Mendel Singer had never concerned himself with anything other than holy and pious words and many pupils came to him. He lived wretchedly but he required nothing whatever. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, he fasted. On ordinary days he took only soup. He slurped it from a wooden dish with a wooden spoon. Only on Friday nights did he eat trout in sauce with horseradish. Everyone in the little town knew him. Twice a day they saw him running to the prayer-house, there and back. He hurried along on thin legs, in white stockings and sandals, which he covered with heavy galoshes in winter. His coat danced in the wind. His heavy fur cap sat low over his eyes, a fringed pelt. His sparse beard waved. The hard prow of his nose thrust against the air, as if it wanted to carve out a path for his face. He saw nothing and no one. He was engrossed and lost in his humility and in his piety, in thoughts of the holy words which he had just read and in joyful anticipation of those yet to be read. Everyone respected him, even the peasants of the neighbourhood came to him when they were in distress, asking for his advice and intercession. Although he appeared never to have seen the world and men, it was nevertheless evident that he understood both the world and men. His advice was excellent and his intercessions helped.

His wife concerned herself with the earthly matters of everyday life. She had scraped together the money for the licence and for the purchase of goods by begging from the rich and well-to-do people of Zlotogrod. Alas! What goods! One could get onions, milk, cheese, eggs, garlic, dried figs, raisins, almonds, nutmegs and saffron. But how minute were the quantities and how frightful was the condition of these provisions! Everything was in a muddle in the small, dark-blue, lime-washed kitchen. It looked as if the children were playing at being shopkeepers. The small sack holding the onions and the garlic rested on the large bucket which contained the sour milk. Raisins and almonds stood in little heaps on the cream cheese, separated by greaseproof paper from what was underneath. Beside the two cream jars crouched the two yellow cats, guardian lions of a kind. In the middle, a pair of large rusty scales hung down from the ceiling on a black wooden hook. And the weights stood on the window-sill.

The kind of people who might have been poor enough to have shopped at Blume Singer’s did not exist in the neighbourhood. And yet they still managed to live, despite everything – for God helps the poor. He bestows a little compassion on the rich, so that from time to time one of them comes and buys something which he does not need and which he will throw away in the street.

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