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

handle and let the cat in.”
    â€œWho could that have been?”
    â€œI know like you know.”
    People on the street began saying all kinds of things. Some said that the misfortunes were occurring because the woman had the same name as her husband’s mother. Others suspected that she wasn’t heeding carefully the laws of family purity and wasn’t going to the ritual bath at the proper time. Father told a scribe to inspect the mezuzahs. He also lent the couple a volume of the Zohar, which was considered a charm to drive demons from one’s house.
    For a while it was quiet. Then, one Friday night, the woman ate a chicken head and the beak got stuck either in her gullet or in her windpipe. Cries for help broke out in the courtyard. Once again the rescue squad was called and a doctor removed the chicken head from the woman’s throat. The doctor declared that had he arrived ten minutes later he wouldn’t have found her alive.

    One misfortune came on the heels of another. The courtyard gaped and was astounded. It was obvious that something was amiss. Evil powers had besieged the couple. But why them?
    There was another round of fires. Not great conflagrations but smaller fires. A garbage container burst into flames all by itself and flickered with a hellish fire. The woman quickly doused it with a pitcher of water. Two hours later, when she went into her bedroom, she saw a little flame bouncing around the bedcover, which she smothered with a jacket. A day or two later, a curtain caught fire and burned.
    Each time the woman came running to my father, but Father told her to see a Hasidic rebbe. Such things were not his specialty. She needed a Hasidic master who could give her amulets, pieces of amber over which spells were cast, or other charms to drive away demons. During those years great rebbes did not yet live in Warsaw (they started arriving only after World War I). The woman went off to see a small-time rebbe. He told her to place pieces of garlic on the walls, a remedy against ghosts and imps. The woman bought a wreath of garlic and placed cloves on all the walls. But they did not help.
    Once, while she was scraping the scales off a fish, a scale slid under her nail. Her finger swelled up and she developed a high fever. Gangrene almost set in, but a doctor performed a minor operation, after which her hand began improving. I don’t remember all the misfortunes that plagued that house. I only remember that one trouble followed another; however, they never suffered a full-fledged tragedy. It seemed that the dark powers wanted to frighten them more than kill them.
    During those years a famous fortune-teller and reader of cards named Schiller Shkolnick lived in Warsaw. He placed
advertisements in newspapers stating that he gave advice and could read cards, could find stolen goods or lost relatives. It was said that he had a black mirror hanging in a dark room in which a deserted wife could find her vanished husband. My father told the woman that she was forbidden to go to him because his deeds smacked of magic, pagan customs, and the black arts of the nations who had lived in the Land of Israel before Jews had conquered it. But neighbors convinced the woman that Schiller Shkolnick was the only one who could help her.
    Supposedly, when she went to see Schiller Shkolnick, he wrote all sorts of charms and told her all kinds of things. But precisely what he did and said I don’t know. I only remember people saying that he, the famous Schiller Shkolnick, could not help either.
    After that the husband and wife came to Father and asked him to divorce them. Father never rushed through with a divorce. He advised them to move out of their apartment.
    â€œThe Talmud teaches that he who changes his place changes his luck,” he declared. “It happens that sometimes an apartment is unlucky. There’s always time to get a divorce.”
    Apparently the couple was not too anxious to divorce.