The Collected Stories

to Cuba—wherever you ought to go. I’m a citizen. We’ll marry and settle down. I’ll bring my daughter over. I didn’t want any children with him, but with you …”
    “Idle words.”
    “Why do you say that? We are both in trouble. I got myself into a mess and was feeling hopeless. But when I read what you wrote everything came back to me. I want to be a Jewish daughter again.”
    “Not through me.”
    “You are responsible for what has happened to me!”
    We grew silent, and the girl across the way who had stopped singing and seemed to be listening to her own perplexity, like the cricket in Old-Stikov, resumed her mournful song:

He won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Never, never, never, never.
Won’t come back …
    Translated by Joseph Singer

Passions

    “W HEN a man persists he can do things which one might think can never be done,” Zalman the glazier said. “In our village, Radoszyce, there was a simple man, a village peddler, Leib Belkes. He used to go from village to village, selling the peasant women kerchiefs, glass beads, perfume, all kinds of gilded jewelry. And he would buy from them a measure of buckwheat, a wreath of garlic, a pot of honey, a sack of flax. He never went farther than the hamlet of Byszcz, five miles from Radoszyce. He got the merchandise from a Lublin salesman, and the same man bought his wares from him. This Leib Belkes was a common man but pious. On the Sabbath he read his wife’s Yiddish Bible. He loved most to read about the land of Israel. Sometimes he would stop the cheder boys and ask, ‘Which is deeper—the Jordan or the Red Sea?’ ‘Do apples grow in the Holy Land?’ ‘What language is spoken by the natives there?’ The boys used to laugh at him. He looked like someone from the Holy Land himself—black eyes, a pitch-black beard, and his face was also swarthy.
    “Once a year a messenger used to come to Radoszyce, a Sephardic Jew. He was sent to collect the alms that were given in the name of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker, that he should intercede for them in the next world. The messenger wore a robe with black and red stripes and sandals that looked as though they were of ancient times. His hat was also outlandish. He smoked a water pipe. He spoke Hebrew and also Aramaic. His Yiddish he had learned in later years. Leib Belkes was so fascinated by him that he went with him from house to house to open the alms boxes. He also took him to his home, where he ate and slept. While the messenger stayed in Radoszyce, Leib Belkes did no work. He kept on asking questions like ‘What does the Cave of Machpelah look like?’ ‘Does one know where Abraham is buried and where Sarah?’ ‘Is it true that Mother Rachel rises from her grave at midnight and weeps for her exiled children?’ I was still a boy then, but I too followed the messenger wherever he went. When could one see such a man in our region?
    “Once, after the messenger left, Leib Belkes entered a store and asked for fifty packs of matches. The merchant asked him, ‘What do you need so many matches for? You want to burn the village?’ And Leib said, ‘I want to build the Holy Temple.’ The storekeeper thought that he had lost his mind. Just the same, he sold him all the matches he had.
    “Later, Leib went into a paint store and asked for silver and gold paint. The storekeeper asked him, ‘What do you need these paints for? Do you intend to make counterfeit money?’ And Leib answered, ‘I am going to build the Holy Temple.’ The messenger had sold Leib a map, a large sheet of paper showing the Temple with the altar and all the other objects of ritual. At night when Leib had time he sat down and began to build the Temple according to this plan. There were no children in the house. Leib Belkes and his wife had two daughters but they had gone into domestic service in Lublin. His wife asked him, ‘Why do you play with matches? Are you a cheder boy again?’ And he replied, ‘I am building the Temple of Jerusalem.’
    “He managed to build everything according to this plan: the Holy of Holies, the Inner Court, the Outer Court, the Table, the Menorah, the Ark. When the people of Radoszyce learned what he was doing, they came to look and admire. The teachers brought their pupils. The whole edifice stood on a table, and it couldn’t be moved, because it would have collapsed. When the rabbi had word of it, he too came to Leib Belkes, and he brought some yeshiva boys with him.