‘Menuchim will be well, but it will take a long time!’ With these words Deborah entered the house.

‘It will take a long time!’ repeated Mendel like an evil echo.

Deborah sighed and again hung the basket from the ceiling. The three older children came in from their play. They fell upon the basket, which they had missed for a few days, and set it to swinging vehemently. Mendel Singer grabbed his sons, Jonas and Shemariah, with both hands. Miriam, the girl, fled to her mother. Mendel boxed his sons’ ears. They howled. He unbuckled his belt and swung it through the air. Mendel Singer felt each smacking blow which struck the backs of his sons as though the leather were the natural continuation of his hand. A dismal tumult broke loose in his head. The warning screams of his wife were drowned unnoticed in his own noise. It was as though one spilled glasses of water into an agitated ocean. He did not know where he stood. He whirled the swinging, cracking belt about, hit the walls, the table, the benches, and did not know which pleased him most, the blows which failed or those which reached their mark.

Finally the clock on the wall struck three, the hour when the pupils assembled in the afternoon. With an empty stomach – for he had eaten nothing – with his throat still choked with excitement, Mendel began to recite the Bible, word for word, verse after verse. The bright choir of children’s voices repeated word for word, verse after verse. It was as though the Bible were being tolled by many bells. The torsos of the scholars swung like bells, backward and forward, while over their heads Menuchim’s basket swung in almost the same rhythm. Today Mendel’s sons participated in the instruction. The father’s rage calmed down, cooled, died out, because in the chanting recitative his boys surpassed the others. In order to test them he left the room. The choir of the children sounded on, led by the voices of his sons. He could depend on them.

Jonas, the elder, was strong as a bear. Shemariah, the younger, was sly as a fox. Jonas trotted about, stamping, his head bent forward, his hands hanging, with protuberant cheeks, eternal hunger, and curly hair that grew exuberantly over the edge of his cap. His brother Shemariah followed him, quiet and almost sneaking, with a pointed profile, light, wide-awake eyes, thin arms, hands for ever buried in his pockets. There was never a quarrel between these two. They were too far from each other.