The Collected Stories

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