Collected Stories (39 page)

Yoineh Meir was filled with a gripping pain. Until this day he had still hoped that he would get accustomed to slaughtering. But now he knew that if he continued for a hundred years his suffering would not cease. His knees shook. His belly felt distended. His mouth was flooded with bitter fluids. Reitze Doshe and her sisters were also in the yard, talking with the women, wishing each a blessed New Year, and voicing the pious hope that they would meet again next year.

Yoineh Meir feared that he was no longer slaughtering according to the Law. At one moment, a blackness swam before his eyes; at the next, everything turned golden green. He constantly tested the knife blade on the nail of his forefinger to make sure it was not nicked. Every fifteen minutes he had to go to urinate. Mosquitoes bit him. Crows cawed at him from among the branches.

He stood there until sundown, and the pit became filled with blood.

After the evening prayers, Reitze Doshe served Yoineh Meir buckwheat soup with pot roast. But though he had not tasted any food since morning, he could not eat. His throat felt constricted, there was a lump in his gullet, and he could scarcely swallow the first bite. He recited the Shema of Rabbi Isaac Luria, made his confession, and beat his breast like a man who was mortally sick.

Yoineh Meir thought that he would be unable to sleep that night, but his eyes closed as soon as his head was on the pillow and he had recited the last benediction before sleep. It seemed to him that he was examining a slaughtered cow for impurities, slitting open its belly, tearing out the lungs and blowing them up. What did it mean? For this was usually the butcher’s task. The lungs grew larger and larger; they covered the whole table and swelled upward toward the ceiling. Yoineh Meir ceased blowing, but the lobes continued to expand by themselves. The smaller lobe, the one that is called “the thief,” shook and fluttered, as if trying to break away. Suddenly a whistling, a coughing, a growling lamentation broke from the windpipe. A dybbuk began to speak, shout, sing, pour out a stream of verses, quotations from the Talmud, passages from the Zohar. The lungs rose up and flew, flapping like wings. Yoineh Meir wanted to escape, but the door was barred by a black bull with red eyes and pointed horns. The bull wheezed and opened a maw full of long teeth.

Yoineh Meir shuddered and woke up. His body was bathed in sweat. His skull felt swollen and filled with sand. His feet lay on the straw pallet, inert as logs. He made an effort and sat up. He put on his robe and went out. The night hung heavy and impenetrable, thick with the darkness of the hour before sunrise. From time to time a gust of air came from somewhere, like a sigh of someone unseen.

A tingling ran down Yoineh Meir’s spine, as though someone brushed it with a feather. Something in him wept and mocked. “Well, and what if the rabbi said so?” he spoke to himself. “And even if God Almighty had commanded, what of that? I’ll do without rewards in the world to come! I want no Paradise, no Leviathan, no Wild Ox! Let them stretch me on a bed of nails. Let them throw me into the Hollow of the Sling. I’ll have none of your favors, God! I am no longer afraid of your Judgment! I am a betrayer of Israel, a willful transgressor!” Yoineh Meir cried. “I have more compassion than God Almighty—more, more! He is a cruel God, a Man of War, a God of Vengeance. I will not serve Him. It is an abandoned world!” Yoineh Meir laughed, but tears ran down his cheeks in scalding drops.

Yoineh Meir went to the pantry where he kept his knives, his whetstone, the circumcision knife. He gathered them all and dropped them into the pit of the outhouse. He knew that he was blaspheming, that he was desecrating the holy instruments, that he was mad, but he no longer wished to be sane.

He went outside and began to walk toward the river, the bridge, the wood. His prayer shawl and phylacteries? He needed none! The parchment was taken from the hide of a cow. The cases of the phylacteries were made of calf’s leather. The Torah itself was made of animal skin. “Father in Heaven, Thou art a slaughterer!” a voice cried in Yoineh Meir. “Thou art a slaughterer and the Angel of Death! The whole world is a slaughterhouse!”

A slipper fell off Yoineh Meir’s foot, but he let it lie, striding on in one slipper and one sock. He began to call, shout, sing. I am driving myself out of my mind; he thought. But this is itself a mark of madness …

He had opened a door to his brain, and madness flowed in, flooding everything. From moment to moment, Yoineh Meir grew more rebellious. He threw away his skullcap, grasped his prayer fringes and ripped them off, tore off pieces of his vest. A strength possessed him, the recklessness of one who had cast away all burdens.

