A Slow Fire Burning

By Laurie Hollman

 

A Jewish woman widowed young after generations of tragic history became an acclaimed artist. Five foot eight, she retained her dignity with a constant erect posture and tight-lipped pose. Her Jewish identity embedded inside of her, she met this non-Jewish sculptor and playwright at a reception following a local Yiddish play performed by a small, local Hasidic sect.

In a brief conversation, they bonded quickly discussing similar unrelenting grim uncertainties prompted by the play.

In time, they met frequently at a kosher deli for bagels and coffee and shared their interest in collecting rare Jewish antiquities. Together they invested their considerable savings forming a successful collective amassing antiquities from all over the world displayed in a store on a frequented row of storefronts in their village square.

After fifty years of companionship, travelling together to obtain stolen relics during WW II and seeking to find their rightful owners, the objects of unidentified owners were given to museums and Synagogues in Jewish communities.

One day he brought in a Christmas tree on a Friday night, the Sabbath. Short in stature, though blooming in its greenness, he placed it on the broad sill of the storefront window that was slightly opened to a breeze that was unable to ruffle the rigid branches because they were fake plastic with not a touch of nature’s verdant fragrance. She avoided asking why he brought it but wanted a moment of reckoning, adrenaline flooding her system—wanting to react, minimizing damage to herself.

She felt a hollow absence. She overreacted to never forgotten slights yet knowing that about herself didn’t stop it from happening. A loner, never fitting into tell-all friendships, she was called a private person by her gossipy neighbors. She guessed it was true—but pejorative. Anyway, not fitting in wasn’t a choice as a minority in the world, a trait that made her peculiar to some, yet endearing to her business partner who remained her steady companion for fifty years.

At any rate, the night the small fake spruce was placed in the store’s picture window turned into days on end. She thought it was surprisingly fake because he was so into nature, but that wasn’t important. They often did things without asking each other. She certainly did. Not because they were shadows of each other because they weren’t.

Their collective workspace was decorated by her without asking him because he’d can all her ideas. Much later, he’d thank her offhandedly for giving him such a beautiful place to work. She felt mixed satisfaction. A bit of flattery. A bit of vengeance for what he’d put her through.

Anyway, the Christmas tree made her insides squeeze up like a fist that Sabbath night. Her urgency to react had an edge of defiance, of stubborn determination bordering on recklessness straddling a sense of forbidden rightness. She abhorred silence over truth. Scattered things rioted inside of her that she doubted would ever gather together.

They’d spent hours talking about World War II, horrific German conquests orphaning many by monstrosities, broad sweeping colonialism, and ethnic cleansing. They labored over unthinkable tragedies and horror in the world, societies strangely oblivious to history about immigration and longing as though with each new story, previous ones were erased, and history began anew—the decline of one empire replaced by the stifling brutality of another.

The stories were deep within her, compelling a growing urgency of restrained desire liquid with things unsaid, especially because she thought they were only external news events to him. Yet she considered that was unkind, even cruel and untrue when he unexpectedly delivered moments of emotional warmth.
His addiction to keeping the news endlessly on TV during working hours was traumatizing. When he’d fury about her complaints, the workspace felt like an authoritarian regime. Like the shark in Jaws, he only became less alarming the closer they got.

She observed him try to accept that he was one of those white Anglo-Saxon men with diminishing privileges as the world was changing. Of course that was okay he’d say: it was time to give back. Hm-m-m. He told her she was on the margins, not quite white-white, olive skinned, female, highly intelligent, successful by completely depending only on herself (in fact he had this way of blaming her for that as if perseverance and self-reliance were a bad thing.) He’d said, “You’re too capable of taking care of yourself, surviving because you’re a goddamn oak.”

Well, the fake tree stood facing menorahs from all over the world as well as menorahs he made as a sculptor that they adored and others admired as well making a statement about him—not only as a talented sculptor but as someone accepting not only his companion but all Jewish people. If you try too hard at that it’s weird heroics. Why be grateful someone thinks being Jewish is to be prized and worse, something to be accepted?

Days go by. She doesn’t speak up. To even ask why he bought the tree would provoke an argument like, “You must know I’m aligned with Jewish people after all these years. But why can’t I have a Christmas tree here? Is everything always about you?” and on to the “everything” and “always” track twisting into “you never,” his rising voice speeding ragefully with the force of authority that discourages dissent. Frightened, she’d think, … I dare not speak up as if gravid truth telling had become a luxury no longer afforded.

Feeling increasingly distant over the years when he’d give in to his temper, she’d observe a raging block of bulky, muscular flesh, preserved despite his aging. But she’d also wonder if sadness blanketed him and he was truly suffering in coiled restlessness as if fate had mistakenly allotted him a place below his true destiny for which he blamed her because there was actually something wrong with her like a furnace lit deep inside with clothed silence infecting her wrapped in gauze beyond reach.

A week later, it’s gone on a Friday, replaced by a bowl of gaudy red Christmas ornaments glistening with sequins saved out of sight all these years? Relieved at least the tree’s gone, she sobbed silently hiding in a narrow corridor that led to the loo.

That night, before she lowered her face to light the white Shabbat candles held firmly in her usual golden candle holders, he said, “Did you see the prop I made? Watch me turn the ornaments’ bowl upside down. Nothing falls out. Heh-heh.”

“Uh, props! For your next play?” A stiffening laugh erupted between her clenched teeth.

“Do you know why two candles are lit on Shabbat?” she asked.

“What?” A vertical wedge formed on his forehead as he stared, no glared, at her unexpected question.

“Best interpretation: They represent the two temples in Jerusalem that were destroyed.

We light the candles to remember buildings can crumble anywhere but that doesn’t matter, like spruce trees can fall anywhere if lightning strikes.”

His wedged forehead developed rigid lines horizontally crossing his brow, yet his eyes closed reverently.

“What matters is gathering with people we care about on Shabbat—so Shabbat can happen anywhere. Peace, my old friend. Shabbat Shalom.”

 

Laurie Hollman from US has written many award-winning books in her capacity as a psychoanalyst, and has published smaller pieces in magazines from "Huffington Post" to "The California Quarterly" including two novel excerpts. She was chosen as an Honorable Mention in the 2024 Art of Unity Literary Award presented by the International Human Rights Art Movement for the poem "An Ashkenazi Beauty." It was recently published in "Never Again: Remembering to Heal and Overcome." She is also a visual artist whose work has been exhibited in New York. She hasand have served on the faculties of NYU and the Society for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.