"What happened?" Zeinvel asked.

"Something with a dybbuk."

"A dybbuk in Lithuania?"

"Yes, in Lithuania. I had been told that the Litvaks didn't believe in dybbuks. The Vilna Gaon didn't believe in such things, and from the Vilna Gaon to God is but one step. But what the eyes see can't be denied. The name of the village was Zabrynka. When Yontche and I got there, the ritual slaughterer invited us for the Sabbath repast. In Lithuania a Sabbath guest doesn't sleep in the poorhouse. A bed is made up for him at his host's house. The slaughterer's name was Bunem Leib, and his wife's Hiene-a name not heard in our parts. They had only one daughter, Freidke, a short girl with red hair and freckles. She was already engaged to a youth who was studying slaughtering under her father. His name was Chlavna. In Lithuania they have the queerest names. He was a handsome young man-tall, dark, well dressed. In Lithuania no one wears a satin robe on the Sabbath, unless maybe a rabbi. Nor are their earlocks as long as here in Poland. Everything with them is different. We put sugar into gefilte fish, they put pepper.

"Yontche was a glutton. The moment he entered a house, he took right to the food. I like to look around. I noticed that Freidke was madly in love with Chlavna. She never took her eyes off him. Her eyes were blue, sharp, and kind of melancholy. Why? It's in my nature that I notice things whether they concern me or not. A healthy young fellow should have an appetite, but it struck me that Chlavna hardly ate a thing. Whatever was served him, he left over-the Sabbath loaf, the soup, the meat, even the carrot stew. When Hiene served him a glass of tea, his hand trembled so that he spilled it on the tablecloth. Eh, I thought, a slaughterer's hand shouldn't tremble. That won't do.

"Yontche and I celebrated the Sabbath there, and after the Sabbath we went our way. We didn't know it then, but that winter was our last together. We hadn't had much luck in Lithuania, and Yontche acted more like a coachman than like a rabbi. Usually when I left a town I soon forgot everyone there, but I sat in the sleigh thinking about Freidke and Chlavna and I knew somehow that I'd be coming back to Zabrynka. But why? What did these strangers mean to me?

"We came to another town and there I really quarreled with Yontche, and told him that he was an outcast and that he should go to blazes. I felt so downhearted I went to a tavern. I sat down, took a shot of vodka, and someone came up to me-a little shipping agent-and said, 'You don't recognize me, but we met in Zabrynka. You are the beadle.'

" 'What's happening in Zabrynka?' I asked, and he said, 'You haven't heard the news? A dybbuk has entered the slaughterer's daughter.'

" 'A dybbuk?' I said. 'In Freidke?'

"And he told me this story: That Sabbath night, soon after we had left town, the butchers brought to Bunem Leib a large black bull with spiral horns, a tough beast. Since Freidke's fiance, Chlavna, had learned the craft, with all its laws, and had already slaughtered several calves, Bunem Leib decided to let him slaughter it. When a bull is slaughtered, the butchers tie him with ropes, throw him to the ground, and hold him until he bleeds to death. But when Chlavna made the benediction and slashed the bull's throat the animal tore loose, lunged to its feet, and began to run round with such fury that he nearly brought down the slaughterhouse. He went racing across the marketplace and cracked a lamppost and overturned a wagon. All this time, the blood gushed from him as if from a tap. After a long chase, the butchers caught him and dragged him back to the slaughterhouse, already a carcass. Only then did they discover that Chlavna had vanished. Someone said that he was seen leaning over the well. Others saw him running toward the river. They searched with poles, but he wasn't found. The rabbi examined the knife Chlavna used and he found the blade jagged. The bull was declared unkosher. The butchers fell into such a rage against Bunem Leib for turning the job over to Chlavna that they shattered his windowpanes.

