Collected Stories (72 page)

“You and Leah will also bring joy to the father one day.”

“Maybe.”

The morning after the wedding, the whispering began. A boy who had hidden behind the window of the bridal chamber announced that Feigel and Leibush quarreled half the night. There was scolding, and blows were struck. In order to reach the window he had crept through the swamp, and he showed the mud and moss that still clung to his pants and boots. Feigel soon called on my mother to unburden herself. I was most eager to listen to Feigel’s secret but she dismissed me. “Do me a favor,” she said, “and leave the room. It’s not for your ears.”

From the other side of the door I heard muttering and stifled crying. When Feigel left, my mother’s face had red blotches. I inquired as to what was wrong with the couple, and my mother said, “God spare us, how many madmen there are.”

“They don’t get along?”

“She has bad luck.”

But the boys in the study house spoke clear words: “Feigel does not allow her husband into her bed.”

Leibush came to my uncle Jekhiel to press charges, and they locked themselves in the study. Just as Leibush had previously maligned Warsaw and praised Shebrin, he now reversed himself. He stood in the marketplace surrounded by boys and men and kept repeating, “How can anyone live in this godforsaken village? One can lose one’s mind just from seeing so much mud. Whatever else can be said about Warsaw, at least it’s lively.”

“For money you can get everything here also,” called out a newly married young man.

“What can you get? There’s not even a place to drink a decent glass of beer.”

People tried to make peace between Feigel and Leibush. Horse dealers offered to sell Leibush a team of horses for a song. Merchants promised they would hire him to carry their merchandise to Lublin and Lemberg. But Leibush shook his head. Feigel didn’t show herself. A girl who went to her shop to be fitted for a dress found the door locked. My aunt Yentl came to talk it over with my mother. They murmured and the ribbons of Yentl’s bonnet shook. “I’m afraid there’ll be no bread from this dough,” Yentl said.

“A crazy ignoramus,” my mother agreed.

The marriage was quickly dissolved. Divorce in Shebrin was not permitted because the river had two names and there was some doubt as to which name to use in the divorce papers. The pair went to Lublin to obtain the divorce. I watched both of them mount the wagon for the trip. Leibush seated himself near the driver and Feigel sat in the rear on a bundle of hay. She wore the same hat with the feather which she had worn on the Sabbath after the wedding when she was led into the women’s section of the synagogue. She looked drawn and older. Rachel came out and handed her sister a package of food. Girls and women watched from behind drawn curtains.

Though Feigel was supposed to return soon afterward, weeks passed and she still remained in Lublin. When she did get back, winter had set in. Rachel paid us a visit and said, “Never serve the third course before the first.”

“Forgive me, Rachel, but you talk nonsense.”

“Men are wild beasts,” Rachel spoke, half to my mother and half to herself.

“What’s the matter with you? The greatest saints were men.”

“Maybe in ancient times.”

One afternoon Feigel appeared at our house. “It’s all Leah,” she confided to my mother. “She bewitched us. When she learned I was about to marry, hell broke loose. She put a curse on me. This is the truth.”

“If one trusts in God, one need not fear evil.”

“It doesn’t help. She’s got Rachel under her spell. Rachel repeats Leah’s every word like a parrot. She would stand on her head if Leah told her to. The reason she’s my enemy is because I refused to do her bidding.”

“God will send you the right match.”

“No, Auntie, my bridegroom will be the Angel of Death.”

Feigel spoke the truth. Not long after this conversation, we heard that she was mortally ill. Though a doctor was summoned, he could not help her. Women reported that she was as emaciated as a consumptive and was failing more and more each day. When I went to buy farfel I no longer heard the sound of Feigel’s sewing machine. One time I noticed that the door to Feigel’s workshop was open and I looked in. She sat basting a seam. When she saw me, she smiled weakly and said, “Look at him, he’s grown up.”

“Feigel, I wish you a speedy recovery.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I’m already beyond help, but it’s nice that you came to visit me. Come in, sit down.”

