The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  “In novels the young man always marries the girl he saves,” I said.

  She tensed but did not answer. She suddenly appeared tired, haggard, wrinkled, as if old age had caught up with her at that very moment. I did not expect her to utter another word about it, when she said, “Together with his manuscript, I burned my power to love.”

  The Power of Darkness

  THE doctors all agreed that Henia Dvosha suffered from nerves, not heart disease, but her mother, Tzeitel, the wife of Selig the tailor, confided to my mother that Henia Dvosha was making herself die because she wanted her husband, Issur Godel, to marry her sister Dunia.

  When my mother heard this strange story she exclaimed, “What’s going on at your house? Why should a young woman, the mother of two little children, want to die? And why would she want her husband to marry her sister, of all people? One mustn’t even think such thoughts!”

  As usual when she became excited, my mother’s blond wig grew disheveled as if a strong wind had suddenly blown up.

  I, a boy of ten, heard what Tzeitel said with astonishment, yet somehow I felt that she spoke the truth, wild as it sounded. I pretended to read a storybook but I cocked my ears to listen to the conversation.

  Tzeitel, a dark, wide woman in a wide wig, a wide dress with many folds, and men’s shoes, went on, “My dear friend, I’m not talking just to hear myself talk. This is a kind of madness with her. Woe is me, what I’ve come to in my old age. I ask but one favor of God—that He take me before He takes her.”

  “But what sense does it make?”

  “No sense whatever. She started talking about it two years ago. She convinced herself that her sister was in love with Issur Godel, or he with her. As the saying goes—‘A delusion is worse than a sickness.’ Rebbetzin, I have to tell someone: Sick as she is, she’s sewing a wedding dress for Dunia.”

  Mother suddenly noticed me listening and cried, “Get out of the kitchen and go in the other room. The kitchen is for women, not for men!”

  I started to go down to the courtyard, and as I was passing the open door to Selig the tailor’s shop I glanced inside. Selig was our next-door neighbor at No. 10 Krochmalna Street, and his shop was in the same apartment where he lived with his family. Selig sat at a sewing machine stitching the lining of a gaberdine. As wide as his wife was, so narrow was he. He had narrow shoulders, a narrow nose, and a narrow gray beard. His hands were narrow too, and with long fingers. His glasses, with brass rims and half lenses, were pushed up onto his narrow forehead. Across from him, before another sewing machine, sat Issur Godel, Henia Dvosha’s husband. He had a tiny yellow beard ending in two points.

  Selig was a men’s tailor. Issur Godel made clothes for women. At that moment, he was ripping a seam. It was said that he had golden hands, and that if he had his own shop in the fancy streets he would make a fortune, but his wife didn’t want to move out of her parents’ apartment. When she got pains in the chest and couldn’t breathe, her mother was there to take care of her. It was her mother—and occasionally her sister Dunia—who eased her with drops of valerian and rubbed her temples with vinegar when she grew faint. Dunia worked in a dress shop on Mead Street, wore fashionable clothes, and avoided the pious girls of the neighborhood. Tzeitel also watched over Henia Dvosha’s two small children—Elkele and Yankele. I often went into Selig the tailor’s shop. I liked to watch the machines stitch, and I collected the empty spools from the floor. Selig didn’t speak like the people in Warsaw—he came from somewhere in Russia. He often discussed the Pentateuch and the Talmud with me, and he would speculate about what the saints did in Paradise and how sinners were roasted in Gehenna. Selig had been touched by Enlightenment and often sounded like a heretic. He would say to me, “Were your mother and father up in Heaven, and did they see all those things with their own eyes? Maybe there is no God? Or, if there is, maybe He’s a Gentile, not a Jew?”

  “God a Gentile? One mustn’t say such things.”

  “How do you know one mustn’t? Because it says so in the holy books? People wrote those books and people like to make up all kinds of nonsense.”

  “Who created the world?” I asked.

  “Who created God?”

