A duck’s life at best may not be very much, but Mrs. Klein’s duck, benefiting from a fortunate concurrence of geography and the Jewish laws of kashrut, certainly did have it better than good, while it lasted. Toby Shafter, who offered a more formal but perhaps no more searching picture of Jewish life in Maine in our issue of January 1949 (“The Fleshpots of Maine”), is a free-lance writer now living in New York.

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‘And how is the duck today?” That was my mother on the telephone, making the same daily inquiry, at exactly the same time of day, of her friend Mrs. Klein.

“The duck is still tied up in the cellar? Then you’re still going down the cellar to feed it. Such a bother. Well, goodbye.”

With that, my mother placed the receiver firmly on the hook and returned to the kitchen where she was cooking a savory beef stew. The meat was mailed weekly from Bangor and had to be cooked immediately and long. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, horn-rimmed spectacles on the tip of his nose, immersed in the day-old Yiddish paper which came by mail from New York.

“Mrs. Klein has a duck in her cellar,” my mother announced to my father as she stirred the thick barley soup flecked with parsley and carrots and added another pinch of pepper. “Some men bring home ducks, fish, everything.”

“Didn’t I run to the post office after the meat this morning?” my father said, and he hid himself completely behind the paper.

“Somebody gave Mr. Klein the duck for nothing,” my mother pursued. “He gets lots of things for nothing.”

“I don’t know those goyim,” my father said as he fled to his room to take a nap.

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On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Klein came to call on us with two other ladies. Mrs. Klein was a regal woman—a great beauty in her youth and beautiful in old age, too, with long white hair knotted in a graceful bun at the back of her head, setting off delicate features of cameo perfection. Mrs. Klein was always impeccably dressed in lavender prints or tasteful blues and no one would ever suspect from her queenly appearance that she had brought up five children with no help and taken in boarders in the early years of her marriage to make ends meet. Even now, though it was not necessary, she farmed a large piece of land in her back yard that provided her with all her summer’s vegetables, and she canned a large part of its produce for winter use. I have never tasted anything better during the dank, dark winter days of coastal Maine than Mrs. Klein’s succulent sweet corn, each kernel showing distinct and golden yellow through the shining glass jars in which she preserved them. Mrs. Klein’s front yard was filled with a tangle of flowers and she had a pair of every conceivable fruit tree that would flourish in our harsh climate. But as far as I know, this was the first time she had attempted to keep livestock.

“And what do you feed the duck?” Mrs. Halpern, one of our Saturday afternoon visitors, inquired.

Mrs. Klein shrugged her shoulders and answered, “What does a duck eat? A little of this. A little of that. I soak some bread in milk. I give the duck grain and water.”

“A duck is not like a cat,” my mother said. “A cat eats fish, hones, liver, chicken skin. I like a cat in the house.” She beamed at our cat Boxer, who was circling in front of the company with arched back and thick, striped tail waving.

“My cat doesn’t like the duck,” Mrs. Klein offered. “I can’t let the cat down the cellar and I have to tie up the duck. In the old days when Rock Harbor had a shochet, we would already have eaten the duck. Everything is over now—all the Jewishness.”

“I remember when we kept chickens and the shochet came every Thursday to slaughter a chicken for the Sabbath.” Mrs. Gross, who was indeed large, shuddered throughout her ample frame. “I’m glad those days are over. I couldn’t stand the sight of those poor chickens flapping their wings and staggering about like drunks for ten or fifteen minutes after the shochet had slit their throats. I’d much rather get a nice, cleaned-out chicken from Portland than stand picking feathers half the day and then put my hands into its slimy insides.” Mrs. Gross was firmly on the side of the more liberal faction in town.

“So what are you going to do with the duck?” my mother asked Mrs. Klein quickly, to prevent the discussion from developing into the touchy, never-ending argument on the respective merits of the old way and the new.

