606
PARTISAN REVIEW
servants . And only the nanny remained, an old woman , deaf and
half blind.
"That winter was one of the coldest. The seeds in the fields
froze. So much snow fell that many houses became snowed-under
and the people had to dig themselves out. In the midst of this cold
spell, Chwalski did not miss a day at the cemetery . One day
Chwalski took a spade to the cemetery, most probably to shovel the
snow away from the grave and the headstone.
It
was strange to see a
squire carrying a spade over his shoulder, but people had become
accustomed to his idiosyncrasies . He often spent all day at the
cemetery and sometimes late into the night . Gradually, it became
warmer and the snow melted. The water flowed over the village like
a nver .
"One time after Passover the cemetery watchman came to the
police and reported that the earth around Aliza's grave had been
tampered with. There were thieves at that time who stole corpses
from graves and sold them to doctors who used the bodies to perform
autopsies . But those vandals only stole fresh corpses. Who would
perform an autopsy on a corpse which is already decayed? In Turbin
people said that Aliza rose up from the grave and roamed the city at
night. When such talk begins, witnesses immediately emerge: this
one saw her, that one heard her. She was standing on the bridge, she
was washing linen by the river, she was knocking at someone's shut–
ter. The rumors reached Chwalski and he only shouted: 'Idiots, I
refuse to listen to such superstition.'
"Nu, but when an entire town talks it is not baseless. The Rus–
sian authorities ordered a few soldiers to dig under the headstone
and to open the coffin.
"When Chwalski heard this he became wild with anger , but he
seemed to have forgotten that Poland was no longer independent.
The Russian soldiers pushed him back, dragged out the coffin ,
unscrewed the lid, and the casket was found to be empty . Half the
town came running together to look at the black wonder. Somebody
had stolen Aliza out from the grave. You could never imagine the
things that went on every day in Turbin. They ran to tell Chwalski
the news, but he hollered like a madman . Reb Betzalel was still
alive , but he was no longer a court-Jew. For a few days the whole
town was boiling like a kettle. Jews were afraid that false accusations
would be brought against them. There were already those who
barked that the Jews used her blood for matzohs .
"In the middle of all this a new commotion broke out in the
