And she got up and mockingly put the receiver to my ear. I heard Liebkind Bendel's nasal voice. He was telling of antiques to be got in Havana and explaining the difference in the exchange. Friedel leaned over to me so that our ears touched. Her hair tickled my cheek. Her ear almost burned mine. I was ashamed-like a boy. In one moment, my need to go to the bathroom became embarrassingly urgent.

Next morning when Friedel called the hospital, they told her that Dr. Walden was dead. He had died in the middle of the night. Friedel said, "Isn't that cruel? My conscience will torture me to my last moment."

The following day the Yiddish papers came out with the news. The same editors who Liebkind Bendel told me had refused to announce Dr. Walden's arrival in New York now wrote at length about his accomplishments in Hebrew literature. Obituaries also appeared in the English-language press. The photographs were at least thirty years old; in them Dr. Walden looked young, gay, with a full head of hair. According to the papers, the New York Hebraists, Dr. Walden's enemies, were making arrangements for the funeral. The Jewish telegraph service must have wired the event all over the world. Liebkind Bendel called Friedel from Havana to say that he was flying home.

Back in New York, he talked to me on the telephone for almost an hour. He kept repeating that Dr. Walden's death was not his fault. He would have died in London, too. What difference does it make where one ends? Liebkind Bendel was especially eager to know whether Dr. Walden had any manuscripts with him. He was planning to bring out a special number of Das Wort dedicated to him. Liebkind Bendel had brought from Havana a painting by Chagall that he had bought from a refugee. He admitted to me that it must have been stolen from a gallery. Liebkind Bendel said to me, "Well, if it had been grabbed by the Nazis, would that have been better? The Maginot Line isn't worth a pinch of tobacco. Hitler will be in Paris! Remember my words."

The chapel where the funeral was to take place was only a few blocks from Liebkind Bendel's apartment, and he, Friedel, and I arranged to meet at the chapel entrance. They were all there-the Hebraists, the Yiddishists, the Anglo-Jewish writers. Taxis kept arriving. From somewhere a small woman appeared, leading a girl who looked emaciated, disturbed. She stopped every few seconds and tapped with her foot on the sidewalk; the woman urged her forward and encouraged her. It was Sarah, Liebkind Bendel's mistress. Mother and daughter tried to go into the chapel, but it was already filled.

After a while, Liebkind Bendel and Friedel arrived in a red car. He was wearing a sand-colored suit and a gaudy tie from Havana. He looked fresh and tanned. Friedel was dressed in black, with a broad-brimmed hat. I told Liebkind that the hall was full and he said, "Don't be naive. You will see how things are done in America." He whispered something in an usher's ear and the usher led us inside and made room for us in one of the front rows. The artificial candles of the Menorah cast a subdued light. The coffin stood near the dais. A young rabbi with a small black mustache and a tiny skullcap that blended with his shiny pomaded hair spoke a eulogy in English. He seemed to know little of Dr. Walden. He confused facts and dates. He made errors in the titles of Dr. Walden's works. Then an old rabbiner with a white goatee, a refugee from Germany, wearing a black hat that looked like a casserole, spoke in German. He stressed his umlauts and quoted long passages in Hebrew. He called Dr. Walden a pillar of Judaism. He claimed that Dr. Walden had come to America so that he could continue publishing the encyclopedia to which he had devoted his best years. "The Nazis maintain that cannons are more important than butter," the rabbiner declaimed solemnly, "but we Jews, the people of the Book, still believe in the power of the word." He appealed for funds to bring out the last volumes of the encyclopedia for which Dr. Walden had sacrificed his life, coming to America in spite of his illness. He took out a handkerchief and with a corner dabbed away a single tear from behind his misty glasses. He called attention to the fact that among the mourners here in the chapel was present the universally beloved Professor Albert Einstein, a close friend of the deceased. A general whispering and looking around began among the crowd. A few even rose to get a glimpse of the world-famous scientist.

After the German rabbiner's sermon, there was a further eulogy given by the editor of a Hebrew magazine in New York. Then a cantor in a hexagonal hat, with the face of a bulldog, recited "God Full of Mercy." He sang in loud and lugubrious tones.

