Simet knew he’d return. The dreams warned her.
***
Moritz had been a rabbi’s son, stifled in his own skin. He managed to be restless yet indolent; he had a beautiful voice but a savage tongue and a quick rich mind he used for no practical purpose anywhere.
Simet endured all this but not willingly; sometimes love can find no other way. Despite everything she believed that somewhere within him the better man lay.
But careless with the candle one evening, he’d set the hem of the child’s nightshirt alight; Simet had turned away for a second and turned back in time; she turned her husband out of the house and would not let him back, and in pursuit of the proof of how he’d prosper in his new liberty, he went and cracked his skull open on the cobblestones of another town after a night of drinking.
All of that was three months ago.
And now, awake or sleeping, she knew he was, moment by moment, passing every dark waystation on some infernal toll road towards home.
***
Ah well, people said, life must go on, and the matchmakers were marking the days until discreet inquiries might not be seen as distasteful. There were those who regarded Simet as a woman too much of her own mind to make a peaceful wife, but there was no dearth of hapless widowers in sad disarray for the lack of a woman’s touch.
***
She had charmed hands. Merely to pass by the doorway of the shop was a pleasure when something was fresh from the oven. The bakery and the house behind with its garden grew from her skill and her prudence and her hard work. She had her workers and the little maid who minded the child when Simet could not; she had acquired for herself every thing necessary.
Only a little of which one longs for she had not. But life certainly, as they said, goes on.
***
First came the starling. Bent-winged, lame-footed, it blew against the window during the last shudder of a storm.
“Ah, poor thing, poor thing!” Simet said, picking it up. She smoothed honey on its blistered foot and made a tiny bandage; bound up its wing, and put it in a box with a scattering of millet seeds and a saucer of water.
Its eyes brightened.
Then the little maid called to Simet from the kitchen, summoning her to approve the child’s porridge, and the starling grew agitated; its black eyes burned; it overturned its water and cried out harshly.
Simet looked at it carefully. Those eyes!
“Take this,” she said to the little maid, “to Hirsch the cobbler. He’s goodhearted and may like its company at his bench.”
So the starling was not allowed to stay.
“It died,” Hirsch said, a week later; “it showed no interest in life.”
Then came the carp. Simet checked the bucket when the boy returned from the fishmonger—and even for a carp, it had a wild eye. It smacked its tail eagerly against the wood as though it could hardly wait to be eaten.
“I’ve not yet given in charity this week,” said Simet; “and this will be too much for us. Take it to Reb Yoishe’s widow, that she and her children may have a good Shabbos, and then bring me a smaller one.”
Reb Yoishe’s widow was originally from Kiev and put pepper in her gefilte fish. Anything troubling that carp, she would surely sweat out of it.
The spider had no chance at all.
“Moritz, how far will you degrade yourself?” asked Simet, finding it in the midst of its handiwork. “Such a web not even an infant would spin.”
The creature glared at her with all its eight angry eyes and she looked sternly back.
“Has death taught you nothing? Face yourself, and the Almighty, and then may you rest in peace!” She dropped it out the window, and a sparrow caught it.
And for a time it seemed—well, thought Simet, relieved—wherever Moritz is, at least he isn’t here.
***
Then spring came—when many sleeping things wake up. Simet had always found solace in her garden.
But this year her rosebush looked surly, as though it had slept poorly.
***
Inside, all was quiet. The child and the little maid were resting after the noon meal.
Simet was sitting on the bench under the cherry tree. Nearly everything was in bloom.
This, thought Simet, must be the fragrance of the world to come.
The rosebush shook angrily. It had begun to rend its own leaves.
Simet’s heart ached with pity.
“To torment a rosebush, Moritz! Even death has not moderated you!”
If Moritz continues in this direction, thought Simet, he will end by inhabiting a rock.
And may he be stuck in one, for all eternity—
Then she felt ashamed.
Does my son deserve a father, she asked herself, whose soul might reside in a rock?
“Truly, Moritz,” said Simet, “you have made yourself ridiculous. How many times will you choose badly?”
***
It wasn’t the hour to start baking but Simet kneaded dough with righteous intention and made four tiny loaves, inscribed with letters of holiness. She buried them under the rosebush, in the first glimmering light from the new moon.
***
“Such a lovely garden!” said Manya, Reb Yoishe’s widow.
Simet had invited her and her children for the Shabbos midday meal. Women do best when they hearten and befriend each other.
“It gives me such joy,” said Simet; “I felt it would do the same for you.”
“The rosebush especially,” said Manya, bending to breathe in its fragrance, “what is your secret for such beautiful flowers?”
“You’d never believe the trouble it gave me; I was doubtful I could save it. But then I applied a little yeast, which went straight to the root of the problem.”
_______________________________________
An earlier version of this story was published 8/29/14 on Every Day Fiction.
I believe I am becoming addicted.