The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  But at the time I am speaking about there were a few rich men in the town and in a prosperous home anything can happen. So whenever I turned my eyes in that direction, I made sure to see how things were going in the household of Reb Bunim Shor, the community’s richest man. It would take too long to explain in detail how Reb Bunim happened to settle in Kreshev. He had originally lived in Zholkve, which is a town near Lemberg. He had left there for business reasons. His interest was lumber and for a very small sum he had purchased a nice tract of woods from the Kreshev squire. In addition, his wife, Shifrah Tammar (a woman of distinguished family, granddaughter of the famous scholar Reb Samuel Edels), suffered from a chronic cough which made her spit blood, and a Lemberg doctor had recommended that she live in a wooded area. At any rate, Reb Bunim had moved to Kreshev with all his possessions, bringing along with him also a grown son and Lise, his ten-year-old daughter. He had built a house set apart from all the other dwellings at the end of the synagogue street; and several wagonloads of furniture, crockery, clothing, books and a host of other things had been crammed into the building. He had also brought with him a couple of servants, an old woman and a young man called Mendel, who acted as Reb Bunim’s coachman. The arrival of the new inhabitant restored life to the town. Now there was work for the young men in Reb Bunim’s forests and Kreshev’s coachmen had logs to haul. Reb Bunim repaired the town’s bath and he constructed a new roof for the almshouse.

  Reb Bunim was a tall, powerful, large-boned man. He had the voice of a cantor and a pitch-black beard that ended in two points. He wasn’t much of a scholar and could scarcely get through a chapter of the Midrash, but he always contributed generously to charity. He could sit down to a meal and finish at one sitting a loaf of bread and a six-egg omelet, washing it all down with a quart of milk. Fridays at the bath, he would climb to the highest perch and would have the attendant beat him with a bundle of twigs until it was time to light the candles. When he went into the forest he was accompanied by two fierce hounds, and he carried a gun. It was said that he could tell at a glance whether a tree was healthy or rotten. When necessary, he could work eighteen hours on end and walk for miles on foot. His wife, Shifrah Tammar, had once been very handsome, but between running to doctors and worrying about herself, she’d managed to become prematurely old. She was tall and thin, almost flat-chested, and she had a long, pale face and a beak of a nose. Her thin lips stayed forever closed and her gray eyes looked belligerently out at the world. Her periods were painful and when they came she would take to her bed as though she were mortally ill. In fact, she was a constant sufferer—one moment it would be a headache, the next an abscessed tooth or pressure on her abdomen. She was not a fit mate for Reb Bunim but he was not the sort who complained. Very likely he was convinced that that was the way it was with all women since he had married when he was fifteen years old.

  There isn’t very much to say about his son. He was like his father—a poor scholar, a voracious eater, a powerful swimmer, an aggressive businessman. He had married a girl from Brod before his father had even moved to Kreshev and had immediately immersed himself in business. He very seldom came to Kreshev. Like his father he had no lack of money. Both of the men were born financiers. They seemed to draw money to them. The way it looked, there didn’t appear to be any reason why Reb Bunim and his family would not live out their days in peace as so often happens with ordinary people who because of their simplicity are spared bad luck and go through life without any real problems.

  II

  The Daughter

  But Reb Bunim also had a daughter, and women, as it is well known, bring misfortune.

