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TAIBELE AND HER DEMON

"The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer"
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, Paperback ISBN:0-374-51788-6
("Taibele and her demon" translated from the Yiddish by Mirra Ginsburg)

In the town of Lashnik, not far from Lublin, there lived a man and his
wife. His name was Chaim Nossen, hers Taibele. They had no children. Not
that the marriage was barren; Taibele had borne her husband a son and two
daughters, but all three had died in infancy - one of whooping cough, one of
scarlet fever, and one of diphtheria. After that Taibele's womb closed up,
and nothing availed: neither prayers, nor spells, nor potions. Grief drove
Chaim Nossen to withdraw from the world. He kept apart from his wife,
stopped eating meat and no longer slept at home, but on a bench in the
prayer house. Taibele owned a dry-goods store, inherited from her parents,
and she sat there all day, with a yardstick on her right, a pair of shears
on her left, and the women's prayer book in Yiddish in front of her.
Chaim Nossen, tall, lean, with black eyes and a wedge of a beard, had
always been a morose, silent man even at the best times. Taibele was small
and fair, with blue eyes and a round face. Although punished by Almighty,
she still smiled easily, the dimples playing on her cheeks. She had no one
else to cook for now, but she lit the stove or the tripod every day and
cooked some porridge or soup for herself. She also went on with knitting -
now a pair of stockings, now a vest; or else she would embroider something
on canvas. It wasn't in her nature to rail at fate or cling to sorrow.
One day Chaim Nossen put his prayer shawl and phylacteries, a change of
underwear, and a loaf of bread into a sack and left the house. Neighbors
asked where he was going; he answered: "Wherever my eyes lead me." When
people told Taibele that her husband had left her, it was too late to catch
up with him. He was already across the river. It was discovered that he had
hired a cart to take him to Lublin. Taibele sent a messenger to seek him
out, but neither her husband nor the messenger was ever seen again. At
thirty-three, Taibele found herself a deserted wife.
After a period of searching, she realized that she had nothing more to
hope for. God had taken both her children and her husband. She would never
be able to marry again; from now on she would have to live alone. All she
had left was her house, her store, and her belongings. The townspeople
pitied her, for she was a quite woman, kindhearted and honest in her
business dealings. Everyone asked: how did she deserve such misfortunes? But
God's ways are hidden from man.
Taibele had several friends among the town matrons whom she had know
since childhood. In the daytime housewives are busy with their pots and
pans, but in the evening Taibele's friends often dropped in for a chat. In
the summer, they would sit on a bench outside the house, gossiping and
telling each other stories.
One moonless summer evening when the town was as dark as Egypt, Taibele
sat with her friends on the bench, telling them a tale she had read in a