Grandma Hannah, eaten by wolves.
That was all I ever knew about her. She was not actually my grandma but someone else’s somewhere along the line. I knew nothing else about her. So when I came across this photo that had the name “Hannah” written on the back, I figured it had to be her.
I had heard many versions of this story.
In one, she was attacked as she went back home carrying turnips that she bought at a nearby town. Wolves, when they get hungry, will eat anything…not only turnips but grandmas too. In another version, Hannah, feisty and snappish, threatened the wolves with a loaf of bread and even threw one at them, because they were following her. Wolves don’t take kindly to threats which, in fact, make them growly. And in yet another, she was lured by the wolves with their seductive gazes and soft tails into the forest where they turned on her. Wolves are all about the yearning heart and the death at the end of every desire.
And there was this:
It was the night of a full moon deep in December. Hannah was restless in her bed. Vilna, barely a village then, was settled into the cold winter frost but in her house at the edge of the town, Hannah felt something tugging at her soul.
In the dark of the house, she accidentally stuck her hand into the bowl of soup still on the table, stumbled to find that red overcoat she had sewn from the hides her husband Motke, still asleep, bought the previous year. As she opened the front door, air rushed in to fill the space behind her and this, even more than her will, pushed her out onto the road.
The moon cast long shadows on the ground and as she walked without thinking, Hannah watched her own dark form following her step by step. That feeling of being stalked in just that way was troubling but also in some way thrilling. As she walked towards the moon she began to feel that her destination might yet present itself but as a whisper, barely making itself known.
Just before the road turned into the forest, she saw something move in the dark. It was hidden in the shadow of a tree but she could feel it watching her, waiting. She thought to go back but something stopped her, some sense of expectation or maybe just wonder. Then it stepped out into the moonlight and it was a wolf, a female by its size, hungry by its weight. It was alone and when Hannah stopped in her tracks, the wolf did too.
In the blue light of the round moon, the woman in the hide coat and the wolf in its fur stood facing each other, unmoving, unknowing.
“What do you want with me?” Hannah asked because it suddenly occurred to her that this was the reason she had ventured out in the first place. This was the magnet that had pulled her from her warm bed.
The wolf said nothing and only sniffed the air once, then continued to stare at her with those wolfish eyes.
“Are you judgment come for me?” she asked. “Because of my love with Luvel?”
The wolf beat its tail once and a dustup of snowy dew scattered.
Hannah took this to mean that she was on the right track, not to mention that the wolf understood Yiddish.
“I could not help myself,” she explained. “My Motke was gone for so long that year and I was terribly lonely.”
At this the wolf sat down on its rear and twisted its head slightly.
“Luvel is a good man, a kind man. I know he is my cousin but only through marriage. And his Golda was…well, you know.”
At that, the wolf stretched out it front paws like a dog and lowered itself onto the ground and Hannah too took a seat in that great overcoat and explained the whole story.
As the moon rolled down to the horizon and the moonshadows lengthened across the trees and Vilna crackled deep into the night, Hannah told the wolf about the difficulties with Motke and the losing of the child and the separation that was much more than simple practicality and also about Luvel and his kind words that made her feel loving again.
When she was all done with this, the wolf raised itself up, rear legs first then front, shook off the cold, and slowly – so slowly – walked over to her until its breath was like a cloud in her eyes. She cautiously reached up to touch it and the wolf licked her hand and right then and there Hannah knew that she had been forgiven, that this was not death at all but some sort of kind spirit come to listen and help her let go of her sorrow.
It was not true of course.
The wolf had simply been separated from her pack and found the voice in the night air soothing, like forest music. It came over only to smell the hides Hannah was wearing and it licked her hand simply due to the traces of the soup from dinner.
All things explained.
To be honest, I don’t know if there really were wolves in Poland then. But if there were, I can easily envision the oil lamps in the homes at night and the flickering shadows on the windows and the eyes of the wild wolves gleaming against the black sky out there in the gloom.
Maybe you don’t need a wolf to be forgiven; maybe only the thought of one is enough. And just maybe in the end, Hannah was really only eaten, as we all are, by that timeless time in which we doubt our choices.
And the moments when we might forgive ourselves.
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