Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer Read Free Book Online

his mother-in-law, a woman nearly ninety, deaf, with a waxen, shriveled face, full of moles and clumps of yellowish hair. The ancient stone house where they lived had thick walls and small high windows near the vaulted ceiling. It stood somewhere on the edge of town, near the graveyard. The doorway was low and dark as a cave, and faced a dead-end street. The court was rolling and hillocky, full of pits, and all manner of rags, feather dusters, and rotted sacks were scattered about. Reb Zeydel occupied two rooms, with an entrance off a narrow vestibule. He slept in one of the rooms, which had a wide canopy bed hung with faded red satin draperies, a prayer stand, and a book chest. When Uncle was not busy in his slaughter but he would sit in his bedroom on a shoemaker's round stool and sharpen the greenish blades of his knives on a large, smooth stone. He would test the edges with the nail of his right index finger--allowed to grow long for just that purpose - and listen with his long, hairy ear for sound of a defect in the blade. At other times he would mumble over a holy volume, or prop his forehead on a fist and doze off.
    The anteroom held the household necessaries: a water tun and a large vessel for washing pots and dishes, two benches--one for dairy food, the other for meat--and a broom leaning on a swill heap. The old woman cooked in a deep sooty oven, constantly occupied with long paddles, and eternally muttering. Whenever Rechele wanted to go outside to play, Granny would grab the child with her bony hands, pull her hair, and hiss at her.
    "Sit down, you monster!" she would cry, and pinch Rechele black and blue. "Throw fits and jump as high as a house! May the fit carry you off!"
    Rechele was a stubborn and contrary child; she would not let Granny delouse her, and the old woman had to beat her with a block of wood. In the trough that held the wash water there was always a switch soaking with which the old woman would flog the girl for her wantonness. Every Friday afternoon the old woman would force Rechele to put her head into the trough, now filled with hot water, and Rechele would scream until she was hoarse. To persuade Rechele to remain at home and not go wandering off, the old woman took to terrifying the child.
    She persuaded Rechele that there were graves in the yard where ghosts flew about ceaselessly, seeking bodies to enter. She put a great apron on Rechele as a charm, so that no unholy spirit might possess her, and hung a linen sack with a wolf's tooth in it around her neck. Whenever Granny went away she latched the door from the outside with a wooden peg. Little light entered through the small, dust-covered window near the rafters, and an oil-dipped wick burned constantly in a clay shard. Mice were forever scratching in the narrow, crowded bedroom, and there were other small sounds as though a hand groped its way through the darkness. There was an opening high above the anteroom hearth. Whenever it smoked a chimney sweep would be summoned, who would scramble up and shout down at the old woman as he worked. His eyes all white as though the eyeballs were turned up, he would grimace blackly, like a devil. Granny would stand below him and shake her small fist.
    "Higher!" she would screech. "Higher! Higher!"
    Rechele would hide under the bed when the chimney sweep came, burying herself under a pile of clothing. She feared the broom he pulled out of an iron bucket, was terrified of the heavy smoke-covered ropes he uncoiled, would pale when she heard the stranger stumble over the oven. Often there would be two chimney sweeps: the taller had a bristling mustache, like an insect's. One of the sweeps would crawl out on the roof and the other would thrust his head into the hearth opening and cry up to his partner in a muffled voice as though from a cavern. After they had left, the black prints of their bare feet remained on the floor. The slaughterer would come into the room, a knife in a corner of his mouth. His blood-