61MPEL THE FOOL
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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 round 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 in–
justice." 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.
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.
Meantime 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 loud–
mouths of the town that came into the bakery gave me a going
over. All Frampol refreshed its spirits because 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 bagel 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 good-hearted
