Mameh poured herself another glass of wine and glanced briefly at him from over the rim.
“Well,” Hershel continued a little doubtfully, “Let’s just say that a young girl gets ideas in her head. Maybe she starts to think she doesn’t want to be with such an old man. Maybe her eyes wander over the fence where the grass is greener. Maybe they linger a little too long on the glazer’s son.” His voice trailed off and they sat there in silence, mulling over the implications.
After dinner they moved across the room to the settee and chairs. Hershel declined Tateh’s offer of the wing chair and pulled over one of the chairs from the table. “You know a Rabbi Liebermann from Dunivits?” he asked his host, once they were all settled.
“I think I’ve heard of him. Is he famous?”
“A little famous.” His eyes flicked over to Mameh, who was mending one of Tateh’s shirts. There was a rust-colored rip on the sleeve as if stained by old blood. “So you haven’t heard about his son?”
“I didn’t know he had a son.”
“Oh yes, he had a good son. A promising scholar they say, until the trouble started. All out of the blue like that. Without warning. Shocked everybody. No one could understand how one day he could be himself, a good, obedient boy, and the next… disrespectful to his mother, shouting out obscenities in shul. And you have to remember this was from a boy who never did anything wrong in his whole life.”
“How old was he?” asked Lhaye.
“Thirteen, fourteen. He was already promised to the daughter of a rich textile merchant. Of course, his father didn’t want the girl’s family finding out about it and calling off the wedding. He tried beating the boy, but the outrages only continued. Soon he was laughing at funerals and once he molested the serving girl, a shikse no less, and was even suspected of stealing money from the owner of a ribbon factory. Naturally the rabbi was at his wit’s end. He was just about to give up and send the boy to an asylum, when it came to him.”
“What?”
Here he paused for effect. “That his son was possessed by a succubus.”
Silence.
Mameh held the needle in midair. Lhaye stared at Hershel, her lips slightly parted. Berta burst out laughing.
Tateh straightened. “Berta…”
“You don’t believe in this nonsense.”
“Reb Alshonsky is our guest.”
“But he doesn’t believe in it either. He’s just having fun with us. It’s ludicrous, and he knows it.”
“No, she’s right. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought the boy was bad or crazy or had eaten something that made him sick or some other perfectly rational explanation. But then I was there in Dunivits on the night they performed the exorcism and I saw it all with my own eyes.”
“Oh, please… there’s no such thing as a succubus. It’s a fairy story to scare children.”
Mameh turned on her daughter. “Listen to you… such a maivin. You would be wise not to laugh at such things, my girl. You do not know everything.” Then she turned to Hersheclass="underline" “Please excuse my daughter. She speaks out of turn. It’s one of her many faults.” These were the first words she had spoken to him all evening. When Hershel’s eyes flicked over to Berta with an unmistakable look of triumph, she realized what he had been up to and sucked in a smile.
THAT NIGHT she lay next to Lhaye, listening to Hershel tossing and turning across the hall, the straw mattress rustling under his body. She pictured him, bare chested, rolling to one side then the other, pulling up the covers and throwing them off again.
Finally she fell asleep and woke up sometime in the middle of the night to the sound of an animal whimpering in pain. At first she couldn’t place it. She thought it might’ve been the little whistle Lhaye made when she slept, but then she heard it again. It was Hershel groaning in his sleep. When the groaning grew louder and threatened to wake the household, she rose and put a shawl on over her nightdress, her hair hanging in a thick braid down her back, and went out into the freezing hall. She shivered in her bare feet, her breath visible in the frosty air. When she pulled back the curtain she found him asleep on his side. She reached out and shook his shoulder. “Wake up… Hershel, wake up.”
He opened his eyes and grabbed her arm. For an instant, he didn’t recognize her.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You had a dream.”
“I know. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Go back to sleep.”
She went back to bed and wanted to think about what she had just seen, but soon she too was drifting off. She was still aware of the bed and Lhaye sleeping next to her but also of a swirl of shapes behind her closed eyes. The shapes soon merged and became recognizable objects: a chair, the kitchen stove, a country road.
HERSHEL CAME back a few weeks later and told them a story about a miracle rabbi who had saved a town from a pogrom by casting a spell on the pogromists. That night Mameh served chicken and it wasn’t even Shabbes. The lace runner was proudly displayed on the table. Mameh listened to the story with slightly parted lips, her eyes fixed on her guest, her pupils dilated in the dim light, listening to every detail while her chicken got cold. Mameh was a great believer in miracle rabbis.
After dinner she invited Hershel to sit with her on the settee. “Here. On this side,” she said, plumping up the one pillow. Tateh was no longer wearing his good coat. He sat in his armchair and quietly nodded off. The girls were in the kitchen.
“Shall I tell you about the pauper who died in Esther Churgin’s shed?” he asked. He sat back on the pillow, propped his elbow up, and dropped his chin on his hand.
“I knew Esther Churgin when I was a girl,” Mameh said, picking up her mending. The light behind her threw a halo around her untidy hair and softened the lines around her mouth. The lighting and her eager anticipation made her look almost like a girl. “She married my cousin’s half brother. I heard they went to live in Kiev. But then he died and I haven’t heard another thing about her.”
“Then this should interest you.”
He told her a story about a pauper who had come to Esther Churgin begging for a place to stay. She let him have the shed in the back and even gave him a few sticks of wood for the stove. “Apparently, his heart gave out during the night, for when she went out to get him for breakfast, she found him dead on the straw.”
Mameh tsked as she continued to sew.
“But that’s not the end of it. When the porters came to take him away, guess what they found in his pockets…” Here his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “A big pile of rubles.”
She looked up. “Big? How big?”
“More than you ever saw in your whole life.”
“Was she allowed to keep them?”
“Of course. It was her shed, wasn’t it? And her pauper. The man had no family. No one to leave them to. It was only right and proper that she should get the money, especially when you consider that she was kind enough to give him a place to die. In fact, to this day, they say that because of her generosity she is now the richest woman on Slavyanskaya.”
“I had no idea.”
After that there was a story about a witch who turned babies into bats and more stories about angels, magic, and mayhem, a sudden turn of fortune, and a miraculous healing. Soon Mameh was looking forward to his visits and making the dishes he liked best. If he didn’t come, which often happened for two or three weeks at a time, she’d ask Tateh if he had heard from Reb Alshonsky, was he held up by business, would he be coming soon? She often said that she was worried about him, but really she was worried about missing the news.
“I WAS THINKING, maybe I could come live with you once you’re married?” Lhaye asked. She was stretched out the bed next to Berta. It was late and they had blown out the candle to save the wax. Outside the night was still and the square was deserted. A mockingbird was protesting some disturbance, running through his repertoire of songs in hopes of attracting a mate even at this late hour.