When I sat on the stool she began to reminisce. “Only yesterday you were a child. Now you’re an adult. There’s one thing I want you to remember: never torture the woman who will fall into your hands!”

“God forbid.”

“We are all God’s children.”

“The main thing is that you should be healthy.”

“No, my darling. I’m not long for this world,” and a knowing smile appeared on her lips.

A few weeks later Feigel died. She had sent for my uncle Jekhiel, recited her confession to him, and requested that her trousseau be given to poor brides. The village women said she died like a saint. I followed her hearse. Rachel wailed and pounded her head with both fists, but Leah walked silently. Leizer recited the Kaddish. Father and daughters sat together for the seven days of mourning.

After Feigel’s death the family fell apart. Leizer contracted pneumonia several months later and passed away. Now the rumors spread that Rachel was losing her mind. She gave the customers more change than they paid for the items. It reached the stage where Leah no longer trusted her to sell. Leah herself wasn’t good at selling. She had no patience with the peasants and their haggling. Her baking was limited to those who came to the shop—a few girls and matrons who liked her baked goods. The two sisters could not earn a living any more. Rachel, who used to make the household purchases, no longer came to the butcher shop. She became senile. When she visited with my mother, dates and facts were confused in her stories. As a rule she brought us bread and rolls every second weekday. One Sabbath the door opened and Rachel entered in workday clothes, carrying a bakery basket. My mother began to pinch her cheeks. “Rachel, what is the matter with you? It’s the Sabbath!”

“Sabbath? I thought it was Sunday.”

“But all the stores are closed. Carrying is forbidden.”

“Shall I take the bread back home?”

“No, leave it. Didn’t you prepare a Sabbath stew?”

“Maybe I did. I will go home.”

Not long after this incident Rachel developed cancer of the breast. She lay in bed and Leah took care of her. Dr. Katz, the Shebrin physician, maintained that if Rachel went to Warsaw they might be able to operate and save her. Though the community was ready to pay her expenses, Rachel refused to go, saying, “Here I was born and here I will die.”

In her pain and delirium she began to sing songs. Fragments of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgies remained in her memory. It became obvious that she had a singing voice, though no one had ever heard her sing before. She even improvised words and melodies, as well as threnodies for her father and her long-dead mother—all in the plaintive tones inherited from generations. She now openly complained that Leah prevented Feigel and herself from marrying.

After Rachel’s death Leah stopped baking. She rented out two rooms and was somehow able to manage from the income. Her seclusion was complete. She went nowhere and didn’t even come on Rosh Hashanah to the women’s section of the synagogue to hear the blowing of the ram’s horn. The chimney stopped spewing smoke and sparks, and in Shebrin it was said the imp now lived behind Leah’s stove and slept with her in her bench bed. Although she was past her sixtieth year, her hair remained black as pitch.

When I left Shebrin, Leah was still alive. I heard that she died just before the Nazi invasion. For a long time I hadn’t thought about the sisters, but yesterday when I dozed off for a minute at my desk, I dreamed about Feigel. I saw her in a bridal gown, silken shoes, her hair streaming down to her waist, her face pale, and her eyes alight with an other-worldly joy. She was waving a palm branch and a citron fruit as though it were Sukkoth and saying to my mother, “What has a girl from her life? Nothing but a dance and a hop.”

A
FTER
Beyle Teme’s death Reb Mordecai Meir sold his store and began to live on his capital. Someone figured out for him with a pencil on paper that if he spent eight rubles a week it would last him seven years—and how much longer could he live? He had reached the age at which his parents had died. Every minute after that was a gift.

His only daughter had died of typhus several years ago and he had a few grandchildren somewhere in Slonim, but they would have to get along without his inheritance. Reb Mordecai Meir’s daughter had married a Litvak, an opponent of Hasidism, an enlightened Jew, and her father had virtually cut her off as his child.

