Black night occupied Kluczýsk, when Deborah arrived. Many bewildered people had already come to see the Rabbi. Kluczýsk consisted of a few thousand low thatched and shingled houses and a market-place more than a half-mile square which looked like a dry lake wreathed round with buildings. The conveyances which stood around in it were like derelict vessels, tiny and meaningless, lost in the surrounding vastness. The unharnessed horses whinnied beside the carts and trod the sticky mire with tired smacking hoofs. A few men wandered through this circle of night with wavering yellow lanterns, to fetch a forgotten blanket or clattering dishes with provisions for the journey.

Round about, among the thousand little houses, the visitors were lodged. They slept on cots beside the beds of the inhabitants, the sickly, the halt, the lame, the mad, the imbecile, the diabetic, those who had weak hearts, those who had cancers in their bodies, those whose eyes were rheumy with trachoma, women with infertile wombs, mothers with deformed children, men threatened with prison or military service, deserters who prayed for a lucky escape, those who had been given up by doctors, those who had been cast out by mankind, those who had been mishandled by earthly justice, the careworn, the yearning, the starving and the satiated, impostors and honest men, all, all, all …

Deborah lived with Kluczýsk relatives of her husband. She did not sleep. All night she crouched beside Menuchim’s basket in the corner, by the stove; darkness was in the room, and darkness in her heart. She no longer dared to call upon God. He seemed to her too lofty, too great, too far away, infinitely far away behind an infinite Heaven. She would have needed a ladder of a million prayers to touch even a hem of God’s garment. She sought after the dead who might intercede for her, called upon her parents, upon Menuchim’s grandfather, after whom the child had been named, then upon the ancestors of the Jews, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, upon the bones of Moses, and, finally, upon Mother Eve herself.

She directed her sighs wherever an advocate might be found. She beat upon a hundred graves, knocked at a hundred doors of Paradise. Fearing that she might not reach the Rabbi the next day because too many petitioners were there, she prayed first for the luck to be there early, as though the healing of her son would then be mere child’s play.

At last she saw through the cracks of the black window shutters a few pale strips of daylight. She rose quickly. She lighted the dry pine chips which lay on the hearth, sought and found a teapot, lifted the samovar from the table, threw in the burning chips, shook in charcoal, held the vessel by both handles, tipped it and blew into it, so that the sparks flew out and scorched her face.

She seemed to go through a secret ritual. Soon the water boiled, soon the tea brewed, the family rose, sat down before the earthenware dishes and drank. Then Deborah lifted her son from the basket. He whimpered. She kissed him rapidly many times, with a frantic tenderness; her damp lips resounded upon the grey face, the poor hands, the crooked thighs, the bloated belly of the little one; it was as though she struck the child with her loving motherly mouth. Then she packed him up, tied a cord around the package, and hung her son around her neck, so that her hands would be free. She wanted to clear a way through the mob in front of the door of the Rabbi.

She threw herself into the midst of the waiting crowd with sharp cries. With cruel fists she pushed the weak out of her way; no one could stop her. Whoever, encountering her hand and being pushed aside, looked back at her to repel her was dazzled by the burning pain in her countenance, by her open red mouth out of which a burning breath seemed to stream, by the crystal gleam of the great rolling tears, by the flaming cheeks, by the thick blue veins on her strained throat in which the cries accumulated before they broke forth.