Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer Read Free Book Online Page A

stiff coat covered with feathers would creak as he bent to go through the low door. He would grumble: "How much did you give the dogs?"
    "A half penny and a handful of chaff," the old woman would respond, thrusting out her chin. There was not a tooth in her shrunken mouth.
    It was terrifying at night when Rechele had to lie down in the bench-bed to sleep with the old woman. Uncle snored loudly in the bedroom, wheezing as though he choked and groaning in his sleep, and the old woman dallied over her prayers, as she turned restlessly from side to side. She smelled of burned feathers and mice. Sometimes she would lift the child's shift and run her dead hands over the girl's hot body, cackling with impure delight: "Fire! Fire! The girl's burning up!"
    As they lay under the feather bed, in the pitch dark, the old woman would tell Rechele stories of wild beasts and goblins; of robbers that lived in caves with witches; of man-eaters that roasted children on spits; and of a wild one-eyed monster that stalked about with a fir tree in its hand looking for a lost princess. Sometimes from her sleep Granny would cry out wildly and incoherently. The roots of Rechele's hair would tingle with terror, and, her whole body a-quiver, she would wake up the old woman with the cry: "Granny? What are you saying? Granny?
    "Granny, I'm afraid!"

    8

    Rechele in Lublin

    When Rechele was twelve years old the old woman died. For three days she lay on a bench bed in the anteroom, gasping her last. Her small head was. bound with a red kerchief, her wrinkled face was stiff as a corpse, her chin pointed up, and her open eyes, with the eyeballs turned back, appeared entirely white. That happened during the Ten Days of Penitence between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. From the slaughter but in the yard the cackling of roosters could be heard, mingled with the shouting of housewives and servant maids. Rarely did anyone glance in at the dying woman, for everyone was busy. Reb Zeydel Ber, her son-in-law, all smeared with blood, would dash into the anteroom from time to time, beard flying, red eyelids gleaming under bushy eye-brows. Drawing a goosefeather from his breast, he would hold it near the dying woman's nostrils to see whether she was still breathing, examine her expertly, and sigh: "Ah, well, it's a story without an end!"
    Uncle Reb Zeydel Ber was as usual before the high holy day, when he was slaughtering atonement roosters whilst the women burdened him with their haste and idle talk. Moreover, young Rechele was burning the meals she cooked for him, because she was tired. Apprehensively she kept the wick burning all night and sat until dawn on the bench enveloped in a shawl. The cricket behind the wall oven chirped even more demandingly than ever. Time and again, from the alcove Uncle would cry out in his sleep, as though he were conversing intermittently with some-one. Rechele was well aware that the room was crowded with evil things. The brooms and mops stirred; long shadows swept along the walls like apparitions from another world. Now and again the old woman raised her upper lip in a horrifying smile. She thrust out her waxen hand from under the feather bed, clutched at the air, and then clenched her fingers as though she had caught something. The old woman died in the early morning on the day before Yom Kippur. At once diligent women from the burial society arrived, wearing enormous aprons that encircled their bodies. They heated kettles of water for the ritual of purification, and the room was filled with thick steam, wet rags, and straw. One woman opened the chest and drew out a suit of full under- hose that had been sewed in a shroud stitch and a mitre, which the old woman had prepared in advance; another woman carried a black stretcher into the room. Rechele was sent off to a distant relation of Reb Zeydel Ber's. The funeral took place at once and Reb Zeydel Ber recited the mourner's prayer. Just before sundown Uncle sent for Rechele to be brought