An excerpt in Civitas Outlook from Julia Geran Pilon’s Notes from the Other Side of Night
Although it wasn’t Sunday, my father didn’t go to work. I liked the day because we could spend it together and we would have a special dinner, with food we could not always afford. My father would bring home some delicious biscuit called “pasca,” packed in a box with strange letters on it. He would buy it in an unusual place, a dark little room in a building quite far from where we lived. The room was not at all like a store—only boxes of this biscuit everywhere—and the people were all very quiet, hardly looking at each other. My father would pick up the package quickly then leave, holding me by the hand very tightly, as if afraid he might lose me. For the special dinner we also had a large piece of meat for a main course, and even wine. I really would have liked to know what this festivity was all about.
My sister was curious about the funny letters on the matzo box, so my father told her it was Chinese. Zionism, like fascism, was considered illegal; it would have been dangerous to let her know there was “Zionist” writing in our house, since she was too small to remember what not to say. I trustingly, if unimaginatively, took the “biscuit” to be some kind of especially nourishing imported food, though it did seem strange that we ate it only once a year. “Maybe that’s the only time it’s available,” I reasoned, well versed in socialist rules of supply and demand.
I admit it did seem a bit strange that my father did not go to work for a whole day, but I didn’t demand any explanation. Since it was not always on the same date, I couldn’t consider it a regular holiday like November 7, the anniversary of the Soviet Revolution. I did notice it was a spring-time celebration, and wondered whether such a special dinner was possible only when “pasca” was sold. But why make a big fuss over a mere cracker? I might have understood it better had we celebrated some fancy dessert, or tangerines, but “pasca”?!
Yet undoubtedly a holiday it was: my mother risked her best white tablecloth, so easily stained by diners like me and my sister, whose appetite was exceeded only by our oft-demonstrated clumsiness. Scrubbed and starched, the white linen seemed stiffly uncomfortable with us children, its own venerable identity reflected in an elaborate (and very difficult to iron) pattern of three letters. My mother had told us it was a “monogram”— which reminded me of “telegram = a very important message.” What enigma did the tablecloth conceal? Maybe it could not be revealed to just anyone, such as mere kids. The same cipher appeared on the napkins, providing one more (if not the only decisive) reason my sister and I consistently shunned them.
And then, of course, the curious candles. We especially liked the way they were lit: three little candles placed close together to be kindled at once. It made for an unusual effect. (I assumed there had been no larger candle in the store, and this was my mother’s way of improvising. How such practical explanations eliminate the need to wonder about symbol. . . .) Their peculiar smell stayed with us throughout the special dinner, blending with the others, yet never fully obliterated.
