The Collected Stories

what did I see but the apprentice lying there beside Elka. The moon went out all at once. It was utterly black, and I trembled. My teeth chattered. The bread fell from my hands, and my wife waked and said, “Who is that, ah?”
    I muttered, “It’s me.”
    “Gimpel?” she asked. “How come you’re here? I thought it was forbidden.”
    “The rabbi said,” I answered and shook as with a fever.
    “Listen to me, Gimpel,” she said, “go out to the shed and see if the goat’s all right. It seems she’s been sick.” I have forgotten to say that we had a goat. When I heard she was unwell I went into the yard. The nannygoat was a good little creature. I had a nearly human feeling for her.
    With hesitant steps I went up to the shed and opened the door. The goat stood there on her four feet. I felt her everywhere, drew her by the horns, examined her udders, and found nothing wrong. She had probably eaten too much bark. “Good night, little goat,” I said. “Keep well.” And the little beast answered with a “Maa” as though to thank me for the good will.
    I went back. The apprentice had vanished.
    “Where,” I asked, “is the lad?”
    “What lad?” my wife answered.
    “What do you mean?” I said. “The apprentice. You were sleeping with him.”
    “The things I have dreamed this night and the night before,” she said, “may they come true and lay you low, body and soul! An evil spirit has taken root in you and dazzles your sight.” She screamed out, “You hateful creature! You moon calf! You spook! You uncouth man! Get out, or I’ll scream all Frampol out of bed!”
    Before I could move, her brother sprang out from behind the oven and struck me a blow on the back of the head. I thought he had broken my neck. I felt that something about me was deeply wrong, and I said, “Don’t make a scandal. All that’s needed now is that people should accuse me of raising spooks and dybbuks.” For that was what she had meant. “No one will touch bread of my baking.”
    In short, I somehow calmed her.
    “Well,” she said, “that’s enough. Lie down, and be shattered by wheels.”
    Next morning I called the apprentice aside. “Listen here, brother!” I said. And so on and so forth. “What do you say?” He stared at me as though I had dropped from the roof or something.
    “I swear,” he said, “you’d better go to an herb doctor or some healer. I’m afraid you have a screw loose, but I’ll hush it up for you.” And that’s how the thing stood.
    To make a long story short, I lived twenty years with my wife. She bore me six children, four daughters and two sons. All kinds of things happened, but I neither saw nor heard. I believed, and that’s all. The rabbi recently said to me, “Belief in itself is beneficial. It is written that a good man lives by his faith.”
    Suddenly my wife took sick. It began with a trifle, a little growth upon the breast. But she evidently was not destined to live long; she had no years. I spent a fortune on her. I have forgotten to say that by this time I had a bakery of my own and in Frampol was considered to be something of a rich man. Daily the healer came, and every witch doctor in the neighborhood was brought. They decided to use leeches, and after that to try cupping. They even called a doctor from Lublin, but it was too late. Before she died she called me to her bed and said, “Forgive me, Gimpel.”
    I said, “What is there to forgive? You have been a good and faithful wife.”
    “Woe, Gimpel!” she said. “It was ugly how I deceived you all these years. I want to go clean to my Maker, and so I have to tell you that the children are not yours.”
    If I had been clouted on the head with a piece of wood it couldn’t have bewildered me more.
    “Whose are they?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “There were a lot … but they’re not yours.” And as she spoke she tossed her head to the side, her eyes turned glassy, and it was all up with Elka. On her whitened lips there remained a smile.
    I imagined that, dead as she was, she was saying, “I deceived Gimpel. That was the meaning of my brief life.”
    IV

    One night, when the period of mourning was done, as I lay dreaming on the flour sacks, there came the Spirit of Evil himself and said to me, “Gimpel, why do you sleep?”
    I said, “What should I be doing? Eating kreplech?”
    “The whole world deceives you,” he said, “and you ought to deceive the world in your turn.”
    “How