A Tale of Love and Darkness

A WEEK OR SO before her death my mother suddenly got much better. A new sleeping pill prescribed by a new doctor worked miracles overnight. She took two pills in the evening, fell asleep fully dressed at halfpast seven on my bed, which had become her bed, and slept for almost twenty-four hours, until five o'clock the following afternoon, when she got up, took a shower, drank some tea, and must have taken another pill or two, because she fell asleep again at half past seven and slept through till the morning, and when my father got up, shaved, and squeezed two glasses of orange juice and warmed them to room temperature, Mother also got up, put on a housecoat and apron, combed her hair, and made us both a real breakfast, as she used to before she was ill, fried eggs done on both sides, salad, pots of yogurt, and slices of bread that she could cut much finer than Father's "planks of wood," as she affectionately called them.

So there we sat once more at seven o'clock in the morning on the three wicker stools at the kitchen table with its flower-patterned oilcloth, and Mother told us a story, about a rich furrier who had lived in her hometown, Rovno, an urbane Jew who was visited by buyers from as far away as Paris and Rome because of the rare silver fox furs he had that sparkled like frost on a moonlit night.