Collected Stories (28 page)

“Then come with me to Bechev.”

He explained that he was returning to Bechev for his fourth year. The yeshiva there was small, with only thirty students, and the people in the town provided board for them all. The food was plentiful and the housewives darned the students’ socks and took care of their laundry. The Bechev rabbi, who headed the yeshiva, was a genius. He could pose ten questions and answer all ten with one proof. Most of the students eventually found wives in the town.

“Why did you leave in the middle of the term?” Yentl asked.

“My mother died. Now I’m on my way back.”

“What’s your name?”

“Avigdor.”

“How is it you’re not married?”

The young man scratched his beard. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me.”

Avigdor covered his eyes and thought a moment. “Are you coming to Bechev?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll find out soon enough anyway. I was engaged to the only daughter of Alter Vishkower, the richest man in town. Even the wedding date was set when suddenly they sent back the engagement contract.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Gossips, I guess, were busy spreading tales. I had the right to ask for half the dowry, but it was against my nature. Now they’re trying to talk me into another match, but the girl doesn’t appeal to me.”

“In Bechev, yeshiva boys look at women?”

“At Alter’s house, where I ate once a week, Hadass, his daughter, always brought in the food …”

“Is she good-looking?”

“She’s blond.”

“Brunettes can be good-looking too.”

“No.”

Yentl gazed at Avigdor. He was lean and bony with sunken cheeks. He had curly sidelocks so black they appeared blue, and his eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose. He looked at her sharply with the regretful shyness of one who has just divulged a secret. His lapel was rent, according to the custom for mourners, and the lining of his gaberdine showed through. He drummed restlessly on the table and hummed a tune. Behind the high furrowed brow his thoughts seemed to race. Suddenly he spoke:

“Well, what of it. I’ll become a recluse, that’s all.”

II

It was strange, but as soon as Yentl—or Anshel—arrived in Bechev, she was allotted one day’s board a week at the house of that same rich man, Alter Vishkower, whose daughter had broken off her betrothal to Avigdor.

The students at the yeshiva studied in pairs, and Avigdor chose Anshel for a partner. He helped her with the lessons. He was also an expert swimmer and offered to teach Anshel the breast stroke and how to tread water, but she always found excuses for not going down to the river. Avigdor suggested that they share lodgings, but Anshel found a place to sleep at the house of an elderly widow who was half blind. Tuesdays, Anshel ate at Alter Vishkower’s and Hadass waited on her. Avigdor always asked many questions: “How does Hadass look? Is she sad? Is she gay? Are they trying to marry her off? Does she ever mention my name?” Anshel reported that Hadass upset dishes on the tablecloth, forgot to bring the salt, and dipped her fingers into the plate of grits while carrying it. She ordered the servant girl around, was forever engrossed in storybooks, and changed her hairdo every week. Moreover, she must consider herself a beauty, for she was always in front of the mirror, but, in fact, she was not that good-looking.

“Two years after she’s married,” said Anshel, “she’ll be an old bag.”

“So she doesn’t appeal to you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Yet if she wanted you, you wouldn’t turn her down.”

“I can do without her.”

“Don’t you have evil impulses?”

The two friends, sharing a lectern in a corner of the study house, spent more time talking than learning. Occasionally Avigdor smoked, and Anshel, taking the cigarette from his lips, would have a puff. Avigdor liked baked flatcakes made with buckwheat, so Anshel stopped at the bakery every morning to buy one, and wouldn’t let him pay his share. Often Anshel did things that greatly surprised Avigdor. If a button came off Avigdor’s coat, for example, Anshel would arrive at the yeshiva the next day with needle and thread and sew it back on. Anshel bought Avigdor all kinds of presents: a silk handkerchief, a pair of socks, a muffler. Avigdor grew more and more attached to this boy, five years younger than himself, whose beard hadn’t even begun to sprout.

Once Avigdor said to Anshel: “I want you to marry Hadass.”

“What good would that do
you
?”

“Better you than a total stranger.”

“You’d become my enemy.”

“Never.”

Avigdor liked to go for walks through the town and Anshel frequently joined him. Engrossed in conversation, they would go off to the water mill, or to the pine forest, or to the crossroads where the Christian shrine stood. Sometimes they stretched out on the grass.

“Why can’t a woman be like a man?” Avigdor asked once, looking up at the sky.

“How do you mean?”

“Why couldn’t Hadass be just like you?”

“How like me?”

“Oh—a good fellow.”

Anshel grew playful. She plucked a flower and tore off the petals one by one. She picked up a chestnut and threw it at Avigdor. Avigdor watched a ladybug crawl across the palm of his hand.

After a while he spoke up: “They’re trying to marry me off.”

Anshel sat up instantly. “To whom?”

“To Feitl’s daughter, Peshe.”

“The widow?”

“That’s the one.”

“Why should you marry a widow?”

“No one else will have me.”

“That’s not true. Someone will turn up for you.”

“Never.”

Anshel told Avigdor such a match was bad. Peshe was neither goodlooking nor clever, only a cow with a pair of eyes. Besides, she was bad luck, for her husband died in the first year of their marriage. Such women were husband-killers. But Avigdor did not answer. He lit a cigarette, took a deep puff, and blew out smoke rings. His face had turned green.

“I need a woman. I can’t sleep at night.”

Anshel was startled. “Why can’t you wait until the right one comes along?”

“Hadass was my destined one.”

And Avigdor’s eyes grew moist. Abruptly he got to his feet. “Enough lying around. Let’s go.”

