Summary
Gimpel accuses Elka of being unfaithful because she gave birth to a baby only four months after she and Gimpel were married. Elka tells Gimpel that the baby was simply premature, and a schoolmaster whom Gimpel visits confirms this possibility, saying the same happened with Adam and Eve. Gimpel grows to love the baby and even to care for Elka, whose strength and ferocity he admires.
One night, after sleeping many nights in the bakery, Gimpel returns home. He finds Elka in bed with another man, but he does not make a scene because he does not want to wake the baby. The next day, Gimpel goes to the rabbi to tell him what he saw. The rabbi tells him he must immediately divorce his wife and never return to her. After staying away from Elka and the baby for a while, Gimpel begins to miss them. He writes to the rabbi to tell him that he thinks he was only hallucinating when he saw the man in Elka's bed, and the rabbi agrees to reconsider the case.
Gimpel continues to stay away from Elka until all the local rabbis can make a decision about what he should do. Elka gives birth to a baby girl, and Gimpel has an apprentice from the bakery bring her bread each day. After nine months of separation, the rabbi tells Gimpel that he can return home.
Analysis
This section of the story focuses primarily on Gimpel's relationship with Elka and how his perceived foolishness manifests in their marriage. From the very beginning of the story, it is clear to everyone – the reader, the townspeople, and Gimpel himself – that Elka is promiscuous and unfaithful. Gimpel knows that the child she has with her is not her younger brother, as she claims, but instead a child she had by another man. Despite this knowledge, however, the expectations of the townspeople lead Gimpel to marry Elka anyway. Gimpel's marriage to Elka mirrors the earlier statement he makes about how he could not challenge the people of Frampol without receiving anger in return. In other words, once he was deemed a "fool" by the townspeople, to showcase anything other than foolishness would mean disturbing the status quo on which so many other people relied. When Gimpel marries Elka, the stakes of his compliance increase, as his refusal to disappoint or anger the townspeople begins to take a severe toll on his own sense of self and well-being.
Gimpel's marriage to Elka showcases this sense of self that is constantly in flux. While he determines early on to confront Elka about their premature son, he allows himself to be convinced by Elka and the schoolmaster that such a phenomenon could indeed happen. Furthermore, when he discovers Elka in bed with another man, his first instinct is to defend the truth and himself, as he goes to the rabbi to reveal what he has seen. Notably, however, once Gimpel is ordered to stay away from Elka and the baby, his sense of what is true starts to disintegrate. "A longing took me, for her and for the child," he says. "I wanted to be angry, but that's my misfortune exactly, I don't have it in me to be really angry" (999). Gimpel proceeds to talk himself to tears as he decides that he really was hallucinating and has done Elka a disservice. This moment challenges the reader to interpret Gimpel's behavior in one of two ways: first, his resignation that he was hallucinating can be seen as further evidence of his own foolishness. However, this interpretation likely aligns with that of the townspeople whose expectations for Gimpel are already determined. Instead, Gimpel's retraction of the accusation against Elka can also be seen as his astute reckoning that, despite knowing the truth, he loves Elka and the children more than he wants to be right. In this way, Gimpel's foolishness is transformed into earnestness and practicality, as he chooses to be foolish in order to put an end to his loneliness.
