Siegal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

16

LATE ONE NIGHT, we heard a knock at the door. Mother jumped out of bed, fumbling in the dark trying to get into her bathrobe. I could see her silhouette struggling with the sleeves. “Why don’t you put on a light?” I asked. She did not answer.

“Who could it be at this hour?” I huddled up against Iboya and could feel her body shiver. I recalled the time Father jumped the train and knocked at our window in the night. I prayed, “Dear God, let it be Father or Lilli.” Iboya and I got out of bed and joined Mother at the door. She called in a forced voice that did not sound like her at all, “Who is there?” The hoarse voice that answered sounded just as strange.

“It is I, Sanyi.”

“Oh, my God! What has happened?”

“It is Lujza,” sobbed our uncle Sanyi outside the gate. Iboya and I stood behind Mother and watched in the moonlight. Mother unbolted the door with rushed, trembling hands. Sanyi passed through and tried to talk, but he could not stop sobbing. His fingers held the collar of his black coat up around his neck. Mother put an arm around him and led him into the kitchen. She switched on the light, looked at him, and then cuddled him in her arms.

“You poor boy!” Sanyi put his face on her shoulder and stopped sobbing after a few minutes, picked up his head, and looked into Mother’s face with red, feverish eyes.

“Lujza is dead!”

“How? When? Because of the Zionists?”

“No. She was accused by her supervisor of stealing money from the store. She came home from work very depressed. They had told her not to come in any more. She would never steal anything. They lied.” He began to cry again.

“But how did she die?”

He drew a deep, racking breath and continued. “The train. We heard the screeching of the train. It was the night train from Miskolc. Father and I ran out to see what made the train come to a stop outside our house. We have heard the trains pass all these years, but never heard one stop before it got to the station. There was a big commotion, and a crowd had gathered. ‘A woman threw herself under the wheels,’ a man told us. The train ran right over her.’ Father and I moved through the crowd and saw two trainmen lift a body wrapped in a blanket onto a stretcher. In the dark, we could only make out that it was a female form. So we started to walk back toward the house. When we got to the front door, there was a policeman with some papers about to knock. ‘Mr. Davidowitz?’ he asked.

“‘Yes, can we help in any way?’ Father answered. He thought that since ours was the nearest house to the accident, the policeman wanted to ask us for help.

“‘Do you have a daughter named Lujza? There’s been an accident.’

“‘I know. We’ve just come back from there, but what has my daughter to do with it?’ Father and I were sure that Lujza had gone to a Zionist meeting.

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