The Washwoman
by
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Our home had little contact
with Gentiles. The only Gentile in the building was the janitor. Fridays he
would come for a tip, his “Friday money.” He remained standing at the door, took
off his hat, and my mother gave him six groschen.
Besides the janitor there were also the Gentile washwomen who came to the house
to fetch our laundry. My story is about one of these.
She was a small woman, old
and wrinkled. When she started washing for us, she was already past seventy.
Most Jewish women of her age were sickly, weak, broken in body. All the old
women in our street had bent backs and leaned on sticks when they walked. But
this washwoman, small and thin as she was, possessed a strength that came from
generations of peasant forebears. Mother would count out to her a bundle of
laundry that had accumulated over several weeks. She would lift the unwieldy
pack, load it on her narrow shoulders, and carry it the long way home. She lived
on Krochmalna Street too, but at the other end, near the Wola section. It must
have been a walk of an hour and a half.
She would bring the laundry back about two weeks later. My mother had never been
so pleased with any washwoman. Every piece of linen sparkled like polished
silver. Every piece was neatly ironed. Yet she charged no more than the others.
She was a real find. Mother always had her money ready, because it was too far
for the old woman to come a second time.
Laundering was not easy in those days. The old woman had no faucet where she
lived but had to bring in the water from a pump. For the linens to come out so
clean, they had to be scrubbed thoroughly in a washtub, rinsed with washing
soda, soaked, boiled in an enormous pot, starched, then ironed. Every piece was
handled ten times or more. And the drying! It could not be done outside because
thieves would steal the laundry. The wrung-out wash had to be carried up to the
attic and hung on clotheslines. In the winter it would become as brittle as
glass and almost break when touched. And there was always a to-do with other
housewives and washwomen who wanted the attic clotheslines for their own use.
Only God knows all the old woman had to endure each time she did a wash!
She could have begged at the church door or entered a home for the penniless and
aged. But there was in her a certain pride and love of labor with which many
Gentiles have been blessed. The old woman did not want to become a burden, and
so she bore her burden.
My mother spoke a little Polish, and the old woman would talk with her about
many things. She was especially fond of me and used to say I looked like Jesus.
She repeated this every time she came, and Mother would frown and whisper to
herself, her lips barely moving, “May her words be scattered in the
wilderness.”
The woman had a son who was rich. I no longer remember what sort of business he had. He was ashamed of his mother, the washwoman, and never came to see her. Nor did he ever give her a groschen. The old woman told this without rancor. One day the son was married. It seemed that he had made a good match. The wedding took place in a church. The son had not invited the old mother to his wedding, but she went to the church and waited at the steps to see her son lead the “young lady” to the altar.
The story of the faithless
son left a deep impression on my mother. She talked about it for weeks and
months. It was an affront not only to the old woman but to the entire
institution of motherhood. Mother would argue, “Nu, does it pay to make
sacrifices for children? The mother uses up her last strength, and he does not
even know the meaning of loyalty.”
And she would drop dark hints to the effect that she was not certain of her own
children: Who knows what they would do some day? This, however, did not prevent
her from dedicating her life to us. If there was any delicacy in the house, she
would put it aside for the children and invent all sorts of excuses and reasons
why she herself did not want to taste it. She knew charms that went back to
ancient times, and she used expressions she had inherited from generations of
devoted mothers and grandmothers. If one of the children complained of a pain,
she would say, “May I be your ransom and may you outlive my bones!” Or she would
say, “May I be the atonement for the least of your fingernails!” When we ate,
she used to say, “Health and marrow in your bones!” The day before the new moon
she gave us a kind of candy that was said to prevent parasitic worms. If one of
us had something in his eye, Mother would lick the eye clean with her tongue.
She also fed us rock candy against coughs, and from time to time she would take
us to be blessed against the evil eye. This did not prevent her from studying
The Duties of the Heart, The Book of the Covenant, and other serious
philosophic works.
But to return to the washwoman. That winter was a harsh one. The streets were in
the grip of a bitter cold. No matter how much we heated our stove, the windows
were covered with frostwork and decorated with icicles. The newspapers reported
that people were dying of the cold. Coal became dear. The winter had become so
severe that parents stopped sending children to cheder, and even the Polish
schools were closed.
