The Collected Stories

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Shoshe was aware that these holy sentences were being said in her honor, and thought to herself, “Here am I, a simple woman, an orphan, and yet God has chosen to bless me with a devoted husband who praises me in the holy tongue.”

  Both of them had eaten sparingly during the day so that they would have an appetite for the Sabbath meal. Shmul-Leibele said the benediction over the raisin wine and gave Shoshe the cup so that she might drink. Afterwards, he rinsed his fingers from a tin dipper, then she washed hers, and they both dried their hands with a single towel, each at either end. Shmul-Leibele lifted the Sabbath loaf and cut it with the bread knife, a slice for himself and one for his wife.

  He immediately informed her that the loaf was just right, and she countered: “Go on, you say that every Sabbath.”

  “But it happens to be the truth,” he replied.

  Although it was hard to obtain fish during the cold weather, Shoshe had purchased three-fourths of a pound of pike from the fishmonger. She had chopped it with onions, added an egg, salt and pepper, and cooked it with carrots and parsley. It took Shmul-Leibele’s breath away, and after it he had to drink a tumbler of whiskey. When he began the table chants, Shoshe accompanied him quietly. Then came the chicken soup with noodles and tiny circlets of fat which glowed on the surface like golden ducats. Between the soup and the main course, Shmul-Leibele again sang Sabbath hymns. Since goose was cheap at this time of year, Shoshe gave Shmul-Leibele an extra leg for good measure. After the dessert, Shmul-Leibele washed for the last time and made a benediction. When he came to the words: “Let us not be in need either of the gifts of flesh and blood nor of their loans,” he rolled his eyes upward and brandished his fists. He never stopped praying that he be allowed to continue to earn his own livelihood and not, God forbid, become an object of charity.

  After grace, he said yet another chapter of the Mishnah, and all sorts of other prayers which were found in his large prayer book. Then he sat down to read the weekly portion of the Pentateuch twice in Hebrew and once in Aramaic. He enunciated every word and took care to make no mistake in the difficult Aramaic paragraphs of the Onkelos. When he reached the last section, he began to yawn and tears gathered in his eyes. Utter exhaustion overcame him. He could barely keep his eyes open and between one passage and the next he dozed off for a second or two. When Shoshe noticed this, she made up the bench-bed for him and prepared her own featherbed with clean sheets. Shmul-Leibele barely managed to say the retiring prayers and began to undress. When he was already lying on his bench-bed he said: “A good Sabbath, my pious wife. I am very tired …” and turning to the wall, he promptly began to snore.

  Shoshe sat a while longer gazing at the Sabbath candles which had already begun to smoke and flicker. Before getting into bed, she placed a pitcher of water and a basin at Shmul-Leibele’s bedstead so that he would not rise the following morning without water to wash with. Then she, too, lay down and fell asleep.

  They had slept an hour or two or possibly three—what does it matter, actually?—when suddenly Shoshe heard Shmul-Leibele’s voice. He waked her and whispered her name. She opened one eye and asked, “What is it?”

  “Are you clean?” he mumbled.

  She thought for a moment and replied, “Yes.”

  He rose and came to her. Presently he was in bed with her. A desire for her flesh had roused him. His heart pounded rapidly, the blood coursed in his veins. He felt a pressure in his loins. His urge was to mate with her immediately, but he remembered the Law, which admonished a man not to copulate with a woman until he had first spoken affectionately to her, and he now began to speak of his love for her and how this mating could possibly result in a male-child.

  “And a girl you wouldn’t accept?” Shoshe chided him, and he replied, “Whatever God deigns to bestow would be welcome.”

  “I fear this privilege isn’t mine any more,” she said with a sigh.

  “Why not?” he demanded. “Our mother Sarah was far older than you.”

  “How can one compare oneself to Sarah? Far better you divorce me and marry another.”

  He interrupted her, stopping her mouth with his hand. “Were I sure that I could sire the twelve tribes of Israel with another, I still would not leave you. I cannot even imagine myself with another woman. You are the jewel of my crown.”

  “And what if I were to die?” she asked.

  “God forbid! I would simply perish from sorrow. They would bury us both on the same day.”

