The butchers and the horse-traders took her part. One of the lads from the slaughterhouse came by and said to me, “We’ve got our eye on you, you’re a marked man.” Meanwhile, the child started to bear down and soiled itself. In the rabbinical court there was an Ark of the Covenant, and they couldn’t allow that, so they sent Elka away.
I said to the rabbi, “What shall I do?”
“You must divorce her at once,” said he.
“And what if she refuses?” I asked.
He said, “You must serve the divorce. That’s all you’ll have to do.”
I said, “Well, all right, Rabbi. Let me think about it.”
“There’s nothing to think about,” said he. “You mustn’t remain under the same roof with her.”
“And if I want to see the child?” I asked.
“Let her go, the harlot,” said he, “and her brood of ******** with her.”
The verdict he gave was that I mustn’t even cross her threshold—never again, as long as I should live.
During the day it didn’t bother me so much. I thought: It was bound to happen, the abscess had to burst. But at night when I stretched out upon the sacks I felt it all very bitterly. A longing took me, for her and for the child. I wanted to be angry, but that’s my misfortune exactly, I don’t have it in me to be really angry. In the first place—this was how my thoughts went—there’s bound to be a slip sometimes. You can’t live without errors. Probably that lad who was with her led her on and gave her presents and what not, and women are often long on hair and short on sense, and so he got around her. And then since she denies it so, maybe I was only seeing things? Hallucinations do happen. You see a figure or a mannikin or something, but when you come up closer it’s nothing, there’s not a thing there. And if that’s so, I’m doing her an injustice. And when I got so far in my thoughts I started to weep. I sobbed so that I wet the flour where I lay. In the morning I went to the rabbi and told him that I had made a mistake. The rabbi wrote on with his quill, and he said that if that were so he would have to reconsider the whole case. Until he had finished I wasn’t to go near my wife, but I might send her bread and money by messenger.
III
Nine months passed before all the rabbis could come to an agreement. Letters went back and forth. I hadn’t realized that there could be so much erudition about a matter like this.
Meanwhile, Elka gave birth to still another child, a girl this time. On the Sabbath I went to the synagogue and invoked a blessing on her. They called me up to the Torah, and I named the child for my mother-in-law—may she rest in peace. The louts and loudmouths of the town who came into the bakery gave me a going over. All Frampol refreshed its spirits becau
se of my trouble and grief. However, I resolved that I would always believe what I was told. What’s the good of not believing? Today it’s your wife you don’t believe; tomorrow it’s God Himself you won’t take stock in.
By an apprentice who was her neighbor I sent her daily a corn or a wheat loaf, or a piece of pastry, rolls or bagels, or, when I got the chance, a slab of pudding, a slice of honeycake, or wedding strudel—whatever came my way. The apprentice was a goodhearted lad, and more than once he added something on his own. He had formerly annoyed me a lot, plucking my nose and digging me in the ribs, but when he started to be a visitor to my house he became kind and friendly. “Hey, you, Gimpel,” he said to me, “you have a very decent little wife and two fine kids. You don’t deserve them.”
“But the things people say about her,” I said.
“Well, they have long tongues,” he said, “and nothing to do with them but babble. Ignore it as you ignore the cold of last winter.”
One day the rabbi sent for me and said, “Are you certain, Gimpel, that you were wrong about your wife?”
I said, “I’m certain.”
“Why, but look here! You yourself saw it.”
“It must have been a shadow,” I said.
“The shadow of what?”
“Just of one of the beams, I think.”
“You can go home then. You owe thanks to the Yanover rabbi. He found an obscure reference in Maimonides that favored you.”
I seized the rabbi’s hand and kissed it.
I wanted to run home immediately. It’s no small thing to be separated for so long a time from wife and child. Then I reflected: I’d better go back to work now, and go home in the evening. I said nothing to anyone, although as far as my heart was concerned it was like one of the Holy Days. The women teased and twitted me as they did every day, but my thought was: Go on, with your loose talk. The truth is out, like the oil upon the water. Maimonides says it’s right, and therefore it is right!
At night, when I had covered the dough to let it rise, I took my share of bread and a little sack of flour and started homeward. The moon was full and the stars were glistening, something to terrify the soul. I hurried onward, and before me darted a long shadow. It was winter, and a fresh snow had fallen. I had a mind to sing, but it was growing late and I didn’t want to wake the householders. Then I felt like whistling, but I remembered that you don’t whistle at night because it brings the demons out. So I was silent and walked as fast as I could.
Dogs in the Christian yards barked at me when I passed, but I thought: Bark your teeth out! What are you but mere dogs? Whereas I am a man, the husband of a fine wife, the father of promising children.
As I approached the house my heart started to pound as though it were the heart of a criminal. I felt no fear, but my heart went thump! thump! Well, no drawing back. I quietly lifted the latch and went in. Elka was asleep. I looked at the infant’s cradle. The shutter was closed, but the moon forced its way through the cracks. I saw the newborn child’s face and loved it as soon as I saw it—immediately—each tiny bone.
