Whether or not Fanny was indeed a vilde chaya, she certainly demonstrated a rare talent for shechitah from her first attempt. Generally, those who are inexperienced shochetim are alarmed when a frightened rooster flaps its wings. They recoil from its snapping beak, and are taken aback by the bird’s indomitable will to live. Often, they end up cutting the throat with trembling hands, or even accidentally severing the rooster’s head. Fanny knew that the cut had to be firm and controlled, never frenzied. She would immobilise the rooster with one arm, grab the wings with her right hand and with two movements of her left hand, back and forth, she would slit the trachea and esophagus. Then, instead of leaving the rooster to agonise in a flapping of wings and legs in a bucket of blood, as is customary, she would hold it against her chest until she felt its soul leave her arms, and only then would she cover the blood with the earth, and smile at up her father.
Meir-Anschil watched his daughter with a pride that was mixed with trepidation. For two whole years, Fanny slaughtered – roosters and lambs mostly – and lo and behold: his customers loved her work. Jews from all across the district came to see the wonder with their own eyes, and there was no solid counter-argument, such as an explicit halakhic prohibition, which her detractors could use against her. Customers were not allowed into the slaughtering pen, but the prospect of seeing the slender girl with fair curls and wolf-like eyes in the slaughterhouse yard was persuasive enough for them to take the trouble to ride all the way to Grodno. They sated their imaginations in the taverns and rested their bodies in inns, and the residents of Grodno quickly realised that Meir-Anschil’s daughter was good for business. The marketplace makhers embellished the fable of the vilde chaya and told how she fearlessly seized the animals to produce kosher meat, and that no-one wielded the knife more skilfully than her. The Blessed Holy One guides the work of her left hand, so they said, and burnt offerings made with her meat bring a blessing upon diners and protect against the Evil Eye. Before long, there wasn’t a single person in Grodno, Jew or gentile, who did not want to take their livestock to be slaughtered by the vilde chaya.
A man like Yankel Kriegsmann, pauper that he was, could not waste such an opportunity. He began to loiter around the abattoir, offering a blessing from the vilde chaya’s grandfather in return for a few copecks. Meir-Anschil decided it was time to forgive his father-in-law for his misdeeds and offered him paid work, cleaning the slaughterhouse.
Yankel Kriegsmann reported for duty in the afternoon hours and cleaned the abattoir until it was spotless. He performed his work with quiet dedication, as if seeking to mend his ways, and little by little regained his son-in-law’s trust. Meir-Anschil and his daughter delegated to him the task of locking up and, after they left, he would sweep the floor, scrub down the walls and clear the waste around which the stray dogs would gather. He lingered over this last task, because he did not want to return to his lonely, empty house. He spent a long time watching the dogs feasting on leftover blood and tissue, sensing atonement for his sins and believing that he was doing good in the world.
Nevertheless, Kriegsmann became enraged by one of these stray dogs, Tzileyger was his name, a three-legged hound with crooked hips, whose weakness and timidity among the pack of dogs left him perpetually starving and emaciated. Tzileyger would stand back until all the others had finished sniffing and licking and chewing the day’s catch, and only then would he permit himself to walk, hesitantly, on two front legs and one hind leg, to the mound of refuse.
Kriegsmann decided to teach Tzileyger to stand his ground, and stopped him from approaching the waste once the rest of the pack had left. Whenever he saw Tzileyger dithering nervously behind the slaughterhouse, he would ambush him, beat him with a stick and throw rocks at him. Once, a stone hit one of Tzileyger’s front legs, and for weeks the dog scuttled on one front and one hind leg, which were luckily on opposite sides so he was able to keep his balance. The dog was forced to wait for Kriegsmann to leave and try his luck at a later hour, but the old man, who had nothing better to do, would always come back to surprise him in the moonlight.