  “Don’t speak blasphemy. May you outlive my bones. You are a man. You would find somebody else. But what would I do without you?”

  He wanted to answer her, but she sealed his lips with a kiss. He went to her then. He loved her body. Each time she gave herself to him, the wonder of it astonished him anew. How was it possible, he would think, that he, Shmul-Leibele, should have such a treasure all to himself? He knew the law, one dared not surrender to lust for pleasure. But somewhere in a sacred book he had read that it was permissible to kiss and embrace a wife to whom one had been wed according to the laws of Moses and Israel, and he now caressed her face, her throat and her breasts. She warned him that this was frivolity. He replied, “So I’ll lie on the torture rack. The great saints also loved their wives.” Nevertheless, he promised himself to attend the ritual bath the following morning, to intone psalms and to pledge a sum to charity. Since she loved him also and enjoyed his caresses, she let him do his will.

  After he had satiated his desire, he wanted to return to his own bed, but a heavy sleepiness came over him. He felt a pain in his temples. Shoshe’s head ached as well. She suddenly said, “I’m afraid something is burning in the oven. Maybe I should open the flue?”

  “Go on, you’re imagining it,” he replied. “It’ll become too cold in here.”

  And so complete was his weariness that he fell asleep, as did she.

  That night Shmul-Leibele suffered an eerie dream. He imagined that he had passed away. The Burial Society brethren came by, picked him up, lit candles by his head, opened the windows, intoned the prayer to justify God’s ordainment. Afterwards, they washed him on the ablution board, carried him on a stretcher to the cemetery. There they buried him as the gravedigger said Kaddish over his body.

  “That’s odd,” he thought. “I hear nothing of Shoshe lamenting or begging forgiveness. Is it possible that she would so quickly grow unfaithful? Or has she, God forbid, been overcome by grief?”

  He wanted to call her name, but he was unable to. He tried to tear free of the grave, but his limbs were powerless. All of a sudden he awoke.

  “What a horrible nightmare!” he thought. “I hope I come out of it all right.”

  At that moment Shoshe also awoke. When he related his dream to her, she did not speak for a while. Then she said, “Woe is me. I had the very same dream.”

  “Really? You too?” asked Shmul-Leibele, now frightened. “This I don’t like.”

  He tried to sit up, but he could not. It was as if he had been shorn of all his strength. He looked toward the window to see if it were day already, but there was no window visible, nor any windowpane. Darkness loomed everywhere. He cocked his ears. Usually he would be able to hear the chirping of a cricket, the scurrying of a mouse, but this time only a dead silence prevailed. He wanted to reach out to Shoshe, but his hand seemed lifeless.

  “Shoshe,” he said quietly, “I’ve grown paralyzed.”

  “Woe is me, so have I,” she said. “I cannot move a limb.”

  They lay there for a long while, silently, feeling their numbness. Then Shoshe spoke: “I fear that we are already in our graves for good.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Shmul-Leibele replied in a voice that was not of the living.

  “Pity me, when did it happen? How?” Shoshe asked. “After all, we went to sleep hale and hearty.”

  “We must have been asphyxiated by the fumes from the stove,” Shmul-Leibele said.

  “But I said I wanted to open the flue.”

  “Well, it
’s too late for that now.”

  “God have mercy upon us, what do we do now? We were still young people …”

  “It’s no use. Apparently it was fated.”

  “Why? We arranged a proper Sabbath. I prepared such a tasty meal. An entire chicken neck and tripe.”

  “We have no further need of food.”

  Shoshe did not immediately reply. She was trying to sense her own entrails. No, she felt no appetite. Not even for a chicken neck and tripe. She wanted to weep, but she could not.

  “Shmul-Leibele, they’ve buried us already. It’s all over.”

  “Yes, Shoshe, praised be the true Judge! We are in God’s hands.”

  “Will you be able to recite the passage attributed to your name before the Angel Dumah?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s good that we are lying side by side,” she muttered.

  “Yes, Shoshe,” he said, recalling a verse: Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.

  “And what will become of our hut? You did not even leave a will.”

  “It will undoubtedly go to your sister.”

