The Collected Stories

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  When she had obliged him, he began, “Both you and the coachman are reincarnations and descended from a common spiritual source. You, Lise, were in your first existence Abeishag the Shunammite, and he was Adonijah, the son of Hagith. He desired you and sent Bathsheba to King Solomon so that he might surrender you to him for a wife, but since according to the law you were David’s widow, his wish was punishable by death and the Horns of the Altar could not protect him, for he was taken away and killed. But law applies only to the body, not the soul. Thus, when one soul lusts for another, the heavens decree that they can find no peace until that lust is gratified. It is written that the Messiah will not come until all passions have been consummated, and because of this, the generations before the Messiah will be completely impure! And when a soul cannot consummate its desire in one existence, it is reincarnated again and again and thus it was with you two. Almost three thousand years now your souls have wandered naked and cannot enter the World of Emanations from where they stem. The forces of Satan have not allowed you two to meet, for then redemption would come. So it happened that when he was a prince, you were a handmaiden, and when you were a princess, he was a slave. In addition, you were separated by oceans. When he sailed to you, the Devil created a storm and sank the ship. There were other obstacles too, and your grief was intense. Now you are both in the same house, but since he is an ignoramus, you shun him. Actually, holy spirits inhabit your bodies, crying out in the dark and longing for union. And you are a married woman because there is a kind of cleansing that can be accomplished through adultery alone. Thus Jacob consorted with two sisters and Jehudah lay with Tamar, his daughter-in-law, and Reuben violated the bed of Bilhah, his own father’s concubine, and Hosea took a wife from a brothel, and that is how it was with the rest of them. And know also that the goat was no common goat, but a devil, one of Satan’s own and if Mendel hadn’t come when he did, the beast would have, God forbid, done you injury.”

  When Lise inquired if he, Shloimele, were also a reincarnation, he said that he was King Solomon and that he’d returned to earth to nullify the error of his earlier existence, that because of the sin of having Adonijah executed, he was not able to enter the Mansion due him in Paradise. When Lise asked what would follow the correction of the error, if they would all then have to leave the earth, Shloimele replied that he and Lise would subsequently enjoy a long life together but he said nothing of Mendel’s future, intimating only that the young man’s stay on earth would be a short one. And he made all these statements with the dogmatic absoluteness of the Cabalist to whom no secret is inviolate.

  When Lise heard his words, a tremor shook her and she lay there numbed. Lise, familiar with the Scriptures, had often felt a compassion for Adonijah, King David’s errant son, who’d lusted for his father’s concubine and wished to be king and paid with his head for his rebelliousness. More than once she had wept with pity on reading this chapter in the Book of Kings. She had also pitied Abeishag the Shunammite, the fairest maiden in the land of Israel, who although carnally not known to the king was forced to remain a widow for the rest of her life. It was a revelation to hear that she, Lise, was actually Abeishag the Shunammite and that Adonijah’s soul dwelt in Mendel’s body.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that Mendel indeed resembled Adonijah as she had fancied him in her imagination, and she considered this astonishing. She realized now why his eyes were so black and strange, his hair so thick, why he avoided her and kept himself apart from people and why he gazed at her with such desire. She began to imagine that she could remember her earlier existence as Abeishag the Shunammite and how Adonijah had driven past the palace in a chariot, fifty men running before him, and although she served King Solomon, she’d felt a strong desire to give herself to Adonijah … It was as if Shloimele’s explanation had unfolded a deep riddle to her and released within her the skein of secrets long past.