“I think I will fatten up the duck for Purim,” Mrs. Klein answered with a serene smile. “Maybe my Lily will come with the children and we can all have a real feast. The only problem is to find a shochet for the duck.”

Mrs. Halpern, a peppery little woman who could not resist a jibe, rose to this remark like a fish sighting a fly. “Ah, if you were only one of those who ate lobsters,” she said, “then you would have no problem. Mr. Klein could take the duck out into the shed and chop off its head. That’s what a Lobster-Eater could do.”

“Oh, the Lobster-Eaters,” the other ladies exclaimed in chorus, with my father adding a baritone counterpoint to the soprano voices. Mrs. Gross shut her lips in a straight line but said nothing.

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My Father sat back expansively in his chair as he prepared to tell one of his stories, unheedful of the warning look that my mother shot his way signifying that she had heard that particular story ten times. Well, she had heard all of his stories at least ten times.

“A long time ago,” my father began, “there was one Jewish family in Waldoboro—the only Jewish family that ever lived there. They are both gone now—peace be with them. The man, he was a tailor, a very fine Jew indeed. They had two wonderful children. The daughter played the piano like an angel from heaven. Went to New York and married a fine young man. The son was a wonder. He was a street-cleaner in Thomas-ton, summers. Worked his way through college that way and became a famous doctor. Married into the Straus family—a cousin or a granddaughter. His mother and father were at the wedding and so was Nathan Straus. But the wife, now there was a lady!” My father’s face crinkled with laughter.

“Well? Well? What happened? What’s the story?” our guests urged my father on, for his stories were notable for their sardonic wit. But my father was not to be hurried. He licked his lips lightly, reached for his tall, steaming glass of tea, and thoughtfully put four heaping teaspoons of sugar and a thin slice of lemon in it.

“How a man can eat so much sugar, I don’t know,” my mother interposed in a tone of combat. “He will come down with diabetes yet.”

My father stirred his tea slowly and resumed his story. “This lady in Waldoboro—and remember this was not now but then when Jews were careful about the house—this lady used to go shopping in the goyishe meat market (for what other kind of meat market was there in Waldoboro?) and buy meat for the family. There was a shochet in Rock Harbor then and when we heard about it, we took the shochet and a delegation of us observant Jews went to call on this lady. It was quite an undertaking in those days. Waldoboro is twenty miles away and the roads then were not as they are now. They were rutted and rough, and if it rained the horse and wagon would get bogged down in the mud. I took my horse and the shochet rode with me. Altogether seven of us went in three different wagons. Luckily, it was a sunny day but cold, so we took along a nice package of meat from that week’s slaughter.

“She was pleasant enough and received us kindly with tea and cake. When we explained to her that the shochet in Rock Harbor had kosher meat and Jewish bread every week, she immediately bought the package we had brought with us and thanked us very much.”

“So what do you want from the poor woman?” the ladies exclaimed in derision. “She started buying kosher meat from the shochet. She bought the meat, what more could you want?”

“Wait, ladies, wait. This is only the beginning of the story. She bought meat once. She bought meat twice. Then a long time passed. Winter came and we did not see her. One day in the spring I happened to be driving through Waldoboro with my horse and wagon and I saw her going into the butcher shop there—the goyishe butcher shop.

“I waited until she came out of the butcher shop with her bundle and then I offered her a ride home. One must be tactful in these matters. As we drove along with my horse going at a good clip—I had a wonderful horse in those days—I began questioning her. ‘How does it happen,’ I asked, ‘that a fine Jewish woman like you buys meat in a treife butcher shop when you can get kosher meat from the shochet in Rock Harbor?’

“Do you think that lady was embarrassed? Not a bit. She looked me straight in the eye and it was easy to see that she was very pleased with herself. And this is what she said. ‘Whenever I buy meat from a goy, I make it kosher. It really doesn’t take long. I salt it and that only takes a few minutes and I can always do other things while the salt remains on the meat for the hour that it must. Then I fill a pail with water and soak it for about ten minutes and I am all through. It really isn’t so much trouble as it would seem.’

