The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [36]
Soon there was talk that lights could be seen at night in the windows of the crumbling estate. An old crone who walked past the ruin swore that she'd heard a thin voice as if that of a mother crooning lullabies to her infant and the old woman had recognized it as Helena's voice. Another woman confirmed this and added that on moonlit nights one could see on the wall of Helena's room, the shadow of a crib. . . .
After a while the ruin was demolished and a granary erected on the site. The rabbi's house was rebuilt. The doctor added a wing to his house and ordered the apple trees chopped down. Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted out and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid from unspun threads--unwoven nets.
--- Translated by Elaine Gottlieb and June Ruth Flaum
Shiddah and Kuziba
I
Shiddah and her child, Kuziba, a schoolboy, were sitting nine yards inside the earth at a place where two ledges of rock came together and an underground stream was flowing. Shiddah's body was made of cobwebs; her hair reached to her anklebones; her feet were like those of a chicken; and she had the wings of a bat. Kuziba, who looked like his mother, had, in addition, donkey ears and wax horns. Kuziba was sick with a high fever. Every half hour his mother gave him medicine made of devil's dung mixed with copper juice, the darkness of a ditch, and the droppings of a red crow. Shiddah, leaning over her son, licked his navel with her long tongue. Kuziba was sleeping the restless sleep of the sick. Suddenly the boy woke up.
"I'm frightened, mother," he said.
"Of what, dear?"
"Of light. Of human beings."
Shiddah trembled; and then spat on her son to ward off such evils.
"What are you talking about, child? We're safe here--far from light and far from human beings. It's as dark as Egypt here, thank God, and as silent as a cemetery. We're protected by nine yards of solid rock."
"But they say men can break rocks," said the boy.
"Old wives' tales!" countered his mother. "The power of man is only on the surface. The heights are for angels. The depths are for us. The lot of man is to creep on the skin of the earth like a louse."
"But what are human beings, mother? Tell me."
"What are they? They're the waste of creation, offal; where sin is brewed in a kettle, mankind is the foam. Man is the mistake of God."
"How can God the Almighty make a mistake?" asked Kuziba.
"That is a secret, my child," answered Shiddah. "For when God created the last of all the worlds, the earth, his love for our mistress, Lilith, was stronger than ever. Only for an instant his gaze wandered, and in that instant he produced man--an evil mixture of flesh, love, dung, and lust.
"Man!" Shiddah spat. "He has a white skin but inside he is red. He shouts as if he were strong, but really he is weak and shaky. Throw a stone and he breaks; use a thong and he bleeds. In heat he melts. In cold he freezes. There is a bellows in his chest which has to contract and expand constantly. In his left side is a small sac which must throb and quiver all the time. He stuffs himself with mildew of a kind which grows in mud or sand. This mildew he has to swallow constantly and after it passes through his body he must drop it out. He depends on a thousand accidents, and that's why he is so nasty and angry."
"But what do human beings do, mother?"
"Evil," Shiddah answered her son, "only evil. But that keeps them busy so that they leave us in peace. Why,