  Lise was both beautiful and well brought up. At twelve she was already as tall as her father. She had blond, almost yellow, hair and her skin was as white and smooth as satin. At times her eyes appeared to be blue and at other times green. Her behavior was a mixture, half Polish lady, half pious Jewish maiden. When she was six her father had engaged a governess to instruct her in religion and grammar. Later Reb Bunim had sent her to a regular teacher and from the very beginning she had shown a great interest in books. On her own she had studied the Scriptures in Yiddish, and dipped into her mother’s Yiddish commentary on the Pentateuch. She had also been through The Inheritance of the Deer, The Rod of Punishment, The Good Heart, The Straight Measure, and other similar books that she had found in the house. After that, she had managed all by herself to pick up a smattering of Hebrew. Her father had told her repeatedly that it was not proper for a girl to study the Torah and her mother cautioned her that she would be left an old maid since no one wanted a learned wife, but these warnings made little impression on the girl. She continued to study, read The Duty of the Heart, and Josephus, familiarized herself with the tales of the Talmud, and in addition learned all sorts of proverbs of the Tanaites and Amorites. She put no limit to her thirst for knowledge. Every time a book peddler wandered into Kreshev she would invite him to the house and buy whatever he had in his sack. After the Sabbath meal her contemporaries, the daughters of the best families of Kreshev, would drop in for a visit. The girls would chatter, play odds and evens, set each other riddles to answer and act as giddily as young girls generally do. Lise was always very polite to her friends, would serve them Sabbath fruits, nuts, cookies, cakes, but she never had much to say—her mind was concerned with weightier matters than dresses and shoes. Yet her manner was always friendly, without the slightest trace of haughtiness in it. On holidays Lise went to the women’s synagogue although it was not customary for girls of her age to attend services. On more than one occasion, Reb Bunim, who was devoted to her, would say sorrowfully: “It’s a shame that she’s not a boy. What a man she would have made.”

  Shifrah Tammar’s feelings were otherwise.

  “You’re just ruining the girl,” she would insist. “If this continues, she won’t even know how to bake a potato.”

  Since there was no competent teacher of secular subjects in Kreshev (Yakel, the community’s only teacher, could just about write a single line of legible Yiddish), Reb Bunim sent his daughter to study with Kalman the leech. Kalman was highly esteemed in Kreshev. He knew how to burn out elf-locks, apply leeches, and do operations with just an ordinary breadknife. He owned a caseful of books and manufactured his own pills from the herbs in the field. He was a short, squat man with an enormous belly and as he walked his great weight seemed to make him totter. He looked like one of the local gentry in his plush hat, velvet caftan, knee-length trousers and shoes with buckles. It was the custom in Kreshev to have the procession, taking the bride to the ritual bath, stop for a moment in front of Kalman’s porch to serenade him gaily. “Such a man,” it was said in town, “must be kept in a good humor. All one can hope is that one never needs him.”

  But Reb Bunim did need Kalman. The leech was in perpetual attendance upon Shifrah Tammar, and not only did he treat the mother’s ailments, but he permitted the daughter to borrow books from his library. Lise read through his whole collection: tomes about medicine, travel books describing distant lands and savage peoples, romantic stories of the nobility, how they hunted and made love, the brilliant balls they gave. Nor was this all. In Kalman’s library were also marvelous yarns about sorcerers and strange animals, about knights, kings and princes. Yes, every line of all this Lise read.

  Well, now it is time for me to speak about Mendel, Mendel the man-servant—Mendel the coachman. No one in Kreshev knew quite where this Mendel had come from. One story was that he’d been a love child who’d been abandoned in the streets. Others said he was the child of a convert. Whatever his origins, he was certainly an ignoramus and was famous not only in Kreshev but for miles around. He literally didn’t know his Alef Beth, nor had he ever been seen to pray, although he did own a set of phylacteries. On Friday night all the other men would be at the house of prayer but Mendel would be loitering in the marketplace. He would help the servant girls draw water from the well and would hang around the horses in the stables. Mendel shaved, had di
scarded his fringed garment, offered no benedictions; he had completely emancipated himself from Jewish custom. On his first appearance in Kreshev, several people had interested themselves in him. He’d been offered free instruction. Several pious ladies had warned him that he’d end up reclining on a bed of nails in Gehenna. But the young man had ignored everyone. He just puckered up his lips and whistled impudently. If some woman assailed him too vigorously, he would snarl back arrogantly: “Oh, you cossack of God, you. Anyway, you won’t be in my Gehenna.”

  And he would take the whip that he always carried with him and use it to hike up the woman’s skirt. There would be a great deal of commotion and laughter and the pious lady would vow never again to tangle with Mendel the coachman.

