They hung their heads despondently, and kept silent, too. Then
father asked me once more:
"Married a Gentile? Has children?" I still kept silent. My old
mother wept silently. My heart melted within me, but I braced
myself up and kept silent. I felt as if a lump in my throat was
choking me, but I swallowed it. I heard mother talking to herself:
"O Master of the Universe, Father who art in Heaven, Thou Merciful
and Righteous!" . . . . As she said it, she shook her head, as if
accepting God's verdict and complaining at the same time.
The old man stood up, his beard a-quiver. His hand shook nervously,
and he said in a tone of dry, cold despair:
"Ett. . . . Blessed be the righteous Judge!" as though I had told
him the news of his son's death. With that he took out a pocket
knife, and wanted to make the "mourning cut." At that moment my ear
caught the sound of the heartrending singsong of the Psalms. The
voice was old and tremulous. It was an old man, evidently a lodger,
who was reading his Psalter in an adjoining room:
"For the Lord knoweth the path of the righteous.
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