“Just imagine,” continued my father, “a thing like that! To get the rest of the story, I asked her what she did when she got meat from the shochet. Of course, all you ladies know that to be kosher, meat must be ritually slaughtered and the shochet must have a certificate from a chief rabbi and then it must be salted down for an hour and washed. It isn’t kosher unless all these things are done. But this lady made up new laws as she went along. ‘When I get meat from the shochet,’ she said, ‘it saves me a lot of work. That meat is kosher so I don’t have to bother at all with making it kosher. I just put it in a pot and cook it.’“

Our lady visitors all rocked with laughter. Even my mother could not suppress a smile, but she felt it her duty to say warningly, “Remember what that young rabbi who came here to pray during the High Holidays said when you told him the story. He said you shouldn’t make fun of that lady. She did make kosher the meat that she bought from the goy so she only committed one transgression. He said that if she had bought meat from a goy and not made it kosher it would have been a double transgression.”

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By this time the short winter afternoon was drawing to a close. In the gathering dusk, the last glimmers of light shot off bright pinks and green-blues in a spectacular sunset over the sea against the snowy background of a fir-covered island in the harbor. Soon it was dark and my mother busied herself about the kitchen setting out a supper of gefilte and vegetables, home-made challeh, strong coffee with rich country cream, and a heaping platter of cakes and strudel. Mrs. Klein sighed as she toyed with her food. “If only there was a shochet in Rock Harbor now, I would make good use of his services,” she observed. “It’s indifference that drove him away. In the old days I could have the duck slaughtered right away and have a wonderful dinner.”

“It is hard to be a proper Jew in a forsaken place like Rock Harbor,” my mother agreed sympathetically.

“Maybe the shochet in Portland will go to Bangor or the shochet from Bangor will step off the train on his way to Portland and make a stop in Rock Harbor to kill your duck and help you out,” Mrs. Halpern suggested.

“You don’t have to go through Rock Harbor to get from Portland to Bangor. You change trains in Brunswick,” my father put in with an air of superior male knowledge. “There’s no way to get from Rock Harbor to Bangor by train.”

“But the buses run straight through,” my mother said. “If the shochet traveled by bus from Portland to Bangor or from Bangor to Portland, what would it mean to him to stop off even if he did go a few miles out of his way? He would make himself quite a few dollars. Everybody could buy chickens from the farmers and Mrs. Klein would get her duck slaughtered.”

“There aren’t too many left in Rutland of those Jews who eat only kosher,” Mrs. Halpern said, “but it would be nice for Mrs. Klein’s duck if he stopped off.”

“Why don’t you write to both shochtim and ask them if either will be traveling down this way soon?” my mother suggested. “Perhaps one of them will do that.”

“It’s a good idea, a very good idea,” the other ladies chimed in.

“I think I will do it,” Mrs. Klein decided. “If I want to cook the duck for Purim, it is not too soon to start making arrangements for it now.”

The repast finished and night well established, the ladies turned to the real business of their visit. My father brought the folding card table into the kitchen, although he always grumbled secretly in the other room about women and cards as he did it. He and my mother unfolded the legs and set it up as near the kitchen stove as possible. Then Mrs. Gross took her chair, which was the large solid oak one, while the other ladies arranged themselves about the table in their accustomed places. Mrs. Klein was my mother’s partner and Mrs. Halpern was Mrs. Gross’s. My father hovered around muttering under his breath but they were all too absorbed in the game to pay any attention to him. The four ladies waited patiently all Saturday afternoon, for it would have been a transgression of the Sabbath to play casino while there was still light in the sky. But when evening came, wild horses could not have kept them from the game. They turned to the casino game all the intense concentration that they had been saving for it all Saturday afternoon, and no word passed their lips that was not concerned with the game.