  Though he was a heretic that didn’t prevent him from being handsome. No, he was very good-looking, tall and lithe, with straight legs and narrow hips and dense black hair which was a little bit curly and a little kinky and in which there were always a few stalks of hay and straw. He had heavy eyebrows which joined together over his nose. His eyes were black, his lips thick. As for his clothing, he went around dressed like a Gentile. He wore riding breeches and boots, a short jacket and a Polish hat with a leather visor which he pulled down in the back until it touched the nape of his neck. He carved whistles from twigs and he also played the fiddle. Another of his hobbies was pigeons and he’d built a coop on top of Reb Bunim’s house and occasionally he’d be seen scampering up to the roof to exercise the birds with a long stick. Although he had a room of his own and a perfectly adequate bench-bed, he preferred to sleep in the hay loft, and when he was in the mood he was capable of sleeping for fourteen hours at a stretch. Once there had been so bad a fire in Kreshev that the people had decided to flee the town. At Reb Bunim’s house everyone had been looking for Mendel so that he might help pack and carry things away. But there had been no Mendel to be found anywhere. Only after the fire had been put out at last and the excitement had died down had he been discovered in the courtyard, snoring under an apple tree as if nothing had happened.

  But Mendel the coachman wasn’t only a sleeper. It was well known that he chased the women. One thing, however, could be said for him: he didn’t go after the Kreshev maidens. His escapades were always with young peasant girls from the neighboring villages. The attraction that he had for these women seemed almost unnatural. The beer drinkers at the local tavern maintained that Mendel had only to gaze at one of these girls and she would immediately come to him. It was known that more than one had visited him in his attic. Naturally the peasants didn’t like this and Mendel had been warned that one of these days they would chop off his head, but he ignored these threats and wallowed deeper and deeper in carnality. There wasn’t a village that he had visited with Reb Bunim where he didn’t have his “wives” and families. It almost seemed true that a whistle from him was sufficient sorcery to bring some girl flying to his side. Mendel, however, didn’t discuss his power over women. He drank no whiskey, avoided fights, and stayed away from the shoemakers, tailors, hoopers and brushmakers that comprised the poorer population of Kreshev. Nor did they regard him as one of them. He didn’t even bother much about money. Reb Bunim, it was said, supplied him with room and board only. But when a Kreshev teamster wanted to hire him and pay him real wages, Mendel remained loyal to the house of Reb Bunim. He apparently did not mind being a slave. His horses and his boots, his pigeons and his girls were the only things that concerned him. So the townspeople gave up on Mendel the coachman.

  “A lost soul,” they commented. “A Jewish Gentile.”

  And gradually they became accustomed to him and then forgot him.

  III

  The Articles of Engagement

  As soon as Lise turned fifteen, conjecture began about whom she would marry. Shifrah Tammar was sick, and relations between her and Reb Bunim were strained, so Reb Bunim decided to discuss the matter with his daughter. When the subject was mentioned, Lise became shy and would reply that she would do what her father thought best.

  “You have two possibilities,” Reb Bunim said during one of these conversations. “The first is a young man from Lublin who comes of a very wealthy family but is no scholar. The other is from Warsaw and a real prodigy. But I must warn you that he doesn’t have a cent. Now speak up, girl. The decision is up to you. Which would you prefer?”

  “Oh, money,” Lise said scornfully. “What value does it have? Money can be lost, but not knowledge.” And she turned her gaze downward.

  “Then, if I understand you correctly, you prefer the boy from Warsaw?” Reb Bunim said, stroking his long, black beard.

  “You know best, Father,” Lise whispered.

  “One thing in addition that I should mention,” he went on, “is that the rich man is very handsome—tall and with blond hair. The scholar is extremely short—a full head shorter than you.”

  Lise grasped both of her braids and her face turned red and then quickly lost all color. She bit her lip.

  “Well, what have you decided, daughter?” Reb Bunim demanded. “You mustn’t be ashamed to speak.”

  Lise began to stammer and her knees trembled from shame. “Where is he?” she asked. “I mean, what does he do?” Where is he studying?”

  “The Warsaw boy? He is, may God preserve us, an orphan, and he is at present studying at the Zusmir yeshiva. I am told that he knows the entire Talmud by heart and that he is also a philosopher and a student of the Cabala. He has already written a commentary on Maimonides, I believe.”

  “Yes,” Lise mumbled.

  “Does that mean that you want him?”

  “Only if you approve, Father.”

