Satan in Goray

attempted to strengthen her with his words and to raise her spirits. Borrowing a fiddle, he played a Sabbath night melody for her in the middle of the week. He dispatched a messenger to buy her a necklace and bracelet, and invited the young wives to enter her room without asking permission and entertain her with merriment. He even sent Levi to Rechele to clarify the new ways of serving God and explicate the verse: "And I shall dwell with you in the midst of your uncleanliness." But Rechele greeted Levi with unrecognizing eyes, and was inattentive. Her soul seemed to be elsewhere.
    Rechele experienced mysterious and terrifying things. Though her room was heated twice a day, she suffered constantly from cold chills that seemed to her to emanate within. Often her heart palpitated like a living creature; something contracted, coiled, and twisted like an imbedded snake in the recesses of her being. Her arms and legs were feeble, and loose in their joints. Her head hung down weakly, and she could not raise it. With nightfall she collapsed on her bed, where she remained in a trance for several hours. Her skull seemed to be filled with sand, her mouth was agape. She always woke at the same moment, in a panic, as though deathbed watchers had brought her back to life with their screams. Her throat was narrow and swollen, almost strangled; her congealed blood slowly warmed and began to flow again through her veins. It would seem to Rechele that her body had actually died and gradually was reviving.
    But what had happened to Rechele the prophetess? Piety and the grace of God had left her. She had lost all inclination to study the holy books, and lacked interest in worldly affairs. She received visitors coldly, and confused their names. She had ceased to bathe every morning and no longer wore her finery. For a long time now someone inside her had been thinking twistedly, someone had been asking questions, and replying--as though a dialogue went on in her mind, complicated, tedious, with neither start nor conclu-sion. For days and nights on end the argument ex-tended. Lofty words were spoken, the Torah was ex-plained meticulously, as well as secular works; the disputants were obdurate. Often Rechele tried to comprehend the grounds of the dispute and later to recall them; but they were elusive, like words in a dream. Sometimes it seemed to Rechele that these things were only occurring within her; at other moments she saw visions that appeared and disappeared in an instant, leaving her uncertain as to what had actually happened. Once Rechele distinguished one of the disputants crying: "God has died! The Husk shall reign for ever and ever!"
    It was a tall man who said this, ash-gray, terrifying, cobwebby. Long strands of hair hung from his head; an evil, mocking smile swept across his pitted, dis-colored countenance. Soon after he had spoken, an-other voice chanted the verse from the Passover Haggadah: "I am the Lord! I am He, and no other!"
    The sacred and the profane were engaged in a dis-putation. The sacred had a face, but no body. The Face was flushed, as after the bath, had a white beard and long, blown earlocks. A velvet skull cap sat on its high forehead. The Face swayed in prayer; it spoke with zeal, like Rabbi Benish in the old days, chanting the holy writ; it raised questions of Torah and resolved them; it told pious tales to strengthen the faith and vanquish disbelief. With sacred pride, the Face recited the blessing before meals, and prayers that come at the beginning and the end of the Sabbath, as well as whole sections from the liturgy and the Zohar. Sometimes shutting her eyes, Rechele could see the Face surging up from the darkness. Tiny old-man's wrinkles quivered in the corners of its eyes. Delicate blue veins shone in its red cheeks, its eyes smiled with grandfatherly grace.
    The Profane was situated in some distant place, in darkness, deep down, like a cellar. Sometimes he spoke very low, voicelessly. Hidden and veiled, he lay inside some web or cocoon. Often, he changed shape - at times he looked human, at other times like a bat or a spider. At moments all that Rechele could see was an open mouth, askew like a frog's. The Profane was audacious, making lewd remarks. Then his voice boomed from the pit, or the cave, where he lay concealed. Taunting and blaspheming, he bandied about the names of holy men and angels. A stream of vulgarities escaped his lips. He jested and mocked profusely, bringing Rechele to the