"That night was to Bunem Leib and to his household one long turmoil. At dawn, when he and his wife had finally dozed off, they were roused by a strange wail-not human but animal. Freidke stood naked in the center of the room bellowing like an ox. She was shaking, jerking, and lowing, as if she were the very bull her fiance had botched. Then a terrible human voice tore itself out from her mouth. All Zabrynka came running, and it became clear that a dybbuk had entered Freidke. The dybbuk cried that he had been a man in life-an evildoer, a drunk, a lecher. When he died, his soul hadn't been allowed into Heaven but had been sentenced to be reincarnated as a bull. The Angel of Death told him that when this bull was slaughtered according to the ritual law and pious Jews ate his flesh after reciting the right benediction, he, the sinner, would be redeemed. Now that Chlavna had rendered the meat impure, the sinner's forsaken soul had entered Freidke.

"I was so taken aback by what the shipping agent told me that I left Yontche bag and baggage, grabbed my bundle, and headed back to Zabrynka. A deep snow had fallen and a bitter frost had settled in. I couldn't get a sleigh and I had to walk halfway there. The wind nearly blew me away. I was sure that my end had come and I began to say my confession."

"You fell in love with that Freidke, eh?"

"In love? You talk nonsense."

"What happened next?" Zeinvel asked.

"I came to Zabrynka in the middle of the night. The shutters were locked everywhere, but Bunem Leib's house was lit up and there were people inside. They seemed to have stayed to listen to the dybbuk instead of going to sleep. No one took notice of me when I entered. I learned later that Freidke's mother had become ill from grief and had been taken to some relative. I barely recognized Bunem Leib. He had become emaciated, yellow, and drained in the few days since I was there. Freidke stood there barefoot, half naked, with straggly red hair over her shoulders, her face as white as that of a corpse and her eyes bulging. She screamed with a voice I could never have believed could come out of a girl's tender throat. This was not a human voice but that of an ox. I heard her bellow, 'Slaughter me, Bunem Leib, slaughter me! I am the bull you caused to be tref and so doomed to eternal torment. You don't see them, but hordes of demons, hobgoblins, and devils are lurking right here waiting to tear me to pieces and carry me away to the wastelands behind the Dark Mountains. Neither your mezuzah nor the talismans and amulets you hung in all the corners of the house can help me. Look, if you are not completely blind: monsters with noses to their navels, with snakes instead of hair, with snouts of boars, as black as pitch, as red as fire, as green as gall! They dance and howl like the mad. Is it my fault, Bunem Leib, that you have chosen for your son-in-law a schlemiel, a mollycoddle who cannot wield a knife? He could as much be a slaughterer as you could be a wet nurse. His hands were shaking like those of a man of ninety. He was such a weakling that when he saw a drop of blood on the white of an egg he was ready to faint. A slaughterer cannot be afraid of blood. A real man doesn't run away from his bride-to-be when things go wrong. You picked a mama's boy for your daughter, a pampered little brat, a eunuch. He was more afraid of me, the bull, than I was of his knife! Slaughter me, Bunem Leib, and save me from all these vicious spirits. If not, I will catch you on my horns and gore you and carry you away to swamps from which there can never be any rescue.'

" 'My daughter, what are you talking about? You are my child,' Bunem Leib said to her. 'Let this evil fiend only free you, and if Chlavna is not your destined one, I will find another spouse for you, God willing, and we will lead you to the wedding canopy. Merciful God, help me! I can't take any more of this anguish.'

"Bunem Leib was crying. But Freidke answered, 'I'm not your daughter but the bull you have given into the hands of a bungler. Take out your knife and slaughter me! Shed my blood! You, Bunem Leib, are a male, not a neuter. No ox, no cow, no sheep or rooster ever ran away from your knife. Kill me, Bunem Leib, kill me!' "

"You heard all this?" Zeinvel asked.

"May I hear the Messiah's ram's horn as clearly."

"Go on."