  And she covered her face with both of her hands and ran from the room. Reb Bunim followed her with his eyes. She delighted him—her beauty, chastity, intelligence. She was closer to him than to her mother, and although almost fully grown, would cuddle close to him and run her fingers through his beard. Fridays before he went off to the bathhouse she would have a clean shirt ready for him and on his return before the lighting of the candles she would serve him freshly baked cake and plum stew. He never heard her laughing raucously as did the other young girls nor did she ever go barefoot in his presence. After the Sabbath meal, when he napped, she would walk on tiptoe so as not to wake him. When he was ill, she would put her hand on his forehead to see whether he had fever and would bring all sorts of medicine and tidbits. On more than one occasion Reb Bunim had envied the happy young man who would have her as a wife.

  Some days later the people of Kreshev learned that Lise’s prospective husband had arrived in town. The young man came in a wagon by himself and he stayed at the house of Rabbi Ozer. Everyone was surprised to see what a scrawny fellow he was, small and thin, with black tousled sidelocks, a pale face and a pointed chin which was barely covered by a few sparse whiskers. His long gaberdine reached to below the ankles. His back was bent and he walked rapidly and as if he didn’t know where he was going. The young girls crowded to the windows and watched him pass by. When he arrived at the study house, the men came up to greet him and he immediately began to expatiate in the cleverest possible way. There was no mistaking that this man was a born city dweller.

  “Well, you really have some metropolis here,” the young man observed.

  “No one’s claiming that it’s Warsaw,” one of the town boys commented.

  The young cosmopolitan smiled. “One place is pretty much like another,” he pointed out. “If they’re on the face of the earth, they’re all the same.”

  This said, he began to quote literally from the Babylonian Talmud and the Talmud of Jerusalem, and when he was finished with that, he entertained everyone with news about what was going on in the great world beyond Kreshev. He wasn’t himself personally acquainted with Radziwill but he had seen him and he did know a follower of Sabbatai Zevi, the false Messiah. He also had met a Jew who came from Shushan, which was the ancient capital of Persia, and another Jew who had become a convert and studied the Talmud in sec
ret. As if this weren’t enough, he began to ask those assembled the most difficult of riddles and, when he tired of that, amused himself by repeating anecdotes of Rabbi Heshl. Somehow or other he managed to convey the additional information that he knew how to play chess, could paint murals employing the twelve signs of the zodiac, and write Hebrew verse which could be read either backwards or forwards and said exactly the same thing no matter how you read it. Nor was this all. This young prodigy, in addition, had studied philosophy and the Cabala, and was an adept in mystical mathematics, being able even to work out the fractions which are to be found in the treatise of Kilaim. It goes without saying that he had had a look at the Zohar and The Tree of Life and he knew The Guide to the Perplexed as well as his own first name.

  He had come to Kreshev looking ragged, but several days after his arrival Reb Bunim outfitted him in a new gaberdine, new shoes, and white stockings, and presented him with a gold watch. And now the young man began to comb his beard and curl his sidelocks. It was not until the signing of the contract that Lise saw the bridegroom, but she had received reports of how learned he was and she was happy that she had chosen him and not the rich young man from Lublin.

  The festivities to celebrate the signing of the engagement contract were as noisy as a wedding. Half the town had been invited. As always, the men and women were seated separately and Shloimele, the groom-to-be, made an extremely clever speech and then signed his name with a brilliant flourish. Several of the town’s most learned men tried to converse with him on weighty subjects, but his rhetoric and wisdom were too much for them. While the celebration was still going on, and before the serving of the banquet, Reb Bunim broke the usual custom that the bride and groom must not meet before the marriage and let Shloimele into Lise’s chamber since the true interpretation of the law is that a man not take a wife unless he has seen her. The young man’s gaberdine was unbuttoned, exposing his silk vest and gold watch chain. He appeared a man of the world with his brightly polished shoes and velvet skullcap perched on the top of his head. There was moisture on his high forehead and his cheeks were flushed. Inquisitively, bashfully, he gazed about him with his dark eyes, and his index finger kept twining itself nervously around a fringe of his sash. Lise turned a deep red when she saw him. She had been told that he was not at all good-looking but to her he seemed handsome. And this was the view of the other girls who were present. Somehow or other Shloimele had become much more attractive.