Although Kiev, the provincial capital in which the Zaydenovskis live, is situated on the Dnieper River, in order to avoid publicity they decide to move Mirel’s divorce proceedings out of town. The nearest downriver alternative with a strong Jewish presence is Cherkassy, some 120 miles south of Kiev.

*A lamb’s wool jacket made of the curly fleece of a breed of sheep named from the area around Kara Kul, a lake in central Asia, where it originated. The fleece resembles astrakhan but has a flatter, looser curl; it comes in black, brown or gray.

*The first telephone installations in Russia, introduced in the 1890s, were made by the American Bell System and were extremely expensive, which meant that only the richest private individuals—and only those living in cities—could afford them.

†Russian diminutive of the name Zinovii (Zalmen)

*Liolia is a diminutive of the Russian name Izrail’ (Yisroel).

Part 4
The End of Everything

4.1

These events took place during the icy snowstorms between Christmas and the Gentile New Year.

His face red with cold, Velvl Burnes stood in his father’s dining room. He’d only just arrived from his farm and was unable to grasp what was going on around him. Looking concerned, almost all the members of the household were clustered around a charity collector, listening to what he had to tell:

—Reb Gedalye’s end was very near … The doctor from the provincial capital had declared that there was nothing more he could do. Reb Gedalye’s sister had already arrived from abroad … And his daughter … Rumor had it that his daughter was ill herself … In all probability, in her father-in-law’s house over there, the telegrams that were being sent almost hourly from over here were being kept from her.

All was quiet, and through the double-glazed windows the gray winter dusk peered silently in; it spread its fearful desolation into all the darkened corners of the room, and the huge black sideboard, already enveloped in it, stared out in wordless reproach at the melancholy faces of those around it:

—For two years in this very room you cursed Reb Gedalye … And now he’s on his deathbed and the boys from the Talmud Torah are on their way to recite psalms in his name.

Someone called attention to these Talmud Torah boys outside and everyone besieged the window from which they saw:

Across the way, Reb Gedalye’s house was brightly illuminated with lamps that had been lit very early, not to bring happiness but to mark the agony of death in all the rooms. And here, passing along the darkened street before the house, more than forty Talmud Torah boys in tattered sheepskin overcoats trudged knee-high through the deep snowdrifts following two of their teachers who were leading the way toward the Husyatin study house.

The local ritual slaughterer came in, the same pleasant, well-known functionary who’d once been sent as an arbitrator to Reb Gedalye when the engagement contract was returned. He reported:

—He’d just come from there … The will had only just been rewritten to allocate the profit of eighteen thousand rubles which the merchants of the provincial capital had paid for a share in the great Kashperivke woods. The remaining debts amounted to twelve thousand seven hundred, and thirteen hundred had been left to the town’s general charity fund.

Looking sad, with his mind fixed on the affairs he was attending to, the ritual slaughterer seemed in some way sanctified and cut off from the mundane world, as though he’d just immersed himself in a ritual bath prior to undertaking some pious, God-fearing act.

Only Avrom-Moyshe Burnes stood near him, smoking a great many cigarettes, finally calling him into his study to seek his advice:

—What did he think? Perhaps it behooved him, Avrom-Moyshe, to call at Reb Gedalye’s house now?

Velvl followed him to the study and listened in to what was being said. The ritual slaughterer frowned:

—What was there to think about? Of course it would be fitting.

Feeling much lighter in heart, Velvl stole quietly into the dark passage where the full-cut fur coat he used for traveling hung. He donned it stealthily and went quietly outdoors.

Following the side alleys, he made his way surreptitiously to Reb Gedalye’s house, his legs sinking deeply into the newly fallen snow, the hem of his long, wide fur coat dragging behind him and leaving tracks wherever he went. In the aftermath of the snowstorm, silence prevailed everywhere. Everything, from the pallid, noiseless night to the few illuminated houses scattered here and there, appeared oddly expectant and mute, as in the pale obscurity of a dream. From one of these side alleys came the loud slamming of a door and a woman who’d emerged from her house yelled out to her neighbor:

—God could still help Reb Gedalye! … He’d certainly deserved help!

He noticed Reb Gedalye’s relative, his former bookkeeper, who was making haste to return to Reb Gedalye’s house from wherever he’d been. Velvl overtook him:

—A word, if I may … Is there any news? Not good, eh?

The bookkeeper stopped and sighed:

—What news can there be? Assuredly not good.

Reb Gedalye’s relative wasn’t at all surprised to find Velvl lingering in the vicinity here, and he responded as he would to any good friend of Reb Gedalye’s. So Velvl went on to the house. A group of men was standing around one of Reb Gedalye’s former couriers, listening to his description of Gitele, who’d been suffering from a severe headache for the past three days:

—Reb Gedalye’s sister was sitting with her in the darkened bedroom; she wouldn’t permit Gitele to leave her bed.

Avoiding this group, Velvl made his way around the back of the house and stopped outside the illuminated window of Mirel’s room:

—Evidently this was where Reb Gedalye lay.

A little old man, a learned Jew who was now ill, afflicted with a severe cough and failing eyesight, came along the narrow alleyway that led from the Husyatin study house. Groaning, he stopped and, peering narrowly into Velvl’s face with his diseased eyes, wheezingly inquired:

—Who’s this? … Oh … Oh … Velvl?

The little old man complained bitterly about old age, about life, and about death. Velvl waited until he’d disappeared on to Reb Gedalye’s verandah and then moved closer to the window. Now he could see everything that was taking place in the room. Imagination suggested that the air in there was heavy with the stench of medication, of sickness and approaching death, and it seemed as though all within was silent, unnaturally silent. At a little table on which a lamp burned under a blue shade sat the harassed local feldsher. Having gone without sleep for several nights, his features were strained as he stared straight ahead at the sickbed on which fell the blue-tinted glow of the shaded lamp. As though walking on eggshells, Avreml the rabbi, looking greatly distressed and agitated, wandered back and forth accompanied by his shadow: his right shoulder jutted upward while from his left the arm hung down oddly, as though paralyzed, almost completely hidden in his sleeve and twitching automatically. And there on the bed against the wall lay the sick man, seemingly lost in abstraction. Because of the leeches that had been applied after the doctor had left, his head had been shaved, making his earlocks and beard appear too big and black and his features too gaunt and shrunken. Every now and then his head moved slowly, very slowly from side to side. The people in the room drew closer to the bed. Standing on tiptoe outside, Velvl saw them doing what Reb Gedalye appeared to be asking of them and sat him up; undressing him, they clothed him afresh in a new, lustrously white shirt in which he looked sanctified and pure, as on the night of Yom Kippur after a fast of twenty-four hours. Slowly, very slowly, they lowered him back on to his pillows and bent closer to hear what he was saying.