The Collected Stories

empty spools from the floor. Selig didn’t speak like the people in Warsaw—he came from somewhere in Russia. He often discussed the Pentateuch and the Talmud with me, and he would speculate about what the saints did in Paradise and how sinners were roasted in Gehenna. Selig had been touched by Enlightenment and often sounded like a heretic. He would say to me, “Were your mother and father up in Heaven, and did they see all those things with their own eyes? Maybe there is no God? Or, if there is, maybe He’s a Gentile, not a Jew?”
    “God a Gentile? One mustn’t say such things.”
    “How do you know one mustn’t? Because it says so in the holy books?
People
wrote those books and people like to make up all kinds of nonsense.”
    “Who created the world?” I asked.
    “Who created God?”
    My father was a rabbi and I knew wouldn’t want me to listen to such talk. I would cover my ears with my fingers when Selig began to blaspheme, and resolve to never enter his place again, but something drew me to this room where one wall was hung with gaberdines, vests, and trousers and the other with dresses and blouses. There was also a dressmaker’s dummy with no head and wooden breasts and hips. This time I felt a strong urge to peek into the alcove where Henia Dvosha lay in bed.
    Selig promptly struck up a conversation with me. “You don’t go to cheder any more?”
    “I’ve finished cheder. I’m studying the Gemara already.”
    “All by yourself? And you understand what you read?”
    “If I don’t, I look it up in Rashi’s Commentary.”
    “And Rashi himself understood?”
    I laughed. “Rashi knew the whole Torah.”
    “How do you know? Did you know him personally?”
    “Know him? Rashi lived hundreds of years ago.”
    “So how can you know what went on hundreds of years ago?”
    “Everyone knows that Rashi was a great saint and a scholar.”
    “Who is this ‘everybody’? The janitor in the courtyard doesn’t know it.”
    Issur Godel said, “Father-in-law, leave him alone.”
    “I asked him a question and I want an answer,” Selig said.
    Just then a small woman round as a barrel came in to be fitted for a dress. Issur Godel took her into the alcove. I saw Henia Dvosha sitting up in bed sewing a white satin dress that fell to the floor on both sides of the bed. Tzeitel hadn’t lied. This was the wedding dress for Dunia.
    I raced out of the shop and down the stairs. I had to think the whole matter out. Why would Henia Dvosha sew a dress for her sister to wear when she married Issur Godel after she, Henia Dvosha, died? Was this out of great love for her sister or love for her husband? I thought of the story of how Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and how her father, Laban, cheated Jacob by substituting Leah in the dark. According to Rashi, Rachel gave Leah signs so that she, Leah, wouldn’t be shamed. But what kind of signs were they? I was filled with curiosity about men and women and their remarkable secrets. I was in a rush to grow up. I had begun watching girls. They mostly had the same high bosom as Selig’s dummy, smaller hands and feet than men’s, and hair done up in braids. Some had long, narrow necks. I knew that if I should go home and ask Mother what signs girls had and what Rachel could have given to Leah, she would only yell at me. I had to observe everything for myself and keep silent.
    I stared at the passing girls, and thought I saw something like mockery in their eyes. Their glances seemed to say, “A little boy and he wants to know everything …”
    Although the doctors assured Tzeitel that her daughter would live a long time and prescribed medicines for her nerves, Henia Dvosha grew worse from day to day. We could hear her moans in our apartment. Freitag the barber-surgeon gave her injections. Dr. Knaister ordered her taken to the hospital on Czysta Street, but Henia Dvosha protested that the sick were poisoned there and dissected after they died.
    Dr. Knaister arranged a consultation of three—himself and two specialists. Two carriages pulled up before the gates of our building, each driven by a coachman in a top hat and a cloak with silver buttons. The horses had short manes and arched necks. While they waited they kept starting forward impatiently, and the coachmen had to yank on the reins to make them stand still. The consultation lasted a long time. The specialists couldn’t agree, and they bickered in Polish. After they had received their twenty-five rubles,