146
PARTISAN REVIEW
ever heard of a town letting a girl stay unmarried until she's over
thirty and having her bake cookies for the yeshivah students?"
My wife realizes that I'm trying to ruin her business, too, and
she rushes up to me with clenched fists. She's ready to hit me, and
she would have, if she hadn't been restrained.
"Now, people," I scream. "See how shameless she is?"
By now it's apparent to everyone that I'm the honorable one,
not she. In short, the r.abbi says, "We still have a God in heaven.
Divorce her and get rid of her."
"I beg your pardon," I say, "but I had expenses. The wedding
cost me a good hundred gulden."
And so the bargaining begins. From her cookie baking my wife
has managed to save, penny by penny, some seventy-odd gulden.
They urge me to settle for that, but I'm adamant.
"Let her sell the wedding presents," I say.
And the girl shrieks: "Take everything! Tear out my insides!"
And she claws at her face and cries out: "Oh, mother, I wish I
were lying in the grave with you!" She beats her fists on the table,
overturning the ink bottle, and sobs:
"If
this could happen to me,
there's no God."
The beadle dashes over and slaps her, and she falls to the
floor, her dress pulled up, her kerchief off her head. They try to lift
her up, but she kicks, flails her arms and laments: "You're not
Jews, but beasts!"
Nevertheless, that evening I collect my hundred gulden. The
scribe sits down to write out the divorce papers. Suddenly I an–
nounce that I have to go out for a moment-and I never return. They
search for me half the night. They call me, halloo after me, they
hunt high and low. My wife becomes a permanent grass widow.
And so, to spite God, the town and her own bad luck, she throws
herself into the well.
Asmodeus himself praised my little job.
"Not bad," he said. "You're on the way." And he sent me to
Machlath, the daughter of Namah, the she-devil who teaches young
demons the paths of corruption.
(Translated from the Yiddish by Nancy E. Gross)
