Satan in Goray - Isaac Bashevis Singer [15]
how capable they were. But Rechele sat at the hearth, never rising to greet them, not even wiping the benches dry for them to sit upon. She confused their names, acted so haughtily that the women began to laugh and mock her. Before leaving, the last of the visitors called to Rechele from the other side of the door: "Don't be so high and mighty, Rechele! Your father isn't rich any longer; you're a pauper now!" Rechele (God save us!) was sickly, and much had to be forgiven her. The woman who went from house to house Thursdays to knead the troughs of dough for the Sabbath reported that Rechele ate less than a fly; she had her period every three months. She slept late in the morning and barricaded her door at night with wooden crossbars. A neighbor that lived behind Reb Eleazar's brick house in a dwelling that had half settled in the earth whispered that Rechele never went into the yard to relieve herself.... Rechele had been born in Goray in 1648, a few weeks before the massacre. When the haidamaks had besieged Zamosc, her mother had fled with the infant in her arms, and, after many trials, had arrived in Lublin. The little one had been five at her mother's death, and Reb Eleazar had been in Vlodave with the rest of the household at the time. Rechele alone had remained in Lublin at the home of an uncle, Reb Zeydel Ber, who was a ritual slaughterer. He was a tall man with thick eyebrows above red eyes, and a black beard that reached to his waist, a taciturn widower who kept to himself. In the booth in the courtyard where he did his slaughtering there was al-ways a wooden bucket full of blood, and feathers flew about constantly. Here day was as dark as night when a small oil lamp burned. Butcher boys in red-spattered jackets, with knives thrust in their belts, moved about, shouting coarsely. Slaughtered chickens threw themselves to the blood-soaked earth, furiously flap-ping their pent wings, as though trying to fly off. Calves, whose legs were bound with straw, laid their heads on one another's necks and pounded the earth with their split hooves, until finally their eyes glazed. Once Rechele saw two blood-smeared butcher boys skin a goat and let it lie there with eyeballs protrudeing in amazement and white teeth projecting in a kind of death-smile. Rechele was terrified of Reb Zeydel Ber. He had never remarried, and had no children. The house was kept by his mother-in-law, a woman nearly ninety, deaf, with a waxen, shriveled face, full of moles and clumps of yellowish hair. The ancient stone house where they lived had thick walls and small high windows near the vaulted ceiling. It stood somewhere on the edge of town, near the graveyard. The doorway was low and dark as a cave, and faced a dead-end street. The court was rolling and hillocky, full of pits, and all manner of rags, feather dusters, and rotted sacks were scattered about. Reb Zeydel occupied two rooms, with an entrance off a narrow vestibule. He slept in one of the rooms, which had a wide canopy bed hung with faded red satin draperies, a prayer stand, and a book chest. When Uncle was not busy in his slaughter but he would sit in his bedroom on a shoemaker's round stool and sharpen the greenish blades of his knives on a large, smooth stone. He would test the edges with the nail of his right index finger--allowed to grow long for just that purpose - and listen with his long, hairy ear for sound of a defect in the blade. At other times he would mumble over a holy volume, or prop his forehead on a fist and doze off. The anteroom held the household necessaries: a water tun and a large vessel for washing pots and dishes, two benches--one for dairy food, the other for meat--and a broom leaning on a swill heap. The old woman cooked in a deep sooty oven, constantly occupied with long paddles, and eternally muttering. Whenever Rechele wanted to go outside to play, Granny would grab the child with her bony hands, pull her hair, and hiss at her. "Sit down, you monster!" she would cry, and pinch Rechele black and blue. "Throw fits and jump as high as a house! May the fit carry