The waiter brought my vegetables. I chewed and looked out the window as night fell over the harvested fields. The sun set, small and glowing. It rolled down quickly, like a coal from some heavenly conflagration. A nocturnal gloom hovered above the landscape, an eternity that was weary of being eternal. Good God, my father and my grandfather were right to avoid looking at women! Every encounter between a man and a woman leads to sin, disappointment, humiliation. A dread fell upon me that Mark would try to find me and exact revenge.
As if Celina had read my mind, she said, “Don’t worry. She’ll soon comfort herself. What was the reason for your taking this trip? Just to see Spain?”
“I wanted to forget someone who wouldn’t let herself be forgotten.”
“Where is she? In Europe?”
“In America.”
“You can’t forget anything.”
We sat until late, and Mrs. Weyerhofer unfolded to me her fatalistic theory: everything was determined or fixed—every deed, every word, every thought. She herself would die shortly and no doctor or conjurer could help her. She said, “Before you came in here I fantasized that I was arranging a suicide pact with someone. After a night of pleasure, he stuck a knife in my breast.”
“Why a knife, of all things?” I asked. “That’s not a Jewish fantasy. I couldn’t do this even to Hitler.”
“If the woman wants it, it can be an act of love.”
The waiter came back and mumbled something.
Mrs. Weyerhofer explained, “We’re the only ones in the dining car. They want to close up.”
“I’m finished,” I said. “Gastronomically and otherwise.”
“Don’t rush,” she said. “Unlike the driver of our ill-starred bus, the forces that drive us mad have all the time in the world.”
Translated by Joseph Singer
A Night in the Poorhouse
I
AT nine in the evening the poorhouse attendant extinguished the kerosene lamp. He left burning a single tallow candle, which soon began to flicker. Outside, the frost glistened, but inside the poorhouse it was warm. The gravely ill lay in beds. The others slept on straw pallets on the floor.
Next to the over lay Zeinvel the thief, whom peasants had crippled when they caught him stealing a horse, and Mottke the beadle, who for a long time had served as beadle to a bogus rabbi named Yontche, a cobbler who donned a Hasidic rabbi’s attire and traveled through the Polish towns allegedly performing miracles. They had gone as far as Lithuania together. Yontche was subsequently caught in the act with a servant girl and fled to America. Mottke, too, tried to escape to America, but he was detained on Ellis Island and then deported because of trachoma. Later he became half blind. Both Mottke the beadle and Zeinvel the thief had lived in the poorhouse for years, although in separate rooms most of the time.
Zeinvel was tall, and as black as a gypsy, with slanted eyes, a head of black hair, and a mouth full of white teeth. Besides being lame, he suffered from consumption. As a young man he had had the reputation of being a dandy. He managed to trim his beard even in the poorhouse. Mottke was small, round like a barrel, with tufts of flax-blond hair around his scabby skull and with a yellow beard that grew on one cheek only. His eyes were always swollen and half closed. He was something of a scholar, and it was said that he and Yontche used to switch roles. One month Yontche would be the rabbi and Mottke the beadle; the next month it was the other way around.
After a while the tallow candle went out. A full moon was shining outside and its light reflected up from the snow upon the poorhouse walls. Zeinvel and Mottke never went to sleep before midnight. They chatted and told stories.
Mottke was saying, “Cold outside, eh? It’s going to get even colder. Here in Poland the cold is still bearable, but when a frost comes up in Lithuania oaks burst in the forests. One thing is good there—wood is cheap. The villages are tiny, but almost all the men are learned. You meet a carpenter or a blacksmith—by day he planes a board or pounds his hammer on the anvil, but after the evening services he reads a chapter of the Mishnah to a group in the study house. They don’t set much store by Hasidic rabbis. You can travel half of Lithuania without seeing a Hasid. The men avoided us, but the women used to come to us on the sly, and brought whatever they could—a chicken, a dozen eggs, a measure of buckwheat, even a garland of garlic. There’s no lack of sickness anywhere, and we gave them all kinds of remedies—cow’s eggs with duck milk, as well as various amulets and talismans we both invented. When we were in Lithuania, a thing happened that turned a village topsy-turvy.”
“What happened?” Zeinvel asked.