On one such day the washwoman, now nearly eighty years old, came to our house. A good deal of laundry had accumulated during the past weeks. Mother gave her a pot of tea to warm herself, as well as some bread. The old woman sat on a kitchen chair, trembling and shaking, and warmed her hands against the teapot. Her fingers were gnarled from work, and perhaps from arthritis too. Her fingernails were strangely white. These hands spoke of the stubbornness of mankind, of the will to work not only as one’s strength permits but beyond the limits of one’s power. Mother counted and wrote down the list: men’s undershirts, women’s vests, long-legged drawers, bloomers, petticoats, shifts, featherbed covers, pillowcases, sheets, and the men’s fringed garments.
The bundle was big, bigger
than usual. When the woman placed it on her shoulders, it covered her
completely. At first she swayed, as though she were about to fall under the
load. But an inner obstinacy seemed to call out: No, you may not fall. A donkey
may permit himself to fall under his burden, but not a human being, the crown of
creation.
It was fearful to watch the old woman staggering out with the enormous pack, out
into the frost, where the snow was dry as salt and the air was filled with dusty
white whirlwinds, like goblins dancing in the cold. Would the old woman ever
reach Wola?
She disappeared, and Mother sighed and prayed for her.
Usually the woman brought back the wash after two or, at the most, three weeks.
But three weeks passed, then four and five, and nothing was heard of the old
woman. We remained without linens. The cold had become even more intense. The
telephone wires were now as thick as ropes. The branches of the trees looked
like glass. So much snow had fallen that the streets had become uneven, and
sleds were able to glide down many streets as on the slopes of a hill.
Kindhearted people lit fires in the streets for vagrants to warm themselves and
roast potatoes in, if they had any to roast.
For us the washwoman’s absence was a catastrophe. We needed the laundry. We did
not even know the woman’s address. It seemed certain that she had collapsed,
died. Mother declared she had had a premonition, as the old woman left our house
that last time, that we would never see our things again. She found some old
torn shirts and washed and mended them. We mourned, both for the laundry and for
the old, toilworn woman who had grown close to us through the years she had
served us so faithfully.
More than two months passed.
The frost had subsided, and then a new frost had come, a new wave of cold. One
evening, while Mother was sitting near the kerosene lamp mending a shirt, the
door opened and a small puff of steam, followed by a gigantic bundle, entered.
Under the bundle tottered the old woman, her face as white as a linen sheet. A
few wisps of white hair straggled out from beneath her shawl. Mother uttered a
half-choked cry. It was as though a corpse had entered the room. I ran toward
the old woman and helped her unload her pack. She was even thinner now, more
bent. Her face had become more gaunt, and her head shook from side to side as
though she were saying no. She could not utter a clear word, but mumbled
something with her sunken mouth and pale lips.
After the old woman had recovered somewhat, she told us that she had been ill,
very ill. Just what her illness was, I cannot remember. She had been so sick
that someone had called a doctor, and the doctor had sent for a priest. Someone
had informed the son, and he had contributed money for a coffin and for the
funeral. But the Almighty had not yet wanted to take this pain-racked soul to
himself. She began to feel better, she became well, and as soon as she was able
to stand on her feet once more, she resumed her washing. Not just ours, but the
wash of several other families too.
“I could not rest easy in my bed because of the wash,” the old woman explained.
“The wash would not let me die.”
“With the help of God you will live to be a hundred and twenty,” said my mother, as a benediction.
“God forbid! What good would such a long life be? The work becomes harder and harder . . . my strength is leaving me . . . I do not want to be a burden on anyone!” The old woman muttered and crossed herself and raised her eyes toward heaven.
Fortunately there was some money in the house, and Mother counted out what she owed. I had a strange feeling: The coins in the old woman’s washed-out hands seemed to become as worn and clean and pious as she herself was. She blew on the coins and tied them in a kerchief. Then she left, promising to return in a few weeks for a new load of wash.
But she never came back. The
wash she had returned was her last effort on this earth. She had been driven by
an indomitable will to return the property to its rightful owners, to fulfill
the task she had undertaken.
And now at last her body, which had long been no more than a shard supported
only by the force of honesty and duty, had fallen. Her soul passed into those
spheres where all holy souls meet, regardless of the roles they played on this
earth, in whatever tongue, of whatever creed. I cannot imagine paradise without
this Gentile washwoman. I cannot even conceive of a world where there is no
recompense for such effort.