  That night, the couple did not sleep. Shloimele lay next to her and they conversed quietly until morning. Lise asked questions and Shloimele answered them all reasonably, for my people are notoriously glib, and in her innocence, she believed everything. Even a Cabalist could have been fooled into thinking that these were the words of the living God and that Elijah the Prophet revealed himself to Shloimele. Shloimele’s words aroused him to such enthusiasm that he tossed and jerked and his teeth chattered as if he were feverish and the bed swayed beneath him and rivulets of sweat coursed from his body. When Lise realized what she was destined to do, and that Shloimele had to be obeyed, she wept bitterly and soaked her pillow with tears. And Shloimele comforted her and caressed her and divulged to her the innermost secrets of the Cabala. At dawn she lay in a stupor, her strength evaporated, more dead than alive. And thus the power of a false Cabalist and the corrupt words of a disciple of Sabbatai Zevi caused a modest woman to stray from the path of righteousness.

  In truth, Shloimele, the villain, devised this whim merely to satisfy his own depraved passions, since he had grown perverse from too much thinking, and what gratified him would make the average person suffer intensely. From an overabundance of lust he had become impotent. Those who understand the complexities of human nature know that joy and pain, ugliness and beauty, love and hate, mercy and cruelty and other conflicting emotions often blend and cannot be separated from each other. Thus I am able not only to make people turn away from the Creator, but to damage their own bodies, all in the name of some imaginary cause.

  X

  The Repentance

  That summer was hot and dry. Reaping their meager corn crop, the peasants sang as though they were keening. Corn grew stunted and half-shriveled. I brought in locusts and birds from the other bank of the river San and what the farmers had labored for the insects devoured. Many cows went dry, probably from spells cast by witches. In the village of Lukoff, not far from Kreshev, a witch was seen riding a hoop and brandishing a broom. Before her ran something with black elflocks, a furry hide and a tail. The millers complained that imps scattered devil’s dung in their flour. A herder of horses who tended his animals at night near the marshes, saw hovering in the sky a creature with a crown of thorns and Christians considered this an omen that their Day of Judgment was not far off.

  It was the month of Elul. A blight struck the leaves which tore loose from the trees and whirled about in circles in the wind. The heat of the sun blended with the frigid breeze from the Congealed Sea. The birds that migrate to distant lands, held a meeting on the rooftop of the synagogue, chirped, twittered and argued in avian language. Bats swooped about at evening and girls feared leaving their homes, for if a bat got tangled in someone’s hair, that person would not live out the year. As usual at this season my disciples, the Shades, began to perpetrate their own brand of mischief. Children were struck down by the measles, the pox, diarrhea, croup and rashes, and although the mothers took the usual protections, measured graves and lit memorial candles, their offspring perished. In the prayer house the ram’s horn was sounded several times each day. Blowing the ram’s horn, is, as is well known, an effort to drive me away, for when I hear the horn I am supposed to imagine that the Messiah is coming and that God, praised be His name, is about to destroy me. But my ears are not that insensitive that I cannot distinguish between the blast of the Great Shofar and the horn of a Kreshev ram …

  So you can see I remained alert and arranged a treat for the people of Kreshev that they would not forget in a hurry.

  It was during services on a Monday morning. The prayer house was crowded. The sexton was about to take out the Scroll of the Law. He had already turned back the curtain before the Holy Ark and opened the door when suddenly a tumult erupted through the entire chamber. The worshippers stared at the place where the noise had come from. Through the opened doors burst Shloimele. His appearance was shocking. He wore a ragged capote, its lining torn, the lapel ripped as if he were in mourning; he was in stockinged feet as if it were the ninth day of Ab, and about his hips was a rope instead of a sash. He was ashen, his bear
d tousled, his sidelocks askew. The worshippers could not believe their eyes. He moved quickly to the copper laver and washed his hands. Then he stepped to the reading desk, struck it and cried out in a trembling voice: “Men! I bear evil tidings! Something terrible has happened.” In the suddenly still prayer house, the flames in the memorial candles crackled loudly. Presently as in a forest before a storm, a rustle passed through the crowd. Everyone surged closer to the lectern. Prayer books fell to the floor and no one bothered to pick them up. Youngsters climbed up on benches and tables, upon which lay the sacred prayer books, but no one ordered them off. In the women’s section there was a commotion and a scuffling. The women were crowding the grate to see what went on below amongst the menfolk.

