Satan in Goray - Isaac Bashevis Singer [32]
in the kitchen, after his fashion, filching from the pots on the fire food which, in his panicky haste, he swallowed unchewed. Every now and then Ozer would come rushing into the sick room with a sooty face, jostle his way through the crowd, to confusedly ask of all and none: "What's happening? No better?" What cures were not attempted! They tried soaking the bad arm in hot water, to soften it, but that only scorched it. They applied seething salt, but that made it worse. The keeper of the poorhouse, an expert at nursing the sick, insisted that the arm was only dislocated, and she tried to snap it back into its socket, but Rabbi Benish fainted with the pain. His grandchildren ran from house to house asking for advice, and returned with numerous home remedies: Honey cakes to apply to the wound, dog fat to smear on it, malodorous yellow-green salves, mustard plaster. Two experienced women with headkerchiefs high on their foreheads, sleeves rolled up, and great aprons on, stood beside the bed and poured boiling water constantly from pots into basins, so that the sick room was dense with steam; they filtered the water through sieves and lighted glowing coals, as women do on the eve of Passover when cleansing the Passover dishes. The room smelled of smoke, charred stones, and the ritual of the purification of the dead. Whenever anyone asked the sick man how things were with him, he would open a corner of his eye, look strangely at his questioner, and instantly sink back into his slumber. Two messengers had been sent at daybreak to a nearby village to fetch a peasant who was reputedly expert at setting dislocated arms and legs. The messengers were given money and a flask of aqua vitae, and told to drag the peasant by the ears if necessary. They should have returned by now, for the village was barely a mile away. But they were nowhere to be seen. Boys ran outdoors to be on the lookout for the messengers and the peasant. Each of them came back with another reply. Somewhere far away, on a hill, a dot came into sight, but it was uncertain whether it could be the messengers or a sleigh hauling wood. Since the disappearance of Reb Eleazar and Leib Banach, everyone lived in terror. Already the messengers' wives sat with flushed faces in the kitchen of the rabbi's wife, prepared to scream and weep. Eating thickly buttered bread, they sighed like widows. Though it was fiercely cold outdoors, knots of women stood about the market place, hunched in shawls, huddling together and as anxious as though waiting for a funeral. Their feet, thrust into men's great boots, kept up a constant dance. Their faces, prematurely aged, were pale with the frost and the new terror whose shadow was slowly deepening over the town. They all repeated the same refrain: "It's because of 'the others,' the demons." "They're the ones to blame." They gossiped that Nechele, his daughter-in-law, had bewitched Rabbi Benish. One woman had with her own eyes seen Nechele in secret confabulation with the old witch Kinnegunde. All the women knew for certain that Nechele had a magical elf lock in the chest in her room, and in order to bind her husband, Levi, she would have him drink the water in which she washed her breasts. Glucke, the trustee, swore that, unable to sleep all night, she had heard the noise of women chattering in the wind, and had concluded that the spirits were gathering together. Later, at the very moment when Rabbi Benish was injured, all the spirits had burst into laughter, mocking and clapping their hands--for they had avenged themselves on humans, had done them an injury. At nightfall the peasant healer finally arrived. The messengers reported that the peasant had refused to come under any circumstance and that they had had to get him dead drunk and drag him all the way. He was a tiny old man, wearing straw shoes and a sheep-skin coat with the wool side out. His tremendous hat was pushed authoritatively back over his white curls. His small eyes were red and always smiling. He was led into the room where Rabbi Benish lay; the door was opened wide in his