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Authors: Isaac Bashevis Singer

BOOK: More Stories from My Father's Court
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Husband and wife came—separately—into our apartment and at once began bad-mouthing each other. She was young but wore an old-fashioned woman's cap and had an old face, teary eyes, and a reddish nose. She blew her nose into her handkerchief and complained to my mother.
“He's a sadist, a murderer. He's not a human being but a killer.”
“What does he do to you?”
“He sucks my blood.”
“For example?”
“I can't describe it. He sucks his fill of me like a leech. He's only good to me when he wants me.”
The young woman whispered something into Mother's ear. Mother nodded, a sign that such is a woman's lot in life.
“Rebbetzin, he sucks the life out of me and for no good reason. I want to run away. But where would I run to? When parents give their daughter away, they no longer want to see her again. We had a goy in the house who used to say, ‘When you throw out garbage, you don't want it back.'”
“A person isn't garbage,” Mother said resolutely.
“When you have five daughters you want to send them away and hear good news from them—from far off. My mother is a fine woman, but she can also be so cutting that you feel it in your gut. Here I'm mistress of my own household.”
“You're right. One mustn't rush into such things,” Mother agreed. “Sometimes a person behaves terribly, then suddenly becomes good. Men don't articulate what troubles them. They hold everything in.”
“He comes here to see you. What does he say?” the woman asked.
“He doesn't say anything bad, God forbid.”
“Still, what does he say?”
“He complains about other people—not about you.”
“That's here. But at home I'm the sacrificial chick. It's my fault they didn't appoint him a licensed city
shochet.
He walks around with the slaughtering knife in hand and sometimes I get the feeling he wants to slaughter me, God forbid.”
Mother shuddered. “Pardon me, but you're talking nonsense.”
“I'm afraid of him. All he does is sharpen his knives and test them on his fingernail. He's no saint, Rebbetzin. He trims his beard.”
Mother's face paled. “What are you talking about?”
“How else would he get that rounded little beard?” the woman informed on him. “He cuts it. He cuts it. He eats before morning prayers, too.”
Mother began adjusting her wig. “I don't want to hear any more.”
“Rebbetzin, he came to me during my unclean days.”
Mother threw an angry glance at me. “Why are you standing here? Go back to your books. Don't hang around the house all day like an old granny.”
I went down to the courtyard and pondered: What are “unclean days”? And what's the meaning of “he came to me”? Since they live together, he's always with her anyway. Grownups have such bizarre secrets.
A couple of days later, Wolf the slaughterer came to our apartment. He was a man of average height, rather chubby, with a rounded beard, red cheeks, and bulging, baggy eyes. His glance was hard and cold, like that of a dead fish. He rolled his
r'
s, and words came out of his mouth and thick lips like little stones.
“Things are no good. They're bad. Awful. First the precinct captain comes and then the cop. And each one's palm has to be greased. If not, I can't work. If you slaughter without a permit, you get three months in jail. The goose dealers know this and they make a fool of me. They pay me half the fee they offer the licensed city slaughterers. They're roughnecks who have no respect for anyone. The worst riffraff in Warsaw! They fiddle away a few hours and pocket fifty rubles a week while I slave well into the night and barely cover my expenses. I find it hard to buy clothes. Working in the cellar is ruining my eyes. And to top it off, my wife is a spendthrift. All she does is buy buy buy and throw money around. People assume that slaughterers roll in money, but I'm still a debtor.”
Father listened while perusing a holy book. He had no patience for that piddling
shochet
or his stories. Nevertheless, when a Jew comes in, he can't be thrown out, God forbid.
Mother also sat at the table. “A woman has a better feel for what's needed in a house than a man,” she said. “It's best when a man doesn't interfere with the running of a household.”
“If I didn't she'd spend our last penny. Normal women shop when they need something. But she buys just like that. It's a kind of madness. We have enough meat in the house. A
shochet
never lacks for meat. I get chickens, geese, ducks, even a turkey for Pesach. Why do we need beef if we can eat chicken every day? But still she runs to the butcher shop every single day and buys a piece of beef, kishka, and who knows what else! If only she'd eat it. But she just sniffs it and puts it aside, which is bearable during the winter; but meat spoils in summer and starts to smell … and that causes the worst illnesses.”
I too listened, and concluded that both sides were right. But I didn't understand why he comes to her during her unclean days, I nearly asked, but I kept silent.
For a while no one spoke. The wick in the lamp sucked the kerosene. Then Wolf the
shochet
said, “I've been advised to go to America.” He pronounced “America” with a hard rolled
r
.
“To America, of all places?”
“Slaughterers make a fortune over there.”
“In America one cannot be a Jew,” said Father.
“They're Jews, they're Jews,” Wolf the
shochet
replied. “A
shochet
there is also a
mohel,
a profession that makes one rich. I once knew a little
shochet,
a perfect shlimazel, a clumsy oaf. He once slaughtered a rooster, and even though its throat was slit, it ran around and crowed. It even leaned over and ate.”
The colors in Mother's face changed. “Don't tell us such stories!”
“But it's the truth. The shlimazel didn't make the incision in the proper place. He couldn't work as a slaughterer after that, so he went off to America. In New York he became a rich man. There a
shochet
doesn't even wear a beard.”
“They shave off their beards?” Father cried out.
“They say it's done with some kind of powder. We got a photograph of him and he's standing there with a naked face, looking like a dandy from Marshalkovska Street. I couldn't recognize him at all. He also divorced his wife and married a New York girl.”
