Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue

One shouldn’t break the sabbath, but I couldn’t do it any other day. It’s our anniversary today, not tomorrow, so I think He will forgive me.

«But you just tell me what I should cook for you today. Ninety’s not all that much when you can boil your own potatoes and go to the store for milk. Well, okay, they bring milk to me – potatoes too, and I don’t boil them for myself very often. That Gentile, Galka, cooks pretty good. But I can say what I think!…

«What are you so quiet for? You were always quiet – when you should have talked.

And when you should have been silent, you would keep on wagging your tongue without stopping.

«No, I’d better go moisten my cloth – I don’t like the way you look.»

She headed over to the tap – they hadn’t yet cut off the water for the winter – and wiped the face in the photograph, just as she had wiped his face so many times whenever he came down with a temperature. And each time she did this, just like now, the same thought would come to mind: «And who wiped your face while you were in prison? You can’t tell me you didn’t come down with a temperature the whole eighteen years!»

She neatly folded the cloth, placed it on the pediment behind the granite headstone, then straightened up and whispered directly to his face: «Konnst schon ein bissel rucken – ich welt sein bald – ja, ja! (You can start moving over, I won’t be long now – yes, yes!)»

The light had already dimmed quite a bit, and the workers who had passed by her quite a few times in their mini-truck decided they ought to tell Filippovich[13 - Filippovich – a patronymic, or second name derived from his father’s first name.

Its use here all by itself (without the first name) indicates that he enjoyed a high degree of trust and friendship on the part of the people he worked with.] that this old woman had been sitting a long time there without moving. At first she had been chattering away and swaying back and forth the way all Jews did, but now she was sitting there stock still, like a statue. Who knows whether she might have died right then and there – it was pretty cold.

Filippovich let out an oath, pushed the table away with his bulging belly, and got up with a groan. As he ambled along the central allеe he thought: everybody dies the same death. Still, it was rare for people to go together. It was always a lot harder for the one left behind.

«There she is!» whispered a voice from behind his back. The worker who had been trailing him pointed.