The Collected Stories

appeared to me. It had rained all October, and those shacks lay reflected in the swamp as if it were a lake. Ruthenian peasants, stooped Jews in gaberdines, women and girls wearing shawls over their heads and men’s boots waded in the mud. Clouds of mist swirled in the air. Crows soared overhead, cawing. The sky hung low, leaden, heavy with storms. The smoke from chimneys didn’t rise but drifted downward toward the soaked earth.
    The community had assigned Father a semi-ruin of a house. In the three years I was away, his beard, red when I left, had become streaked with strands of white. Mother had discarded her wig for a kerchief. She had lost her teeth and her sunken cheeks made her nose hooked, her chin receded. Only her eyes remained youthful and sharp.
    Father warned me, “This is a pious community. If you don’t conduct yourself as you should, they’ll drive us out of here with sticks.”
    “Father, I’m giving in. My only hope is that the army won’t take me.”
    “When do you have to report for conscription?”
    “In a year.”
    “We’ll arrange a match for you. God willing, your father-in-law will ransom you. Put aside your foolishness and study the Yoreh Deah.”
    I went to the study house but no one was studying there. The congregation, mostly artisans and dairymen, came to pray early in the morning and returned for the evening services; in between time, the place was deserted. I found an old volume on the Cabala there. I had brought along from Warsaw an algebra book and a Polish translation of Baudelaire’s poems.
    Abraham Getzel the matchmaker came to look me over—a little man with a white beard ranging nearly to his loins. He was also the village beadle, the cantor, and the Talmud teacher. He measured me up and down and sighed. “These are different times,” he complained. “Girls want a husband who’s a provider.”
    “I can’t blame them.”
    “The Torah has lost its value in our generation. But don’t you worry, I’ll find you a bride.”
    He proposed a widow who was six or seven years older than I and had two children. Her father, Berish Belzer, managed a brewery owned by an Austrian baron. (Before the war, Galicia had been ruled by Emperor Franz Josef.) When the weather cleared somewhat during the day, one could see the brewery chimney. Black smoke sat on it like a hat.
    Berish Belzer came to the study house to have a chat with me. He had a short beard the color of beer. He wore a fox coat and a derby. A watch on a silver chain dangled from his silk vest. After we had talked for a few minutes, he said, “I see you’re no businessman.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right.”
    “Then what are you?”
    And the match was off.
    All of a sudden the mail brought news from Warsaw. My brother had become co-editor of a literary weekly and I was offered the job of being its proofreader. He said that I could publish my stories there if they proved good enough. The moment I read the letter my health improved. From then on I didn’t cough once during the night. I regained my appetite. I ate so much that my mother grew alarmed. Enclosed with the letter was the first issue of the magazine. It discussed a new novel by Thomas Mann,
The Magic Mountain,
and it contained poems in free verse, illustrated with Cubistic drawings. It reviewed a book of poetry entitled
A Boot in the Lapel.
Its articles spoke of the collapse of the old world and the emergence of a new man and a new spirit that would reappraise all values. It printed a chapter of Oswald Spengler’s
The Decline of the West,
as well as translations of poems by Alexander Blok, Mayakovsky, and Esenin. New writers had appeared in America during the war years, and their work was beginning to be published in Poland. No, I could not while away my days in Old-Stikov! I waited only for the train fare to be sent me from Warsaw.
    Now that I was about to return to modern culture, I began to observe what was happening in Old-Stikov. I listened to the women who came to consult Father on ritual matters and to gossip with Mother. We had a neighbor, Lazar the shoemaker, and his wife brought us the good tidings that their only daughter, Rivkele, was marrying her father’s apprentice. Soon afterward Rivkele herself came to invite us to the engagement party. I looked at her with amazement. She reminded me of a Warsaw girl. She was tall, slim, with unusually white skin, black hair, dark-blue eyes, a long neck. Her upper lip drew back slightly to reveal