The Collected Stories

Lithuania oaks burst in the forests. One thing is good there—wood is cheap. The villages are tiny, but almost all the men are learned. You meet a carpenter or a blacksmith—by day he planes a board or pounds his hammer on the anvil, but after the evening services he reads a chapter of the Mishnah to a group in the study house. They don’t set much store by Hasidic rabbis. You can travel half of Lithuania without seeing a Hasid. The men avoided us, but the women used to come to us on the sly, and brought whatever they could—a chicken, a dozen eggs, a measure of buckwheat, even a garland of garlic. There’s no lack of sickness anywhere, and we gave them all kinds of remedies—cow’s eggs with duck milk, as well as various amulets and talismans we both invented. When we were in Lithuania, a thing happened that turned a village topsy-turvy.”
    “What happened?” Zeinvel asked.
    “Something with a dybbuk.”
    “A dybbuk in Lithuania?”
    “Yes, in Lithuania. I had been told that the Litvaks didn’t believe in dybbuks. The Vilna Gaon didn’t believe in such things, and from the Vilna Gaon to God is but one step. But what the eyes see can’t be denied. The name of the village was Zabrynka. When Yontche and I got there, the ritual slaughterer invited us for the Sabbath repast. In Lithuania a Sabbath guest doesn’t sleep in the poorhouse. A bed is made up for him at his host’s house. The slaughterer’s name was Bunem Leib, and his wife’s Hiene—a name not heard in our parts. They had only one daughter, Freidke, a short girl with red hair and freckles. She was already engaged to a youth who was studying slaughtering under her father. His name was Chlavna. In Lithuania they have the queerest names. He was a handsome young man—tall, dark, well dressed. In Lithuania no one wears a satin robe on the Sabbath, unless maybe a rabbi. Nor are their earlocks as long as here in Poland. Everything with them is different. We put sugar into gefilte fish, they put pepper.
    “Yontche was a glutton. The moment he entered a house, he took right to the food. I like to look around. I noticed that Freidke was madly in love with Chlavna. She never took her eyes off him. Her eyes were blue, sharp, and kind of melancholy. Why? It’s in my nature that I notice things whether they concern me or not. A healthy young fellow should have an appetite, but it struck me that Chlavna hardly ate a thing. Whatever was served him, he left over—the Sabbath loaf, the soup, the meat, even the carrot stew. When Hiene served him a glass of tea, his hand trembled so that he spilled it on the tablecloth. Eh, I thought, a slaughterer’s hand shouldn’t tremble. That won’t do.
    “Yontche and I celebrated the Sabbath there, and after the Sabbath we went our way. We didn’t know it then, but that winter was our last together. We hadn’t had much luck in Lithuania, and Yontche acted more like a coachman than like a rabbi. Usually when I left a town I soon forgot everyone there, but I sat in the sleigh thinking about Freidke and Chlavna and I knew somehow that I’d be coming back to Zabrynka. But why? What did these strangers mean to me?
    “We came to another town and there I really quarreled with Yontche, and told him that he was an outcast and that he should go to blazes. I felt so downhearted I went to a tavern. I sat down, took a shot of vodka, and someone came up to me—a little shipping agent—and said, ‘You don’t recognize me, but we met in Zabrynka. You are the beadle.’
    “ ‘What’s happening in Zabrynka?’ I asked, and he said, ‘You haven’t heard the news? A dybbuk has entered the slaughterer’s daughter.’
    “ ‘A dybbuk?’ I said. ‘In Freidke?’
    “And he told me this story: That Sabbath night, soon after we had left town, the butchers brought to Bunem Leib a large black bull with spiral horns, a tough beast. Since Freidke’s fiancé, Chlavna, had learned the craft, with all its laws, and had already slaughtered several calves, Bunem Leib decided to let him slaughter it. When a bull is slaughtered, the butchers tie him with ropes, throw him to the ground, and hold him until he bleeds to death. But when Chlavna made the benediction and slashed the bull’s throat the animal tore loose, lunged to its feet, and began to run round with such fury that he nearly brought down the slaughterhouse. He went racing across the marketplace and cracked a lamppost and overturned a wagon. All this time, the blood