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A Week—more or less—passed and Mrs. Klein called my mother. The weather had been bad. There was snow and sleet, and the cold dampness—as only Maine winter weather can be cold and damp—had kept everybody indoors and prevented the ladies from seeing each other.

“Yes, terribly nasty weather,” I heard my mother agree over the phone. “The whole winter has been nasty. I don’t remember another as bad as this.” Then in a tone of interest and considerable agitation, “Yes, yes. You did! You don’t say. The nerve! The chutzpah! I wouldn’t do it if I were you. Let the duck live a while. It will get fatter.”

My father was all ears and curiosity. “What’s with the duck?” he asked excitedly. “If she can’t get the shochet from Bangor or Portland, maybe someone from Boston will come.” There was nothing that my father loved more dearly than a new Jewish face in town—someone who had not heard his fund of stories twice over and who would have anecdotes to exchange with him.

“The shochet in Portland thinks he’s a prince,” my mother said bitterly. “Thinks all the country Jews are made of money. If he comes to kill the duck, he wants Mrs. Klein to shower him with gold. She must pay his expenses back and forth—only by train or plane. And he wants a minimum guarantee of twenty-five dollars’ worth of donations for his services. Now how many Jews will there be who will want chickens slaughtered in Rock Harbor, I ask you?”

“That’s robbery,” my father said. “Now an old-style shochet would come for the sociability and to do the townspeople a favor. It’s all the fault of those newfangled rabbis we pay five or six hundred dollars to, just to come and pray for the three days of the High Holidays. All they do is shout ‘page forty-five, page two hundred and three,’ and give all the others fancy ideas about money. In the old days, a rabbi would come and help out our shochet during the High Holidays for thirty, forty dollars—including board of course. . . .” My father’s voice trailed off into nothingness in speechless contemplation of the days that were gone.

My mother’s thoughts were planted squarely in the present. “For that money, Mrs. Klein can order a duck and a chicken—maybe two—already picked and singed and` cleaned,” she announced firmly. “I’m going to call her up and tell her so.”

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The first fair Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Klein came to call on us. She walked slowly and carefully into our yard, picking her way through the snow banks on either side of our hard-packed, icy walk. She came in through our kitchen door and settled herself heavily in the large oak chair, making no move to divest herself of her heavy storm coat.

“I hardly got here at all. The walking is terrible underfoot,” she groaned.

“Come, come, let me take your coat, Mrs. Klein,” my mother insisted, tugging at her sleeve.

“I must have been crazy to come. None of the other ladies would,” Mrs. Klein continued. By then, my mother had captured half her coat and was pulling at the other sleeve.

“Have some hot tea with raspberry jam. It will warm you up,” my mother urged Mrs. Klein.

“No. No tea, thank you. I just want to catch my breath. I’m an old lady, you know,” Mrs. Klein said with a wan smile. “And I’m so worried about the duck. The duck is sick.”

“What is the matter with the duck?” my mother and father asked simultaneously.

“The duck has a cold—I think,” Mrs. Klein replied. “Probably caught it in the damp cellar. Its eyes are full of pus and it can barely walk.”

“Too bad. Too bad,” said my mother. “What are you doing for it?”

“If the duck wasn’t so heavy, I would carry it into my summer kitchen. As it is, the duck lies there in the damp cellar and I do the best I can. I bring it good food—a little warm cream of wheat with milk one day—some white meat from the breast of the chicken the next day. I am trying to get it back in the best of health.”

“You should try to get the Bangor shochet here as soon as you can to kill the duck before it dies,” my father put in. Both women looked pained at the thought and there was a long silence.

“You are talking about a sick duck,” my mother admonished him.

But my father was not to be deterred by feminine squeamishness. “Maybe the Bangor shochet can get a ride down with Mrs. Gross’s son when he comes home a month from now. Have you heard anything at all from him, Mrs. Klein?”