"It is impossible to tell it all. Toward dawn Bunem Leib became so tired and haggard that he had to go to sleep, but the town's rowdies took over the show. For them it was fun. Imagine, an only daughter, a quiet little dove, stands in the middle of the night, her breasts uncovered, her red hair wild as a witch's, and she confesses sins that make your head swim. I heard her say, 'While alive, I did everything to spite God. I shaved my beard, I ate pork on Yom Kippur, I fornicated with Gentile wenches and Jewish whores. I denied God, and I thought I would live to be a hundred and indulge in all my abominations. But suddenly I got sick with pox and saw that I was done for. Still, to my last breath I blasphemed God and served the idols. When I finally expired, the Burial Society wouldn't cleanse my body and they buried me without shrouds, at midnight, without anyone saying Kaddish. Even before the gravediggers had thrown the last spadeful of dirt over me, the Angel Dumah opened my grave, spat at me, pierced me with his fiery rod, and dragged me to the very gates of Gehenna. He tried to hurl me inside, but Satan slammed the door and shouted, "It is a disgrace to Gehenna to allow such scum to enter into it." '

"You can be the world's biggest heretic, Zeinvel, but when you see and hear a thing like this, you must admit that there is a God."

"No, you mustn't."

"Then what was all that?"

"Nerves."

"How do nerves know what goes on in the netherworld?" Mottke asked.

"The nerves know everything."

"What are they-prophets?"

"Even better than that," Zeinvel said. "Good night."

"Well, you are talking nonsense."

Zeinvel had fallen asleep and was snoring, but Mottke lay awake. He talked to himself: "Gone to sleep, eh? A dunce, a boob ... Thinks he knows it all, but to me he's still a fool."

"Mottke, shut up."

"You're not asleep?"

"I am asleep, but I hear every word anyway. I learned this trick in jail. There, if you fall asleep for real they'll strip the shirt right off your back. What became of Freidke?"

"How should I know? I stayed there for three days, then I went my way. I haven't told you everything yet. Neighbors swore to me that Freidke had never sung before. True, a well-brought-up girl doesn't let her voice be heard, so as not to arouse us males; nevertheless, if a girl has a voice she'll sing while rocking a child, or she will join in the Sabbath chants. All of a sudden Freidke started singing droll songs in Yiddish, Polish, even in Russian. She serenaded a bride and made wedding jests, all in rhyme. She mocked the women haggling in the butcher shops, and their splashing in the ritual bath. The hoodlums made snide remarks to her, and she answered each one on his own terms. She fast-talked them so, they were left speechless. All the neighbors said the same-this wasn't Freidke but a wag, a rascal, with a tongue like a razor. His profanities left you rolling with laughter. Brother, I stood by and watched a female turn both into a bull and into a man. Nerves can't do this."

"What can do it?"

"Only God."

"There is no God."

"How did the world form?" Mottke asked.

"It grew from itself like a scab."

II.

Zeinvel dozed off again, but Mottke still lay awake. The sick in the poorhouse sighed and mumbled in their sleep. Wasn't Zeinvel right, Mottke reflected. A merciful God wouldn't allow so much misery. People die like flies here. Each day the Burial Society comes with the ablution board to carry out a body.

For a while Mottke listened to a cricket chirping behind the stove. It jingled as if with little bells. It told a tale without a beginning or an end. How was it that it chirped the whole night, Mottke wondered. Don't crickets need sleep, too? Or do they sleep during the day? And what do they find to eat among the rags? It was crazy to think that this cricket had a father, a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, and maybe children, too. I'm all befuddled, Mottke mused. I'm dead tired all day, but at night my brain works like a churn.

Sometimes during the day, when Mottke wanted to show off his erudition, he forgot everything, jumbled passages like some ignoramus. But in the middle of the night his brain opened up. He recalled whole chapters of the Scripture, sections of the Gemara, even the liturgies of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. People who had died so long ago that he no longer remembered their names materialized seemingly alive before him. He remembered names of villages in which he had stayed with Yontche. Chants of cantors and songs of Hasidim came back to his mind. Mottke had been raised in a religious home. His father had taken him along to the wonder rabbi at Turisk. As a boy, he had read Hasidic books, had even dreamed of becoming a rabbi. But his father had died of typhus, his mother had married some boor, and Mottke had slipped into the confidence game with Yontche.