After that, everything happened quickly. One day Avigdor was confiding his problem to Anshel, two days later he became engaged to Peshe, and brought honey cake and brandy to the yeshiva. An early wedding date was set. When the bride-to-be is a widow, there’s no need to wait for a trousseau. Everything is ready. The groom, moreover, was an orphan and no one’s advice had to be asked. The yeshiva students drank the brandy and offered their congratulations. Anshel also took a sip, but promptly choked on it.

“Oy, it burns!”

“You’re not much of a man,” Avigdor teased.

After the celebration, Avigdor and Anshel sat down with a volume of the Gemara, but they made little progress, and their conversation was equally slow. Avigdor rocked back and forth, pulled at his beard, muttered under his breath.

“I’m lost,” he said abruptly.

“If you don’t like her, why are you getting married?”

“I’d marry a she-goat.”

The following day Avigdor did not appear at the study house. Feitl the leather dealer belonged to the Hasidim and he wanted his prospective son-in-law to continue his studies at the Hasidic prayer house. The yeshiva students said privately that though there was no denying the widow was short and round as a barrel, her mother the daughter of a dairyman, her father half an ignoramus, still the whole family was filthy with money. Feitl was part-owner of a tannery; Peshe had invested her dowry in a shop that sold herring, tar, pots and pans, and was always crowded with peasants. Father and daughter were outfitting Avigdor and had placed orders for a fur coat, a cloth coat, a silk kapote, and two pair of boots. In addition, he had received many gifts immediately, things that had belonged to Peshe’s first husband: the Vilna edition of the Talmud, a gold watch, a Hanukkah candelabra, a spice box. Anshel sat alone at the lectern.

On Tuesday when Anshel arrived for dinner at Alter Vishkower’s house, Hadass remarked: “What do you say about your partner—back in clover, isn’t he?”

“What did you expect—that no one else would want him?”

Hadass reddened. “It wasn’t my fault. My father was against it.”

“Why?”

“Because they found out a brother of his had hanged himself.”

Anshel looked at her as she stood there—tall, blond, with a long neck, hollow cheeks, and blue eyes, wearing a cotton dress and a calico apron. Her hair, fixed in two braids, was flung back over her shoulders. A pity I’m not a man, Anshel thought.

“Do you regret it now?” Anshel asked.

“Oh, yes!”

Hadass fled from the room. The rest of the food, meat dumplings and tea, was brought in by the servant girl. Not until Anshel had finished eating and was washing her hands for the Final Blessings did Hadass reappear.

She came up to the table and said in a smothered voice: “Swear to me you won’t tell him anything. Why should he know what goes on in my heart!”

Then she fled once more, nearly falling over the threshold.

III

The head of the yeshiva asked Anshel to choose another study partner, but weeks went by and still Anshel studied alone. There was no one in the yeshiva who could take Avigdor’s place. All the others were small, in body and in spirit. They talked nonsense, bragged about trifles, grinned oafishly, behaved like shnorrers. Without Avigdor the study house seemed empty. At night Anshel lay on her bench at the widow’s, unable to sleep. Stripped of gaberdine and trousers, she was once more Yentl, a girl of marriageable age, in love with a young man who was betrothed to another. Perhaps I should have told him the truth, Anshel thought. But it was too late for that. Anshel could not go back to being a girl, could never again do without books and a study house. She lay there thinking outlandish thoughts that brought her close to madness. She fell asleep, then awoke with a start. In her dream she had been at the same time a man and a woman, wearing both a woman’s bodice and a man’s fringed garment. Yentl’s period was late and she was suddenly afraid … who knew? In
Medrash Talpioth
she had read of a woman who had conceived merely through desiring a man. Only now did Yentl grasp the meaning of the Torah’s prohibition against wearing the clothes of the other sex. By doing so one deceived not only others but also oneself. Even the soul was perplexed, finding itself incarnate in a strange body.

At night Anshel lay awake; by day she could scarcely keep her eyes open. At the houses where she had her meals, the women complained that the youth left everything on his plate. The rabbi noticed that Anshel no longer paid attention to the lectures but stared out the window lost in private thoughts. When Tuesday came, Anshel appeared at the Vishkower house for dinner. Hadass set a bowl of soup before her and waited, but Anshel was so disturbed she did not even say thank you. She reached for a spoon but let it fall.

Hadass ventured a comment: “I hear Avigdor has deserted you.”

Anshel awoke from her trance. “What do you mean?”

“He’s no longer your partner.”

“He’s left the yeshiva.”

“Do you see him at all?”

“He seems to be hiding.”

“Are you at least going to the wedding?”

For a moment Anshel was silent as though missing the meaning of the words. Then she spoke: “He’s a big fool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re beautiful, and the other one looks like a monkey.”

Hadass blushed to the roots of her hair. “It’s all my father’s fault.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll find someone who’s worthy of you.”

“There’s no one I want.”

“But everyone wants you …”

There was a long silence. Hadass’ eyes grew larger, filling with the sadness of one who knows there is no consolation.

“Your soup is getting cold.”

“I, too, want you.”

Anshel was astonished at what she had said. Hadass stared at her over her shoulder.

“What are you saying!”

“It’s the truth.”

“Someone might be listening.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Eat the soup. I’ll bring the meat dumplings in a moment.”

Hadass turned to go, her high heels clattering. Anshel began hunting for beans in the soup, fished one up, then let it fall. Her appetite was gone; her throat had closed up. She knew very well she was getting entangled in evil, but some force kept urging her on. Hadass reappeared, carrying a platter with two meat dumplings on it.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

“I’m thinking about you.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I want to marry you.”

Hadass made a face as though she had swallowed something.

“On such matters, you must speak to my father.”