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knew it could lead to trouble and he wondered why the boys in his class talked about girls so much. Didn’t they all realize that the matchmakers were on the prowl, watching the children from an early age for a likely shiddach a few years down the line? If an arrangement were made for Nathan he could end up just like his mother and father, doomed to a life of poverty and fear. He would do better. He’d escape the Pale one day and become wealthy. Then all of the family would have to come to him and bow before him. He would be kind and generous to them, despite the way they had mistreated him. This would be his delicious revenge. He would be nice to Momma but quite stern with his father. As for his brothers, he’d make them crawl. This was Nathan’s great dream. His sisters would come humbly before him and beg him to put up a large dowry so they would be able to capture an important husband. Oh, the power he would exert!

Nathan stood over the cradle and poked his finger in the baby’s stomach, ostensibly to draw a smile, but he was too rough and Reuben screamed his displeasure. Sophie slapped Nathan’s hand and admonished him to do his chores. He backed away from the crib wondering how many more babies they were going to have.

Nathan carried two buckets of water in from the pump, wobbling under the weight of the yoke, then gathered wood from the shed and stoked up the stove, which was both hearthstone and slave master of the house.

Today was window-washing day. Where were his brothers Mordechai and Matthias? Probably playing stickball or, worse, that goyim game of soccer. Nathan didn’t like to play the games. He was afraid of getting roughed up. That damned Mordechai knew how to avoid his chores, and when things weren’t done Poppa always blamed Nathan, often with a clout to the ear.

Mordechai, who was a year younger, was the bright scholar, the apple of Yehuda Zadok’s eye. Even now, with Nathan earning a ruble a week as a runner for the savings and loan office after school, Mordechai didn’t have to fill in with chores at home. Nathan often fantasized punching Mordechai half to death, but his brother was larger than he and very mean.

There were big celebrations when sons were born, but Nathan liked it better when he had a new sister. The girls didn’t get so much attention and at least they grew up knowing how to work.

Rifka, Sarah, and even little Ida always had busy hands. Sophie prepared them to be homemakers almost as soon as they could walk. Before the daughters came, Momma did everything: baking and cooking and making the candles; sweeping and scrubbing and washing and ironing; mending and dressmaking; bearing children and nursing and mothering; keeping the vegetable plot and running a kosher home. Sophie was a splendid balabosta. How she managed to make ends meet was through incredible manipulation. And she taught her girls, early and well. Nathan frankly preferred his sisters for another reason. As a male, he was allowed to boss them around.

YEHUDA ZADOK was the shohet of Wolkowysk, the ritual slaughterer of chickens, an ancient profession first dictated in the Book of Deuteronomy. Each chicken was accorded a brief benediction, then dispatched quickly and with the least amount of pain and in a manner to assure they were kosher.

The tool of his trade was a ten-inch knife with a blunted end. He had a half dozen of these, made of the finest German steel and honed to exquisite sharpness. Yehuda kept them in hand-tooled leather cases which he carried in a little black bag along with other paraphernalia of the trade.

When Nathan was very young he enjoyed going with his father to the slaughterhouse behind the poultry market and watching him at work. His father’s hands were sure and swift like lightning. He did the bird in with one clean stroke across the neck, plunged it into a vat of hot water, said a prayer, and plucked it clean in a matter of seconds. It was a matter of great pride that Yehuda never left pinfeathers in his birds. The rabbis periodically examined Yehuda’s chickens to assure his proficiency and never found