Now Mottke began droning a song that he had heard in Turisk at the Sabbath meal: I'll sing with praise To open the gates Of the Heavenly orchards For their sacred mates.

Zeinvel got to coughing and sat up. "Why are you singing in the middle of the night? Are you hungry?"

"I'm not hungry."

"You've got a burr in your saddle, eh?"

"Wasted away a life for nothing," Mottke said, shocked at his own words.

"You want to become a penitent like that musician who blindfolded himself so that he couldn't look at women?"

"Too late for that."

"Yes, brother, for us it might have been too late when we were born," Zeinvel said. "That business with Freidke was all stuff and nonsense. It's all made up-the Jewish God, the Christian God. That Chlavna was a clumsy dolt and a miserable coward. Freidke, on the other hand, was putting on an act because he deserted her. Young girls hear old wives' tales, absorb every trifle, and then they mimic them.

"I had a wild female once, a Talmud teacher's daughter. Mindle was her name. She looked like a kosher virgin. I could have sworn she couldn't count to two-a pale little face, big black eyes. It all started when I met her at the pump and filled a pail of water for her. She gave me a pretty thank you and threw in a sweet smile. I was already a thief by then and I had had more women than you have hairs on your head. At that time, it wasn't easy to get a Jewish girl-not in our parts, anyway-but there was no shortage of shiksas. They don't know any pretenses. They've got Uncle Esau's blood in their veins. Well, but I saw fire in Mindle's eyes. Each time I saw her going with her pail, I ran outside with my pail. I must have pumped a hundred pails for her. I began thinking that it was a waste of time. Suddenly I hand her the pail and she slips a note into my hand. I ran so fast with my own pail that I spilled half of it. I walk into the house and I read, 'Meet me in the cemetery at midnight.'

"One line, that's all-fancy handwriting. I had tasted everything-girls, matrons, young, old-but I grew as rattled as a yeshiva boy. I was scared, too. In those days I still believed in the creatures of the night. What kind of girl would meet a fellow in the cemetery at midnight? It was said that corpses prayed in the synagogue at night and that if someone walked by they would call him inside to read from the Torah. Also, a carpenter's daughter had hanged herself in our town because some tramp made her pregnant, and it was said that she climbed out of her grave in the nights and wandered among the tombstones. Just the same, I couldn't wait for night to fall and, later, for the clock on the town hall to toll eleven-thirty. My piece of goods had figured out everything in advance. Her father, a fervent Hasid who wore two skullcaps, one in front and one in back, went to bed with the chickens. He got up before dawn to bewail the Destruction of the Temple. The mother traveled to fairs to support her older daughter, a penniless widow who lived in Krasnystaw with three children. She sold jackets that she padded herself.

"I'll cut it short. Mindle had scheduled our meeting for the end of the month, when the moon wasn't shining and when the mother was off to some fair. The night was hot and dark. The road to the cemetery led through Church Street. The Jews lived close to the marketplace. Farther along, only Gentiles lived-tiny houses and huge dogs. I walked by and they attacked me like a pack of wolves. With one dog you can manage, but with fifty you don't stand a chance. Besides, when the Gentiles hear their dogs bark, they come running outside with cudgels. I thought I was going to be martyred, but somehow I made it to the cemetery. I tapped, feeling my way like a blind man. I was still a believer then, and in my mind I donated eighteen groschen to charity. I stretched out my arms and there she was, as if she had emerged from the ground. When you're scared, all desire leaves you, but the moment I touched her she burned me like a hot coal. She whispered a secret in my ear. There was no need for talk. How can such a firebrand grow up in a pious teacher's house?"

"She satisfied you, eh?" Mottke asked.