  My father was a rabbi and I knew wouldn’t want me to listen to such talk. I would cover my ears with my fingers when Selig began to blaspheme, and resolve to never enter his place again, but something drew me to this room where one wall was hung with gaberdines, vests, and trousers and the other with dresses and blouses. There was also a dressmaker’s dummy with no head and wooden breasts and hips. This time I felt a strong urge to peek into the alcove where Henia Dvosha lay in bed.

  Selig promptly struck up a conversation with me. “You don’t go to cheder any more?”

  “I’ve finished cheder. I’m studying the Gemara already.”

  “All by yourself? And you understand what you read?”

  “If I don’t, I look it up in Rashi’s Commentary.”

  “And Rashi himself understood?”

  I laughed. “Rashi knew the whole Torah.”

  “How do you know? Did you know him personally?”

  “Know him? Rashi lived hundreds of years ago.”

  “So how can you know what went on hundreds of years ago?”

  “Everyone knows that Rashi was a great saint and a scholar.”

  “Who is this ‘everybody’? The janitor in the courtyard doesn’t know it.”

  Issur Godel said, “Father-in-law, leave him alone.”

  “I asked him a question and I want an answer,” Selig said.

  Just then a small woman round as a barrel came in to be fitted for a dress. Issur Godel took her into the alcove. I saw Henia Dvosha sitting up in bed sewing a white satin dress that fell to the floor on both sides of the bed. Tzeitel hadn’t lied. This was the wedding dress for Dunia.

  I raced out of the shop and down the stairs. I had to think the whole matter out. Why would Henia Dvosha sew a dress for her sister to wear when she married Issur Godel after she, Henia Dvosha, died? Was this out of great love for her sister or love for her husband? I thought of the story of how Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and how her father, Laban, cheated Jacob by substituting Leah in the dark. According to Rashi, Rachel gave Leah signs so that she, Leah, wouldn’t be shamed. But what kind of signs were they? I was filled with curiosity about men and women and their remarkable secrets. I was in a rush to grow up. I had begun watching girls. They mostly had the same high bosom as Selig’s dummy, smaller hands and feet than men’s, and hair done up in braids. Some had long, narrow necks. I knew that if I should go home and ask Mother what signs girls had and what Rachel could have given to Leah, she would only yell at me. I had to observe everything for myself and keep silent.

  I stared at the passing girls, and thought I saw something like mockery in their eyes. Their glances seemed to say, “A little boy and he wants to know everything …”

  Although the doctors assured Tzeitel that her daughter would live a long time and prescribed medicines for her nerves, Henia Dvosha grew worse from day to day. We could hear her moans in our apartment. Freitag the barber-surgeon gave her injections. Dr. Knaister ordered her taken to the hospital on Czysta Street, but Henia Dvosha protested that the sick were poisoned there and dissected after they died.

  Dr. Knaister arranged a consultation of three—himself and two specialists. Two carriages pulled up before the gates of our building, each driven by a coachman in a top hat and a cloak with silver buttons. The horses had short manes and arched necks. While they waited they kept starting forward impatiently, and the coachmen had to yank on the reins to make them stand still. The consultation lasted a long time. The specialists couldn’t agree, and they bickered in Polish. After they had received their twenty-five rubles, they climbed into their carriages and drove back to the rich neighborhoods where they lived and practiced.

  A few days later Selig the tailor came to us in his shirtsleeves, a needle in his lapel and a thimble over the index finge
r of his left hand, and said to my father, “Rabbi, my daughter wants you to recite the confession with her.”

  My father gripped his red beard and said, “What’s the hurry? With the Almighty’s help, she’ll live a hundred and twenty years yet.”

  “Not even a hundred and twenty hours,” Selig replied.

  Mother looked at Selig with reproof. Although he was a Jew, he spoke like a Gentile; those who came from Russia lacked the sensitivity of the Polish Jew. She began to wipe away her tears. Father rummaged in his cabinet and took out The Ford of the Jabbok, a book that dealt with death and mourning. He turned the pages and shook his head. Then he got up and went with Selig. This was the first time Father had been to Selig’s apartment. He never visited anyone except when called to officiate in a religious service.

  He stayed there a long time, and when he came back he said, “Oh, what kind of people are these? May the Almighty guard and protect us!”