Near me sat a young woman dressed in black. She had yellow hair and red cheeks. I noticed a ring with a huge diamond on her finger. When the young rabbi was speaking in English, she lifted her veil and blew her nose into a lacy handkerchief. When the old rabbiner spoke in German, she clasped her hands and wept. When the cantor cried out, "In Paradise his rest shall be!" the woman sobbed with as much abandon as the women in the old country. She bent over as though about to collapse, her face drenched with tears. Who can she be, I wondered. As far as I knew, Dr. Walden had no relatives here. I remembered Liebkind Bendel's words that somewhere in New York might be found a true admirer of Dr. Walden's who would really love him. I had realized long ago that whatever anybody can invent already exists somewhere.

After the ceremony, everyone rose and filed past the coffin. I saw ahead of me Professor Albert Einstein looking exactly as he did in his pictures, slightly stooped, his hair long. He stood for a moment, murmuring his farewell. Then I got a glimpse of Dr. Walden. The undertakers had applied their cosmetics. His head rested on a silk pillow, his face stiff as wax, closely shaved, with twirled mustache, and in the corners of his eyes a hint of a smile that seemed to say, "Well, ja, my life was one big joke-from the beginning to the end."

Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.

Powers.

I.

As a rule, those who come for advice to the newspaper where I work do not ask for anyone in particular. We have a reporter who turns out a regular column of advice to readers, and anyone dropping around is usually referred to him. But this man asked especially for me. He was shown my room: a tall man-he had to bend his head to come through the door-without a hat, with a shock of black hair mixed with gray. His black eyes, under shaggy brows, had a wild look that rather frightened me. He had on a light raincoat, although it was snowing outside. His square face was red from the cold. He wore no tie, and his shirt was open, showing a chest covered with hair as thick as fur. He had a broad nose and thick lips. When he talked, he revealed large, separated teeth that appeared unusually strong.

He said, "Are you the writer?"

"I am."

He seemed surprised. "This little man who sits at this table?" he said. "I imagined you somewhat different. Well, things don't have to be exactly as we imagined them. I read every word you write-Yiddish and English both. When I hear that you've published something in a magazine, I run right out to buy it."

"Thank you very much. Please sit down."

"I'd rather stand-but-well-I will sit down. May I smoke?"

"Certainly."

"I should tell you I am not an American. I came here after the Second World War. I've been through Hitler's hell, Stalin's hell, and a couple of other hells besides. But that's not why I came to you. Do you have time to listen to me?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, everybody in America is busy. How do you have time to write all those things and to see people too?"

"There is time for everything."

"Perhaps. Here in America time disappears-a week is nothing and a month is nothing, and a year passes by between yes and no. In those hells on the other side, a day seemed longer than a year does here. I've been in this country since 1950, and the years have gone like a dream. Now it's summer, now it's winter, the years just roll away. How old do you think I am?"

"In the forties-maybe fifty."

"Add thirteen years more. In April I will be sixty-three."

"You look young-knock on wood."

"That's what everybody says. In our family we don't turn gray. My grandfather died at ninety-three and he had hardly any gray hair. He was a blacksmith. On my mother's side, they were scholars. I studied at a yeshiva-I was a student at the yeshiva of Gur, and for a while in Lithuania. Only until I was seventeen, it's true, but I have a good memory. When I learn something, it stays stuck in my brain. I forget nothing, in a sense, and this is my tragedy. Once I was convinced that poring over the Talmud would be useless, I took to studying worldly books. The Russians had left by that time and the Germans had taken over. Then Poland became independent and I was drafted into the army. I helped to drive the Bolsheviks to Kiev. Then they drove us back to the Vistula. The Poles are not too fond of Jews, but I advanced. They made me a top sergeant-chorazy-the highest rank you can reach without military school, and after the war they offered to send me to a military academy. I might have become a colonel or something, but the barracks was not my ambition. I read a lot, painted, and tried to become a sculptor. I began to carve all sorts of figures out of wood. I ended up making furniture. Cabinet work-I specialized in repairing furniture, mostly antiques. You know how it is-inlays fall out, bits break off. It takes skill to make the patch invisible. I still don't know why I threw myself into it with such enthusiasm. To find the right grain of wood, the right color, and to fit it in so that the owner himself couldn't spot the place-for this, one needs iron patience, and instinct too.

