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

They moved out of the apartment and found a new one somewhere in the fancier district, either on Mizke Street or on Mila Lane.
    Strangely, this simple remedy helped. We began hearing good news about them. Their troubles had ceased. The woman became pregnant again. The tinsmith found work with another master.
    The landlord of the previous apartment house was angry at Father. For several months the apartment remained empty. Finally, a gentile moved in. It seemed that the spirits had a score to settle only with that couple—the goy they left alone.

    The master tinsmith came to visit us once in a while, and he often spoke about the couple. They had stopped arguing and now they lived like a pair of doves. The woman completed her pregnancy and gave birth to a boy. She was terrified before her lying-in, because it was known that demons have power over a woman in labor. But everything went well. The child was healthy. Now everything was fine and dandy with them.
    I said earlier that only lately have I begun to understand what happened with that couple. But I’m still not sure that I really understand it.
    A Freudian might interpret all of this as follows: The husband and wife subconsciously tried to sabotage their life together. Perhaps he or she had another love. Perhaps they weren’t happy sexually. It is easy to hang the blame for everything on sex and the subconscious.
    One might also say that the couple was the victim of a poltergeist, the same sort of spirit which several months ago emptied bottles of liquid in a house on Long Island and threw things with an invisible hand. But what is a poltergeist? And why did he beset that particular apartment? This belongs to that category of things where the facts are known but no cogent explanation for them exists. Yes, it is connected with a person’s spiritual attitude. That much is certain. Our inner attitude and outer circumstances are closely bound together. But what sort of connection exists and how it operates—that has not yet been discovered. Only during the past few years have people come to realize that such a link does indeed exist.

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF SUCH A LIFE?
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    Those who understand human nature and contemplate its affairs realize that one person can never really know another. People do things which seem to make no sense at all.
    For example: the middle-aged man who married a woman fifteen years younger and then began to work as a salesman, traveling the length and breadth of Russia to sell the products of a big firm on commission. He got married, let’s say on a Tuesday, and then on Sunday, even before the traditional seven days of celebration had ended, his wife was accompanying him to the train bound for Petersburg. He had planned to be away three months, but ended up traversing all of Russia up to the Chinese border and didn’t return until seven months later.
    He remained in Warsaw three weeks and then departed once more. When he came back again, the traveling salesman found a baby in a cradle—his own.
    I won’t recount all his trips here. At the lawsuit his wife listed each one in detail. He had been at home no more than one month during the year and sometimes not even that long. Another child
was born. The children were already seven and eight, but they did not really know their father. He came, brought presents, and once more began preparing for another journey. After each trip he would promise his wife that his roaming and roving had ended, but he never kept his word.
    He looked like a traveling salesman: average height, rather chubby, with a black mustache and the smile of a peddler. He had a premature potbelly on which hung the gold chain of a pocketwatch. He dressed fashionably: a derby, a pinstriped suit, a stiff collar with rounded edges, and a black necktie. His boots were polished to a high shine. Even the way he inserted a finger into his vest pocket and lit his cigarettes with a lighter proved he