The Collected Stories

mystical. While it tolerates commentary by others, it should never try to explain itself. These obvious truths must be emphasized, because false criticism and pseudo-originality have created a state of literary amnesia in our generation. The zeal for messages has made many writers forget that storytelling is the raison d’être of artistic prose.
    For readers who would like me to say something “more personal,” I quote here a few passages (though not in the order in which they were written) from a recent memoir of mine: “My isolation from everything remained the same. I had surrendered myself to melancholy and it had taken me prisoner. I had presented Creation with an ultimatum: ‘Tell me your secret, or let me perish.’ I had to run away from myself. But how? And where? I dreamed of a humanism and ethics the basis of which would be a refusal to justify all the evils the Almighty has sent us and is preparing to bestow upon us in the future. At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while.”
    I am still working hard to make this “while” worthwhile.
    I have had the good fortune to work with three highly talented and true editors, Robert Giroux, Cecil Hemley, and Rachel MacKenzie. I dedicate this collection to Rachel MacKenzie’s sacred memory. She was blessed with wisdom, charm, and humility, and embued with a perfect understanding of literature—a great editor and, more than that, a great person.
    I.B.S.
    July 6, 1981

Gimpel the Fool

    I

    I AM Gimpel the fool. I don’t think myself a fool. On the contrary. But that’s what folks call me. They gave me the name while I was still in school. I had seven names in all: imbecile, donkey, flax-head, dope, glump, ninny, and fool. The last name stuck. What did my foolishness consist of? I was easy to take in. They said, “Gimpel, you know the rabbi’s wife has been brought to childbed?” So I skipped school. Well, it turned out to be a lie. How was I supposed to know? She hadn’t had a big belly. But I never looked at her belly. Was that really so foolish? The gang laughed and hee-hawed, stomped and danced and chanted a good-night prayer. And instead of the raisins they give when a woman’s lying in, they stuffed my hand full of goat turds. I was no weakling. If I slapped someone he’d see all the way to Cracow. But I’m really not a slugger by nature. I think to myself: Let it pass. So they take advantage of me.
    I was coming home from school and heard a dog barking. I’m not afraid of dogs, but of course I never want to start up with them. One of them may be mad, and if he bites there’s not a Tartar in the world who can help you. So I made tracks. Then I looked around and saw the whole market place wild with laughter. It was no dog at all but Wolf-Leib the thief. How was I supposed to know it was he? It sounded like a howling bitch.
    When the pranksters and leg-pullers found that I was easy to fool, every one of them tried his luck with me. “Gimpel, the czar is coming to Frampol; Gimpel, the moon fell down in Turbeen; Gimpel, little Hodel Furpiece found a treasure behind the bathhouse.” And I like a golem believed everyone. In the first place, everything is possible, as it is written in
The Wisdom of the Fathers
, I’ve forgotten just how. Second, I had to believe when the whole town came down on me! If I ever dared to say, “Ah, you’re kidding!” there was trouble. People got angry. “What do you mean! You want to call everyone a liar?” What was I to do? I believed them, and I hope at least that did them some good.
    I was an orphan. My grandfather who brought me up was already bent toward the grave. So they turned me over to a baker, and what a time they gave me there! Every woman or girl who came to bake a batch of noodles had to fool me at least once. “Gimpel, there’s a fair in Heaven; Gimpel, the rabbi gave birth to a calf in the seventh month; Gimpel, a cow flew over the roof and laid brass eggs.” A student from the yeshiva came once to buy a roll, and he said, “You, Gimpel, while you stand here scraping with your baker’s shovel the Messiah has come. The dead have arisen.” “What do you mean?” I said. “I heard no one blowing the ram’s horn!” He said, “Are you deaf?” And all began to cry, “We heard it, we heard!” Then in came Rietze the candle-dipper and called out in her hoarse voice, “Gimpel, your father and mother have stood up from the grave.