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    "Thus rotteth the name of the wicked!" he said. "Now he shall know that there is a God who rules the world!"

    7

    Reb Eleazar Babad and His Daughter, Rechele Reb Eleazar Babad was seldom at home. It was his practice to move about from village to village. He would put on his heavy coat, stuff straw in his shoes, and, with a sack in one hand, a stick in the other, take to the paths and byways. Like a beggar he would drive off the hounds with his stick and sleep nights in the haylofts of peasant barns. Some said that Reb Eleazar went to collect old debts due him from before 1648; others were certain that he wandered this way as a penance for the sins that were wearying his spirit. Rechele, his only daughter, remained at home all alone. For days on end she sat on a foot bench facing the hearth, reading the volumes she had brought from distant cities, and it was rumored that she was versed in the holy tongue. Some even went so far as to declare that she had learned Latin from a physician in Lublin. Goray housewives had sought to be friendly with Rechele and had paid her courtesy visits, but her response had not been the usual "God bid ye welcome." She had not urged them to be seated but had hid something from them in the bosom of her dress. Young matrons in silk bonnets, usually with aprons bulging over their pregnant bellies, came to amuse Rechele, to play at bones with her, and to chat about prospective matches, as young women will. Some of them brought their jewels along in caskets in order to preen themselves; others had balls of wool and knitting needles, to show how capable they were. But Rechele sat at the hearth, never rising to greet them, not even wiping the benches dry for them to sit upon. She confused their names, acted so haughtily that the women began to laugh and mock her. Before leaving, the last of the visitors called to Rechele from the other side of the door: "Don't be so high and mighty, Rechele! Your father isn't rich any longer; you're a pauper now!"
    Rechele (God save us!) was sickly, and much had to be forgiven her. The woman who went from house to house Thursdays to knead the troughs of dough for the Sabbath reported that Rechele ate less than a fly; she had her period every three months. She slept late in the morning and barricaded her door at night with wooden crossbars. A neighbor that lived behind Reb Eleazar's brick house in a dwelling that had half settled in the earth whispered that Rechele never went into the yard to relieve herself....
    Rechele had been born in Goray in 1648, a few weeks before the massacre. When the haidamaks had besieged Zamosc, her mother had fled with the infant in her arms, and, after many trials, had arrived in Lublin. The little one had been five at her mother's death, and Reb Eleazar had been in Vlodave with the rest of the household at the time. Rechele alone had remained in Lublin at the home of an uncle, Reb Zeydel Ber, who was a ritual slaughterer. He was a tall man with thick eyebrows above red eyes, and a black beard that reached to his waist, a taciturn widower who kept to himself. In the booth in the courtyard where he did his slaughtering there was al-ways a wooden bucket full of blood, and feathers flew about constantly. Here day was as dark as night when a small oil lamp burned. Butcher boys in red-spattered jackets, with knives thrust in their belts, moved about, shouting coarsely. Slaughtered chickens threw themselves to the blood-soaked earth, furiously flap-ping their pent wings, as though trying to fly off. Calves, whose legs were bound with straw, laid their heads on one another's necks and pounded the earth with their split hooves, until finally their eyes glazed. Once Rechele saw two blood-smeared butcher boys skin a goat and let it lie there with eyeballs protrudeing in amazement and white teeth projecting in a kind of death-smile.
    Rechele was terrified of Reb Zeydel Ber. He had never remarried, and had no children. The house was kept by