Helen came in and said, “You look as if I had already swallowed you.” She took him by the arm and brought him into the diningroom, sat him down at the table, and told him, “Eat.” He lifted up his eyes and looked at her. Again she said, “Eat.” He broke off a piece of bread and swallowed it whole. “I see you need to have your bread chewed for you,” Helen said. He wiped the remnants of bread from his hands and got up to leave. “Wait, and I’ll go with you,” Helen said. She put on a sheepskin coat and went outside with him.
Walking along, they spoke nothing either good or bad, but they just talked, like people who have quarreled and want to take their minds off themselves. As they were walking, they came upon a stone image. Helen stopped, crossed herself, stood and recited a brief prayer. Afterward she took Joseph by the arm and returned with him to their house.
During the night Joseph awoke from his sleep in terror and screamed with all his might. It seemed to him that a knife had been thrust into his heart, and not into his heart but into that stone image, and not into the stone image, but into another image made of ice, the kind the Christians make on the river during their holidays. And though the knife had not struck him, even so he felt pain in his heart. He turned over and sighed. Sleep fell upon him and he dozed off. He heard a clinking sound and saw that the bitch was pulling off the chain around her neck. He closed his eyes and did not look at her. She leaped up on him and sank her teeth into his throat. His throat began to spurt and she licked up his blood. He screamed with all his might and thrashed about in the bed. Helen awoke and shouted, “What are you doing, raising the house with your noise and not letting me sleep!” He shrank under his covers and pillows, and lay motionless until daybreak.
In the morning Joseph said to Helen, “I disturbed your sleep.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Why, you shouted at me that I wasn’t letting you sleep.”
“I shouted?”
“Then you must have been talking in your sleep.” Helen’s face paled and she asked, “What are you saying?”
That night he moved his bedding to the room where old things were kept that were no longer in use. Helen saw and said nothing. When it was time to go to sleep, he said to her, “I haven’t been sleeping well and I keep turning and tossing in bed, so I’m afraid that I’ll disturb your sleep. That’s why I’ve moved my bed into another room.” Helen nodded in agreement. “Do whatever you think is best for you.”
“That’s what I’ve done.”
“Then good.”
From then on they spoke no more of the matter. Joseph forgot that he was only a guest and continued according to his practice. Every day he thought of leaving her house, of abandoning all her favors. A day passed, a week passed, and he did not leave her house. And she on her part did not tell him to get out.
One night he was sitting at the dinner table and Helen brought in a dish. Her mouth gave off an odor like the smell of a hungry person. He grimaced. She noticed and said to him, “Why are you twisting your mouth?”
“I didn’t twist my mouth.” She smiled a queer smile. “Maybe you’re bothered by the way my mouth smells?”
“Take a piece of bread and eat,” he entreated her. “Don’t worry about me, I won’t go hungry,” Helen answered. And again a queer smile played over her face, worse than the first one.
After eating and drinking, he went off to his room and made his bed ready. It occurred to him suddenly to recite the bedtime Shema. Since there was a crucifix hanging on the wall, he got up and went outside to recite the Shema.
That night was a winter night. The earth was covered with snow and the sky was congealed and turbid. He looked up to the sky and saw no spark of light; he looked to the ground and he could not make out his own feet. Suddenly he saw himself as though imprisoned in a forest in the midst of the snow around him that was being covered over by new snow. And he himself was also being covered over. He uprooted his feet and began to run. He bumped into a stone image that stood in the snow. “Father in heaven,” Joseph shouted, “how far away I have gone! If I don’t return at once, I am lost.” He looked one way and then another until he got his bearings. He directed himself toward the house and went back to it.
A tranquil stillness prevailed. No sound could be heard except for a muffled sound like snow falling on piles of snow. And from that arose another sound of his feet sinking in the snow and struggling to get out. His shoulders grew very heavy, as though he were carrying his heavy pack. After a while he reached the house.
The house was shrouded in darkness. There was no light in any of the rooms. “She’s sleeping,” Joseph whispered and stood still, his teeth clenched in hatred. He closed his eyes and entered his room.
When he came in he sensed that Helen was in the room. He put aside his hatred for her. Hurriedly, he took off his clothes and began to grope among the covers and pillows. He called out in a whisper, “Helen,” but received no answer. Again he called and received no answer. He got up and lit a candle. He saw his bedding filled with holes. What’s this? What’s this? When he had left his room, his bedding had been undamaged, and now it was filled with holes. There could be no doubt that these holes were made by human hands, but for what reason were they made? He looked and saw a blood spot. He stared at the blood in wonder.
Meanwhile, he heard the sound of a sigh. He looked and saw Helen sprawled on the floor with a knife in her hand. It was the hunting knife that she had bought from him the day he came there. He took the knife out of her hand, lifted her from the floor, and stretched her out on his bed. Helen opened her eyes and looked at him. As she looked at him, she opened her mouth wide until her teeth glittered.
Joseph asked Helen, “Do you want to say something?” And she said not a word. He bent down toward her. She pulled herself up all at once, sank her teeth into his throat, and began to bite and suck. Then she pushed him away and shouted, “Pfui, how cold you are! Your blood isn’t blood. It’s ice water.”
The peddler took care of the lady a day, and two days, and another day. He bound her wounds, for on the night that she came in to slaughter him, she wounded herself. He also prepared food for her.
But whatever food she tried to eat she would throw up, for she had already forgotten the science of eating ordinary human food, as it was her practice to eat the flesh of her husbands whom she slaughtered and to drink their blood, just as she wanted to do with the peddler.
On the fifth day she gave up the ghost and died. Joseph went to look for a priest but found none. He made her a coffin and a shroud, and dug in the snow to bury her. Since all the land was frozen over, he could not manage to dig her a grave. He took her carcass, placed it in the coffin, and climbed up to the roof where he buried the coffin in the snow. The birds smelled her carcass. They came and pecked away at the coffin till they broke into it, and then they divided among them the carcass of the lady. And that peddler took up his pack and traveled on from place to place, traveling and crying out his wares.