  “Did you recite the confession with her?” Mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She asked if you could marry right after shivah, the seven days of mourning, or if you had to wait until after sheloshim, the full thirty.”

  Mother made a face as if to spit. “She’s not in her right mind.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll see, she’ll live years yet,” Mother said.

  But this prediction didn’t come true. A few days later a lament was heard in the corridor. Henia Dvosha had just passed away. The front room soon filled with women. Tzeitel had already managed to cover the sewing machines and drape the mirror with a black cloth. The windows had been opened, according to Law. Issur Godel appeared among the throng of women. He was dressed in a vented gaberdine cut to the knee, a paper dickey, a stiff collar, a black tie, and a small cap. He soon was on his way to the community office to arrange for the funeral. Then Dunia walked into the courtyard wearing a straw hat decorated with flowers and a red dress and carrying a bag in ladylike fashion. Dunia and Issur Godel met on the stairs. For a moment they stood there without speaking, then they mumbled something and parted—he going down and she up. Dunia wasn’t crying. Her face was pale, and her eyes expressed something like rage.

  During the period of mourning, men came twice a day to pray at Selig the tailor’s. Selig and Tzeitel sat on little benches in their stocking feet. Selig glanced into the Book of Job printed in Hebrew and Yiddish that he had borrowed from my father. His lapel was torn as a sign of mourning. He chatted with the men about ordinary matters. The cost of everything was rising. Thread, lisle, and lining material were all higher. “Do people work nowadays?” Selig complained. “They play. In my time an apprentice came to work with the break of day. In the winter you started working while it was still dark. Every worker had to furnish a tallow candle at his own expense. Today the machine does everything and the worker knows only one thing—a new raise every other month. How can you have a world of such loafers?”

  “Everyone runs to America!” Shmul the carpenter said.

  “In America there’s a panic. People are dying of hunger.”

  I went to pray each day at Selig the tailor’s, but I never saw Issur Godel or Dunia there. Was Dunia hiding in the alcove or had she gone to work instead of observing shivah? As soon as this period of mourning was over, Issur Godel trimmed his beard, and exchanged his traditional cap for a fedora and the gaberdine for a short jacket. Dunia informed her mother that she wouldn’t wear a wig after she was married.

  The night before the wedding, I awoke just as the clock on the wall struck three. The window of our bedroom was covered with a blanket, but the moonlight shone in from each side. My parents were speaking softly, and their voices issued from one bed. God in Heaven, my father was lying in bed with my mother!

  I held my breath and heard Mother say, “It’s all their fault. They carried on in front of her. They kissed, and who knows what else. Tzeitel told me this herself. Such wickedness can cause a heart to burst.”

  “She should have got a divorce,” Father said.

  “When you love, you can’t divorce.”

  “She spoke of her sister with such devotion,” Father said.

  “There are those that kiss the Angel of Death’s sword,” Mother replied.

  I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. The whole world was apparently one big fraud. If my father, a rabbi who preached the Torah and piety all day, could get into bed with a female, what could you expect from an Issur Godel or a Dunia?

  When I awoke the next day, Father was reciting the morning prayers. For the thousandth time he repeated the story of how the Almighty had ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar and the angel shouted down from Heaven, “Lay not thy hand upon the lad.” My father wore a mask—a saint by day, a debaucher at night. I vowed to stop praying and to become a heretic.

  Tzeitel mentioned to my mother that the wedding would be a quiet one. After all, the groom was a widower with two children, the family was in mourning—why make a fuss? But for some reason all the tenants of the courtyard conspired to make the wedding noisy. Presents came pouring in to the couple from all over. Someone had hired a band. I saw a barrel of beer with brass hoops being carried up the stairs, and baskets of wine. Since we were Selig’s next-door neighbors, and my father would officiate at the ceremony besides, we were considered part of the family. Mother put on her holiday dress and had her wig freshly set at a hairdresser’s. Tzeitel treated me to a slice of honey cake and a glass of wine. There was such a crush at Selig’s apartment that there was no room for the wedding canopy, and it had to be set up in my father’s study. Dunia wore the white satin wedding gown her sister had sewn for her. The other brides who had been married in our building smiled, responded to the wishes offered them in a gracious way, laughed and cried. Dunia barely said a word to anyone, and held her head high with worldly arrogance.

