The Last Demon

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  ‘Shut the Gemara.’

  ‘Ah, but my soul yearns for Torah,’ the rabbi of Tishevitz groans. Nevertheless, he lifts the cover of the book, ready to shut it. If he had done that, he would have been through. What did Joseph de la Rinah do? Just hand Samael a pinch of snuff. I am already laughing to myself, ‘Rabbi of Tishevitz, I have you all wrapped up.’ The little bathhouse imp, standing in a corner, cocks an ear and turns green with envy. True, I have promised to do him a favor, but the jealousy of our kind is stronger than anything. Suddenly the rabbi says, ‘Forgive me, my Lord, but I require another sign.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Stop the sun?’

  ‘Just show me your feet.’

  The moment the rabbi of Tishevitz speaks these words, I know everything is lost. We can disguise all the parts of our body but the feet. From the smallest imp right up to Ketev Meriri we all have the claws of geese. The little imp in the corner bursts out laughing. For the first time in a thousand years I, the master of speech, lose my tongue.

  ‘I don’t show my feet,’ I call out in rage.

  ‘That means you’re a devil. Pik, get out of here,’ the rabbi cries. He races to his bookcase, pulls out The Book of Creation and waves it menacingly over me. What devil can withstand The Book of Creation? I run from the rabbi’s study with my spirit in pieces.

  To make a long story short, I remain stuck in Tishevitz. No more Lublin, no more Odessa. In one second all my stratagems turn to ashes. An order comes from Asmodeus himself. ‘Stay in Tishevitz and fry. Don’t go further than a man is allowed to walk on the Sabbath.’

  How long am I here? Eternity plus a Wednesday. I’ve seen it all, the destruction of Tishevitz, the destruction of Poland. There are no more Jews, no more demons. The women don’t pour out water any longer on the night of the winter solstice. They don’t avoid giving things in even numbers. They no longer knock at dawn at the antechamber of the synagogue. They don’t warn us before emptying the slops. The rabbi was martyred on a Friday in the month of Nisan. The community was slaughtered, the holy books burned, the cemetery desecrated. The Book of Creation has been returned to the Creator. Gentiles wash themselves in the ritual bath. Abraham Zalman’s chapel has been turned into a pigsty. There is no longer an Angel of Good or an Angel of Evil. No more sins, no more temptations! The generation is already guilty seven times over, but Messiah does not come. To whom should he come? Messiah did not come for the Jews, so the Jews went to Messiah. There is no further need for demons. We have also been annihilated. I am the last, a refugee. I can go anywhere I please, but where should a demon like me go? To the murderers?

  I found a Yiddish storybook between two broken barrels in the house which once belonged to Velvel the barrelmaker. I sit there, the last of the demons. I eat dust. I sleep on a feather duster. I keep on reading gibberish. The style of the book is in our manner; Sabbath pudding cooked in pig’s fat: blasphemy rolled in piety. The moral of the book is: neither judge, nor judgment. But nevertheless the letters are Jewish. The alphabet they could not squander. I suck on the letters and feed myself. I count the words, make rhymes, and tortuously interpret and reinterpret each dot.

  Aleph, the abyss, what else waited?

  Beth, the blow, long since fated.

  Gimel, God, pretending He knew,

  Daleth, death, its shadow grew.

  Hai, the hangman, he stood prepared;

  Vov, wisdom, ignorance bared.

  Zayeen, the zodiac, signs distantly loomed;

  Chet, the child, prenatally doomed.

  Tet, the thinker, an imprisoned lord;

  Yud, the judge, the verdict a fraud.

  Yes, as long as a single volume remains, I have something to sustain me. As long as the moths have not destroyed the last page, there is something to play with. What will happen when the last letter is no more, I’d rather not bring to my lips.

  When the last letter is gone,

  The last of the demons is done.

