The Collected Stories

yawned. “I’m sorry for the old folks.”
    “You want to leave me a deserted wife the very first night?”
    “Come along if you can.”
    “Where to? Behind the Mountains of Darkness?”
    “Wherever our eyes take us.”
    “You mean sockets, comedian!”
    “Swear, Reb Sheftel, that you will keep all your promises,” Getsl the fiddler repeated. “Make a holy vow. If you break your word, I’ll be back with the whole Evil Host and scatter your bones to the four winds.”
    “Don’t swear, Reb Sheftel, don’t swear!” the Hasidim cried. “Such a vow is a desecration of the Name!”
    “Swear, my husband, swear. If you don’t, we shall all perish.”
    Reb Sheftel put his hand on his beard. “Dead souls, I swear that I will faithfully fulfill all that I take upon myself. I will study the Mishnah for you. I will say Kaddish for twelve months. Tell me when you died, and I will burn memorial candles for you. If there are no headstones on your graves, I will journey to the cemeteries and have them erected.”
    “Our graves have been leveled long since. Come, Beyle Tslove, let’s go. Dawn is rising over Pinchev.”
    “Imp, you made a fool of a Jewish daughter all for nothing!” Beyle Tslove reproached him.
    “Hey, men, move aside!” Getsl cried. “Or I shall enter one of you!”
    There was such a crush that, though the door stood open, no one could get out. Hats and skullcaps fell off. Caftans caught on nails and ripped. A muffled cry rose from the crowd. Several Hasidim fell, and others trampled them. Liebe Yentl’s mouth opened wide and there was a shot as from a pistol. Her eyes rolled and she fell back on the pillow, white as death. A stench swept across the room—a foul breath of the grave. Zise Feige stumbled on weak legs toward her daughter and untied her. The girl’s belly was now flat and shrunken like the belly of a woman after childbirth.
    Reb Sheftel attested afterward that two balls of fire came out of Liebe Yentl’s nostrils and flew to the window. A pane split open, and the two sinful souls returned through the crack to the World of Delusion.
    VII

    For weeks after the dybbuks had left her, Liebe Yentl lay sick. The doctor applied cups and leeches; he bled her, but Liebe Yentl never opened her eyes. The woman from the Society of Tenders of the Sick who sat with the girl at night related that she heard sad melodies outside the window, and Getsl’s voice begging her to remove the amulets from the girl’s neck and let him in. The woman also heard Beyle Tslove’s giggling.
    Gradually Liebe Yentl began to recover, but she had almost stopped speaking. She sat in bed and stared at the window. Winter was over. Swallows returned from the warm countries and were building a nest under the eaves. From her bed Liebe Yentl could see the roof of the synagogue, where a pair of storks were repairing last year’s nest.
    Reb Sheftel and Zise Feige feared that Liebe Yentl would no longer be accepted in marriage, but Shmelke Motl wrote from Zawiercia that he would keep to his agreement if the dowry were raised by one third. Reb Sheftel and Zise Feige consented at once. After Pentecost, Shmelke Motl made his appearance at the Shidlovtse prayer house—no taller than a cheder boy but with a large head on a thin neck and tightly twisted sidelocks that stood up like a pair of horns. He had thick eyebrows and dark eyes that looked down at the tip of his nose. As soon as he entered the study house, he took out a Gemara and sat down to study. He sat there, swaying and mumbling, until he was taken to the ceremony of betrothal.
    Reb Sheftel invited only a selected few to the engagement meal, for during the time that his daughter had been possessed by the dybbuks he had made many enemies both among the Radzymin Hasidim and among those of Worka. According to custom, the men sat at one table, the women at another. The bridegroom delivered an impromptu sermon on the subject of the Stoned Ox. Such sermons usually last half an hour, but two hours went by and the groom still talked on in his high, grating voice, accompanying his words with wild gestures. He grimaced as though gripped with pain, pulled at a sidelock, scratched his chin, which was just beginning to sprout a beard, grasped the lobe of his ear. From time to time his lips stretched in a smile, revealing blackened teeth, pointed as nails.
    Liebe Yentl never once took her eyes from him. The women tried to talk to her; they urged her to taste the cookies, the