The Collected Stories

hand but upon seeing him it had fallen from her fingers. One of the girls in the room walked over and picked it up.
    “It’s a very fine evening,” Shloimele said to Lise.
    “And an excellent summer,” answered the bride and her two attendants.
    “Perhaps it’s a trifle hot,” Shloimele observed.
    “Yes, it is hot,” the three girls answered again in unison.
    “Do you think the fault is mine?” Shloimele asked in a sort of singsong. “It is said in the Talmud …”
    But Shloimele didn’t get any further as Lise interrupted him. “I know very well what the Talmud says. ‘A donkey is cold even in the month of Tammuz.’ ”
    “Oh, a Talmudic scholar!” Shloimele exclaimed in surprise, and the tips of his ears reddened.
    Very soon after that, the conversation ended and everyone began to crowd into the room. But Rabbi Ozer did not approve of the bride and groom meeting before the wedding, and he ordered them to be separated. So Shloimele was once more surrounded only by men and the celebration continued until daybreak.
    IV
Love

    From the very first moment that she saw him Lise loved Shloimele deeply. At times she believed that his face had been shown to her in a dream before the marriage. At other times she was certain that they had been married before in some other existence. The truth was that I, the Evil Spirit, required so great a love for the furtherance of my schemes.
    At night when Lise slept I sought out his spirit and brought it to her and the two of them spoke and kissed and exchanged love tokens. All of her waking thoughts were of him. She held his image within her and addressed it, and this fiction within her replied to her words. She bared her soul to it, and it consoled her and uttered the words of love that she longed to hear. When she put on a dress or a nightgown she imagined that Shloimele was present, and she felt shy and was pleased that her skin was pale and smooth. Occasionally she would ask this apparition those questions which had baffled her since childhood: “Shloimele, what is the sky? How deep is the earth? Why is it hot in summer and cold in the winter? Why do corpses gather at night to pray in the synagogue? How can one see a demon? Why does one see one’s reflection in a mirror?”
    And she even imagined that Shloimele answered each of these questions. There was one other question that she asked the shadow in her mind: “Shloimele, do you really love me?”
    Shloimele reassured her that no other girl was equal to her in beauty. And in her daydreams she saw herself drowning in the river San and Shloimele rescued her. She was abducted by evil spirits and he saved her. Indeed, her mind was all daydreams, so confused had love made her.
    But as it happened, Reb Bunim postponed the wedding until the Sabbath after Pentecost and so Lise was forced to wait nearly three-quarters of a year longer. Now, through her impatience, she understood what misery Jacob had undergone when he had been forced to wait seven years before marrying Rachel. Shloimele remained at the rabbi’s house and would not be able to visit Lise again until Hanukkah. The young girl often stood at the window in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of him, for the path from the rabbi’s to the study house did not pass Reb Bunim’s. The only news that Lise received of him was from the girls who came to see her. One reported that he had grown slightly taller and another said that he was studying the Talmud with the other young men at the study house. A third girl observed that obviously the rabbi’s wife was not feeding Shloimele properly, as he had become quite thin. But out of modesty Lise refrained from questioning her friends too closely; nevertheless, she blushed each time her beloved’s name was mentioned. In order to make the winter pass more quickly, she began to embroider for her husband-to-be a phylactery bag and a cloth to cover the Sabbath loaf. The bag was of black velvet, upon which she sewed in gold thread a star of David along with Shloimele’s name and the date of the month and year. She took even greater pains with the tablecloth, on which were stitched two loaves of bread and a goblet. The words “Holy Sabbath” were done in silver thread, and in the four corners the heads of a stag, a lion, a leopard, and an eagle were embroidered. Nor did she forget to line the seams of the cloth with beads of various colors and she decorated the edges with fringes and tassels. The girls of Kreshev were