Eventually, Tzileyger gave up and began searching for other sources of nourishment, but Kriegsmann did not relent. In the evening he would sneak over with leftover bones and meat and lure Tzileyger to his home with whistles and tut-tuts. He led the dog along the muddy streets of the town until they reached his home, where he would place the bowlful of bait underneath the front porch, whistling and calling out: “Tzileyger, you cheat, come and get a treat.” Kriegsmann then peeped from his window and threw a stone at him each time Tzileyger approached. But the temptation was too great for the starving dog, who, in spite of the stones hitting his head, managed every now and then to snatch a bone that would sustain him for a few days, chewing it with great pleasure in a nook he found underneath the steps to Kriegsmann’s house.
One morning, Yankel Kriegsmann awoke to the smell of rotting flesh, and found chicken remains and fur balls in the space between his house and the ground. He guessed that this was where the stray dog disappeared whenever he managed to pilfer a piece of bone. It was then that Kriegsmann decided to teach Tzileyger a lesson once and for all, and planned a sophisticated trap. He put out the bowl of food, as he had done every other evening, but deliberately missed the dog with the stones he threw at him. When he saw Tzileyger grab a juicy bone, he stole to the dog’s hiding place with his stick. Fanny happened to walk by her grandfather’s house exactly at that moment as she returned from her arithmetic lesson, and observed the incident to the very last detail. Tzileyger was caught by surprise and suffered Kriegsmann’s beatings with whines and howls: a front leg was broken and his body suffered grievous wounds, but his jaws continued to tightly clamp the bone.
Fanny said nothing.
Yankel Kriegsmann roared with laughter at the dog’s tenacity and tried to pull the bone out of his mouth, and Fanny saw Tzileyger expose his sharp teeth and snarl. The grandfather was so enraged by Tzileyger’s insurrection that he pulled at the bone with one hand and kept beating the dog with the stick in his other hand until finally, triumphantly, he seized the loot. But his triumph proved to be his defeat. The dog’s eyes sparked with wrath. Fanny watched as he mustered his courage and leaped at the old man with the last of his strength. Then, with a rage Fanny had never seen before, the dog mutilated her grandfather’s face, tore his skin, bit off his ear and clawed out his eyes.
Fanny stood paralysed for a few moments. It was the first time she had ever seen an animal take revenge. When she regained her senses, she tried to scare off the dog with her knife, but Tzileyger leaped at her as well, bit her left arm and disappeared. Overwhelmed by the pain, she felt as though her arm had been severed from her body. Her grandfather lay at the entrance to his house, unconscious and bleeding. When the doctor reached Kriegsmann he managed to stop the bleeding and clean the old man’s wounds, but when he returned the next day with ointments and medi-cines he told Meir-Anschil, “I’m afraid that he will live.” Only those who saw the vision of horror that was Yankel Kriegsmann that night understood what the doctor meant. The old man never appeared in public again. He could barely see or hear, his diet now amounted to no more than tepid cucumber soup, and his final doom was set for the next winter.
Tzileyger was never seen again around Grodno, and from that day on Fanny refused to slaughter animals or eat their flesh. When her father objected to her change of heart and tried to preach along the lines of “humans having pre-eminence over beasts”, she looked at him and said, “It depends which human and which beast.”
Yet Fanny no longer needed to slaughter in order to evoke the memory of her mother’s bosom, and a few weeks later, she asked her father to find her a proper shidduch that would be commensurate with her principles. Meir-Anschil promised the world to the matchmaker, Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner, who in turn suggested a few possibilities, all of which were rejected because the matchmaker failed to understand Fanny’s “principles”. Finally, Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner was forced to travel all the way to Motal, where he heard about Natan-Berl Keismann, a portly and rather slow golem who was older than Fanny by fifteen years. Natan-Berl had inherited from his father a cheese-making business in the village of Upiravah and made a name for himself as the most successful sheep farmer in the entire district.
The “principle” that guided his work, so Yehiel-Mikhl Gemeiner was secretly told, was not a special salting or curdling process, but rather maintaining herds of calm and peaceful livestock – that was all.
“Is this commensurate with her ‘principles’?” the matchmaker asked Meir-Anschil, failing to hide the mockery in his voice.
“If you find a shidduch for Mende nearby,” Meir-Anschil replied, “I will send them both to Motal.”