  Yentl the Yeshiva Boy

  I

  After her father’s death, Yentl had no reason to remain in Yanev. She was all alone in the house. To be sure, lodgers were willing to move in and pay rent; and the marriage brokers flocked to her door with offers from Lublin, Tomashev, Zamosc. But Yentl didn’t want to get married. Inside her, a voice repeated over and over: ‘No!’ What becomes of a girl when the wedding’s over? Right away she starts bearing and rearing. And her mother-in-law lords it over her. Yentl knew she wasn’t cut out for a woman’s life. She couldn’t sew, she couldn’t knit. She let the food burn and the milk boil over; her Sabbath pudding never turned out right, and her hallah dough didn’t rise. Yentl much preferred men’s activities to women’s. Her father, Reb Todros, may he rest in peace, during many bedridden years had studied Torah with his daughter as if she were a son. He told Yentl to lock the doors and drape the windows, then together they pored over the Pentateuch, the Mishnah, the Gemara, and the Commentaries. She had proved so apt a pupil that her father used to say:

  ‘Yentl – you have the soul of a man.’

  ‘So why was I born a woman?’

  ‘Even Heaven makes mistakes.’

  There was no doubt about it, Yentl was unlike any of the girls in Yanev – tall, thin, bony, with small breasts and narrow hips. On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a dark, handsome young man. There was even a slight down on her upper lip. Only her thick braids showed her womanhood – and if it came to that, hair could always be shorn. Yentl conceived a plan and day and night she could think of nothing else. No, she had not been created for the noodle board and the pudding dish, for chattering with silly women and pushing for a place at the butcher’s block. Her father had told her so many tales of yeshivas, rabbis, men of letters! Her head was full of Talmudic disputations, questions and answers, learned phrases. Secretly, she had even smoked her father’s long pipe.

  Yentl told the dealers she wanted to sell the house and go to live in Kalish with an aunt. The neighborhood women tried to talk her out of it, and the marriage brokers said she was crazy, that she was more likely to make a good match right here in Yanev. But Yentl was obstinate. She was in such a rush that she sold the house to the first bidder, and let the furniture go for a song. All she realized from her inheritance was one hundred and forty rubles. Then late one night in the month of Av, while Yanev slept, Yentl cut off her braids, arranged sidelocks at her temples, and dressed herself in her father’s clothes. Packing underclothes, phylacteries, and a few books into a straw suitcase, she started off on foot for Lublin.

  On the main road, Yentl got a ride in a carriage that took her as far as Zamosc. From there, she again set out on foot. She stopped at an inn along the way, and gave her name there as Anshel, after an uncle who had died. The inn was crowded with young men journeying to study with famous rabbis. An argument was in progress over the merits of various yeshivas, some praising those of Lithuania, others claiming that study was more intensive in Poland and the board better. It was the first time Yentl had ever found herself alone in the company of young men. How different their talk was from the jabbering of women, she thought, but she was too shy to join in. One young man discussed a prospective match and the size of the dowry, while another, parodying the manner of a Purim rabbi, declaimed a passage from the Torah, adding all sorts of lewd interpretations. After a while, the company proceeded to contests of strength. One pried open another’s fist; a second tried to bend a companion’s arm. One student, dining on bread and tea, had no spoon and stirred his cup with his penknife.

  Presently, one of the group came over to Yentl and poked her in the shoulder. ‘Why so quiet? Don’t you have a tongue?’

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Anshel.’

  ‘You are bashful. A violet by the wayside.’

  And the
young man tweaked Yentl’s nose. She would have given him a smack in return, but her arm refused to budge. She turned white. Another student, slightly older than the rest, tall and pale, with burning eyes and a black beard, came to her rescue.

  ‘Hey, you, why are you picking on him?’

  ‘If you don’t like it, you don’t have to look.’

  ‘Want me to pull your sidelocks off?’

  The bearded young man beckoned to Yentl, then asked where she came from and where she was going. Yentl told him she was looking for a yeshiva, but wanted a quiet one. The young man pulled at his beard.

  ‘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 good-looking 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.