“Something with a dybbuk.”
“A dybbuk in Lithuania?”
“Yes, in Lithuania. I had been told that the Litvaks didn’t believe in dybbuks. The Vilna Gaon didn’t believe in such things, and from the Vilna Gaon to God is but one step. But what the eyes see can’t be denied. The name of the village was Zabrynka. When Yontche and I got there, the ritual slaughterer invited us for the Sabbath repast. In Lithuania a Sabbath guest doesn’t sleep in the poorhouse. A bed is made up for him at his host’s house. The slaughterer’s name was Bunem Leib, and his wife’s Hiene—a name not heard in our parts. They had only one daughter, Freidke, a short girl with red hair and freckles. She was already engaged to a youth who was studying slaughtering under her father. His name was Chlavna. In Lithuania they have the queerest names. He was a handsome young man—tall, dark, well dressed. In Lithuania no one wears a satin robe on the Sabbath, unless maybe a rabbi. Nor are their earlocks as long as here in Poland. Everything with them is different. We put sugar into gefilte fish, they put pepper.
“Yontche was a glutton. The moment he entered a house, he took right to the food. I like to look around. I noticed that Freidke was madly in love with Chlavna. She never took her eyes off him. Her eyes were blue, sharp, and kind of melancholy. Why? It’s in my nature that I notice things whether they concern me or not. A healthy young fellow should have an appetite, but it struck me that Chlavna hardly ate a thing. Whatever was served him, he left over—the Sabbath loaf, the soup, the meat, even the carrot stew. When Hiene served him a glass of tea, his hand trembled so that he spilled it on the tablecloth. Eh, I thought, a slaughterer’s hand shouldn’t tremble. That won’t do.
“Yontche and I celebrated the Sabbath there, and after the Sabbath we went our way. We didn’t know it then, but that winter was our last together. We hadn’t had much luck in Lithuania, and Yontche acted more like a coachman than like a rabbi. Usually when I left a town I soon forgot everyone there, but I sat in the sleigh thinking about Freidke and Chlavna and I knew somehow that I’d be coming back to Zabrynka. But why? What did these strangers mean to me?
“We came to another town and there I really quarreled with Yontche, and told him that he was an outcast and that he should go to blazes. I felt so downhearted I went to a tavern. I sat down, took a shot of vodka, and someone came up to me—a little shipping agent—and said, ‘You don’t recognize me, but we met in Zabrynka. You are the beadle.’
“ ‘What’s happening in Zabrynka?’ I asked, and he said, ‘You haven’t heard the news? A dybbuk has entered the slaughterer’s daughter.’
“ ‘A dybbuk?’ I said. ‘In Freidke?’
“And he told me this story: That Sabbath night, soon after we had left town, the butchers brought to Bunem Leib a large black bull with spiral horns, a tough beast. Since Freidke’s fiancé, Chlavna, had learned the craft, with all its laws, and had already slaughtered several calves, Bunem Leib decided to let him slaughter it. When a bull is slaughtered, the butchers tie him with ropes, throw him to the ground, and hold him until he bleeds to death. But when Chlavna made the benediction and slashed the bull’s throat the animal tore loose, lunged to its feet, and began to run round with such fury that he nearly brought down the slaughterhouse. He went racing across the marketplace and cracked a lamppost and overturned a wagon. All this time, the blood gushed from him as if from a tap. After a long chase, the bu
tchers caught him and dragged him back to the slaughterhouse, already a carcass. Only then did they discover that Chlavna had vanished. Someone said that he was seen leaning over the well. Others saw him running toward the river. They searched with poles, but he wasn’t found. The rabbi examined the knife Chlavna used and he found the blade jagged. The bull was declared unkosher. The butchers fell into such a rage against Bunem Leib for turning the job over to Chlavna that they shattered his windowpanes.