“The Bangor shochet wrote that he would come when he can. He wants to get a ride, like you said. He’ll charge me a dollar for slaughtering the duck.”

“He shouldn’t charge more than thirty-five cents, fifty cents at the most,” my mother exclaimed indignantly. “What do they pay him in Bangor, I would like to know?”

“What can I do? I’m helpless in his hands,” Mrs. Klein said in a resigned tone. “I’ll just have to sit here and wait until he comes and pay him the dollar like he says.”

“He won’t charge me a dollar,” my father put in. “I used to be friends with his uncle a long time ago.”

“A lot of weight that will carry,” my mother said. “You’ll have to pay a dollar to have your chicken slaughtered like anyone else. You’ll see.”

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Week after week passed. Purim came and and went. Mrs. Gross’s son came from “down east,” where he had settled, to spend a few days with his mother, but the shochet from Bangor did not arrive with him. The duck was nursed back to health on its invalid diet of hot gruel and white chicken. The ground was thawing with the first freshets of spring and the Saturday afternoon visits of the ladies followed by the evening meal and the card-playing became a thing of regularity.

“The duck must be getting fat,” Mrs. Halpern remarked to Mrs. Klein during the afternoon phase while they were still making conversation with one another.

“The duck is so fat now it can hardly waddle,” Mrs. Klein answered proudly. “And pure white. You never saw a duck so fat and so white.”

“How else would a duck be in your hands, Mrs. Klein?” everyone said at once.

Mrs. Klein accepted the compliment graciously. “The duck talks to me. Greets me and says quack, quack, quack, every time I open the cellar door.”

“So the shochet from Bangor never came,” my father observed somewhat redundantly.

“No, he never came,” Mrs. Klein replied vehemently. “If he didn’t want to come, he should have said so and not led me on. My daughter and her family came here from Auburn and there was nothing to eat except what she brought with her for the children.”

“Can you imagine nothing to eat at Mrs. Klein’s house?” all the ladies chortled.

“Maybe the shochet will take the ride down with my Harry when he comes the next time—around Pesach,” Mrs. Gross suggested.

“I don’t want to rely on that shochet any longer. I was so disappointed that he didn’t come in time so I could have the duck for Purim.”

“It’s even better for you to have the duck for Pesach,” my mother consoled her. “For Purim, there are lots of good things to eat—hamantashen, cakes, cookies, milk, butter, cheese. And such good wine. But what can you have for Pesach? Again matzah and further matzah. And the same piece of meat over and over again. Now in the cities there are things to eat even during Pesach. Here if you give the milkman a can he will milk the cow directly into it. At least you tell him to do it, but who knows whether he really does or not? How can one tell how careful he is or what happens to the can between the time it is given to him and the time he brings it back full of milk? About what he gives the cow to eat during Pesach, I don’t even dare inquire. And this is only by special arrangement and as a favor and for that I coddle him and give him hot coffee rolls every Friday morning throughout the year—except Passover week of course. Ah, in Europe one could watch these things—what the cow ate, how the goy milked her, and one took the warm can of milk back home oneself.”

Having relieved herself of this soliloquy, my mother tilted forward eagerly the better to see the consoling effect of her words on poor Mrs. Klein.

_____________

Mrs. Klein nodded slowly. “You are right, after all,” she agreed. “It is much better to have the duck for Pesach when there is not so much to eat.”

“What do you mean, there is not so much to eat for Pesach?” Mrs. Halpern challenged in her most peppery tone. “This year my Jake is going to drive the truck to Portland and buy everything for Pesach—cheese, butter, candy, Slivovitz, matzah meal, potato flour—even sponge cake, if I don’t feel like beating out the eggs every other day of Pesach. There’ll be so much to eat that we won’t even feel it worthwhile to run after the milkman with our little tin cans,” she added recklessly.