  Shoshe wished to ask something else, but she was ashamed. She was curious about the Sabbath meal. Had it been removed from the oven? Who had eaten it? But she felt that such a query would not be fitting of a corpse. She was no longer Shoshe the dough-kneader, but a pure, shrouded corpse with shards covering her eyes, a cowl over her head, and myrtle twigs between her fingers. The Angel Dumah would appear at any moment with his fiery staff, and she would have to be ready to give an account of herself.

  Yes, the brief years of turmoil and temptation had come to an end. Shmul-Leibele and Shoshe had reached the true world. Man and wife grew silent. In the stillness they heard the flapping of wings, a quiet singing. An angel of God had come to guide Shmul-Leibele the tailor and his wife, Shoshe, into Paradise.

  Translated by Joseph Singer and Roger Klein

  The Séance

  I

  IT was during the summer of 1946, in the living room of Mrs. Kopitzky on Central Park West. A single red bulb burned behind a shade adorned with one of Mrs. Kopitzky’s automatic drawings—circles with eyes, flowers with mouths, goblets with fingers. The walls were all hung with Lotte Kopitzky’s paintings, which she did in a state of trance and at the direction of her control—Bhaghavar Krishna, a Hindu sage supposed to have lived in the fourth century. It was he, Bhaghavar Krishna, who had painted the peacock with the golden tail, in the middle of which appeared the image of Buddha; the otherworldly trees hung with elflocks and fantastic fruits; the young women of the planet Venus with their branch-like arms and their ears from which stretched silver nets—organs of telepathy. Over the pictures, the old furniture, the shelves with books, there hovered reddish shadows. The windows were covered with heavy drapes.

  At the round table on which lay a Ouija board, a trumpet, and a withered rose, sat Dr. Zorach Kalisher, small, broad-shouldered, bald in front and with sparse tufts of hair in the back, half yellow, half gray. From behind his yellow bushy brows peered a pair of small, piercing eyes. Dr. Kalisher had almost no neck—his head sat directly on his broad shoulders, making him look like a primitive African statue. His nose was crooked, flat at the top, the tip split in two. On his chin sprouted a tiny growth. It was hard to tell whether this was a remnant of a beard or just a hairy wart. The face was wrinkled, badly shaven, and grimy. He wore a black corduroy jacket, a white shirt covered with ash and coffee stains, and a crooked bow tie.

  When conversing with Mrs. Kopitzky, he spoke an odd mixture of Yiddish and German. “What’s keeping our friend Bhaghavar Krishna? Did he lose his way in the spheres of Heaven?”

  “Dr. Kalisher, don’t rush me,” Mrs. Kopitzky answered. “We cannot give them orders … They have their motives and their moods. Have a little patience.”

  “Well, if one must, one must.”

  Dr. Kalisher drummed his fingers on the table. From each finger sprouted a little red beard. Mrs. Kopitzky leaned her head on the back of the upholstered chair and prepared to fall into a trance. Against the dark glow of the red bulb, one could discern her freshly dyed hair, black without luster, waved into tiny ringlets; her rouged face, the broad nose, high cheekbones, and eyes spread far apart and heavily lined with mascara. Dr. Kalisher often joked that she looked like a painted bulldog. Her husband, Leon Kopitzky, a dentist, had died eighteen years before, leaving no children. The widow supported herself on an annuity from an insurance company. In 1929 she had lost her fortune in the Wall Street crash, but had recently begun to buy securities again on the advice of her Ouija board, planchette, and crystal ball. Mrs. Kopitzky even asked Bhaghavar Krishna for tips on the races. In a few cases, he had divulged in dreams the names of winning horses.

  Dr. Kalisher bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hands, muttering to himself as solitary people often do. “Well, I’ve played the fool enough. This is the last night. Even from kreplech one has enough.”

  “Did you say something, Doctor?”

  “What? Nothing.”

  “When you rush me, I can’t fall into the trance.”

  “Trance-shmance,” Dr. Kalisher grumbled to himself. “The ghost is late, that’s all. Who does she think she’s fooling? Just crazy—meshugga.”