  The aged rabbi, Reb Ozer, was still amongst the living and ruled his flock with an iron hand. Although he wasn’t inclined to interrupt the services, he now turned from his place along the eastern wall where he worshipped in prayer shawl and phylacteries and shouted angrily: “What do you want? Speak up!”

  “Men, I am a transgressor! A sinner who causes others to sin. Like Jerobom, the son of Nebat!” Shloimele exclaimed and pounded his breast with his fist. “Know ye that I forced my wife into adultery. I confess to everything, I bare my soul!”

  Although he spoke quietly, his voice echoed as if the hall were now empty. Something like laughter emanated from the women’s section of the synagogue and then it turned to the kind of low wailing that is heard at the evening prayers on the eve of the Day of Atonement. The men seemed petrified. Many thought Shloimele had lost his reason. Others had already heard gossip. After a while Reb Ozer, who had long suspected that Shloimele was a secret follower of Sabbatai Zevi, raised the prayer shawl from his head with trembling hands and draped it about his shoulders. His face with its patches of white beard and sidelocks became a corpse-like yellow.

  “What did you do?” the patriarch asked with a cracked voice full of foreboding. “With whom did your wife commit this adultery?”

  “With my father-in-law’s coachman, that Mendel … It’s all my fault … She did not want to do it, but I persuaded her …”

  “You?” Reb Ozer seemed about to charge at Shloimele.

  “Yes, Rabbi—I.”

  Reb Ozer stretched out his arm for a pinch of snuff as if to fortify his wasted spirit, but his hand trembled and the snuff slipped from between his fingers. Knees shaking, he was forced to support himself on a stand.

  “Why did you do this thing?” he asked feebly.

  “I don’t know, Rabbi … Something came over me!” cried Shloimele, and his puny figure seemed to shrink. “I committed a grave error … A grave error!”

  “An error?” Reb Ozer demanded and raised one eye. It seemed as if the single eye held a laughter not of this world.

  “Yes, an error!” Shloimele said, forlorn, bewildered.

  “Oy vey—Jews, a fire rages, a fire from Gehenna!” a man with a pitch-black beard and long, disheveled sidelocks cried suddenly. “Our children are dying because of them! Innocent infants who knew nothing of sin!”

  With the mention of children, a lament arose from the women’s synagogue. It was the mothers remembering their babies who had perished. Since Kreshev was a small town the news spread quickly and a terrible excitement followed. Women mingled with the men, phylacteries fell to the ground, prayer shawls were torn loose. When the crowd quieted, Shloimele started his confession again. He told how he had joined the ranks of the cult of Sabbatai Zevi while still a boy, how he had studied with his fellow disciples, how he had been taught that an excess of degradation meant greater sanctity and that the more heinous the wickedness the closer the day of redemption.

  “Men, I am a traitor to Israel!” he wailed. “A heretic from sheer perversity and a whoremonger! I secretly desecrated the Sabbath, ate dairy with meat, neglected my prayers, profaned my prayer books and indulged in every possible iniquity … I forced my own wife into adultery! I fooled her into thinking that that bum, Mendel the coachman, was in truth Adonijah the son of Hagith and that she was Abeishag the Shunammite and that they could obtain salvation only through union! I even convinced her that, by sinning, she’d commit a good deed! I have trespassed, been faithless, spoken basely, wrought unrighteousness, been presumptuous and counseled evil.”

  He screamed in a shrill voice and, each time, beat his bosom. “Spit upon me, Jews. Flail me! Tear me to bits! Judge me!” he cried. “Let me pay for my sins with death.”

  “Jews, I am not the rabbi of Kreshev but of Sodom!” shouted Reb Ozer, “Sodom and Gomorrah!”

  “Oy—Satan dances in Kreshev!” wailed the black Jew and clapped his head in both hands. “Satan the Destroyer!”