The other ladies were immensely impressed. Mrs. Halpern basked in the glory of their awe and admiration. It was not often that she gained such worshipful regard.

“If your Jake goes to Portland for the Pesach things, then Mrs. Klein can send her duck up with him to be slaughtered,” my father, who had been silent all afternoon, rumbled loudly from his corner of the room.

“That’s right, Mrs. Klein. You can send your duck to the shochet in Portland. It’s a God-given opportunity. Such an inspiration.” The ladies now all beamed at my father.

“How can a duck travel by truck? He will fly away,” Mrs. Klein put in with a delicate shudder.

“Let the duck sit in the front with Jake,” someone suggested.

“A duck doesn’t sit still. He will get excited from the ride and peck my Jake’s eyes out,” Mrs. Halpern objected vociferously. “Nosiree, no duck is going to sit in the front seat with my Jake. I may even go to Portland with him myself, and don’t tell me to hold the duck on my lap.” She cast a baleful glance at the other ladies.

“Women, women, be still!” my father silenced them. “The solution to that problem is simple. Mrs. Klein can borrow a crate from one of the chicken dealers to put her duck in. Thousands of chickens ride to New York even every week in those crates. I see the trucks going by on the highway every day.”

“My duck won’t fit into a chicken crate. My duck is too big and fat for that,” Mrs. Klein almost crowed.

Momentarily defeated, everyone sat in silence for a few moments. Suddenly, Mrs. Gross threw back her head and laughed her hearty laugh. “You can use the crib from a baby. It will make a perfect crate for a big, fat duck.” She sat back and smiled at everyone in satisfaction.

“Who has a crib from a baby?” Mrs. Klein shrugged her shoulders. The other ladies looked at one another significantly. They knew that Mrs. Klein never threw anything away but preserved all the mementoes of her intimate life as if she were creating a shrine. “The crib that I have from my children, the grandchildren are using it now,” Mrs. Klein added defensively. “The duck might dirty it on such a long trip. Then what would the grandchildren use?”

“I have a baby’s crib. I will lend it to you for the day, Mrs. Klein, and your duck can ride up to Portland in it. To ride back he won’t need it,” Mrs. Gross offered magnanimously. “My grandchildren have their own cribs to sleep in, God bless them, right here in Rock Harbor.” Everyone envied Mrs. Gross because her children had settled down right where they were born and brought up. Amid loud acclaims and congratulatory laughter, Mrs. Klein weakly assented to the plan. There was a happy buzz in the air as they settled down to the casino game.

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The week before Passover came—early this year—and with it a stretch of deceptively springlike weather and the bustle of plans and preparations for the holiday. First, the house had to be cleaned—room by room—a little each day—until each corner from floor to ceiling was shining. Floors were waxed and furniture polished. Rugs were dragged out to air and hung across the porch railing and the clothesline to be beaten. Boxes of matzah and cartons of farfel, noodles, and other Passover edibles in jars and packages began to mount in an ever spreading heap in our front hall, well away from the everyday, all-year food that we were still eating. A special section of the cupboards was emptied and the Passover dishes were brought in from the barn attic, dusted, sorted, washed, and placed in readiness on the clear shelves. The stove—to be washed inside and out—was always left to the last day so that no chometz cooking would sully it.

With it all, my mother still found time to talk to her lady friends on the telephone, though personal visits were out of the question. When she spoke with Mrs. Halpern my father was always at her elbow urging her to mention again that when Jake drove to Portland to fetch Passover things, he wanted a bottle of well-aged plum brandy. From Mrs. Gross, she learned that the baby crib had been transported to Mrs. Klein’s house by taxi.

“Mrs. Klein is so happy about it,” my mother reported to my father. “She put the crib on her sun porch and brought the duck up from the cellar. It is a pleasure. The duck loves it. All that sunshine after weeks in the dark cellar! And in one corner of the crib, Mrs. Klein took an old quilt and made a nice bed for the duck and put in a little pillow, too. It is better for Mrs. Klein, too. She doesn’t have to run up and down the steps to the cellar—a woman her age!”