"That's not the word," Zeinvel said. "We fell on each other and we couldn't break apart. I took it for granted she was a virgin, but that would be the day!"

"A tasty piece, eh?"

"We lay for hours among the headstones and I couldn't get enough. As hot as fire and as sharp as a dagger. Whenever I began to cool off she said something so spicy that I shuddered and the game started all over again. Where she had learned such talk in our little village I'll never know."

"How is it you didn't marry her?" Mottke asked.

"Eh? I wanted a respectable girl, not a slut. She spoke frankly: one man to her was like an appetizer. She needed many, always new ones. I'm no saint, but I wished a wife like my mother. In my trade, you've got to be ready to do time. To sit in prison and worry that your wife is running around with every bum is scant pleasure. Even as I fondled and kissed her and promised her the moon and the stars, I longed for my Malkele, may she rest in peace. I already knew her by then. She was a friend of my sister Zirel. I wasn't planning to remain a thief. I wanted to amass a stake and become a horse dealer. But man proposes and God disposes."

"That means you do believe in God," Mottke said.

"It only sounds this way. What is God? Who is He? No one has gone up to Heaven and come to an understanding with Him. It's all written in the Torah, but what's the Torah? Parchment and ink. Whoever holds the pen writes what pleases him. For nearly two thousand years Jews have been waiting for the Messiah, but he's in no hurry to show up."

"So the world is lawless, eh?"

"Whoever can, grabs. And whoever can't lies six feet under."

"Still, if good people didn't send us groats and soup here we would long since have been flat on our backs," Mottke said.

"They don't do it for us," Zeinvel said. "They think this will reserve them golden chairs in Paradise and large portions of the Leviathan."

"You once said yourself that you believe in fate," Mottke argued. "You said that the last time you went to steal a horse you knew in advance that you would come a cropper and that it was fated this way. Those were your very words."

"God is God and fate is fate. I had stolen a half-dozen nags within a few weeks, and the peasants had started sleeping in the stables. They stood guard with axes and rattles. My Malkele begged me: 'Zeinvel, enough!' She knelt before me and warned me to stay home. She spoke about opening a store or, if worst came to worst, of going to America. She demanded that I swear on the Pentateuch that I would begin a new life. But even as I took the holy oath I knew that it wasn't worth a pinch of snuff. It's not in me to stand in a store and weigh out two ounces of almonds or cream of tartar. I don't have the patience for such drivel. Nor was I drawn to the land of Columbus. Everyone who went there ended up pressing pants or peddling from door to door. Letters came telling of a depression in New York, of workers picking food out of garbage cans. I loved Malkele, but she wasn't Mindle. I was faithful to her, God is my witness, but to sit with her days and nights and have her chip away at me didn't appeal to me. She had miscarried twice. She was constantly bewailing her lot and mine, too. I wanted once and for all to test my luck."

"You believe in luck?"

"Yes. In good luck and bad luck."

"There is a God, there is!" Mottke said.

"And if there is, what of it? He sits in the seventh Heaven, the angels flatter Him with their hymns, and He cares as much about us as about last year's frost."

"What became of Mindle?" Mottke asked.

"Oh, her father married her off to some dummy, a son of a rich Hasid, a follower of his rabbi's. My little kitten stood with him under the canopy pure and veiled as if she had never been touched. Why she would allow herself to be used this way is a riddle to me. Such females sometimes marry a fool so that they'll have someone to dupe easily. There is a great thrill in cheating-almost as much as in stealing. But you pay for everything. She died two years later in childbirth."

"So that's how it turned out?"

"Yes. Her husband, the lummox, had gone to his rabbi's and he lingered there for months. I was doing time in the Janov jail. Later, they transferred me to Lublin. That time I was innocent. I had been falsely accused. When I finally got out, Mindle was already in the other world."

"It was surely a punishment from God," Mottke said.

"No."

It grew silent. Even the cricket had ceased its chirping. After a while Zeinvel said, "I haven't forgotten her. If there is a Gehenna, I want to lie next to her on one bed of nails."

