installing the Prodigy in the bosom of his business; meanwhile the charitable members of the Refugees’ Aid Society promised to locate some “cozy little nest” for the newlyweds. For a time it seemed that the orphaned bride and groom would be treated as dignitaries, the toast of the ghetto, and Salo, still caked in the shmutz of the road, basked in their triumphant entry into Lodz: It was the storybook finale to a great adventure. But as the misery of the quarter was in no way mitigated by his advent, and its citizens’ short spans of attention were recalled to their daily woes, the son of the King of Cholera and his refrigerated tzaddik were soon forgotten, Salo’s notoriety failing to survive his first week in Lodz.
They were installed in cheap lodgings in Zabludeve Street, a windowless cellar habitation that Salo praised for its favorable comparison to his father’s grotto (it was certainly as dank and cold) and his wife cursed for the claustrophobic crypt that it was. Moreover, Zalman Pisgat’s gratitude for having been allowed the mitzvah of preserving the frozen rebbe was also short-lived. He did, however, offer Salo the position of night watchman, though not without strings attached: A portion of Salo’s wages would have to be exacted weekly to compensate for the rebbe’s storage fee. That Salo willingly acquiesced to what amounted to his indenture, that he didn’t toss the block of ice containing the holy man into the river and have done with it, were crimes Basha Puah added to the lengthening list of her husband’s infamies. Salo was himself a little disappointed that his fame had so swiftly subsided, though he chided himself for his vanity. And after a spell in Pisgat’s icehouse, dispersing shadows with a hurricane lamp as he navigated the crystal palisades under the glazed eyes of dead oxen, salmon, and hares, he was again reconciled to old Eliezer’s unending incubation. He was content to spend his nights, between tours of the hyperborean premises, sitting vigil in his role as the saint’s custodian, prepared to wait till hell itself froze over for the rebbe to hatch from his ice chrysalis.
So what if the ghetto was a pesthole in which he and his hatchet-faced bride lacked a pair of groschen to rub together, where they dined on hot water afloat with limp cabbage leaves and relieved themselves in a courtyard privy whose odor brought tears to the eyes? The Balut, in its unsleeping activity, was by Salo’s lights a tonic to all who dwelled therein. And besides, didn’t he enjoy the best of two worlds? By day he was a four-square householder who, with his expectant wife, fulfilled the commandment of marriage and multiplication; while at night, in retreat from the roiling streets, he was the solitary guardian of a legend that became more burnished the more it faded into memory.
For her part Basha Puah fulminated against their lot with every breath she took, cursing her husband’s irrepressible spirits, though she was herself galvanized by the ghetto’s raucous atmosphere. Despite her violated sense of entitlement, which she never ceased from registering with God and Salo, she was an enterprising woman. By the time their celebrity had expired, she had managed to parlay nothing into a couple of turnips and eggs, which she peddled in the Franciszkanska Street market—battling the other wives over coveted locations—for the price of another couple of turnips and eggs. Then a day came when she sold an egg at a profit and used the surplus capital to increase her inventory. Eventually, by shrewd reinvestment in the produce the peasant farmers sold wholesale from the wallow of their wagonyard, she established a modest pushcart business; she sold vegetables and eggs whose freshness her husband extended by storing them in the icehouse overnight. In a matter of weeks her market stall was a going concern, and full of admiration for his eruptive wife’s industry, Salo helped her as best he could, though it meant that he seldom slept. He carted merchandise from the wholesalers to the marketplace and shlepped to and from the bakery the boolkies Basha Puah rolled at home and left to rise like inflating airships on top of the neighborhood oven. For gratitude Salo received his wife’s habitual grousing that he was always underfoot. She also chafed at his solicitude with regard to her inconvenient condition, which she refused to let hamper her labors or leaven her poisonous tongue.