Red Shoes for Rachel
Published in Issue #15 Translated from Yiddish by Barnett Zumoff(Excerpt from a Novella)
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He and She
If they were trying to account for their meeting and acquaintance, they could probably have done it with a single statement that had ensconced itself in Yashe’s childhood: “It was destined to be that way!” But it’s hard to explain one’s whole life with a single statement.
On that spring day, Rachel, as she did every morning, was strolling on the boardwalk with her mother. Suddenly a wheel from her mother’s wheelchair got stuck in a crack between two boards. The wheelchair turned to one side, and the old lady was at the point of falling out of it. Rachel lost herself for a moment; she grabbed her mother’s coat with one hand, and with the other hand she clung to the wheelchair so it wouldn’t overturn completely. She felt that she wouldn’t be able to hold out long that way, and wouldn’t be able to free the wheel from the crack by herself. She was ready to cry out, to call for help, but an unknown man clumsily bumped into her with his shoulder, bent over to the wheel, and in an instant the wheelchair was again standing on the boardwalk on all four wheels.
Rachel immediately ran to her mother, felt her for broken bones, straightened out the bonnet on her head, and, at the same time, stroked her frightened face. A weak sound emerged from between the two thin strips of her mother’s compressed lips, which could have represented either a groan of pain or a capricious squeak from a spoiled...
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