More Stories from My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer

broke out. The wife came to us to complain that her husband constantly grumbled, picked on her, and reproached her. She didn’t speak with Father but with Mother.
    â€œWhat does he want from you?” Mother asked.
    â€œRebbetzin, I don’t know. I give him a plate of food straight from the fire and he shouts that it’s cold. Here he says I’ve over-salted the food and there he says it has no salt at all. The soup is too watery, the meat is too hard, the milk is curdled. He interferes in my household affairs, too. I have to account to him for every penny, and if a penny is missing, he makes such a fuss that all the neighbors hear it.”
    â€œHas he always been so stingy?”
    â€œNo. When he was engaged to me, he threw money around. I would have to restrain him not to spend so much.”
    â€œPerhaps he’s angry about something.”
    â€œWhy should he be angry? I haven’t caused him any harm …”
    â€œPerhaps his boss is giving him trouble?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œPerhaps he’s not well.”
    â€œI haven’t got the faintest idea.”
    Mother gave the woman the eternal womanly advice: Wait, have patience, sometimes a crazy notion gets into a man’s head. Sometimes a man suffers but doesn’t want to talk about it—so he takes it out on his wife. What can one do? One must put up with everything. With time, when a man sees that his wife is loyal and devoted to him, he becomes nice and stays that way.
    This is what Mother said. I heard her advice and was pleased that she spoke with such respect about men. When I grew up, I too would become a man …
    The woman left, apparently ready to obey Mother.

    But instead of being good and submissive, the woman drank half a bottle of essence of vinegar after their next argument, then ran at once to a neighbor’s apartment with burned lips, groaning, “Help me!”
    They called out the rescue-squad wagon and the attendants pumped the woman’s stomach.
    A couple of weeks later a fire broke out in their apartment. The woman opened the window that faced the courtyard and shouted, “Help! Fire!”
    Someone telephoned the fire department, and they came at once with their wild horses. First the firemen smashed all the windows in the apartment, then they broke the new furniture, and only then did they extinguish the flames. The fire itself was a mystery. The woman said that she had opened her clothes closet and a fire ensued.
    â€œHow do you get flames in a clothes closet?” her neighbors wanted to know.
    â€œI ask you!” she replied.
    Some time passed. Then one day the street suddenly turned black with people. The young tinsmith had fallen off a roof. He wasn’t killed, but he had broken a leg. His fall was also a mystery—the roof was less steep than others and he had been standing next to the chimney. There had been no wind. In the hospital, he told people who had come to visit him to learn what had happened that he felt as if two hands had seized him by the shoulders and pushed him. He had tried to hold on to the roof’s gutters, but that other, the one who had pushed him, was stronger than he.
    â€œWait a minute. Who was pushing you?”
    â€œIt must’ve been a demon.”
    â€œIn the middle of the day?”

    â€œWell, you see what happened.”
    People could not understand. On the other hand, on occasion tinsmiths fall from roofs. That business with the hands was probably his imagination. But clearly ill luck was plaguing the couple.
    Soon the tinsmith left the hospital and the woman became pregnant. It seemed that everything was now going smoothly. But then the woman had a miscarriage. She declared that she was standing in the kitchen, cooking soup, when the door suddenly opened and a black cat ran in. Her sudden fright caused hemorrhaging.
    â€œPerhaps the door was open,” someone suggested.
    â€œNo. It was shut. Someone turned the