“And what happened to the first wife?” Mother asked.
“Who knows?”
My tongue itched. I wanted to call out, You cut your beard, too! But I restrained myself with all my might.
Then Father said, “What does all this come down to? We don't live forever and ultimately we'll have to give an accounting. People don't live forever in America either.”
“No, but as long as one lives, one really lives!” Wolf the
shochet
maintained. “A
shochet
there is like a municipal scribe here. He puts in his couple of hours and then is free to do what he wants. The
shochtim
there wear modern clothes like Frenchmen or Germans, and take strolls in the park with their wives. And when they slaughter they wear white aprons.”
“But who inspects their slaughtering knives?”
“Who needs inspections? The
shochet
himself knows the law. And if he doesn't know it, then too bad. In America a
shochet
does not study
Tevuos Shor.
He just looks through a little rule book or studies the
Yoreh De'ah
and the
Be'er Hetev.
And it goes
without saying that he doesn't consult the
Pri Megadim
1
either. The main thing over there is to do everything quickly. The goyim kill their animals with a machine …”
“Enough!”
The
shochet
left. A couple of days later his wife returned. “Rebbetzin, I can't take it anymore.”
She didn't yell and didn't cry but hissed like a goose, spat like a snake. She put a finger to her throat signaling how high the water had risen.
“What is it now?” Mother asked.
“Rebbetzin, he wants to go to America. What should I do? How can I go there? Either he's crazy—may it happen to my enemies!—or he's a heretic. There's a dybbuk in him, no doubt about it, an evil spirit. What should I do? To whom should I go? Warsaw is such a big city.”
“Does he want to go alone?”
“You think I'm going to go to America with him? Warsaw isn't
trayf
enough? I need America? Jews there work on the Sabbath, woe unto us! People walk upside down there, head on the ground, feet in the air. Everyone talks English and only the devil understands them. I'm not going to America.”
“And he really wants to go?”
“Rebbetzin, if he says he'll go, he'll go. Every other day another crazy notion takes hold of him. Now he wants to buy a gramophone, where music comes out of a huge trumpet. I tell
him, Where in the world did you ever hear that a
shochet
should have something like that? That's more appropriate for beardless musicians. But it's like talking to the wall. He wants to give in to conversion. Rebbetzin, the truth is—he wants a new wife!”
The
shochet's
wife began to sob and blow her nose into her handkerchief with a harsh, grating sound. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Does he want a divorce?” Mother asked.
“Why shouldn't he? He's got a hankering for a young one. He wants a loose girl, a bareheaded piece who doesn't keep Yiddishkeit. In America a
shochet
's wife walks around with uncovered, messy hair and they go the the theater together … Who knows if they have a ritual bath over there? It's a topsy-turvy world over there, and that's where he wants to run off to and leave me here a deserted wife … So tell me what should I do?”
“Let him give you money.”
“He says he doesn't have any money. And if he does, I don't know where he keeps it. He cries he's in debt. How much do we need? We're only two. He slaughters all day long. He makes a living, he does. He puts money away, but if I buy half a pound of meat because chickens are coming out of my nose, he starts raving and ranting. Rebbetzin, it's not right to say so, but I don't want to eat the fowl that he's slaughtered. He's corrupt. I want glatt kosher meat under the strictest supervision. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, fasted every Monday and Thursday. When he died they put a Talmud folio on his stretcher. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, was a saintly, upstanding
woman. In our house, three days before Pesach they kashered the stove till it glowed. We didn't even eat knaydls until the last day of the holiday. In America he'll become completely wild. If he trims his beard here, what will he do there?”
“This is not a good situation,” Mother said.
“Should I divorce him?”
“It's certainly better than remaining an
agunah,
a deserted wife.”
The
shochet'
s wife left. We heard her crying on the stairwell. I went out into the courtyard, and of their own accord my feet led me to the dark cellar where Wolf was slaughtering. At first I couldn't see a thing, but soon my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The cellar was full of blood and feathers and stacked cages filled with live fowl. Wolf stood working next to a washtub brimming with blood. He seized a chicken forcefully and, it seemed to me, with anger. He turned its head back, flicked out a little feather, made a cut, and threw the chicken to a girl in a bloody jacket who plucked feathers. She had a big bosom, thick hands, a broad neck, red cheeks, and eyes as black as cherries. Sitting on a kind of shoemaker's bench, she plucked with a murderous fury while the bird was still quivering and thrashing about.
I watched open-mouthed. A moment ago the bird had been alive and a minute later all its feathers were gone. The other birds stuck their heads out of the cages, looked around, clucked, and closed their red lids. How could God see all this and remain silent? I asked myself. Why did He need such a world? Why did He create all this? And who would repay all these little chickens for their suffering? I was angry at Wolf the
shochet
for committing
these murders. I recalled that he came to his wife during her unclean days and felt nauseous.
A couple of months later Wolf divorced his wife and gave her several hundred rubles. Even before he left for America, he began wearing Western dress in Warsaw, parading around the courtyard in a short jacket, long trousers, and polished boots. From the vest covering his fat paunch dangled the chain of a pocket watch. Word had spread that Wolf was having a love affair with the feather plucker and planned on taking her to America. My mother went to the window and gazed down at the transformed Wolf the
shochet,
who had abandoned all shame. She wanted Father to come to the window, too, but he said, “What for? It's a waste of time.”

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