The Collected Stories

reading storybooks I knew that there existed sinful females who copulated with demons and gave birth to sprites and succubi. Perhaps Leah was having an affair with the demon who dwelt in her chimney. I was close to bar mitzvah age and kept thinking more and more about what I had studied in the Gemara concerning relations between men and women. Novels, too, began to interest me. It was at about this time that my mother asked Feigel to make me several pairs of drawers and shirts.
    I brought the linen to Feigel, and as I approached the house I noticed a thick black smoke issuing from the chimney. I pondered about the devil who lurked in his sooty lair. When I passed the bakery I saw Leah standing in a shabby skirt and huge boots. As she sprinkled water on the freshly baked loaves, the steam rose into the air.
    The threshold of the gate was high and I tripped over it. It was a hot day and the door of Leizer’s room was ajar. His white beard had turned brown in spots from the snuff tobacco he used. The thought that a female rummaged around with his genitals invoked in me feelings of curiosity and disgust. He had a workshop equipped with hammers, saws, pliers, screwdrivers, and knives. Boards and metal rods were stacked in the corner. I remembered my mother saying that when he was young he tried to invent a cradle that would be self-rocking with the force of weights and springs. This was the reason that his business went to pieces.
    After a while I entered Feigel’s room. It was the brightest in the house. Father and daughters did not live as a family. They were rather like neighbors. Some of the rooms were ruined and remained locked. Feigel had a mannequin in her room—a female without a head but with hips and breasts. Pieces of thread caught in Feigel’s hair gave her a special charm in my eyes. It was hard to believe that she was nearing thirty, as her appearance was that of a young girl. She deftly stepped on the treadle of her sewing machine with her small foot and quickly moved her index finger out of the way of the needle.
    “You are here, huh?” She smiled at me invitingly.
    “Yes, my mother sent me.”
    “You love your mother?”
    I stood there embarrassed. “Yes, why not?”
    “Is a Hasid allowed to love a female?” she asked.
    “A mother is not a female.”
    “What else?”
    Feigel rose to take my measurements, being most careful as my mother had pointed out to her that my neck had gotten thicker. Her knuckles touched my chin and I felt that her fingers were warm and soft. Suddenly she bent her head, and her hair brushed my cheek as she kissed me on the lips. I was so perplexed that I could not utter a word. “Don’t mention this to anyone,” she admonished me.
    How peculiar: days in advance I knew that I was about to commit some transgression. My brain teemed with sinful thoughts. Several nights earlier I had dreamed about my cousin Taube, naked, her body enveloped in a net. The following day I fasted until noon.
    In Shebrin word got around that Feigel was about to be engaged again. The new suitor, a droshky driver from Warsaw, had a relative in Shebrin, Chaim Kalch, and it was through him that the match was arranged. Everything went quickly. One day we heard about it and two days later we were invited to the engagement party. The affair was a quiet one, the guests were few. Leibush, the bridegroom-to-be, seemed like a man in his late thirties or perhaps early forties, big, with a reddish-blue complexion, a large nose, thick lips, and a deeply creviced and pimpled neck. I imagined that he smelled of horse manure and axle grease. Under flaxen eyebrows, his watery blue eyes had a look that suggested anger and mockery, as if the whole event were nothing but a sham. Rachel served chopped herring, freshly baked kaiser rolls, and vodka. Leah put in an appearance just for a minute, not even bothering to change her clothes. Leibush had the coarse voice of one who customarily shouts. I heard him say, “I’m tired of the Warsaw cobblestones.” He drank three-quarters of the vodka and ate almost all the rolls while discussing business. He had had enough of the Warsaw tumult and stench, and he intended to buy a horse and wagon in Shebrin to carry freight to Lublin. People in Warsaw didn’t know how to cross the streets, and when an accident occurred, the driver got the blame. From his words I understood that he most probably ran over someone, with a resulting lawsuit, or perhaps he went to jail. Feigel,