  Aloud, he said: “I’m not rushing you, I’ve plenty of time. If what the Americans say about time is right, I’m a second Rockefeller.”

  As Mrs. Kopitzky opened her mouth to answer, her double chin, with all its warts, trembled, revealing a set of huge false teeth. Suddenly she threw back her head and sighed. She closed her eyes, and snorted once. Dr. Kalisher gaped at her questioningly, sadly. He had not yet heard the sound of the outside door opening, but Mrs. Kopitzky, who probably had the acute hearing of an animal, might have. Dr. Kalisher began to rub his temples and his nose, and then clutched at his tiny beard.

  There was a time when he had tried to understand all things through his reason, but that period of rationalism had long passed. Since then, he had constructed an anti-rationalistic philosophy, a kind of extreme hedonism which saw in eroticism the Ding an sich, and in reason the very lowest stage of being, the entropy which led to absolute death. His position had been a curious compound of Hartmann’s idea of the Unconscious with the Cabala of Rabbi Isaac Luria, according to which all things, from the smallest grain of sand to the very Godhead itself, are Copulation and Union. It was because of this system that Dr. Kalisher had come from Paris to New York in 1939, leaving behind in Poland his father, a rabbi, a wife who refused to divorce him, and a lover, Nella, with whom he had lived for years in Berlin and later in Paris. It so happened that when Dr. Kalisher left for America, Nella went to visit her parents in Warsaw. He had planned to bring her over to the United States as soon as he found a translator, a publisher, and a chair at one of the American universities.

  In those days Dr. Kalisher had still been hopeful. He had been offered a cathedra in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; a publisher in Palestine was about to issue one of his books; his essays had been printed in Zurich and Paris. But with the outbreak of the Second World War, his life began to deteriorate. His literary agent suddenly died, his translator was inept and, to make matters worse, absconded with a good part of the manuscript, of which there was no copy. In the Yiddish press, for some strange reason, the reviewers turned hostile and hinted that he was a charlatan. The Jewish organizations which arranged lectures for him cancelled his tour. According to his own philosophy, he had believed that all suffering was nothing more than negative expressions of universal eroticism: Hitler, Stalin, the Nazis who sang the Horst Wessel song and made the Jews wear yellow armbands, were actually searching for new forms and variations of sexual salvation. But Dr. Kalisher began to doubt his own system and fell into despair. He had to leave his hotel and move into a cheap furnished room. He wandered about in shabby clothes, sat all day in cafeterias, drank endless cups of coffee, smoked bad cigars, and barely managed to survive on t
he few dollars that a relief organization gave him each month. The refugees whom he met spread all sorts of rumors about visas for those left behind in Europe, packages of food and medicines that could be sent them through various agencies, ways of bringing over relatives from Poland through Honduras, Cuba, Brazil. But he, Zorach Kalisher, could save no one from the Nazis. He had received only a single letter from Nella.

  Only in New York had Dr. Kalisher realized how attached he was to his mistress. Without her, he became impotent.

  II

  Everything was exactly as it had been yesterday and the day before. Bhaghavar Krishna began to speak in English with his foreign voice that was half male and half female, duplicating Mrs. Kopitzky’s errors in pronunciation and grammar. Lotte Kopitzky came from a village in the Carpathian Mountains. Dr. Kalisher could never discover her nationality—Hungarian, Rumanian, Galician? She knew no Polish or German, and little English; even her Yiddish had been corrupted through her long years in America. Actually she had been left languageless and Bhaghavar Krishna spoke her various jargons. At first Dr. Kalisher had asked Bhaghavar Krishna the details of his earthly existence but had been told by Bhaghavar Krishna that he had forgotten everything in the heavenly mansions in which he dwelt. All he could recall was that he had lived in the suburbs of Madras. Bhaghavar Krishna did not even know that in that part of India Tamil was spoken. When Dr. Kalisher tried to converse with him about Sanskrit, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Sakuntala, Bhaghavar Krishna replied that he was no longer interested in terrestrial literature. Bhaghavar Krishna knew nothing but a few theosophic and spiritualistic brochures and magazines which Mrs. Kopitzky subscribed to.