The Collected Stories

sparse whiskers. His long gaberdine reached to below the ankles. His back was bent and he walked rapidly and as if he didn’t know where he was going. The young girls crowded to the windows and watched him pass by. When he arrived at the study house, the men came up to greet him and he immediately began to expatiate in the cleverest possible way. There was no mistaking that this man was a born city dweller.
    “Well, you really have some metropolis here,” the young man observed.
    “No one’s claiming that it’s Warsaw,” one of the town boys commented.
    The young cosmopolitan smiled. “One place is pretty much like another,” he pointed out. “If they’re on the face of the earth, they’re all the same.”
    This said, he began to quote literally from the Babylonian Talmud and the Talmud of Jerusalem, and when he was finished with that, he entertained everyone with news about what was going on in the great world beyond Kreshev. He wasn’t himself personally acquainted with Radziwill but he had seen him and he did know a follower of Sabbatai Zevi, the false Messiah. He also had met a Jew who came from Shushan, which was the ancient capital of Persia, and another Jew who had become a convert and studied the Talmud in secret. As if this weren’t enough, he began to ask those assembled the most difficult of riddles and, when he tired of that, amused himself by repeating anecdotes of Rabbi Heshl. Somehow or other he managed to convey the additional information that he knew how to play chess, could paint murals employing the twelve signs of the zodiac, and write Hebrew verse which could be read either backwards or forwards and said exactly the same thing no matter how you read it. Nor was this all. This young prodigy, in addition, had studied philosophy and the Cabala, and was an adept in mystical mathematics, being able even to work out the fractions which are to be found in the treatise of Kilaim. It goes without saying that he had had a look at the Zohar and
The Tree of Life
and he knew
The Guide to the Perplexed
as well as his own first name.
    He had come to Kreshev looking ragged, but several days after his arrival Reb Bunim outfitted him in a new gaberdine, new shoes, and white stockings, and presented him with a gold watch. And now the young man began to comb his beard and curl his sidelocks. It was not until the signing of the contract that Lise saw the bridegroom, but she had received reports of how learned he was and she was happy that she had chosen him and not the rich young man from Lublin.
    The festivities to celebrate the signing of the engagement contract were as noisy as a wedding. Half the town had been invited. As always, the men and women were seated separately and Shloimele, the groom-to-be, made an extremely clever speech and then signed his name with a brilliant flourish. Several of the town’s most learned men tried to converse with him on weighty subjects, but his rhetoric and wisdom were too much for them. While the celebration was still going on, and before the serving of the banquet, Reb Bunim broke the usual custom that the bride and groom must not meet before the marriage and let Shloimele into Lise’s chamber since the true interpretation of the law is that a man not take a wife unless he has seen her. The young man’s gaberdine was unbuttoned, exposing his silk vest and gold watch chain. He appeared a man of the world with his brightly polished shoes and velvet skullcap perched on the top of his head. There was moisture on his high forehead and his cheeks were flushed. Inquisitively, bashfully, he gazed about him with his dark eyes, and his index finger kept twining itself nervously around a fringe of his sash. Lise turned a deep red when she saw him. She had been told that he was not at all good-looking but to her he seemed handsome. And this was the view of the other girls who were present. Somehow or other Shloimele had become much more attractive.
    “This is the girl you are to marry,” Reb Bunim said. “There’s no need for you to be bashful.”
    Lise had on a black silk dress and around her neck was a string of pearls, which was the present she had been given for this occasion. Her hair appeared almost red under the glow of candlelight, and on the finger of her left hand she wore a ring with the letter “M” inscribed upon it, the first letter of the words
mazel tov
. At the moment of Shloimele’s entrance she had been holding an embroidered handkerchief in her