"Now I'll tell you why I came to you. It's because you write about the mysterious powers: telepathy, spirits, hypnotism, fatalism, and so on-I read it all. I read it because I possess the powers you describe. I didn't come to boast, and don't get the idea I want to become a newspaperman. Here in America I work at my trade and I earn enough. I'm single-no wife, no children. They killed off my family. I take a drink of whiskey, but I'm not a drunkard. I have an apartment here in New York, and a cottage in Woodstock. I don't need help from anybody.

"But to get back to the powers. You're right when you say a person is born with them. We're born with everything. I was a child of six when I first began to carve. Later I neglected it, but the gift stayed with me. And that's how it is with the powers. I had them but I didn't know what they were. I got up one morning and it came into my mind that someone in our building was going to fall out the window that day. We lived in Warsaw on Twarda Street. I didn't like the thought-it frightened me. I left for cheder, and when I came home the courtyard was black with people. The ambulance was just arriving. A glazier had been replacing a pane in a window on the second floor, and had fallen out. If such things had happened once, twice-even five times-I might have called it coincidence, but they happened so frequently there could be no question of coincidence. Strange, I began to understand that I should conceal this-as if it were an ugly birthmark. And I was right, because powers like this are a misfortune. It's better to be born deaf or lame than to possess them.

"But, no matter how careful you are, you can't hide everything. Once, I was sitting in the kitchen. My mother-peace be with her-was knitting a stocking. My father earned good money, even though he was a laborer. Our apartment was comfortable, and as clean as a rich man's house. We had a lot of copper dishes, which my mother used to scour each week until they shone. I was sitting on a low bench. I wasn't more than seven years old at the time. All of a sudden, I said, 'Mamma, there's money under the floor! There is money!' My mother stopped knitting and looked at me in amazement. 'What sort of money? What are you babbling about?' 'Money,' I said. 'Gold pieces.' My mother said, 'Are you crazy? How do you know what's under the floor?' 'I know,' I said. Already I realized that I shouldn't have said it, but it was too late.

"When my father came home for dinner, my mother told him what I had said. I wasn't there, but my father was so astonished he confessed that he had hidden a number of golden coins under the floor. I had an older sister and my father was saving a dowry for her-putting money into a bank was not the custom for simple people. When I returned from cheder, my father began to question me. 'Are you spying on me?' Actually, my father had hidden the money when I was in cheder and my mother was out marketing. My sister had gone to visit a friend. He had locked and bolted the door, and we lived on the third floor. He had even been careful enough to stuff the keyhole with cotton. I got a beating, but no matter how I tried I could not explain to him how I knew about those coins. 'This boy is a devil!' my father said, and he gave me an extra box on the ear. It was a good lesson to me to keep my mouth shut.

"I could tell you a hundred things like that about my childhood, but I'll add just one. Across the street from our home there was a store that sold dairy products. In those years, you went to the store to buy boiled milk. They boiled it on a gas range. One morning my mother gave me a pan and told me, 'Go to Zelda across the street and buy a quart of boiled milk.' I went over to the store and there was only one customer-a girl who was buying a few ounces of butter. In Warsaw they used to slice the butter from a big chunk with a bow, like the ones children carried at the Feast of Omer when they went picnicking in the Praga forest. I looked up and saw a strange thing: a light was burning over Zelda's head, as if there were a Hanukkah lamp in her wig. I stood and gaped-how was it possible? Nearby, at the counter, the girl spoke to Zelda as though there was nothing out of the way. After Zelda weighed the butter on the scale and the girl left, Zelda said, 'Come in, come in. Why are you standing there on the threshold?' I wanted to ask her, 'Why does a light burn over your head?' But I already had a hunch that I was the only one who saw it.

"The next day, when I came home from cheder, my mother said to me, 'Did you hear what happened? Zelda from the dairy store dropped dead.' You can imagine my fright. I was only about eight. Since then I've seen the same kind of light many times over the heads of those who were about to die. Thank God, I haven't seen it for the last twenty years. At my age, and among those I spend my days with, I could see those lights all the time."

II.

"A while ago, you wrote that in every great love there is an element of telepathy. I was struck by this and decided that I had to see you. In my own life this happened not once, not ten times, but over and over again. In my young years I was romantic. I would see a woman and fall in love with her at first sight. In those days you couldn't just approach a woman and tell her you were in love with her. Girls were delicate creatures. A mere word was considered an insult. Also, in my own way, I was shy. Proud, too. It's not in my nature to run after women. To make it short, instead of talking to a girl, I would think about her-day and night. I fancied all kinds of impossible encounters and adventures. Then I began to notice that my thoughts took effect. The girl I had been thinking about so hard would actually come to me. Once, I deliberately waited for a woman on a crowded street in Warsaw until she appeared. I'm no mathematician, but I know the odds that this woman might cross that street at that very time were about one in twenty million. But she came, as though attracted by an invisible magnet.

