Another cold and cheerless winter night that I must avert my eyes from the poor wretches and their fearful, darting eyes. I pass them by. Moonlight shines on their bereft, ragged forms as they scuttle into the darkness with no small hands to hold. It has been seven weeks since the children disappeared.

The woodcutter refuses to enter the forest so has no logs to cut, while the shopkeeper boarded up his shop and stays inside with his precious little one. Carpentry has ceased in the workshop because the carpenter’s wife is too frightened to be alone with her baby. Small jobs and woodturning can be done indoors, but both parents hold in deep suspicion anyone calling to collect an item – Did that person, whether neighbour or friend, intend to steal the baby, snatch him from their arms? Who was behind this horror? Why was it happening?

Each day, at twilight, the townspeople gather together. They come with twigs and brushwood in hand, for all fear entering the forest in search of larger kindling. Bonfires are lit in the hope the children, presumed lost in the forest, will follow the glow and emerge.

At the bonfire tonight, I see the shopkeeper has come with provisions for the assembly. He grasps his daughter’s arm so tightly that she winces in pain. Moving his big hand up her thin little arm as he reaches over with a parcel of food, I notice the marks. His strong grip leaves fingertip-shaped bruises in her pale skin. It wasn’t as if any of the remaining youngsters would dare move an inch from their parents, but such was the terror that they might evaporate somehow with only a momentary break in this physical contact.

Gaunt faces are hungering for the shopkeeper’s goods but distracted by the shadowy forest in their peripheral vision. Even though the fire is lit in the same spot each time, it seems like the trees are somehow nearer, as if the forest itself is encroaching on us. Activity would begin with one of them telling stories of their children, rejoicing in memories of how sweet the girls were, playing with their dolls, or even how naughty the boys could be! This reminiscence produces a feeling of propinquity; they might just come tramping out of those trees any moment! Singing lightens their nightly outpouring of pain, but even this becomes morose for the new songs have verses about their lost sons and daughters. As more days passed, the repetitive bonfire lighting became more a ritual than a beacon of light to lost children.

My heart leapt from my chest the night they brought forth the head of their Wicked Witch: I recognised her! I looked upon her kindly eyes, frozen in horror, as they forced the neck down onto the spikes of the pitchfork. As a boy, on one of my many jaunts into the wood to hunt rabbits with my slingshot, I often passed this woman’s house. One day, on a high having killed three, I saw her peeking from her doorway, a red scarf tied around her long black lustrous hair. She beckoned and I approached the wooden porch. Her eyes were large and dark brown and she had smooth olive skin – I thought her incredibly beautiful! Her ears were completely decked with jewels! She smiled, shyly, saying something I didn’t understand and pointed at the rabbits. It was then I realised she couldn’t speak German. So exotic was her appearance that I couldn’t help staring at her. She glanced again at the rabbits and, taking out my knife, I hunkered down and skinned one for her.

She went into the cabin and gestured for me to follow. I entered and placed the rabbit on the table. Never could I have anticipated the exchange for this one rabbit! She went into her pantry and returned with as much candy as she could carry: delicious-looking assorted cakes of all shapes and sizes, baumkuchen, star-shaped cinnamon biscuits, sugared fried dough, fruit-breads. It being obvious I couldn’t possibly carry these by hand as well as the rabbits, she fetched a piece of linen and bundled them all in, tying it in a knot. I got a long stick from out front and when I returned, she bent to help me secure the parcel to the stick. As she brushed against me, my nostrils filled with the unfamiliar piquant scent of her skin, a curious perfume like blackberries and orange-zest blended together. In my adolescent dreams, I would catch a waft of this fragrance and wake filled with longing and wonder.

It shocked me now to look into those old, though still beautiful, eyes wherein a strange light remained. Her wizened olive-hued face was framed by long grey hair. All those years ago, my parents warily received my boyish story – the rabbit-catch exaggerated to six. I remember their fretful glances across the kitchen table when I mentioned the cabin in the woods. Unbeknownst to me, the townsfolk believed she was a hex-caster, that she could turn you into an animal if she wanted! I was tainted by my close contact with her, the fact I had been in her house, and indignantly my mother dragged me to the church where the priest did a special blessing for me. The linen-wrap from my cake-bundle was snatched from me. My mother screamed when my father moved to place it in the hearth – it had to be burnt outdoors. Some of the townspeople’s theories of her origin and other wild imaginings excited me, some appalled me. I often wondered at her strange speech, where she really had come from but despite my curiosity, I never returned to the cabin.

Oh they believe they have captured their Witch, exterminated the foul enchantress. In the weeks after, I held my tongue as hysterical mothers concocted vile images of the deeds of this disgusting Witch, the one to blame, the focus for their hatred. I know better.

*

Biography

Dr Jenny Butler is an academic folklorist who writes prose inspired by the supernatural, folkloric and mythological themes. The numinous is an integral part of her life, since her professional research as well as her creative writing, deals with the consequences of sacred encounters and otherworldly realms. She is especially interested in the place of myth and magic in the modern world and in how cultural fears are reflected in folk stories. More generally, she is interested in esoteric currents in art and in how artistic expression is connected to the divine or sacred in the dynamics of the creative process itself.

