When my hands were pretty well swollen and the skin had turned all colors, Reb Yozel put away the twig and said: "Enough! Now you'll let the wax alone!"
I went on moulding wax all the same.
It gave me the greatest satisfaction to make whatever I pleased out of it. I felt I had something to be busy about.
I would mould the head of a man, and then turn it into a cat or a mouse; then I drew the sides out into wings, divided the head into two, and it became an Imperial eagle. After that, out of the two heads and two wings, I made a bun in four pieces.
I myself was just such another piece of wax. Reb Yozel, the teacher, my mother, and anybody who pleased moulded me into shape. Gütele melted me.
14
They moulded me into shapes, but it hurt.
I remember very well that it hurt, but why? Why must I torment myself about the soul?
My comrades laughed at me; they nicknamed me the "soul-boy," and I suffered as much from the name as it was foolish in itself.
I am lost in thought; I wonder what my end will be; when I shall have the strength to tear myself out of Satan's grasp. I call my own soul to account; I reproach it; I scold it. Suddenly I receive a fillip on the nose, "Soul-boy." I wish to forget my troubles and plunge into a deep problem of Rabbinical dialectics; I yoke together a difficult explanation of the Tossafot with a hard passage in the Rambam, mix in a piece from the P'ne Yehoshuah, and top it off with an argument from Eibeschütz. I am in another world, forgotten are the teacher, Gütele, the soul. Things are fitting one into the other in my brain; I nearly "have it," the solution is at the tip of my tongue—a whistle in my ear—"Soul-boy!" It rings through my head, something bursts in my brain. Forgotten Tossafot, forgotten Rambam—I am back on the earth!