The Collected Stories

afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a dark, handsome young man. There was even a slight down on her upper lip. Only her thick braids showed her womanhood—and if it came to that, hair could always be shorn. Yentl conceived a plan and day and night she could think of nothing else. No, she had not been created for the noodle board and the pudding dish, for chattering with silly women and pushing for a place at the butcher’s block. Her father had told her so many tales of yeshivas, rabbis, men of letters! Her head was full of Talmudic disputations, questions and answers, learned phrases. Secretly, she had even smoked her father’s long pipe.
    Yentl told the dealers she wanted to sell the house and go to live in Kalish with an aunt. The neighborhood women tried to talk her out of it, and the marriage brokers said she was crazy, that she was more likely to make a good match right here in Yanev. But Yentl was obstinate. She was in such a rush that she sold the house to the first bidder, and let the furniture go for a song. All she realized from her inheritance was one hundred and forty rubles. Then late one night in the month of Av, while Yanev slept, Yentl cut off her braids, arranged sidelocks at her temples, and dressed herself in her father’s clothes. Packing underclothes, phylacteries, and a few books into a straw suitcase, she started off on foot for Lublin.
    On the main road, Yentl got a ride in a carriage that took her as far as Zamosc. From there, she again set out on foot. She stopped at an inn along the way, and gave her name there as Anshel, after an uncle who had died. The inn was crowded with young men journeying to study with famous rabbis. An argument was in progress over the merits of various yeshivas, some praising those of Lithuania, others claiming that study was more intensive in Poland and the board better. It was the first time Yentl had ever found herself alone in the company of young men. How different their talk was from the jabbering of women, she thought, but she was too shy to join in. One young man discussed a prospective match and the size of the dowry, while another, parodying the manner of a Purim rabbi, declaimed a passage from the Torah, adding all sorts of lewd interpretations. After a while, the company proceeded to contests of strength. One pried open another’s fist; a second tried to bend a companion’s arm. One student, dining on bread and tea, had no spoon and stirred his cup with his penknife.
    Presently, one of the group came over to Yentl and poked her in the shoulder. “Why so quiet? Don’t you have a tongue?”
    “I have nothing to say.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Anshel.”
    “You
are
bashful. A violet by the wayside.”
    And the young man tweaked Yentl’s nose. She would have given him a smack in return, but her arm refused to budge. She turned white. Another student, slightly older than the rest, tall and pale, with burning eyes and a black beard, came to her rescue.
    “Hey, you, why are you picking on him?”
    “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to look.”
    “Want me to pull your sidelocks off?”
    The bearded young man beckoned to Yentl, then asked where she came from and where she was going. Yentl told him she was looking for a yeshiva, but wanted a quiet one. The young man pulled at his beard.
    “Then come with me to Bechev.”
    He explained that he was returning to Bechev for his fourth year. The yeshiva there was small, with only thirty students, and the people in the town provided board for them all. The food was plentiful and the housewives darned the students’ socks and took care of their laundry. The Bechev rabbi, who headed the yeshiva, was a genius. He could pose ten questions and answer all ten with one proof. Most of the students eventually found wives in the town.
    “Why did you leave in the middle of the term?” Yentl asked.
    “My mother died. Now I’m on my way back.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Avigdor.”
    “How is it you’re not married?”
    The young man scratched his beard. “It’s a long story.”
    “Tell me.”
    Avigdor covered his eyes and thought a moment. “Are you coming to Bechev?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you’ll find out soon enough anyway. I was engaged to the only daughter of Alter Vishkower, the richest man in town. Even the wedding date