Shmu fell again in the kitchen

Shmuel Ash’s second fall in the kitchen makes the ordinary task of getting a glass of water dangerous: on crutches, with one leg in a cast and asthma restricting his movement, he loses his balance among broken jars and falls against the marble counter. Atalia finds him, checks him for injuries, and carries his weight as she helps him to bed in her father’s room.

The Attempt to Get Water

The fall occurs on a cloudy Saturday morning, while the house at the end of Rabbi Elbaz Lane is dim beneath its dense cypress walls. Shmuel has just abandoned an effort to climb the spiral staircase to his attic room. He left his crutches at the foot of the stairs and tried to hop upward on his sound leg, holding the railing with both hands and keeping the cast clear of the steps. After only three or four steps, an asthma attack made it difficult to breathe. He rested on the third step, went back down, and returned to his temporary ground-floor room to use his inhaler.

After lying down for about fifteen minutes, Shmuel turned over in his thoughts his disagreement with Atalia’s father, Shaltiel Abravanel, about whether the Jewish people should have a state. His reflections joined the argument for a Jewish home in the Land of Israel to the possibility of Arabs and Jews living there cooperatively. Wanting to tell Atalia what he had been thinking, he got up and went toward the kitchen on his crutches. She was not there, and did not hear him call.

The Fall

As Shmuel approached the sink for water, he struck the corner of the table. One crutch slipped away, and he nearly fell, but caught hold of a cupboard and stayed upright. In doing so, he knocked down a jar of jam and another of pickles, shattering both and scattering their contents across the floor.

He tried to clean up the broken glass and mess without letting his cast touch the floor. Bracing his left hand against the counter and leaning on a crutch, he bent to pick up the shards with his right hand. The effort cost him his balance: the crutch slid on a patch of sticky jam, and Shmuel fell sideways. As he rolled onto the floor, his shoulder struck the marble corner of the counter. The spill that he had tried to clear thus became the immediate cause of the worse fall.

Atalia’s Response

The elderly Gershom Wald was still asleep, as he usually was in the morning. Atalia came out of her room in a blue flannel dressing gown, her dark hair freshly washed and wet. She lifted Shmuel and felt along his back and body with both hands. He hurried to assure her that he was all right and, unlike on other occasions, had neither injured himself nor broken a bone; a minute later, he admitted that his neck hurt.

Atalia pulled him up onto his sound leg, put his arm over her shoulders, and supported his full weight as he hopped with her help to the bedroom. She laid him on her father’s bed and, without ending her sentence with a question mark, said, “What am I going to do with you.” Her practical rescue and exasperated tenderness close the scene: Shmuel’s mobility depends on others, even as his impulse to act for himself repeatedly puts him at risk.