“It won’t be for lone anyhow,” my father remarked practically. “Jake Halpern is planning to go to Portland the day after tomorrow, and then Mrs. Klein will have roast duck for her Seder.”

My mother winced slightly at his male indelicacy. Then, ignoring him, she went on, “Tomorrow, if I have the time, I think I may run over to Mrs. Klein’s and look at the duck. I have practically everything all ready—and well beforehand—for the holidays. The fresh air will do me good.”

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My Mother returned the next day from Mrs. Klein’s in a happy glow. The mild weather had turned considerably colder and the nip in the air had reddened my mother’s cheeks. “The walk did me good,” she announced to my father, who had remained at home reading his Yiddish paper. “And such a duck Mrs. Klein has—a hero. So big. So fat. So white. And Mrs. Klein feeds him only matzah now. She dips it in a little milk first.”

“Tomorrow all that will be over,” my father said ominously. “The duck will ride to Portland on the truck. The shochet will take him in hand. He will flap his wings and squawk and quack as loud as he can, and then he will be served up on the table. I always did like a duck,” he added, licking his lips appreciatively.

“So? So! Did you ever bring home a duck like Mr. Klein?”

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We all arose late the next morning. There was no sun. An unreal grayness enveloped the earth and sky. A swirling snowstorm that had begun during the night promised to become a bitter blizzard. Our small frame house shook with the howling of the wind and the cold seeped in at the window frames and doors. My father peered anxiously out of one window, my mother out of another.

“I wonder if Jake took his truck to Portland,” my father said. “He was supposed to buy me some Passover brandy. Call Mrs. Halpern up and ask.”

“Why don’t you call?” was my mother’s tart rejoinder.

“She’s your friend. You call her,” he coaxed. “Besides, I hate the operator. She sleeps all day—but most of all in the morning.”

“I’ll call,” my mother replied, “but not just on account of your Passover brandy. You could do without it. I’m mostly interested in Mrs. Klein’s duck. On a day like this, you shouldn’t send out a dog.”

My mother took the telephone off the hook and waited a goodly time before the operator chirped, in a lazy, down-east drawl, “Number please.” My mother gave the number and after an interval we heard Mrs. Halpern’s “Hello, hello.” After identifying herself, my mother had no opportunity to utter a word. Mrs. Halpern was upset—we could tell by the loud, unending torrent of words that we could hear but not distinguish from afar. My father hovered as close to the telephone as he could and as soon as the conversation was over, he was at my mother’s elbow asking, “Did he go? Did he go?”

“Yes,” answered my mother, “he went to Portland in this awful storm. They wouldn’t have had any Pesach things if he hadn’t. Instead of getting a few boxes of matzah here, some chicken fat there, and taking advantage of every opportunity to bring in the things for Passover as we all did, Mrs. Halpern left everything over and depended on this trip of Jake’s. So he had to go to Portland in this bitter weather. She is worrying terrible about his rheumatism.”

My father was jubilant. “So I’ll get my Passover brandy, after all. There is only a third left from last year’s bottle, and it might not last through the eight days.”

“All you think about is your brandy,” my mother said acidly. “How a man can be so crazy for drink. . . .”

My father fled from her. My mother turned again to the telephone and gave Mrs. Klein’s number to the operator. She did not even wait to exchange the customary salutations and inquiries of health, but began at once breathlessly, “Mrs. Klein, I called you right away to tell you how glad I am you didn’t send the duck to Portland with Jake Halpern in this weather. The duck would have caught a cold, and you know how he suffered from the last one. You suffered, too—having to bring him warm cream of wheat to the cellar back and forth. Much, much better, you should wait with the duck. The right time will come, don’t worry. And this Pesach, thank God, there is plenty to eat—more than anyone from the kosher houses ever had before on a Pesach.”

