The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [24]
First they hanged the thieves, Leib the Coachman among them. Then Glicka Genendel was led up the steps. Before the hood was placed over her head, they asked her if she had a final request, and she begged that the rabbi be summoned to hear her confession. He came, and she told him the true story. It was probably the first time in her life she had ever told the truth. The rabbi recited the Confession for her and promised her Paradise.
It seems, however, that the Lenchic rabbi had little influence in Heaven because before Glicka Genendel and Reb Yomtov were admitted to Paradise, they had to atone for every last sin. No allowances are made up there for anything.
When I told this story to Lilith, she found it very amusing and decided to see these two sinners in Gehenna. I flew with her to purgatory and showed her how they hung suspended by their tongues, which is the prescribed punishment for liars.
Under their feet were braziers of burning hot coals. Devils flogged their bodies with fiery rods. I called out to the sinners, "Now, tell me whom did you fool with those lies? Well, you have only yourselves to thank. Your lips spun the thread, and your mouths wove the net. But be of good cheer. Your stay in Gehenna lasts only for twelve months, including Sabbaths and holidays."
--- Translated from the Yiddish by Cecil Hemley and June Ruth Flaum
The Shadow of a Crib
I
DR. YARETZKY'S ARRIVAL
All of a sudden, one day, a new doctor came to town. He arrived in a hired wagon, with a basket of possessions, a stack of books bound with a thong, a parrot in a cage and a poodle. In his thirties, short, swarthy, with black eyes and mustache, he might have looked Jewish, if his nose had not had its Polish tilt. He wore an elegant, old-fashioned fur-lined overcoat, gaiters, and a broad-brimmed hat like those of gypsies, magicians and tinkers. Standing amid his things in the center of the market place, he addressed the Jews in the halting Yiddish a gentile occasionally acquires: "Hey there, Jews, I want to live here. Me, Doctor. Doctor Yaretzky. . . . Head hurt, eh? See tongue!"
"Where are you from?" the Jews asked.
"Far, far away! . . ."
"A madman!" the Jews decided, "A mad doctor!"
He settled in a house on a side street, near the fields. He had neither wife, nor furniture. He bought an iron bed and a rickety table. The old doctor, Chwaschinski, charged fifty groszy per visit and a half-ruble for outside calls, but Dr. Yaretzky took what was offered, jamming it uncounted into his pocket. He liked to joke with his patients. Soon two factions formed in town--those who insisted he was a quack who did not know his foot from his elbow, and others who swore he was a master physician. One glance at a patient, his admirers claimed, and diagnosis was complete. He restored the dying to life.
The apothecary, the mayor appointed by the Russians, the notary public and the Russian authorities were all partisan to Dr. Chwaschinski. Since Yaretzky did not attend church, the priest maintained that the doctor was no Christian but an infidel, perhaps a Tartar--and a heathen. Some suggested that he might even poison people. He could be a sorcerer. But the destitute Jews of Bridge Street and the sand flats patronized Dr. Yaretzky. And the peasants too began to consult him, and Dr. Yaretzky furnished an office and hired a maid. But he still wore disheveled clothes and remained friendless. Alone, he strolled down oak-lined Zamosc Avenue. Alone he shopped for groceries, since his maid was a deaf-mute who could neither write nor haggle. In fact, she rarely left the house at all.
The maid was rumored pregnant. Her belly began to expand--but eventually flattened again. Yaretzky was blamed for both the pregnancy and the miscarriage. The authorities at their club spoke of putting the doctor on trial, but the prosecutor was a timid man, afraid of the piercing black eyes and satanic smile beneath Yaretzky's bristling mustache. Yaretzky had, moreover, a medical diploma from Petersburg, and, since he feared no one, possibly had influence with the