The Collected Stories

God, help me! I can’t take any more of this anguish.’
    “Bunem Leib was crying. But Freidke answered, ‘I’m not your daughter but the bull you have given into the hands of a bungler. Take out your knife and slaughter me! Shed my blood! You, Bunem Leib, are a male, not a neuter. No ox, no cow, no sheep or rooster ever ran away from your knife. Kill me, Bunem Leib, kill me!’ ”
    “You heard all this?” Zeinvel asked.
    “May I hear the Messiah’s ram’s horn as clearly.”
    “Go on.”
    “It is impossible to tell it all. Toward dawn Bunem Leib became so tired and haggard that he had to go to sleep, but the town’s rowdies took over the show. For them it was fun. Imagine, an only daughter, a quiet little dove, stands in the middle of the night, her breasts uncovered, her red hair wild as a witch’s, and she confesses sins that make your head swim. I heard her say, ‘While alive, I did everything to spite God. I shaved my beard, I ate pork on Yom Kippur, I fornicated with Gentile wenches and Jewish whores. I denied God, and I thought I would live to be a hundred and indulge in all my abominations. But suddenly I got sick with pox and saw that I was done for. Still, to my last breath I blasphemed God and served the idols. When I finally expired, the Burial Society wouldn’t cleanse my body and they buried me without shrouds, at midnight, without anyone saying Kaddish. Even before the gravediggers had thrown the last spadeful of dirt over me, the Angel Dumah opened my grave, spat at me, pierced me with his fiery rod, and dragged me to the very gates of Gehenna. He tried to hurl me inside, but Satan slammed the door and shouted, “It is a disgrace to Gehenna to allow such scum to enter into it.” ’
    “You can be the world’s biggest heretic, Zeinvel, but when you see and hear a thing like this, you must admit that there is a God.”
    “No, you mustn’t.”
    “Then what was all that?”
    “Nerves.”
    “How do nerves know what goes on in the netherworld?” Mottke asked.
    “The nerves know everything.”
    “What are they—prophets?”
    “Even better than that,” Zeinvel said. “Good night.”
    “Well, you are talking nonsense.”
    Zeinvel had fallen asleep and was snoring, but Mottke lay awake. He talked to himself: “Gone to sleep, eh? A dunce, a boob … Thinks he knows it all, but to me he’s still a fool.”
    “Mottke, shut up.”
    “You’re not asleep?”
    “I am asleep, but I hear every word anyway. I learned this trick in jail. There, if you fall asleep for real they’ll strip the shirt right off your back. What became of Freidke?”
    “How should I know? I stayed there for three days, then I went my way. I haven’t told you everything yet. Neighbors swore to me that Freidke had never sung before. True, a well-brought-up girl doesn’t let her voice be heard, so as not to arouse us males; nevertheless, if a girl has a voice she’ll sing while rocking a child, or she will join in the Sabbath chants. All of a sudden Freidke started singing droll songs in Yiddish, Polish, even in Russian. She serenaded a bride and made wedding jests, all in rhyme. She mocked the women haggling in the butcher shops, and their splashing in the ritual bath. The hoodlums made snide remarks to her, and she answered each one on his own terms. She fast-talked them so, they were left speechless. All the neighbors said the same—this wasn’t Freidke but a wag, a rascal, with a tongue like a razor. His profanities left you rolling with laughter. Brother, I stood by and watched a female turn both into a bull and into a man. Nerves can’t do this.”
    “What can do it?”
    “Only God.”
    “There is no God.”
    “How did the world form?” Mottke asked.
    “It grew from itself like a scab.”
    II

    Zeinvel dozed off again, but Mottke still lay awake. The sick in the poorhouse sighed and mumbled in their sleep. Wasn’t Zeinvel right, Mottke reflected. A merciful God wouldn’t allow so much misery. People die like flies here. Each day the Burial Society comes with the ablution board to carry out a body.
    For a while Mottke listened to a cricket chirping behind the stove. It jingled as if with little bells. It told a tale without a beginning or an end. How was it that it chirped the whole night, Mottke wondered. Don’t crickets need sleep, too? Or do they sleep during the day? And what do they find to eat among the rags? It was crazy to think that this cricket had a father, a mother, a