THE DIARY OF ONE NOT BORN
143
salt or sugar. In a second I had become a calf, and I'll give you three
guesses where he was licking me. When he saw what he was doing,
the
poor wretch nearly went crazy. His hands and feet began to
tremble. "What's going on here?" he cried. "Where the devil am
I?" Suddenly I flapped my wings and flew away like an eagle. The
drayman arrived home a sick man. And now he goes around with
an amulet and a piece of charmed amber, but they'll do him as
much good as cupping a corpse.
One winter I came to the village of Turbin, in the form of a
solicitor collecting for the needy in the Holy Land. I went from
house to house, opening the metal alms-boxes which hung on the
doors and taking out the small change, mostly worn half-pennies.
From one of the houses came the smell of an overheated oven. The
owner was a maiden in her thirties, both of whose parents were dead.
She supported herself by baking cookies for the yeshivah students.
She was short and stout, with a large bosom and an even larger what–
do-you-call-it. The house was warm, the air redolent of cinnamon
and poppy seeds, and it occurred to me that there would be nothing
to be lost by marrying this old maid for a while. I smoothed my red
sidelocks, combed my beard with my fingers, blew my frostbitten
nose, and had a chat with the girl. One word led to another-I told
her I was a childless widower. "I'm not a big earner, but I have a
few hundred gulden in a purse behind my fringed garment."
"Is your wife dead long?" she asks, and I answer, "It'll be
three years the Fast of Esther."
She asks, "What was the matter with her?" and I reply, "She
died in childbirth," and groan.
She can see that I'm an honest fellow-why else would a man
mourn three years after his wife? In short, it's a match. The women
of
the town take the orphan under their wings. They collect a
dowry for her. They supply her with tablecloths, napkins, sheets,
shirts, petticoats, drawers. And since she is a
virgin,
they erect the
wedding canopy in the synagogue court. The wedding presents are
given, everyone dances with the newlyweds, and the bride
is
carried
off to her bedroom. "Good luck!" the best man says to me. "I hope
next year there'll be a circumcision feast!"
The guests leave. The night
is
long and dark. The bedroom
is
wann as an oven and black as Egypt. My bride
is
already in bed,
under a down quilt (she had plucked the down herself), waiting for