Happiness (A Fairy Tale)

Original tale by Hersh Dovid Nomberg, translation by Daniel Kennedy

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Through infinite space, through the immensity of the cosmos, there flew an angel.

For many long years he had not rested his wings; for many long years he had flown and flown without pause. Whenever he encountered a sun or a star or a lost comet, he would stop and ask: ‘Excuse me, please. You don’t happen to know where the earth is, do you?’

And on hearing the answer, ‘no,’ he would fly on. He did not have a minute to spare, nor a second to waste.

Many, many years ago the angel had heard about the terrible plight of the unhappy earthlings, about how hard and bitter their lives were, and his angel-heart was filled with sympathy. He had fallen, in tears, before the divine throne and begged for happiness on behalf of the humans. God accepted his prayer, entrusting the angel with happiness to be delivered to the wretched people of earth.

Coming down from the seventh Heaven, the angel has wandered ever since, through suns, stars and comets, in search of the earth. In his right hand he holds the happiness and his white wings move effortlessly through the thin ether. Thousands of years have passed; he has flown through millions of systems. But no one knows where the earth with its unhappy people is to be found.

Sometimes a tear falls from the angel’s eye. Who knows if his bright wings were carrying him away from the earth? And yet, he is an angel. He sheds those tears not on account of his long exile or his drawn out, futile toil, but for the poor humans who thirst and strive for the happiness, that he carries in his right hand.

‘Tell me, please, you don’t happen to know where the earth with its unhappy people is?’

‘No.’

He flies on, driven by his own idealism. Meanwhile the earth grows old and new. Civilisations, ideologies and religions come and go, and misery continues to reign.

‘Where can happiness be found?’sigh the unhappy humans.

Once, an old stargazer, an astronomer, was watching a wandering comet. For a long time he did not take his eye off the lens of his telescope, following the comet’s every move. He did not abandon his watch, even when he was eating and sleeping, he would put his young son in his place and no sooner had he finished his meal, than he would hurry back to continue peering through the lens.

The comet was not pleased:

‘What does he want from me, that old wizard? What is the meaning of this? Am I a thief that cannot be left out of one’s sight?’

The comet became even angrier.

Suddenly, the angel flew by and asked in his soft, sad voice: ‘Tell me please, Reb Comet, you don’t happen to know where the earth with its unhappy people is?’

‘People, on the earth?’ answered the comet angrily, ‘there are only wizards and young thugs there…’

‘Oh! those poor people,’ sighed the angel, ‘all because of unhappiness! No, Reb Comet, you cannot get angry, it is a sin to hate.’

And the happiness in his right hand shone and sparkled so brightly that even the comet’s mood was lifted when he saw it, and his gloomy, misanthropic soul felt lighter.

‘Where is the earth?’

The comet showed him, pointing with a long, thick beam towards the place where the earth was to be found.

‘Oh, how far from heaven the earth has wandered!’ sighed the angel to himself, ‘and all because of unhappiness.’

He immediately set off on his way again.

Meanwhile, on earth, the astronomer had noticed the angel, spotting, through his telescope, the radiant object in his right hand. And because there was a prophet who had long been predicting that an angel would come to deliver happiness, the stargazer immediately recognised that it was the angel come to bring happiness to the people of earth.

The newspapers soon spread the news throughout the whole world.

‘An angel is flying our way with happiness,’ they said, wherever there were people to talk about it.

All the stargazers adjusted their telescopes and saw clearly how the angel was getting closer and closer towards the earth. They started to calculate, and estimated that the angel would land on a specific day, hour, and minute at specific coordinates.

When the day finally came, people from every country gathered at the preordained spot. The place was crowded; people started pushing and shoving one another, getting into arguments. Punches were thrown. It soon came to the point where they started killing each other with knives. Rivers of human blood flowed there, and the wailing and moaning of the dying reached up to the heavens.

The angel saw from afar how the people pushed and crushed each other, and from on high he started to scream with the last of his energy:

‘Don’t fight! I have enough happiness for everybody, for everybody!’

But they did not hear.

As the angel got closer to the earth, his bright eyes saw the stabbed corpses and the pools of blood, and when his ears heard the wailing and moaning, a tear fell from his glowing eye, landing on the happiness.

From then on the happiness was stained.

The crowd watched as the angel – who was tired and weary from his long journey and from what his eyes witnessed on earth – fainted, and the happiness fell from his right hand.

 

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Biography

Hersh Dovid Nomberg (1876–1927) was a Yiddish writer, essayist and political activist, born in Mszczonów near Warsaw. “Happiness” (Warsaw 1900) was Nomberg’s first publication in prose, taking elements and motifs from the genre of mayses (Yiddish folk tales) and weaving them into a fable of his own.

Daniel Kennedy is an Irish-born literary translator based in Paris. He specializes in Yiddish literature.

This translation was made possible thanks to the Yiddish Book Center translation fellowship