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Spring was slow in coming that year. The ground was sodden with the leaden rains that seemed unending. The cold clung to the air though the pussy willows in the swamp burst their tight green buds to silken, silver furs and the mayflowers were pure, waxen pink beneath the discolored leaves of winter. Upon arising, my father would go to the window and survey the dull, gray, dripping universe. “Good weather for ducks,” he would observe wryly before going about the business of the day.

“It’s good for the farmers,” my mother would reply philosophically. “Mrs. Klein’s duck must be enjoying himself.”

“Is she still feeding that duck?” my father exclaimed. “It must have cost her a fortune by now.”

“To feed a duck doesn’t cost much. A little milk and bread, a little grain, left-overs. But Mrs. Klein has other troubles,” my mother reported sadly. “The duck goes outside and plays in the water and mud. Afterwards, he likes to come into the house. He got used to being on the sun porch. Mrs. Klein is having a hard time cleaning up after the duck.”

“Is that a duck or is it a king?” my father snorted. “Who ever heard of a duck having the run of a civilized household? Such a foolishness and all over a duck.”

“Mrs. Klein wants to make the duck happy during its lifetime,” my mother explained apologetically. “The week after next, Mr. Klein is getting a ride to Bangor and he will take the duck to the shochet.”

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One day the skies did clear and the sun came out bright and strong. The days were warm and the earth deep brown and springy. The grass was lush and green and the spring flowers appeared almost overnight as if by magic. Mrs. Klein’s front yard was a wild tangle of purple-blue and white iris flags struggling out from the profusion of thick green leaves. The black-and-yellow-throated flowers lifted their nodding blue and white heads above the massed foliage crowding one upon the other. Every afternoon, Mrs. Klein could be seen among the flowers, pruning fork and trowel in hand, making vain attempts to achieve order in that neglected overgrowth. The sun shown on her snow-white head as she paused beside the walk to explain to passers-by, sadly shaking her head, “I let it go for too long. I should have begun thinning out the iris five years ago instead of leaving it for now.” At the other end of the capacious yard was the white duck, busily scratching away, roving between the flowers, the hammock, and the fruit trees at will. Whenever he came near Mrs. Klein she beamed at him. “That’s my duck,” she would announce to her casual visitors as she stooped to scratch his neck fondly. Mrs. Klein and her white duck among the iris became a familiar sight to the townspeople those first days of spring.

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Mrs. Klein did not work in her garden on Saturdays—no matter how tempting the weather and the warm brown earth. She still reserved Saturday afternoon for visiting us. And one of those Saturday afternoons, even before she entered the house, we could tell from her leaden, defeated walk as we glimpsed her approaching our porch that something was the matter. “I am in trouble—great trouble,” she announced as she came in the door. “Trouble seems to dog my steps—everything I do.”

“What is the matter, Mrs. Klein?” my mother and father asked together.

“The duck has gone,” Mrs. Klein said momentously. “Since Thursday, the duck is gone. Laid an egg and went away.”

“Maybe somebody took the duck. Maybe the duck is hiding somewhere or got lost?” my mother suggested.

“I have looked high and low since Thursday and asked all the neighbors,” answered Mrs. Klein. “Everybody knows my duck, so who could take it? No, the duck laid an egg and then ran away from me. After I was so good to it.”

“Maybe the duck went to Bangor to see the shochet,” my father said.

My mother glared at him. “Maybe the duck will come back,” she said. “Wait, Mrs. Klein.”

“No,” Mrs. Klein intoned dolefully, “the duck will never come back. And after the way I fed it and nursed it—you remember when it had a cold?”

“I remember,” said my mother, shaking her head. “Too bad.”

“It will never come back,” Mrs. Klein repeated in a tone of conviction.

“So where are Mrs. Gross and Mrs. Halpern?” my father asked. “They’re coming?”

“They’re coming,” said my mother.

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