Dogs chased him, barking, but he drove them off. Doors were flung open. Men ran out barefoot, with feathers clinging to their skullcaps. Women came out in their petticoats and nightcaps. All of them shouted, tried to bar his way, but Yoineh Meir evaded them.

The sky turned red as blood, and a round skull pushed up out of the bloody sea as out of the womb of a woman in childbirth.

Someone had gone to tell the butchers that Yoineh Meir had lost his mind. They came running with sticks and rope, but Yoineh Meir was already over the bridge and was hurrying across the harvested fields. He ran and vomited. He fell and rose, bruised by the stubble. Shepherds who take the horses out to graze at night mocked him and threw horse dung at him. The cows at pasture ran after him. Bells tolled as for a fire.

Yoineh Meir heard shouts, screams, the stamping of running feet. The earth began to slope and Yoineh Meir rolled downhill. He reached the wood, leaped over tufts of moss, rocks, running brooks. Yoineh Meir knew the truth: this was not the river before him; it was a bloody swamp. Blood ran from the sun, staining the tree trunks. From the branches hung intestines, livers, kidneys. The forequarters of beasts rose to their feet and sprayed him with gall and slime. Yoineh Meir could not escape. Myriads of cows and fowls encircled him, ready to take revenge for every cut, every wound, every slit gullet, every plucked feather. With bleeding throats, they all chanted, “Everyone may kill, and every killing is permitted.”

Yoineh Meir broke into a wail that echoed through the wood in many voices. He raised his fist to Heaven: “Friend! Murderer! Devouring beast!”

For two days the butchers searched for him, but they did not find him. Then Zeinvel, who owned the watermill, arrived in town with the news that Yoineh Meir’s body had turned up in the river by the dam. He had drowned.

The members of the Burial Society immediately went to bring the corpse. There were many witnesses to testify that Yoineh Meir had behaved like a madman, and the rabbi ruled that the deceased was not a suicide. The body of the dead man was cleansed and given burial near the graves of his father and his grandfather. The rabbi himself delivered the eulogy.

Because it was the holiday season and there was danger that Kolomir might remain without meat, the community hastily dispatched two messengers to bring a new slaughterer.

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the town of Shidlovtse, which lies between Radom and Kielce, not far from the Mountains of the Holy Cross, there lived a man by the name of Reb Sheftel Vengrover. This Reb Sheftel was supposedly a grain merchant, but all the buying and selling was done by his wife, Zise Feige. She bought wheat, corn, barley, and buckwheat from the landowners and the peasants and sent it to Warsaw. She also had some of the grain milled and sold the flour to stores and bakeries. Zise Feige owned a granary and had an assistant, Zalkind, who helped her in the business and did all the work that required a man’s hand; he carried sacks, looked after the horses, and served as coachman whenever Zise Feige drove out to a fair or went to visit a landowner.

Reb Sheftel held to the belief that the Torah is the worthiest merchandise of all. He rose at dawn and went to the study house to pore over the Gemara, the Annotations and Commentaries, the Midrash, and the Zohar. In the evenings, he would read a lesson from the Mishnah with the Mishnah Society. Reb Sheftel also devoted himself to community affairs and was an ardent Radzymin Hasid.

Reb Sheftel was not much taller than a midget, but he had the longest beard in Shidlovtse and the surrounding district. His beard reached down to his knees and seemed to contain every color: red, yellow, even the color of hay. At Tishe b’Av, when the mischiefmakers pelted everyone with burs, Reb Sheftel’s beard would be full of them. At first Zise Feige had tried to pull them out, but Reb Sheftel would not allow it, for she pulled out the hairs of the beard too, and a man’s beard is a mark of his Jewishness and a reminder that he was created in the image of God. The burs remained in his beard until they dropped out by themselves. Reb Sheftel did not curl his sidelocks, considering this a frivolous custom. They hung down to his shoulders. A tuft of hair grew on his nose. As he studied, he smoked a long pipe.