Translated by Joseph Singer.

Escape from Civilization.

I BEGAN to plan my escape from civilization not long after learning the meaning of the word. But the village of Bilgoray, where I lived until I was eighteen, didn't have enough civilization to run away from. Later, when I went to Warsaw, all I could do was run back to Bilgoray. The idea took on substance only after I arrived in New York. It was here that I started to suffer from some kind of allergy-rose fever, hay fever, dust, who knows? I took pills by the bottleful, but they didn't do much good. The heat that early spring was as intense as in August. The furnished room where I lived on the West Side was stifling. I am not one to consult with doctors, but I paid a visit to Dr. Gnizdatka, whom I knew from Warsaw and who faithfully read anything that I managed to get published in the Yiddish press.

Dr. Gnizdatka inserted a speculum into my nostrils and a tongue depressor into my mouth and said, "Paskudno." ("Bad.") "What should I do?"

"Move somewhere near the ocean."

"Where is the ocean?"

"Go to Sea Gate."

The moment Dr. Gnizdatka spoke the name, I realized that the time had finally come to escape from civilization, and that Sea Gate could serve the same purpose as Haiti or Madagascar. The following morning, I went to the bank and withdrew my savings of seventy-eight dollars, checked out of my room, packed all my belongings into a large cardboard suitcase, and walked to the subway. In a cafeteria on East Broadway, someone had told me that it was easy to get a furnished room in Sea Gate. I carried a few books to be my spiritual mainstay while away from civilization: the Bible, Spinoza's Ethics, Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, as well as a textbook with mathematical formulas. I was then an ardent Spinozist and, according to Spinoza, one can reach immortality only if one meditates upon adequate ideas, which means mathematics.

Because of the heat in New York City, I expected Coney Island to be crowded and the beach lined with bathers. But at Stillwell Avenue, where I got off the train, it was winter. How surprising that in the hour it took me to get from Manhattan to the Island the weather had changed. The sky was overcast, a cold wind blew, and a needle-like rain had begun to fall. The Surf Avenue trolley was empty. At the entrance to Sea Gate there was actually a gate to keep the area private. Two policemen stationed there stopped me and asked who I was and what business I had in Sea Gate. I almost said, "I am running away from civilization," but I answered, "I came to rent a room."

"And you brought your baggage along?"

These interrogations in a country that is supposed to be free insulted me, and I asked, "Is that forbidden?"

One policeman whispered something to the other, and both of them laughed. I received permission to cross the frontier.

The rain intensified. I would have liked to ask someone where I could get a room, but there was no one to ask. Sea Gate looked desolate, still deeply sunk in its winter sleep. For courage I reminded myself of Sven Hedin, Nansen, Captain Scott, Amundsen, and other explorers who left the comforts of the cities to discover the mysteries of the world. The rain pounded on my cardboard suitcase like hail. Perhaps it was hailing. The wind tore the hat off my head, and it rolled and flew about like an imp. Suddenly through the downpour I saw a woman beckoning to me from the porch of a house. Her mouth moved, but the wind carried her voice away. She signaled me to come over and find protection from the wild elements. I found myself facing a fancy house with a gabled roof, columns, an ornate door. I walked onto the porch, dropped my suitcase (books and manuscripts can be as heavy as stones), wiped my face with a handkerchief, and was able to see the woman more clearly: a brunette who seemed to me in her thirties, with an olive complexion, black eyes, and classic features. There was something European about her. Her eyebrows were thick. There was no sign of cosmetics on her face. She wore a coat and a beret that reminded me of Poland. She spoke to me in English, but when I answered her and she heard my accent she shifted to Yiddish.

"Who are you looking for? I saw you walking in the rain with that heavy suitcase, and I thought I might ..."

I told her I had come to rent a room and she smiled, not without irony.

"Is this the way you look for a room? Carrying your luggage? Please come inside. I have a house full of rooms that are to let."