“That night was to Bunem Leib and to his household one long turmoil. At dawn, when he and his wife had finally dozed off, they were roused by a strange wail—not human but animal. Freidke stood naked in the center of the room bellowing like an ox. She was shaking, jerking, and lowing, as if she were the very bull her fiancé had botched. Then a terrible human voice tore itself out from her mouth. All Zabrynka came running, and it became clear that a dybbuk had entered Freidke. The dybbuk cried that he had been a man in life—an evildoer, a drunk, a lecher. When he died, his soul hadn’t been allowed into Heaven but had been sentenced to be reincarnated as a bull. The Angel of Death told him that when this bull was slaughtered according to the ritual law and pious Jews ate his flesh after reciting the right benediction, he, the sinner, would be redeemed. Now that Chlavna had rendered the meat impure, the sinner’s forsaken soul had entered Freidke.
“I was so taken aback by what the shipping agent told me that I left Yontche bag and baggage, grabbed my bundle, and headed back to Zabrynka. A deep snow had fallen and a bitter frost had settled in. I couldn’t get a sleigh and I had to walk halfway there. The wind nearly blew me away. I was sure that my end had come and I began to say my confession.”
“You fell in love with that Freidke, eh?”
“In love? You talk nonsense.”
“What happened next?” Zeinvel asked.
“I came to Zabrynka in the middle of the night. The shutters were locked everywhere, but Bunem Leib’s house was lit up and there were people inside. They seemed to have stayed to listen to the dybbuk instead of going to sleep. No one took notice of me when I entered. I learned later that Freidke’s mother had become ill from grief and had been taken to some relative. I barely recognized Bunem Leib. He had become emaciated, yellow, and drained in the few days since I was there. Freidke stood there barefoot, half naked, with straggly red hair over her shoulders, her face as white as that of a corpse and her eyes bulging. She screamed with a voice I could never have believed could come out of a girl’s tender throat. This was not a human voice but that of an ox. I heard her bellow, ‘Slaughter me, Bunem Leib, slaughter me! I am the bull you caused to be tref and so doomed to eternal torment. You don’t see them, but hordes of demons, hobgoblins, and devils are lurking right here waiting to tear me to pieces and carry me away to the wastelands behind the Dark Mountains. Neither your mezuzah nor the talismans and amulets you hung in all the corners of the house can help me. Look, if you are not completely blind: monsters with noses to their navels, with snakes instead of hair, with snouts of boars, as black as pitch, as red as fire, as green as gall! They dance and howl like the mad. Is it my fault, Bunem Leib, that you have chosen for your son-in-law a schlemiel, a mollycoddle who cannot wield a knife? He could as much be a slaughterer as you could be a wet nurse. His hands were shaking like those of a man of ninety. He was such a weakling that when he saw a drop of blood on the white of an egg he was ready to faint. A slaughterer cannot be afraid of blood. A real man doesn’t run away from his bride-to-be when things go wrong. You picked a mama’s boy for your daughter, a pampered little brat, a eunuch. He was more afraid of me, the bull, than I was of his knife! Slaughter me, Bunem Leib, and save me from all these vicious spirits. If not, I will catch you on my horns and gore you and carry you away to swamps from which there can never be any rescue.’
“ ‘My daughter, what are you talking about? You are my child,’ Bunem Leib said to her. ‘Let this evil fiend only free you, and if Chlavna is not your destined one, I will find another spouse for you, God willing, and we will lead you to the wedding canopy. Merciful God, help me! I can’t take any more of this anguish.’
“Bunem Leib was crying. But Freidke answered, ‘I’m not your daughter but the bull you have given into the hands of a bungler. Take out your knife and slaughter me! Shed my blood! You, Bunem Leib, are a male, not a neuter. No ox, no cow, no sheep or rooster ever ran away from your knife. Kill me, Bunem Leib, kill me!’ ”
“You heard all this?” Zeinvel asked.
“May I hear the Messiah’s ram’s horn as clearly.”
“Go on.”
