Maybe he searched his endless life for Sarah? If only for a second.
Ach, I can see them, hobbling old and toothless. Two zkeynim. An old bubbie and an alter kaker zadie shuffling about, forgotten by time.
“Is good?” Sarah mumbles.
“Yes, mayn libeh,” Moishe says. “My love.” He takes her hand. They wobble. “Nu, let us hodeveh cultivate our gortn. As the psalm says, ‘That the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into our garden, and eat the pleasant fruits.’ ”
Or they fall together on the ground and shmunts, their bodies soft as alteh yidn payayas. “Oy, Sarah,” he says. “Oy!”
Ei! I wish I were on his wizened pupiklech shoulder, telling these codswallop bobeh mayseh tales to his eyniklech grandchildren as if they were mine. My Moishe. I wish that the mamzer were here.
Ach but I’m getting shmaltzy. And what parrot wants to get all shmutzik with chicken-fat shmaltz?
They say I repeat myself. But I remember. Too much. Stories I would live again, keneynehoreh. Despite myself.
Not that I mind telling you. As I said, I’m glad you asked. And the zadie over there is still shloffing.
They say I’m living history. Ach. I’m the farkakteh book of geshichte stories. Some wandering siddur, a meshugener crazy Messiah, the flesh made word. So, nu, maybe someone could call an editor, es tut mir vey, I ache everywhere. But, azoy, I remember so that Moishe, wherever he is, doesn’t have to.
Over each horizon, more horizons. From the printing press to the typewriter to the text message. I have lived long. Oy, there were years of zaftik parrots in Florida. Though no one special. Years of sailing. Shtupping. Kibitzing. Sailing. Remembering. Kibitzing. Shtupping. Remembering.
Ach, it’s a life. A wonder tale. And I try not to notice that—can I help it?—all the time our tucheses are plonked in the sitz-bath of story. You think, genug shoyn, enough already. But nu. Gey plotz. What can you do? You try not to let tsuris make you old.
Which reminds me: A man goes to the theatre with his son.
“One adult and one child,” he says at the box office.
“That’s no child,” the ticket seller says. “He looks at least thirty.”
“I can help it that he worries?”