"Jane Yolen - Granny Rumple" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yolen Jane)

Then the wife of Gdalye the butcherтАФhis new wifeтАФwent out to pull water from
the well and saw the angry men outside the gate. She raised the alarm, but by then it
was too late. As they hammered down the gate, the cries went from the streets to
Heaven, but if the Lord G-d was home and listening, there was no sign of it.
The rabble broke through the gates and roamed freely along the streets. They
pulled Jews out of their houses and measured them against a piece of lumber with a
blood red line drawn halfway up. Any man found below the line was beaten, no
matter his age. And all the while the rabble chanted "Little black imp!" and "Stealer
of children!"
By morning's end the count was this: two concussions, three broken arms, many
bruises and blackened eyes, a dislocated jaw, the butcher's and baker's shops set
afire, and one woman raped. She was an old woman. The only one they could find.
By pogrom standards it was minor stuff and the Jews of Ykaterinislav were relieved.
They knew, even if the goyim did not, that this sort of thing is easier done in the
disguise of night.
One man only was missingтАФShmuel Zvi Bar Michael, the moneylender. He was
the shortest and the ugliest and the blackest little man the crowd of sinners could
find.
Of course the rest of the Jews were too busy to look for him. The men were
trying to save what they could of Gdalye the butcher's shop and Avreml the baker's
house. The women were too busy binding up the heads of Reb Jakob and his son
Lev, and the arms of the three men, one a ten-year-old boy, and the jaw of Moyshe
the cobbler, and tending to the old woman. Besides Shana had been too guilt-ridden
to press them into the search.
It was not until the next day that she found his bodyтАФor the half of it that
remainedтАФin the soldiers' trenches.
At the funeral she tore her face with her fingernails and wept until her eyes were
permanently reddened. Her hair turned white during the week she sat shiva. And it
was thus that Granny Rumple was born of sorrow, shame, and guilt. At least that
was my great-grandmother's story. And while details in the middle of the tale had a
tendency to change with each telling, the ending was always tragic.


But the story, you say, is too familiar for belief? Belief! Is it less difficult to
believe that a man distributed food to thousands using only a few loaves and fishes?
Is it less difficult to believe the Red Sea opened in the middle to let a tribe of
wandering desert dwellers through? Is it less difficult to believe that Elvis is alive and
well and shopping at Safeway?
 Look at the story you know. Who is the moral center of it? Is it the miller who lies
and his daughter who is complicitous in the lie? Is it the king who wants her for
commercial purposes only? Or is it the dark, ugly little man with the
unpronounceable name who promises to change flax into goldтАФand does exactly
what he promises?
Stories are told one way, history another. But for the JewsтАФdespite their long
association with the Lord G-dтАФthe endings have always been the same.