“It is impossible to tell it all. Toward dawn Bunem Leib became so tired and haggard that he had to go to sleep, but the town’s rowdies took over the show. For them it was fun. Imagine, an only daughter, a quiet little dove, stands in the middle of the night, her breasts uncovered, her red hair wild as a witch’s, and she confesses sins that make your head swim. I heard her say, ‘While alive, I did everything to spite God. I shaved my beard, I ate pork on Yom Kippur, I fornicated with Gentile wenches and Jewish whores. I denied God, and I thought I would live to be a hundred and indulge in all my abominations. But suddenly I got sick with pox and saw that I was done for. Still, to my last breath I blasphemed God and served the idols. When I finally expired, the Burial Society wouldn’t cleanse my body and they buried me without shrouds, at midnight, without anyone saying Kaddish. Even before the gravediggers had thrown the last spadeful of dirt over me, the Angel Dumah opened my grave, spat at me, pierced me with his fiery rod, and dragged me to the very gates of Gehenna. He tried to hurl me inside, but Satan slammed the door and shouted, “It is a disgrace to Gehenna to allow such scum to enter into it.” ’
“You can be the world’s biggest heretic, Zeinvel, but when you see and hear a thing like this, you must admit that there is a God.”
“No, you mustn’t.”
“Then what was all that?”
“Nerves.”
“How do nerves know what goes on in the netherworld?” Mottke asked.
“The nerves know everything.”
“What are they—prophets?”
“Even better than that,” Zeinvel said. “Good night.”
“Well, you are talking nonsense.”
Zeinvel had fallen asleep and was snoring, but Mottke lay awake. He talked to himself: “Gone to sleep, eh? A dunce, a boob … Thinks he knows it all, but to me he’s still a fool.”
“Mottke, shut up.”
“You’re not asleep?”
“I am asleep, but I hear every word anyway. I learned this trick in jail. There, if you fall asleep for real they’ll strip the shirt right off your back. What became of Freidke?”
“How should I know? I stayed there for three days, then I went my way. I haven’t told you everything yet. Neighbors swore to me that Freidke had never sung before. True, a well-brought-up girl doesn’t let her voice be heard, so as not to arouse us males; nevertheless, if a girl has a voice she’ll sing while rocking a child, or she will join in the Sabbath chants. All of a sudden Freidke started singing droll songs in Yiddish, Polish, even in Russian. She serenaded a bride and made wedding jests, all in rhyme. She mocked the women haggling in the butcher shops, and their splashing in the ritual bath. The hoodlums made snide remarks to her, and she answered each one on his own terms. She fast-talked them so, they were left speechless. All the neighbors said the same—this wasn’t Freidke but a wag, a rascal, with a tongue like a razor. His profanities left you rolling with laughter. Brother, I stood by and watched a female turn both into a bull and into a man. Nerves can’t do this.”
“What can do it?”
“Only God.”
“There is no God.”
“How did the world form?” Mottke asked.
“It grew from itself like a scab.”
II
Zeinvel dozed off again, but Mottke still lay awake. The sick in the poorhouse sighed and mumbled in their sleep. Wasn’t Zeinvel right, Mottke reflected. A merciful God would
n’t allow so much misery. People die like flies here. Each day the Burial Society comes with the ablution board to carry out a body.
For a while Mottke listened to a cricket chirping behind the stove. It jingled as if with little bells. It told a tale without a beginning or an end. How was it that it chirped the whole night, Mottke wondered. Don’t crickets need sleep, too? Or do they sleep during the day? And what do they find to eat among the rags? It was crazy to think that this cricket had a father, a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, and maybe children, too. I’m all befuddled, Mottke mused. I’m dead tired all day, but at night my brain works like a churn.
Sometimes during the day, when Mottke wanted to show off his erudition, he forgot everything, jumbled passages like some ignoramus. But in the middle of the night his brain opened up. He recalled whole chapters of the Scripture, sections of the Gemara, even the liturgies of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. People who had died so long ago that he no longer remembered their names materialized seemingly alive before him. He remembered names of villages in which he had stayed with Yontche. Chants of cantors and songs of Hasidim came back to his mind. Mottke had been raised in a religious home. His father had taken him along to the wonder rabbi at Turisk. As a boy, he had read Hasidic books, had even dreamed of becoming a rabbi. But his father had died of typhus, his mother had married some boor, and Mottke had slipped into the confidence game with Yontche.
Now Mottke began droning a song that he had heard in Turisk at the Sabbath meal:
I’ll sing with praise
To open the gates
Of the Heavenly orchards
For their sacred mates.
Zeinvel got to coughing and sat up. “Why are you singing in the middle of the night? Are you hungry?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ve got a burr in your saddle, eh?”
The Collected Stories Page 76