The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

Author:Cynthia Ozick [Ozick, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

Something like that. Better than that, more remarkable. Her Polish was very dense. You had to open it out like a fan to get at all the meanings. She was exceptionally modest, but she was not afraid to call herself a symbolist.

I know you won’t blame me for going astray with such tales. After all, you’re always prodding me for these old memories. If not for you, I would have buried them all, to satisfy Stella. Stella Columbus! She thinks there’s such a thing as the New World. Finally—at last, at last—she surrenders this precious vestige of your sacred babyhood. Here it is in a box right next to me as I write. She didn’t take the trouble to send it by registered mail! Even though I told her and told her. I’ve thrown out the wrapping paper, and the lid is plastered down with lots of Scotch tape. I’m not hurrying to open it. At first my hunger was unrestrained and I couldn’t wait, but nothing is nice now. I’m saving you; I want to be serene. In a state of agitation one doesn’t split open a diamond. Stella says I make a relic of you. She has no heart. It would shock you if I told you even one of the horrible games I’m made to play with her. To soothe her dementia, to keep her quiet, I pretend you died. Yes! It’s true! There’s nothing, however crazy, I wouldn’t say to her to tie up her tongue. She slanders. Everywhere there are slanders, and sometimes—my bright lips, my darling!—the slanders touch even you. My purity, my snowqueen!

I’m ashamed to give an example. Pornography. What Stella, that pornographer, has made of your father. She thieves all the truth, she robs it, she steals it, the robbery goes unpunished. She lies, and it’s the lying that’s rewarded. The New World! That’s why I smashed up my store! Because here they make up lying theories. University people do the same: they take human beings for specimens. In Poland there used to be justice; here they have social theories. Their system inherits almost nothing from the Romans, that’s why. Is it a wonder that the lawyers are no better than scavengers who feed on the droppings of thieves and liars? Thank God you followed your grandfather’s bent and studied philosophy and not law.

Take my word for it, Magda, your father and I had the most ordinary lives—by “ordinary” I mean respectable, gentle, cultivated. Reliable people of refined reputation. His name was Andrzej. Our families had status. Your father was the son of my mother’s closest friend. She was a converted Jew married to a Gentile: you can be a Jew if you like, or a Gentile, it’s up to you. You have a legacy of choice, and they say choice is the only true freedom. We were engaged to be married. We would have been married. Stella’s accusations are all Stella’s own excretion. Your father was not a German. I was forced by a German, it’s true, and more than once, but I was too sick to conceive.

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