She does, however, like the smell of wax—she secretly sniffs every candle—and of mud mixed with horse droppings and—now she knows—of vodka. Solomon, significantly older than she is, with a solid build and a belly, a middle-aged man with a beard, proud of his lovely little wife, brings her a shot of vodka every once in a while. Sheyndel tastes the drink but cannot swallow it. She spits it out on the floor.
When the young wife sits down at Yente’s bedside, Yente’s hand shoots out from underneath the wolfskins and lands on Sheyndel’s belly, although Sheyndel isn’t showing yet. But Yente can see that a separate soul has taken up residence in Sheyndel’s belly, a soul still indistinct, hard to describe because many; these free souls are everywhere, just waiting for the opportunity to grab some unclaimed bit of matter. And now they lick this little lump, which looks a bit like a tadpole, inspecting it, though there is still nothing concrete in it, just shreds, shadows. They probe it, testing. The souls consist of streaks: of images, and recollections, memories of acts, fragments of sentences, letters. Never before has Yente seen this so clearly. Truth be told, Sheyndel, too, gets uncomfortable sometimes, for she, too, can feel their presence—as if dozens of strangers’ hands were pressing on her, as if she were being touched by hundreds of fingers. She doesn’t want to confide in her husband about it—and anyway, she wouldn’t be able to find the words.
While the men sit in one chamber, the women gather in Yente’s room, where they scarcely fit. Every now and then one of them brings in a little bit of vodka from the kitchen, wedding vodka, in semi-secret, like a smuggler, but of course this, too, is part of the fun. Crowded together and excited about the impending festivities, they forget themselves and start to clown around. But it doesn’t seem to bother the ailing Yente—she may even be pleased that she’s become the center of this merriment. Sometimes they glance at her, uneasy, feeling a little guilty as she suddenly dozes off, then a moment later awakes with a childlike smile. Sheyndel gives Hayah a significant look as Hayah straightens the wolfskins on the old woman, wraps her own scarf around Yente’s neck, and sees all the amulets she wears there—little pouches on strings, little pieces of wood with symbols written out on them, figures made of bone. Hayah doesn’t dare to touch them.
The women tell terrible stories—about ghosts, lost souls, people buried alive, ill omens.
“If you only knew how many evil spirits were lurking in a single droplet of your beloved blood, you would all turn over your bodies and your souls at once to the Creator of this world,” says Tzipa, a woman considered learned, wife of Old Notka.
“Where are the spirits?” asks one of the women in a tremulous whisper, and Tzipa picks up a stick off the dirt floor and points at its tip:
“Here! Here they all are, take a good look.”
The women stare at the tip of the stick, their eyes squinting in a funny way; one of the women starts to giggle, and in the light of just a few candles now, they see double or triple, but they don’t see any spirits.
What we read in the Zohar
Elisha, with his eldest son, his cousin Zalman Dobrushka of Moravia, and Israel of Korolówka, who’s pressed his forehead into his forearms so hard that all can see how very guilty he feels, are stewing over an important question: What to do in a home about to host both a wedding and a funeral? The four of them sit huddled together. After a little while the door opens and Rabbi Moshko walks in, shuffling his feet. Rabbi Moshko is particularly knowledgeable about Kabbalah. Israel leaps up to help him over to where they are. There is no need to explain things to the elderly rabbi—everyone knows, it’s all anyone’s been talking about.
They whisper among themselves, until finally Rabbi Moshko begins:
“We read in the Zohar that the two dissolute women who stood before King Solomon with one living child were named Mahalath and Lilith, yes?” The rabbi breaks off inquiringly, as if giving them time to summon up the corresponding passage in their minds.
“The letters of the name Mahalath have a numerical value of 478. Lilith, meanwhile, 480, yes?”
They nod. They know now what he’s going to say.
“When a person takes part in a wedding celebration, he rejects the witch Mahalath with her 478 demon companions, while when a person mourns someone close, he overcomes the witch Lilith with her 480 demon companions. This is why we find in Kohelet 7:2 that ‘it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart.’”
Which means: They should call off the wedding and wait for the funeral instead.
Dobrushka gives a knowing look to his cousin Elisha and then gazes up at the ceiling emphatically, disappointed by the verdict. He cannot simply sit around here forever. He has his tobacco business in Prossnitz, in Moravia, which he really has to keep on top of. And delivery of traditionally prepared wine for all the local Jews there, on which he enjoys a monopoly. These relatives of his wife’s here are nice people, but simple folk, a little backward, superstitious. His Turkish concerns are doing well with them, so he decided to come and visit. But he cannot simply sit around for all eternity. What if it snows? As a matter of fact, no one is pleased by this outcome. Everyone wants the wedding, and they want it now. They can’t wait, everything is ready.
Elisha Shorr is certainly not happy with the verdict. The wedding must take place.
Once he is alone, he summons Hayah, she will advise him, and as he waits for her, he flips through the pages of that priest’s book, of which he cannot understand a single word.
Of the swallowed amulet
In the night, when everyone has gone to sleep, Elisha Shorr, writing by candlelight, scratches out the following letters on a tiny piece of paper: