304
PARTISAN REVIEW
the congregation put a straw to my mouth and said, "Hay for
the
cows." There was something
to
that, too, by God!
She gave birth to a boy. Friday at the synagogue the sexton
stood up before the Ark, pounded on the reading-table and announced,
"The wealthy Red Gimpel invites the congregation to a feast
in
honor of the birth of a son." The whole House of Worship rang
with laughter. My face was flaming. But there was nothing I could
do. Mter all, I
was
the one responsible for the circumcision honon
and rituals.
Half the town came running. You couldn't wedge another
soul
in. Women brought peppered chick-peas, and there was a keg
of
beer from the tavern. I ate and drank as much as anyone and they
all congratulated me. Then there was a circumcision and I named
the boy after my father, may he rest in peace. When all were gone
and I was left with my wife alone, she thrust her head through the
bed-curtain and called me to her. "Gimpel," said she, "why are you
silent? Has your ship gone and sunk?" "What shall I say," I
an–
swered. "A fine thing you've done to me.
If
my mother had known
of it she'd have died a second time." She said: "Are you crazy, or
what?" "How can you make such a fool," I said, "of one who should
be the lord and master?" "What's the matter with you?" she said.
"What have you taken it into your head to imagine?" I saw that
I must speak bluntly and openly. "Do you think this is the way to
use an orphan?" I said. "You have borne a bastard." She answered,
"Drive this foolishness out of your head. The child is yours." "How
can he be mine?" I argued. "He was born seventeen weeks after
the wedding." She told me then that he was premature. I said, "Isn't
he a little too premature?" She said she had had a grandmother who
carried just as short a time and she resembled this grandmother of
hers as one drop of water does another. She swore to it with such
oaths that you would have believed a peasant at the fair if he had
used them. To tell the plain truth, I didn't believe her; but when
I talked it over next day with the schoolmaster he told me that the
very same thing had happened to Adam and Eve. Two they went
up to bed, and four they descended.
"There isn't a woman in the world who is not the granddaughter
of Eve," he said.
That was how
it
was, they argued me dumb. But then, who
really knows how such things are?
