Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance by Sholem Aleichem, Hannah Berman

lifted his eyes off Rochalle’s face, had been quick to see her leaving the table and the room. After waiting a little while, he too, left the room. He came out to the door, and, finding Rochalle in the threshold, he took up his place beside her. He started a conversation with her about the village of Tasapevka, and about her own village, Yehupetz, of which he happened to know every nook and corner—all its beauty spots, and all its highways, and byways. He also spoke at length of the village called Skvirro, having heard that she had spent a short time there, on a visit toa friend. Rochalle listened very attentively to him, but she scarcely said one word to his ten.
    “Why is it,” asked Stempenyu, “that one never sees you going for a walk, neither on Sabbaths, nor on Holy Days? You are in Tasapevka nearly a whole year—more than a year, and you have never yet taken a walk along the Berdettsever Road. You live so far out of the village itself that I never knew you were here at all. It was only yesterday that I got to know it. When I saw you … I wished to talk with you yesterday; but, I could not. Do you not know what our little Jewish villages are like? The moment two persons are seen talking together, the villagers begin to talk about them.
    “But, I beg of you to take a walk next Sabbath afternoon along the Berdettsever Road. You will find the whole town there. You will be sure to go there, won’t you? You will surely walk on the Berdettserver Road—eh?”
    Rochalle had no time to answer him. For, at this very moment, her mother-in-law, Dvossa-Malka, having missed her from the room, had rushed off in search of her. When she found her standing in the doorway, with Stempenyu beside her, she was filled with surprise. “What does this mean?” she asked herself. And, as if he had divined her question, Stempenyu, who had never been known to lose his presence of mind in a critical moment, and who had never been at a loss for a way out of an embarrassing situation—Stempenyu turned to Dvossa-Malka, and said:
    “We were talking about the wedding of the Rebbe’s daughter in Skvirro. Your daughter-in-law was a child at the time that I was playing at the Rebbe’s wedding. Shedoes not remember a single thing about it.”
    “Certainly not! How could she remember it!” replied Dvossa-Malka. “But, I remember it quite clearly. I was there with my husband; and, we had to sleep in a field overnight, so crowded was the village with strangers.”
    “But, you can know nothing of the overcrowding,,” said Stempenyu. “I will tell you something more than you know.” And, he proceeded to tell her a number of stories of all kinds of descriptions. And, while they were thus occupied, Rochalle slipped away from them and went back to her place at the table, at the right-hand side of the bride.
    As we have said already, Stemepenyu could talk. But he had yet another quality. He could talk with old women—gossip with them for hours on end. He could talk the teeth out of their heads, as the saying goes, when necessary. Nor did he need any instructions in the art of keeping them completely under the sway of his eloquence. The world repeats a proverb to the effect that a witch trained into witchcraft is worse than one born with the gift. And, Stempenyu had gone through an excellent school, where he acquired the art of fascination until he was a perfect master in it, as we shall see presently.
    “What a cheek he has!” cried Rochalle within herself. “The impudence of him to tell me to be sure to walk next Sabbath afternoon along the Berdettsever Road! What next? The idea of it! Only a musician who plays before the public could have such a cheek.” Her heart was hot with anger, as she walked home from the wedding-feast.
    The Sabbath came round in due course, and Rochalle’s husband, as well as her father-in-law and hermother-in-law, betook himself to his bedroom to sleep for the rest of the afternoon. It had been their habit to