How could they have brought along this old woman with so little life left in her, thinks Asher. She looks like a shriveled-up old mushroom, with her wrinkled brown face, and the candlelight further and more cruelly carves it up, until gradually the woman ceases to appear human; Asher has the sense that soon she will be indistinguishable from nature—from tree bark, gnarled wood, a rough stone.
She is obviously well taken care of here. After all, as Elisha Shorr explained to Asher, Yente’s father and Elisha Shorr’s grandfather, Zalman Naftali Shorr—the same man who wrote the famous Tevu’at Shorr—were brothers. So there was nothing surprising in her wanting to attend her relative’s wedding, since there would be cousins from Moravia and from distant Lublin here, as well. Asher crouches beside the low bed and immediately smells the saltiness of human sweat and—he thinks for a moment, looking for the right association—childhood. At her age, people start to smell like children again. He knows there is nothing wrong with this woman—she’s simply dying. He examines her carefully and finds nothing other than old age. Her heart is beating unevenly and weakly, as if out of exhaustion. Her skin is clear, but thin and dry like parchment. Her eyes are glassy, sunken. Her temples are sinking, too, and that’s a sure sign of impending death. From under the slightly unbuttoned shirt at her throat he can see some strings and knots. He touches one of the old woman’s clenched fists, and for a moment she resists, but then, as if ashamed, her fist blossoms open like a dry desert rose. In her palm lies a piece of silk cloth, completely covered in thickly made letters:
It almost seems to him that Yente is smiling at him with her toothless mouth, and her deep, dark eyes reflect the candles’ burning; Asher feels as if that reflection were reaching him from very far away, from the unfathomable depths that all human beings hold within them.
“What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with her?” Elisha asks him, suddenly bursting into that cramped little space.
Asher rises slowly and looks into his anxious face.
“What do you think? She’s dying. She won’t last the wedding.”
Asher Rubin makes a face that speaks for itself: Why would they have brought her here in such a state?
Elisha grabs him by the elbow and takes him aside.
“You have your methods, don’t you, that we don’t know. Help us, Asher, please. The meat has already been chopped, the carrots peeled. The raisins are soaking in their bowls, the women are cleaning the carp. Did you see how many guests there are?”
“Her heart is barely beating,” says Rubin. “There’s nothing I can do. She should never have been brought on such a journey.”
He delicately frees his elbow from the grasp of Elisha Shorr and heads for the door.
Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges.
He is thirty-five, but he looks a lot older. The last few years have hunched him over and made him go completely gray—before, his hair was jet-black. He’s also having trouble with his teeth. Sometimes, too, when it’s wet out, the joints in his fingers swell; he is delicate, he has to take care of himself. He has managed to avoid marriage. His fiancée died while he was studying. He barely knew her, so her death did not sadden him. Since then he has been left in peace.
He comes from Lithuania. Because he did well in school, his family collected funds in order for him to continue his education abroad. So he went to study in Italy, though he did not finish. He developed a sort of generalized incapacity. He barely had enough strength, as he was returning, to make it to Rohatyn, where his uncle Anczel Lindner sewed vestments for Orthodox popes and was well-off enough to take him in under his roof. Here Rubin started to feel a little like himself again. Despite the fact that he had a few years of medical studies behind him by then, he had no idea what was wrong with him. An incapacity, an inability. His hand would be lying before him on the table, and he would not have the strength to raise it. He didn’t have the strength to open his eyes. His aunt smeared sheep’s fat with herbs on his eyelids several times a day, and this brought him slowly back to life. The knowledge imparted to him by his Italian university came back to him bit by bit, and eventually he started treating people himself. This is going well for him now, although he feels trapped in Rohatyn, as if he were an insect slipped into resin and frozen for all time.
In the beth midrash
Elisha Shorr, whose long beard gives him the look of a patriarch, is holding his granddaughter up in the air, tickling her stomach with his nose. The little girl giggles, showing her still-toothless gums. She leans her head back, and her laughter fills the whole room. It sounds like doves cooing. Then droplets start to fall onto the floor from her diaper, and her grandfather rushes to pass her to her mother, Hayah. Hayah passes her along again to the other women, and the little one vanishes into the depths of the house, a trickle of urine marking her path along the worn floorboards.
Shorr must step out of the house and into the chilly October afternoon in order to cross over to the next building, where the beth midrash is located, and from which come, as usual, many male voices, sometimes raised and impatient, so that one might be excused for mistaking this reading and studying area for some sort of bazaar. He goes to the children, to the room where they are being taught to read. The family has many children—Elisha alone has nine grandchildren already. He believes that children should be kept on a tight leash. Studying, reading, and prayer until noon. Then they work in the store, help around the house, and learn to do practical things, like bills and commercial correspondence. But also working with the horses, chopping wood for the stove and making even stacks of it, performing little household repairs. They have to know how to do everything, because any and all of it could come in handy. A man has to be independent, self-sufficient, and ought to know a little bit about a lot. He also has to have one real skill that will allow him to make a living when he needs to—this is to be determined according to talent. You have to pay careful attention to whatever the child becomes really attached to and fond of—this is a method that can’t lead astray. Elisha lets the girls study, too, but not all of them, and not together with the boys. His eagle eye gets straight to the heart of things, and he can see clearly which of the girls will make a clever pupil. On those with less aptitude, those more frivolous, there is no sense in wasting time, as they will still make good wives and will bear many children.