When Reb Sheftel stood at the lectern in the synagogue in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, he looked like one of the ancients. He had a high forehead, and under shaggy eyebrows, eyes that combined the sharp glance of a scholar with the humility of a God-fearing man. Reb Sheftel imposed a variety of penances upon himself. He drank no milk unless he had been present at the milking. He ate no meat except on the Sabbath and on holidays and only if he had examined the slaughtering knife in advance. It was told of him that on the eve of Passover he ordered that the cat wear socklets on its feet, lest it bring into the house the smallest crumb of unleavened bread. Every night, he faithfully performed the midnight prayers. People said that although he had inherited his grain business from his father and grandfather he still could not distinguish between rye and wheat.

Zise Feige was a head taller than her husband and in her younger days had been famous for her good looks. The landlords who sold her grain showered her with compliments, but a good Jewish woman pays no attention to idle talk. Zise Feige loved her husband and considered it an honor to help him serve the Almighty.

She had borne nine children, but only three remained: a married son, Jedidiah, who took board with his father-in-law in Wlodowa; a boy, Tsadock Meyer, who was still in cheder; and a grown daughter, Liebe Yentl. Liebe Yentl had been engaged and about to be married, but her fiancé, Ozer, caught a cold and died. This Ozer had a reputation as a prodigy and a scholar. His father was the president of the community in Opola. Although Liebe Yentl had seen Ozer only during the signing of the betrothal papers, she wept bitterly when she heard the bad news. Almost at once she was besieged with marriage offers, for she was already a ripe girl of seventeen, but Zise Feige felt that it was best to wait until she got over her misfortune.

Liebe Yentl’s betrothed, Ozer, departed this world just after Passover. Now it was already the month of Heshvan. Sukkoth is usually followed by rains and snow, but this fall was a mild one. The sun shone. The sky was blue, as after Pentecost. The peasants in the villages complained that the winter crops were beginning to sprout in the fields, which could lead to crop failure. People feared that the warm weather might bring epidemics. In the meantime, grain prices rose by three groschen on the pood, and Zise Feige had higher profits. As was the custom between man and wife, she gave Reb Sheftel an accounting of the week’s earnings every Sabbath evening, and he immediately deducted a share—for the study house, the prayer house, the mending of sacred books, for the inmates of the poorhouse, and for itinerant beggars. There was no lack of need for charity.

Since Zise Feige had a servant girl, Dunya, and was herself a fine housekeeper, Liebe Yentl paid little attention to household matters. She had her own room, where she would often sit, reading storybooks. She copied letters from the letter book. When she had read through all the storybooks, she secretly took to borrowing from her father’s bookcase. She was also good at sewing and embroidery. She was fond of fine clothes. Liebe Yentl inherited her mother’s beauty, but her red hair came from her father’s side. Like her father’s beard, her hair was uncommonly long—down to her loins. Since the mishap with Ozer, her face, always pale, had grown paler still and more delicate. Her eyes were green.

Reb Sheftel paid little attention to his daughter. He merely prayed to the Lord to send her the right husband. But Zise Feige saw that the girl was growing up as wild as a weed. Her head was full of whims and fancies. She did not allow herring or radishes to be mentioned in her presence. She averted her eyes from slaughtered fowl and from meat on the salting board or in the soaking dish. If she found a fly in her groats, she would eat nothing for the rest of the day. She had no friends in Shidlovtse. She complained that the girls of the town were common and backward; as soon as they were married, they became careless and slovenly. Whenever she had to go among people, she fasted the day before, for fear that she might vomit. Although she was beautiful, clever, and learned, it always seemed to her that people were laughing and pointing at her.

Zise Feige wanted many times to talk to her husband about the troubles she was having with their daughter, but she was reluctant to divert him from his studies. Besides, he might not understand a woman’s problems. He had a rule for everything. On the few occasions when Zise Feige had tried to tell him of her fears, his only reply was, “When, God willing, she gets married, she will forget all this foolishness.”

After the calamity with Ozer, Liebe Yentl fell ill from grieving. She did not sleep nights. Her mother heard her sobbing in the dark. She was constantly going for a drink of water. She drank whole dippers full, and Zise Feige could not imagine how her stomach could hold so much water. As though, God forbid, a fire were raging inside her, consuming everything.