Reb Mordecai Meir was a small man with a yellowish-white beard, a broad forehead, bushy eyebrows beneath which peeped a pair of yellow eyes, like a chicken’s. On the tip of his nose there grew a little beard. Wisps of hair stuck out of his ears and nostrils. In the course of time his back had become bowed and he always looked as if he were searching for something on the floor. He didn’t walk but shuffled his feet. All year round he wore a cotton caftan with a sash, low shoes, and a velvet hat over two skullcaps. He spoke in half sentences, only to the initiated Hasidim.

Even among Hasidim, Reb Mordecai Meir was known as an impractical man. Though he had lived in Warsaw for years, he was not at all acquainted with the streets of Warsaw. The only road he knew was from his home to the Hasidic house of prayer and back. During the year, he occasionally traveled to the Rabbi of Alexandrow, but he always had difficulty finding the trolley to the railway station, changing cars, and buying tickets. In all this he had to be assisted by young men who knew their way around. He had neither the time nor the patience for such externals.

At midnight he arose for study and prayer. Very early each morning he recited the Gemara and the Tosephot commentary. After that came psalms, more prayers, delving into Hasidic books, and discussing Hasidic matters. The winter days were short. Before one had a bite to eat and a nap, it was time to return to the study house for evening prayers. Even though the summer days were long, there were not enough of them. First it was Passover, then the Feast of Omer, and before you could turn around it was Shevuoth. After that came the seventeenth of Tammuz, the three weeks of mourning for the destruction of the Temple, the nine days of refraining from meat, and then Tishe b’Av, the Sabbath of Comfort. These were followed by the month of Elul, when even fish in water tremble. Later there was Rosh Hashanah, the ten days of Penitence, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, the Day of Rejoicing in the Law, and then, Sabbath of Genesis.

As a boy, Reb Mordecai Meir had already realized that if one wanted to be a real Jew there was no time for anything else. Praised be God, his wife, Beyle Teme, had understood this. She never asked him to assist in the store, to concern himself with business, to carry the burden of earning a living. He seldom had any money with him except for the few guldens which she gave him each week for alms, the ritual bath, books, snuff, and pipe tobacco. Reb Mordecai Meir wasn’t even certain of the exact location of the store and the merchandise sold there. A shopkeeper had to talk to women customers and he knew well that it was only one short step from talking, to looking, to lecherous thoughts.

The street on which Reb Mordecai Meir lived teemed with unbelievers, loose women. Boys peddled Yiddish newspapers which were full of mockery and atheism. The saloons swarmed with ruffians. In his library, Reb Mordecai Meir kept the windows shut, even during the summer. As soon as he opened the transom of the window, he immediately heard the playing of frivolous songs on the gramophone and female laughter. In the courtyard, bareheaded jugglers often performed their tricks, which he felt might be black magic. Reb Mordecai Meir was told that Jewish boys and girls went to the Yiddish theater where they made fun of Jewishness. There emerged worldly writers, writing in Hebrew and Yiddish. They incited the readers to sin. At every turn the Evil Spirit lay in wait. There was only one way to defeat him: with Torah, prayer, Hasidism.

The years passed and Reb Mordecai Meir did not know where or how. Overnight his yellow beard turned gray. Because he did not want to go to the barber shop and sit among the shaven transgressors, Beyle Teme used to cut his hair. She took off his skullcaps and he quickly replaced them. She would argue, “How can I cut your hair with the skullcaps on your head?”

In later years he became bald and only his sidelocks remained. When Beyle Teme stopped having children (five of the children had died and they were left with just the one daughter, Zelda Rayzel), Reb Mordecai Meir separated himself from his wife. What more was needed after he had fulfilled the commandment “Be fruitful and multiply”? To be sure, according to the Law a man was permitted to have relations with his wife when she could no longer bear children. Some were even of the opinion that one must not become a recluse. But when was this said? Only when one could copulate without any desire for the flesh. If a person had intercourse for the sake of pleasure, this could lead to temptations and lust. Besides, in recent years Beyle Teme was not in good health. She used to return home from the shop exhausted, smelling of herring and valerian drops.