Meir Shalev - My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner

ALSO BY MEIR SHALEV

FICTION
Two She-Bears
The Loves of Judith
A Pigeon and a Boy
Fontanelle
Alone in the Desert
But a Few Days
Esau
The Blue Mountain

NONFICTION
My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner
Beginnings: Reflections on the Bibles Intriguing Firsts
Elements of Conjuration
Mainly About Love
The Bible for Now

CHILDRENS BOOKS
Roni and Nomi and the Bear Yaacov
Aunt Michal
The Tractor in the Sandbox
How the Neanderthal Discovered the Kebab
A Louse Named Thelma
My Father Always Embarrasses Me
Zohars Dimples
A Lion in the Night

Translation copyright 2011 by Meir Shalev
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schocken Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Schocken Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2011. Originally published in Israel as Hadavar Haya Kakha by Am Oved Publishers Ltd., Tel Aviv, in 2009. Copyright 2009 by Am Oved Publishers Ltd., Tel Aviv.

Schocken Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shalev, Meir.
[Davar hayah kakhah. English]
My Russian grandmother and her American vacuum cleaner : a memoir/
Meir Shalev; translated from the Hebrew by Evan Fallenberg.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8052-1240-2 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-8052-4298-0 (ebook).
1. Shalev, Meir. 2. Authors, Israeli20th centuryBiography.
I. Title.
PJ5054.S384Z4613 2010892.48609dc22 [B]2010033275

www.schocken.com
Cover images: (orange and lemon tree) missyoung/Shutterstock; (donkey) Benguhan/Shutterstock; (woman and vacuum) CSA Images/Getty Images

Cover design by Nayon Cho

v3.1_r1

To my uncles and my aunts

This is how it was: Several years ago, on a hot summer day, I rose from a pleasant afternoon nap and made a cup of coffee for myself, and while I stood sipping from the mug I noticed that everyone was looking strangely at me and holding back their laughter. When I bent down to put my sandals on I discovered the reason: my toenails, all ten of them, had been painted with shiny red nail polish.

What is this? I cried. Who painted my toenails?

From the other side of the porch door, which stood ajar, came the sound of giggling that I recognized at once from previous incidents.

I know who did this, I said, raising my voice. Ill find you and Ill catch you and Ill paint your noses and your ears with the very same shiny red polish you used on my toes, and Ill manage to do it all before my coffee turns cold!

The giggles became laughter that confirmed my suspicions. While I lay sleeping, my brothers two little daughters, Roni and Naomi, had stolen in and painted my toenails. Later they would tell me that the younger of the two had done four nails while her older sister had done the other six. They had hoped I would not notice and that I would walk out in public, only to be scorned and ridiculed. But now that their scheme had been unmasked they burst into the room and pleaded: Dont take it off, dont, its really pretty.

I told them that I, too, thought it was really pretty, but that there was a problem: I had been invited to an important event where I was expected to speak, but I could not appear before the crowd with painted nails, since it was summer and in summer I wear sandals.

The girls said that they were familiar with both mattersthe important event and my custom of wearing sandalsand that this was precisely the reason they had done what they did.

I told them that I would go to any other important event with shiny red toenails but not to this important event. And that was because of the crowd that would gather there, a crowd no sane man would appear before with painted toenailsand red ones, no less.

The event we were talking about was the inauguration of the old arms cache used by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization that operated in Palestine during the British Mandate. The cache had been built on a farm in the village of Nahalal and disguised to look like a cowshed cesspool. In my novel The Blue Mountain I had described an arms cache that never existed in a village that never existed in the Jezreel Valley, but my arms cache was also built and disguised exactly the same way. After the book was published, readers began to show up on the real farm in the real village, asking to see the real cache.

Rumor passed by word of mouth, the number of visitors grew and became a nuisance, and the owners of the property were smart enough to make the best of their situation. They renovated the cache, set up a small visitors center, and thus added a new stream of income to their farm. That day, when my brothers two young daughters painted my toenails with red polish, was the day the renovated arms cache was being inaugurated, and I had been invited as one of the speakers at the ceremony.

Now bring some nail polish remover and get this pretty stuff off me, I told Roni and Naomi. And please hurry up because I have to get going already!

The two refused. Go like that! they said.

I sat down and explained to them that this was a particularly manly event, that there would be generations of fighters from the Jezreel Valley in attendance, elders from the Haganah, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Palmach. Men of the sword and the plowshare, men who had bent spears into pruning shears and vice versa. In short, girls, these were people who would not react favorably to men with red polish on their toenails.

But Naomi and Roni paid no attention to my pleas. What do you care? they cried. You said yourself its pretty.

If you dont take it off Ill wear shoes! I threatened. Nobody will see your red nail polish, and thatll be that!

Youre afraid! they exclaimed. Youre afraid what theyll say about you in the village.

Those words took effect at once. Without knowing it the two little girls had hit a soft underbelly. Anyone familiar with members of the old-time collective agricultural movement, anyone who has been upbraided by them, knows that in small villages eyes take everything in and comments are made with regularity and rumors take off and land like cranes in a sown field. All the more so in places whose pedigree is famed and illustrious, like Nahalals. Here, the standards are more stringent, and anyone who leaves the path of the straight and narrow, who veers left or right, up or downeven a single mistake made in ones childhoodis not forgotten. Especially someone considered odd, eccentric, meshugah, or an underachiever, which is the complete opposite of mutzlach, one of the loftiest expressions of excellence the village bestows upon its most fortunate sons and daughters, those blessed with wisdom, industriousness, leadership qualities, and community spirit.

But after many years in the city the combination of the words what and theyll say about you and in the village had lost some of their power and threat. So I reconsidered and decided to take up the gauntlet or, more accurately, the sandals. I put them on, thrust the notes for the speech I had prepared into my pocket, and set out for the inauguration of the old arms cache with my red-painted toenails exposed. The entire household eyed mesome with mirth, others with regret, some with schadenfreude, others with suspicion: Would I return to be reunited with my home and family? And in what condition?