The white radiance again suffused her. The brush dropped from her hand. “He—he is the beating in my heart! He is the life in me—the hope in me—the breath of prayer in me! If not for him in me, then what am I? Deadness—emptiness—nothingness! You are going out of your head. You are living only on rainbows. He is no more real—
“What is real? These rags I wear? This pail? This black hole? Or him and the dreams of him?” She flung her challenge to the murky darkness.
“Shenah Pessah! A black year on you!” came the answer from the cellar below. It was the voice of her uncle, Moisheh Rifkin.
“Oi weh!” she shrugged young shoulders, wearied by joyless toil. “He’s beginning with his hollering already.” And she hurried down.
“You piece of earth! Worms should eat you! How long does it take you to wash up the stairs?” he stormed. “Yesterday, the eating was burned to coal; and to-day you forget the salt.”
“What a fuss over a little less salt!”
“In the Talmud it stands a man has a right to divorce his wife for only forgetting him the salt in his soup.”
“Maybe that’s why Aunt Gittel went to the grave before her time—worrying how to please your taste in the mouth.”
The old man’s yellow, shriveled face stared up at her out of the gloom. “What has he from life? Only his pleasure in eating and going to the synagogue. How long will he live yet?” And moved by a surge of pity, “Why can’t I be a little kind to him?”
“Did you chop me some herring and onions?” he interrupted harshly.