  The man was right. All that day and through the following night I ruled over Kreshev. No one prayed or studied that day, no ram’s horn was blown. The frogs in the marshes croaked: “Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!” Crows heralded evil tidings. The community goat went berserk and attacked a woman returning from the ritual bath. In every chimney a demon hovered. From every woman a hobgoblin spoke. Lise was still in bed when the mob overran her house. After shattering the windows with rocks, they stormed her bedroom. When Lise saw the crowds she grew white as the sheet beneath her. She asked to be allowed to dress but they tore the bedding and shredded the silk nightgown from her body, and in such disarray, barefoot and in tatters, her head uncovered, she was dragged off to the house of the rabbi. The young man, Mendel, had just arrived from a village where he had spent several days. Before he even knew what was happening, he was set upon by the butcher boys, tied with ropes, beaten severely and spirited away to the community jail in the anteroom of the synagogue. Since Shloimele had confessed voluntarily, he got away with several facial blows, but of his own free will he stretched out on the threshold of the study house and told everyone who entered or left to spit and walk over him, which is the first penance for the sin of adultery.

  XI

  The Punishment

  Late into the night Reb Ozer sat in the chamber of justice with the ritual slaughterer, the trustee, the seven town elders and other esteemed citizens, listening to the sinners’ stories. Although the shutters were closed and the door locked, a curious crowd gathered and the beadle had to keep going out to drive them away. It would take too long to tell all about the shame and depravities detailed by Shloimele and Lise. I’ll repeat only a few particulars. Although everyone had supposed Lise would weep and protest her innocence, or simply fall into a faint, she maintained her composure. She answered with clarity every question that the rabbi asked her. When she admitted fornicating with the young man, the rabbi asked how it was possible for a good and intelligent Jewish daughter to do such a thing, and she replied that the blame was all hers, she had sinned and was reconciled to any punishment now. “I know that I’ve forsaken this world and the next,” she said, “and there’s no hope for me.” She said this as calmly as if the entire chain of events had been a common occurrence, thus astonishing everyone. And when the rabbi asked if she were in love with the young man or if she had sinned under duress she replied that she had acted willingly and of her own accord.

  “Perhaps an evil spirit bewitched you?” the rabbi suggested. “Or a spell was cast upon you? Or some dark force compelled you? You could have been in a trance and forgotten the teachings of the Torah and that you were a good Jewish daughter? If this is so—do not deny it!”

  But Lise maintained that she knew of no evil spirits, nor demons nor magic nor illusions.

  The other men probed further, asked if she’d found knots in her clothing or elflocks in her hair or a yellow stain on the mirror, or a black and blue mark on her body, and she announced that she had encountered nothing. When Shloimele insisted that he had spurred her on and that she was pure of heart, she bowed her head and would neither admit nor deny this. And when the rabbi asked if she regretted her trespasses, she was silent at first, then said: “What’s the use of regretting?” and added: “I wish to be judged according to the la
w—unmercifully.” Then she grew silent and it was difficult to get another word out of her.

  Mendel confessed that he’d lain with Lise, the daughter of his master, many times; that she’d come to him in his garret and in the garden between the flower beds and that he’d also visited her several times in her own bedroom. Although he had been beaten and his clothing was in shreds, he remained defiant—for as it is written: “Sinners do not repent even at the very gates of Gehenna …” and he made uncouth remarks. When one well-respected citizen asked him: “How could you possibly do such a thing?” Mendel snarled: “And why not? She is better than your wife.”

  At the same time he vilified his inquisitors, called them thieves, gluttons and usurers, claimed that they gave false weight and measure. He also spoke derogatorily of their wives and daughters. He told one worthy that his wife left a trail of refuse behind her; another—that he was too smelly even for his wife, who refused to sleep with him; and made similar observations full of arrogance, mockery and ridicule.

  When the rabbi asked him: “Have you no fear? Do you expect to live forever?” he replied that there was no difference between a dead man and a dead horse. The men were so infuriated that they whipped him again and the crowds outside heard his curses while Lise, covering her face with both her hands, sobbed.