  It was whispered about that Tzeitel had had to plead with her to get her to immerse herself in the ritual bath. Dunia had invited her own guests—girls with low-cut dresses and clean-shaven youths with thick mops of hair and broad-brimmed fedoras. Instead of shirts they wore black blouses bound with sashes. They smoked cigarettes, winked, and spoke Russian to each other. The people in our courtyard said that they were all socialists, the same as those who rebelled against the czar in 1905 and demanded a constitution. Dunia was one of them.

  My mother refused to taste anything at the affair: some of the guests had brought along all kinds of food and drinks, and one could no longer be sure if everything was strictly kosher. The musicians played theater melodies, and men danced with women. Around eleven o’clock my eyes closed from weariness and Mother told me to go to bed. In the night I awoke and heard the stamping, the singing, the pagan music—polkas, mazurkas, tunes that aroused urges in me that I felt were evil even though I didn’t understand what they were.

  Later I woke again and heard my father quoting Ecclesiastes: “I said of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it?”

  “They’re dancing on graves,” Mother whispered.

  Soon after the wedding, scandals erupted at Selig’s house. The newlyweds didn’t want to stay in the alcove, and Issur Godel rented a ground-floor apartment on Ciepla Street. Tzeitel came weeping to my mother because her daughter had trimmed Yankele’s earlocks and had removed him from cheder and enrolled him in a secular school. Nor did she maintain a kosher kitchen but bought meat at a Gentile butcher’s. Issur Godel no longer called himself Issur Godel but Albert. Elkele and Yankele had been given Gentile names too—Edka and Janek.

  I heard Tzeitel mention the number of the house where the newlyweds were living, and I went to see what was going on there. To the right of the gate hung a sign in Polish: ALBERT LANDAU, WOMEN’S TAILOR. Through the open window I could see Issur Godel. I hardly recognized him. He had dispensed with his beard altogether and now wore a turned-up mustache; he was bareheaded and looked young and Christian. While I was standing th
ere, the children came home from school—Yankele in shorts and a cap with an insignia and with a knapsack on his shoulders, Elkele in a short dress and knee-high socks. I called to them, “Yankele … Elkele …” but they walked past and didn’t even look at me.

  Tzeitel came each day to cry anew to my mother: Henia Dvosha had come to her in a dream and shrieked that she couldn’t rest in her grave. Her Yankele didn’t say Kaddish for her, and she wasn’t being admitted into Paradise.

  Tzeitel hired a beadle to say Kaddish and study the Mishnah in her daughter’s memory, but, even so, Henia Dvosha came to her mother and lamented that her shrouds had fallen off and she lay there naked; water had gathered in her grave; a wanton female had been buried beside her, a madam of a brothel, who cavorted with demons.

  Father called three men to ameliorate the dream, and they stood in front of Tzeitel and intoned, “Thou hast seen a goodly vision! A goodly vision hast thou seen! Goodly is the vision thou hast seen!”

  Afterward, Father told Tzeitel that one dared not mourn the dead too long, or place too much importance in dreams. As the Gemara said, just as there could be no grain without straw, there couldn’t be dreams without idle words. But Tzeitel could not contain herself. She ran to the community leaders and to the Burial Society demanding that the body be exhumed and buried elsewhere. She stopped taking care of her house, and went each day to Henia Dvosha’s grave at the cemetery.

  Selig’s beard grew entirely white, and his face developed a network of wrinkles. His hands shook, and the people in the courtyard complained that he kept a gaberdine or a pair of trousers for weeks, and when he finally did bring them back they were either too short or too narrow or the material was ruined from pressing. Knowing that Tzeitel no longer cooked for her husband and that he lived on dry food only, Mother frequently sent things over to him. He had lost all his teeth, and when I appeared with a plate of groats, or some chicken soup or stuffed noodles, he smiled at me with his bare gums and said, “So you’re bringing presents, are you? What for? It’s not Purim.”