• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 417 0

faces of sickly children, massaged arthritic women, and had them spend the night in his house. Daily the number who came to the miracle worker increased. They shopped in Goray, and slept on the bare floor in the homes of the townsfolk, avidly listening to the amazing tales concerning Rechele the prophetess. Every-where, they sat on benches in front of the houses. Their kerchiefs were pulled down over their eyes; their hands clutched baskets of food; between their breasts hung pouches containing the copper coins that were to buy them health. The young were bashful, and would say nothing. But the older women knitted stockings and recounted with relish their sicknesses and the cures they had been given by various magicians and miracle workers. Those whose menstrual flow had stopped prematurely were advised to eat the foreskin of a circumcised infant. Those who wished to please their husbands were told to have their men drink the water in which their breasts had been washed; those with the falling sickness were told to cut the nails of their hands and feet and have the nails kneaded into a lump of dough and thrown to a dog. At times older women would tease the young barren ones, shocking them with their lewd talk. And then, finally, men also began to arrive in the town. There were beggars and vagabonds; there were ascetics, and there were husbands trying to get the signatures of a hundred rabbis for a writ of remarriage; a yeshiva student was seeking a master to teach him cabala; a penitent was tormenting himself by putting peas in his shoes. A convert from Amsterdam also came, a man who had taken a vow of silence as well as a bandsman who walked around blindfolded, so as not to perceive women, and a barefoot jester who asked for alms and recited obscene rhymes. These lived by begging from the pilgrims, slept in the poorhouse or, when that was full, in any corner they could find. Evil often transpired secretly. Once two wandering beggars who had come to Goray decided to marry, and married they were by some mischief makers on a dung-hill.

7

The Hour of Union

This was a year of severe drought. The grass that was to be used as fodder had been scorched, and the peasants sold their beasts at half-price. Wheat grew sparsely in the fields, and the stalks were light and empty. Burning winds threshed the yet unreaped grain, and ripped the green fruit from the trees. Every day a host of peasants passed through Goray on their way to chapels and shrines to pray for rain. They were so poor that the men wore straw for clothing. Their cheeks were hollow, and their protruding, frightened eyes stared from beneath their strands of flaxen hair like the eyes of madmen. The women carried their babies on their backs, wrapped in sheets, gypsy fashion. The feet of these wanderers were black from the dust of the roads, their voices were hoarse from imploring their God, and it seemed as if they had already died, and that this entourage was conducting itself to the grave. The rumor in the villages was that, before going off to join their Messiah, the Jews had prevailed upon the devil to kill all Christians. Each day the water sprite carried off another Christian; the water sprite was large as a cow, and swam backward in the river which he patroled early each evening in search of victims; his custom was to sing and do antics to attract the passers-by. Nor was this the only evil the devil concocted. He had of late sent a black cloud of locusts swooping down upon the fields; he had also summoned the field mice of the world and had sent them scampering through the furrows of wheat and into the barns. And one night a peasant saw a spirit dancing on stilts near the windmill. It whirled and capered and whistled, its face bearded, its feet webbed like the feet of a goose. Wild creatures circled it, foxes, and polecats, martens and wolves. They beat their wings like birds, and flew away laughing. A young woman who had gone to the well late one evening to fetch water, felt her bucket touch some live thing, and heard a voice from the depth cry out: "Sell me thy