Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance by Sholem Aleichem, Hannah Berman Page B

husband than he lost both his pride and his independence. All his strength was gone from him as well as his good-humour, and his sparkle of wit. In his own house, Stempenyu had no authority whatever.
    “Keep in mind only what concerns you,” was Freidel’s argument. “Your business is with the orchestra and with the music, and with weddings and other parties where you are asked to play. What do you want money for, you little fool?”
    After this fashion did Freidel succeed in extracting from him every single
kopek
he ever earned anywhere.
    She was very fond of money. She had been brought up in extreme poverty, and had had very few opportunities of handling even the smallest sum of money. As a girl she had found it extremely difficult to procure of a piece of ribbon for her hair, or a comb, such as all the other girls wore. She never got anything she wanted before she hadshed a little flood of tears of the bitterest and most despairing kind. Until she was fifteen years old, she went about barefooted and almost in rags. Her mother had gone out as a nurse to other families, talking care of tiny children. And, Freidel got many beatings from her mother and father, Isaiah the Fiddler, who had a decided weakness for strong drink. Though she had never enough to eat, Freidel was early filled with a passion for money. Her greed knew no bounds, and was only aggravated because of her wretched poverty. It was only at the Feast of the
Purim
, when she earned a few coppers on her own account, that she had an opportunity of holding some coins in her hand for a length of time. These coppers were given to her by the people for whom she carried out the customary
Purim
gifts to friends, from one end of the village to another. She used to hide her coppers in the bosom of her bodice so that her mother might have no chance of dragging them out of her on any pretense whatever. At night, she slept with the coins under her pillow, and in the day, she clutched them to her greedily. And, when the Festival of
Pesach
came round at last, Freidel rushed off to the fair to buy with her money the ribbons and other ornaments of personal adornment that she had long wished for and dreamt of in her wildest dreams.
    No one took the least notice of Freidel until she was about eighteen years old, when she suddenly sprang up, as a gourd in the night, from a little girl to a tall, dark, heavily-built young woman of mature physique.
    When she became engaged to Stempenyu, she herself did not realize the good fortune which had befallen her. But, her mother saw everything with her lynx eyes.A hundred times a day, she explained to Freidel that Stempenyu was a treasure—a little gold-mine in himself, even thought he was a charlatan and a good-for-nothing as well, into the bargain, so to speak. He was a man to whom the
roubles
were of no value; and, hence, she must make it her business to manage him in all things as she herself had always managed her husband, Freidel’s father, Isaiah the Fiddler.
    After Freidel had married Stempenyu, she remembered and applied every word of advice which her mother had given her—had drilled into her, rather. Gradually and completely, she took all the authority out of Stempenyu’s hands. She proved to him times out of number that a woman must know everything connected with her husband, that a man’s wife was not a stranger to him, and that a daughter of the Jewish people was not the kind of woman who created for herself different interests from those which concerned her husband. No, she was at one with him in everything. He must know that. He must realize clearly, once and for all, that he was she, and she was he. In short, he must not fail to see that he had a wife who was only his second self.
    When Freidel became the mistress of the house, she saw that Stempenyu was always making more and more money. He often brought home a handful of silver
roubles
. She threw herself upon them with the greed of a hungry person before whom has