310
PARTISAN REVIEW
Before I could move, her little brother sprang out from behind
the oven and struck me a blow on the back of the head. I thought
he had broken my neck. I felt that something about me was deeply
wrong, and I said, "Don't make a scandal. All that's needed now
is
that people should accuse me of raising spooks and
Dybbuks."
For
that was what she had meant. "No one will touch bread of my
baking."
In short, I somehow calmed her.
"Well," she said, "that's enough. Lie down, and be shattered by
wheels."
Next morning I called the apprentice aside. "Listen here,
brother!" I said. And so on and so forth. "What do you say?" He
stared .at me as though I had dropped from the roof or something.
"I swear!" he said. "You'd better go to a herb-doctor or some
healer. I'm afraid you have a screw loose, but I'll hush it up for
you." And that's how the thing stood.
To make a long story short, I lived twenty years with my wife.
She bore me six children, four daughters and two sons. All
kinds
of things happened, but I neither saw nor heard. I believed, and
that's all. The rabbi recently said to me, "Belief in itself is beneficial.
It is written that a saint lives by his faith."
Suddenly my wife took sick. It began with a trifle, a little growth
upon the breast. But she evidently was not destined to live long;
she had no years. I spent a fortune on her. I have forgotten to say
that by this time I had a bakery of my own, and was considered
in
Frampol to be something of a rich man. Daily the healer came, and
every witch-doctor in the neighborhood was brought. They decided
to use leeches, and after that to try cupping. They even called a doctor
from Lublin, but it was too late. Before she died she called me to
her bed and said, "Forgive me, Gimpel."
I said, "What is there to forgive? You have been a good and
faithful wife."
"Woe, Gimpel," she said, "it was ugly how I deceived you all
these years. I want to go clean to my Maker, .and so I have to tell
you that the children are not yours."
If
I had been clouted on the head with a piece of wood, it
couldn't have bewildered me more.
"Whose are they?-" I asked.
