Heartbeats

Heartbeats

Jewish writers at their best
Edited by Shoshana Lepon

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Heartbeats

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Book Excerpt from Heartbeats

From the Heart

Chana Levin

As a little girl there was one place I always loved to go. When my mother said we were going, I'd run for my coat and wait eagerly at the door. It wasn't the candy shop. It wasn't the toy store. It was the public library.

I loved everything about it: speaking in whispers, crouching down to read the titles on the lowest shelves, examining the pictures. The final test was to open the pages and take a deep breath of that special library smell the best books had. Then I had to narrow my selection to the ones I'd carry home. The librarian would see my dilemma and remind me that there were lots of books on the shelves and they weren't running away. "Next week you can take more."

I loved to play with words and experiment with tongue twisters and zany combinations. Although it was hard for the rest of the family to listen to, it was not just a silly game. Savoring the repetition and the lively sounds rolling off my tongue, I was beginning to feel the rhythm of language, eager to master its complexities.

I remember poring over the dictionary, fascinated by the discovery of new words and new concepts. Later I encountered the thesaurus, whose very name made me think of some exotic dinosaur, stuffed with words of every color and hue. How marvelous to be able to choose. Instead of ordinary red, I could have crimson, ruby, scarlet, cherry, vermilion.... And instead of being just plain scared, I could be frightened, alarmed, terrified, startled, or panic-stricken.

Today, when I write a poem or story, I take pleasure in selecting the perfect word with just the right shade of meaning. But only in English. Although I studied other languages in school and picked up a smattering of Yiddish from my European-born relatives, English is my mother tongue and the only language in which I am totally fluent.

When I moved to Israel, I experienced a crushing blow to my identity. Suddenly, I was struggling for words, reduced to shaking my head dumbly when others aimed a barrage of guttural sounds my way.

I would either try to communicate with my very limited Hebrew or find one of my children - who had become bilingual virtually overnight without a trace of an accent - to translate. When a phone call got too complicated for me to understand, I would put one of the kids on the line. I'd wait for my older kids to come home so they could decipher the teachers' notes the little ones brought from school.

A few years ago, a Russian family moved to our community. They were even newer to this country than I was, and I invited them over for Friday night dinner. How good it felt to be able to start repaying all the kindnesses people had done for me since my arrival on these shores. Since Galina and I struggled along in our broken Hebrew, both making frequent mistakes, I was not embarrassed to speak with her. Pretty soon we became quite fluent in our own way and I would astound myself at hearing this torrent of mangled Hebrew pouring from my lips.

Months later another Russian family moved in nearby. I thought Galina would be delighted; at last she'd have a friend to talk to. But when I told her this she looked hurt. "You're my friend!" she protested. "I talk to you...."

I was faced with the barrier of language once again, when my husband was hospitalized for minor surgery. He shared a room with a young Arab boy who had undergone a similar operation. His mother was a woman in her forties who spoke only Arabic, not a word of Hebrew or English. Yet she seemed so warm and eager to connect with me.

She pantomimed a belly, making large, round movements with her arms, to ask me how many children I had. I answered her with four upraised fingers and a smile to match her own. Using sign language, I told her I had three boys and a girl. She held up an open hand and then made a slash across her stomach to tell me she had five children, all born by Caesarean section.

She was still friendly when my oldest son came by, dressed in his paratrooper uniform. He could speak a little Arabic and they exchanged words of greeting. When my other children visited, she welcomed them, too. She seemed particularly fond of my daughter and offered her some cards to play with. It was an ordinary deck of playing cards, but there was Arabic writing on the box.

Once, her children came to visit with a big bunch of purple flowers. Immediately she took some of the blooms, placed them inside a water-filled Coke bottle, and presented them to my husband.

We never entered or left the room without greeting each other. And then came the morning my husband was due to go home. My new friend came to say goodbye, and she said something that I knew meant, "He should have a speedy recovery." I looked into her deep-brown eyes and understood. I wished her son the same.

It was then that I realized what I had learned in my new country. I had learned a language with more nuances and depth than any language I had ever known. I had learned a language that could express my feelings exactly. And I was speaking it without hesitation and without effort. I was speaking the language of the heart.