"William Tenn - My Mother Was a Witch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

backтАФonly behind her back; who knew what she'd wish on you if she heard you?тАФpeople giggled and
said, "Her nose has a nose."
But that was humor's limit; everything else was sheer fright. She would squint at you, squeezing first
one eye shut, then the other, her nose wart vibrating as she rooted about in her soul for an appropriately
crippling curse. If you were sensible, you scuttled away before the plague that might darken your future
could be fully fashioned and slung. Not only children ran, but brave and learned witches.
Old Mrs. Mokkeh was a kind of witch-in-chief. She knew curses and spells that went back to
antiquity, to the crumbled ghettos of Babylon and Thebes, and she re-constructed them in the most novel
and terrible forms.
When we moved into the apartment directly above her, my mother tried hard to avoid a clash. Balls
must not be bounced in the kitchen; indoor running and jump-ing were strictly prohibited. My mother was
still learning her trade at this time and had to be cautious. She would frequently scowl at the floor and bite
her lips worriedly. "The mokkehs that woman can think up!" she would say.
There came a day when the two of us prepared to visit cousins in the farthest arctic regions of the
Bronx. Washed and scrubbed until my skin smarted all over, I was dressed in the good blue serge suit
bought for the High Holy Days recently celebrated. My feet were shod in glossy black leather, my neck
encircled by a white collar that had been ultimately alloyed with starch. Under this collar ran a tie of
brightest red, the intense shade our neighborhood favored for burning the sensitive retina of the Evil Eye.
As we emerged from the building entrance upon the stone stoop, Mrs. Mokkeh and her eldest,
ugliest daughter, Pearl, began climbing it from the bottom. We passed them and stopped in a knot of
women chatting on the sidewalk. While my mother sought advice from her friends on express stops and
train changes, I sniffed like a fretful puppy at the bulging market bags of heavy oilcloth hanging from their
wrists. There was onion reek, and garlic, and the fresh miscellany of "soup greens."
The casual, barely noticing glances I drew did not surprise me; a prolonged stare at someone's
well-turned-out child invited rapid and murderous retaliation. Star-ing was like complimentingтАФit only
attracted the attention of the Angel of Death to a choice specimen.
I grew bored; I yawned and wriggled in my mother's grasp. Twisting around, I beheld the
witch-in-chief examining me squintily from the top of the stoop. She smiled a rare and awesomely gentle
smile.
"That little boy, Pearlie," she muttered to her daughter. "A darling, a sweet one, a golden one. How
nice he looks!"
My mother heard her and stiffened, but she failed to whirl, as everyone expected, and deliver a
brutal riposte. She had no desire to tangle with Mrs. Mokkeh. Our whole group listened anxiously for the
Yiddish phrase customarily added to such a compli-ment if good will had been at all behind itтАФa leben
uff em, a long life upon him.
Once it was apparent that no such qualifying phrase was forthcoming, I showed I had been
well-educated. I pointed my free right hand in a spell-nullifying feig at my admirer.
Old Mrs. Mokkeh studied the feig with her narrow little eyes. "May that hand drop off," she intoned
in the same warm, low voice. "May the fingers rot one by one and wither to the wrist. May the hand drop
off, but the rot remain. May you wither to the elbow and then to the shoulder. May the whole arm rot
with which you made a feig at me, and may it fall off and lie festering at your feet, so you will remember
for the rest of your life not to make a feig at me."
Every woman within range of her lilting Yiddish malediction gasped and gave a mighty head-shake.
Then stepping back, they cleared a space in the center of which my mother stood alone.
She turned slowly to face Old Mrs. Mokkeh. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" she pleaded. "He's
only a little boyтАФnot even five years old. Take it back."
Mrs. Mokkeh spat calmly on the stoop. "May it happen ten times over. Ten and twenty and a
hundred times over. May he wither, may he rot. His arms, his legs, his lungs, his belly. May he vomit
green gall and no doctor should be able to save him."
This was battle irrevocably joined. My mother dropped her eyes, estimating the resources of her