Read The Last Demon for Free Online Page A

been good.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I’m neither one nor the other.’
    ‘What a dilemma I’m in!’
    ‘Get a divorce from that horror. Marry Hadass.’
    ‘She’ll never divorce me and Hadass won’t have me.’
    ‘Hadass loves you. She won’t listen to her father again.’
    Avigdor stood up suddenly but then sat down. ‘I won’t be able to forget you. Ever …’
VI
    According to the Law, Avigdor was now forbidden to spend another moment alone with Yentl; yet dressed in the gaberdine and trousers, she was again the familiar Anshel.
    They resumed their conversation on the old footing: ‘How could you bring yourself to violate the commandment every day: “A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man”?’
    ‘I wasn’t created for plucking feathers and chattering with females.’
    ‘Would you rather lose your share in the world to come?’
    ‘Perhaps …’
    Avigdor raised his eyes. Only now did he realize that Anshel’s cheeks were too smooth for a man’s, the hair too abundant, the hands too small. Even so he could not believe that such a thing could have happened. At any moment he expected to wake up. He bit his lips, pinched his thigh. He was seized by shyness and could not speak without stammering. His friendship with
Anshel, their intimate talk, their confidences, had been turned into a sham and delusion. The thought even occurred to him that Anshel might be a demon. He shook himself as if to cast off a nightmare; yet that power which knows the difference between dream and reality told him it was all true. He summoned up his courage. He and Anshel could never be strangers to one another, even though Anshel was in fact Yentl …
    He ventured a comment: ‘It seems to me that the witness who testifies for a deserted woman may not marry her, for the Law calls him “a party to the affair.” ’
    ‘What? That didn’t occur to me!’
    ‘We must look it up in Eben Ezer.’
    ‘I’m not even sure that the rules pertaining to a deserted woman apply in this case,’ said Anshel in the manner of a scholar.
    ‘If you don’t want Hadass to be a grass widow, you must reveal the secret to her directly.’
    ‘That I can’t do.’
    ‘In any event, you must get another witness.’
    Gradually the two went back to their Talmudic conversation. It seemed strange at first to Avigdor to be disputing holy writ with a woman, yet before long the Torah had reunited them. Though their bodies were different, their souls were of one kind. Anshel spoke in
a singsong, gesticulated with her thumb, clutched her sidelocks, plucked at her beardless chin, made all the customary gestures of a yeshiva student. In the heat of argument she even seized Avigdor by the lapel and called him stupid. A great love for Anshel took hold of Avigdor, mixed with shame, remorse, anxiety. If I had only known this before, he said to himself. In his thoughts he likened Anshel (or Yentl) to Bruria, the wife of Reb Meir, and to Yalta, the wife of Reb Nachman. For the first time he saw clearly that this was what he had always wanted: a wife whose mind was not taken up with material things … His desire for Hadass was gone now, and he knew he would long for Yentl, but he dared not say so. He felt hot and knew that his face was burning. He could no longer meet Anshel’s eyes. He began to enumerate Anshel’s sins and saw that he too was implicated, for he had sat next to Yentl and had touched her during her unclean days.
Nu
, and what could be said about her marriage to Hadass? What a multitude of transgressions there! Wilful deception, false vows, misrepresentation! – Heaven knows what else.
    He asked suddenly: ‘Tell the truth, are you a heretic?’
    ‘God forbid!’
    ‘Then how could you bring yourself to do such a thing?’
    The longer Anshel talked, the less Avigdor understood. All Anshel’s explanations seemed to point to one thing: she had the soul of a man and the body of a woman. Anshel said she had married Hadass only in order to