The Last Demon

carrying it. She ordered the servant girl around, was forever engrossed in storybooks, and changed her hairdo every week. Moreover, she must consider herself a beauty, for she was always in front of the mirror, but, in fact, she was not that good-looking.
    ‘Two years after she’s married,’ said Anshel, ‘she’ll be an old bag.’
    ‘So she doesn’t appeal to you?’
    ‘Not particularly.’
    ‘Yet if she wanted you, you wouldn’t turn her down.’
    ‘I can do without her.’
    ‘Don’t you have evil impulses?’
    The two friends, sharing a lectern in a corner of the study house, spent more time talking than learning. Occasionally Avigdor smoked, and Anshel, taking the cigarette from his lips, would have a puff. Avigdor liked baked flatcakes made with buckwheat, so Anshel stopped at the bakery every morning to buy one, and wouldn’t let him pay his share. Often Anshel did things that greatly surprised Avigdor. If a button came off Avigdor’s coat, for example, Anshel would arrive at the yeshiva the next day with needle and thread and sew it back on. Anshel bought Avigdor all kinds of presents: a silk handkerchief, a pair of socks, a muffler. Avigdor grew more and more attached to this boy, five years younger than himself, whose beard hadn’t even begun to sprout.
    Once Avigdor said to Anshel: ‘I want you to marry Hadass.’
    ‘What good would that do
you
?’
    ‘Better you than a total stranger.’
    ‘You’d become my enemy.’
    ‘Never.’
    Avigdor liked to go for walks through the town and Anshel frequently joined him. Engrossed in conversation, they would go off to the water mill, or to the pine forest, or to the crossroads where the Christian shrine stood. Sometimes they stretched out on the grass.
    ‘Why can’t a woman be like a man?’ Avigdor asked once, looking up at the sky.
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Why couldn’t Hadass be just like you?’
    ‘How like me?’
    ‘Oh – a good fellow.’
    Anshel grew playful. She plucked a flower and tore off the petals one by one. She picked up a chestnut and threw it at Avigdor. Avigdor watched a ladybug crawl across the palm of his hand.
    After a while he spoke up: ‘They’re trying to marry me off.’
    Anshel sat up instantly. ‘To whom?’
    ‘To Feitl’s daughter, Peshe.’
    ‘The widow?’
    ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘Why should you marry a widow?’
    ‘No one else will have me.’
    ‘That’s not true. Someone will turn up for you.’
    ‘Never.’
    Anshel told Avigdor such a match was bad. Peshe was neither good-looking nor clever, only a cow with a pair of eyes. Besides, she was bad luck, for her husband died in the first year of their marriage. Such women were husband-killers. But Avigdor did not answer. He lit a cigarette, took a deep puff, and blew out smoke rings. His face had turned green.
    ‘I need a woman. I can’t sleep at night.’
    Anshel was startled. ‘Why can’t you wait until the right one comes along?’
    ‘Hadass was my destined one.’
    And Avigdor’s eyes grew moist. Abruptly he got to his feet. ‘Enough lying around. Let’s go.’
    After that, everything happened quickly. One day Avigdor was confiding his problem to Anshel, two days later he became engaged to Peshe, and brought honey cake and brandy to the yeshiva. An early wedding date was set. When the bride-to-be is a widow, there’s no need to wait for a trousseau. Everything is ready. The groom, moreover, was an orphan and no one’s advice had to be asked. The yeshiva students drank the brandy and offered their congratulations. Anshel also took a sip, but promptly choked on it.
    ‘Oy, it burns!’
    ‘You’re not much of a man,’ Avigdor teased.
    After the celebration, Avigdor and Anshel sat down with a volume of the Gemara, but they made little progress, and their conversation was equally slow. Avigdor rocked back and forth, pulled at his beard, muttered under his breath.
    ‘I’m lost,’ he said abruptly.
    ‘If you don’t like her, why are you getting married?’
    ‘I’d marry a she-goat.’
    The following day Avigdor did not appear at the study house. Feitl the leather dealer belonged to the Hasidim and he wanted his prospective son-in-law to continue his studies at the Hasidic prayer house. The yeshiva students said privately that though there was no denying the widow was short and round as a barrel, her mother the daughter of a dairyman, her father half an ignoramus, still the whole family was filthy with money. Feitl was part-owner