After some idyllic months, Sammy realized guiltily that he was quite overdue for a visit to Lena. He hadn’t brought anyone home for a long while and his mother, very unusually for her, been dropping unsubtle and unsettling hints. He looked, half-heartedly, at his JDate profile and saw dozens of hopefuls lined up, but the thought of selecting one made his heart sink. Sammy knew that his false encouragement of the JDate ladies had not been kind and there was something about the purity, the goodness of his delicious Anežka that made him want to become a better person. Casting caution to the winds, he asked her to take a couple of days off and accompany him to Florida. It was high time that his mother knew what was important in his life. Anežka agreed excitedly and packed her best dress and a large jar of goose fat
On the day of the tea with Lena, Sammy woke from a nap at his West Palm condo, to the entrancing and familiar smell of Anežka’s cooking. A cake, he thought sleepily, possibly that fantastic cream filled hazelnut thing, and then something else, dumplings, sauerkraut certainly and something else, what was it?
“PORK?” Sammy shrieked, jumping out of bed in a frenzy. “What are you doing, my love? Pork, you’re cooking pork?”
“Yes, of course” Anežka answered, “Roasting. For your mother. I put it goose fat on.”
Sammy felt as though he’d been hit on the head by a Torah.
“Anežka! My mother, she’s Jewish. A survivor of the Holocaust! Jewish people like us are not allowed to eat pork. Ever. Ever. Alright, I do, I know, but, it’s complicated, we get to do some things we want to do and then other times we don’t. This would kill my mother!”
Anežka’s big round uncomprehending eyes filled with tears.
“Jewish?” She repeated. “You are a Jewish man?” Sammy was thunderstruck.
“Of course, my love, how would you not know?”
Then, in halting, uncomfortable English, poor, beautiful, ignorant Anežka articulated what she had heard in her village about Jewish people, an appalling spew of primitive anti-semitic stereotypes, a blood libel used to persecute and slaughter Jews for centuries, views so vile that Sammy felt faint listening to them. He paced around the room.
“Anežka, this is horrendous. You can’t say these things. Who told you this? These are terrible, terrible words of hatred!”
Anežka sat there bewildered, trying to square the stories she had heard her whole life about Jews, with sweet, loving Sammy who had never been anything but lavishly, embarrassingly generous to her.
They were already 20 minutes late for tea. Sammy had done nothing to prepare his mother for the visit. She had been bugging him, even critical of late and he was so nervous, perhaps he should just cancel. But seeing Anežka so wounded he pulled himself together. It would be a disaster, but his mother was old, she’d probably forget quickly enough. He couldn’t even begin to think about what this meant for his love affair. The pork went into the garbage.
Unsurprisingly Lena’s face on opening the door to them was a picture – this was probably the biggest maxillofacial challenge of her 88 years. Good manners prevailed, nonetheless, as she greeted Anežka and then proceeded to ignore her, devoting the next fifteen minutes to a breathless recitation of her grandchildren’s latest achievements followed by an untypically intrusive discussion about Sammy’s substantially increased girth.
“You’re so fat, Sammy, quite different, so big. So heavy! What did you do to yourself? Suddenly you look like your father!”
At least I’ve given her something to think about other than the Aryan on the couch, Sammy thought gloomily.
Then tea and Anežka’s cake were served. Lena, the tear-stained Anežka and by now near-suicidal Sammy shared a long, very un-Jewish silence. Sammy checked his watch repeatedly, planning the escape. Then Lena looked closely at Anežka. She paused, remembering Bubbe, the closed mind, the constant carping, nagging and criticism. And haltingly she tried out a few words in a language she had chosen not to speak for over sixty years, a language buried in memory. Anežka replied, nervously at first, but then in long, long sentences. She seemed to have a lot to say. Lena answered, and suddenly Sammy saw a different Anežka, a vibrant, talkative woman, words and laughter pealing from her beautiful, lipsticked mouth and a different Lena too, a younger, less restrained version. God knows what they were laughing about, but Sammy, who had learned a lot both about himself and about love in the last months, felt himself relax into the sofa.
“This girl,” Lena turned to Sammy, mid-conversation, “now this girl, I like,” she says. And then in English,
“Anežka, may I offer you another piece of this delicious cake?”