"I'm not too credulous; even today I have my doubts. We want to believe that everything happens in a rational way and according to order. We're afraid of mysteries-if there are good powers, it's likely there are also evil ones, and who knows what they might do! But so many irrational things happened to me I would have to be an idiot to ignore them.

"Perhaps because I had this kind of magnetism, I never married. Anyway, I'm not the kind of man who is satisfied with one woman. I had other powers, too, but those I'm not going to boast about. I lived, as they say, in a Turkish paradise-often with as many as five or six lovers at the same time. In the drawing rooms where I used to fix furniture, I often made the acquaintance of beautiful women-mostly Gentiles. And I always heard the same song from them-I was different from other Jews, and all that kind of chatter. I had a room with a separate entrance, and that's all a bachelor needs. I kept brandy and liquors and a good supply of delicacies in my cupboard. If I were to tell you what took place in this room on my sofa, you could make a book out of it-but who cares? The older I grew, the clearer it became to me that for modern man marriage is sheer insanity. Without religion, the whole institution is absurd. Naturally, your mother and my mother were faithful women. For them there was one God and one husband.

"Now I come to the main point. In spite of all the women I had in those years, there was one I stayed with for almost thirty years-actually, until the day the Nazis bombed Warsaw. That day thousands of men crossed the bridge to Praga. I wanted to take Manya with me-Manya was her name-but she had the grippe, and I couldn't wait for her. I had plenty of connections in Poland, but in such a catastrophe they are not worth a sniff of tobacco. Later I was told that the house where I lived was hit by a bomb and reduced to a pile of lime and bricks. I never heard from Manya again.

"This Manya might have been considered an ordinary girl. She came from some little village in Greater Poland. When we met, we were both virgins. But no power and no treachery on my part could destroy the love between us. Somehow she knew of all my abominations and kept warning me that she would leave me, get married, and whatnot. But she came to me regularly every week-often more. The other women never spent the night in my room, but when Manya came she stayed. She was not particularly beautiful-dark, not tall, with black eyes. She had curly hair. In her village they called her Manya the Gypsy. She had all the antics of a gypsy. She told fortunes from cards and read palms. She believed in all kinds of witchcraft and superstitions. She even dressed like a gypsy in flowered skirts and shawls, wore large hoop earrings, and red beads around her neck. There was always a cigarette between her lips. She made a living as a salesgirl in a lingerie shop. The owners were an elderly couple without children, and Manya became almost a daughter to them. She was an excellent saleswoman. She could sew, embroider, and even learned how to make corsets. She managed the whole business. If she had been willing to steal, she could have had a fortune, but she was one hundred percent honest. Anyhow, the old people were going to leave her the store in their will. In later years, the old man had a liver ailment, so they traveled to Carlsbad, Marienbad, and to Piszczany. And they left everything with Manya. Why did she need to get married? What she needed was a man, and I was that man. This girl, who could barely read and write, was, in her way, very refined-especially in sex. In my life I had God knows how many women, but there was never one like Manya. She had her own caprices and peculiarities, and when I think about them I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Sadism is sadism and masochism is masochism-are there names for all this nonsense? Each time we quarreled we were both terribly unhappy, and making peace was a great ceremony. She could cook fit for a king. When her bosses went to the spas, she cooked meals for me in their apartment. I used to say that her food had sex appeal, and there was some truth in it. This was her good side. The bad side was that Manya could never make peace with the idea that I had other women. She did everything she could to spoil my pleasure. By nature I am not a liar, but because of her I became one. Automatically. I didn't have to invent lies-my tongue did it by itself, and I was often astonished at how clever and farsighted a tongue can be. It foresaw events and situations-a matter I realized only later. However, you cannot fool anybody for thirty years. Manya knew my habits and she never stopped spying on me; my telephone used to ring in the middle of the night. At the same time, my business with other women gave her a perverse enjoyment. Now and again I confessed to her and she would ask for details, call me the worst names, cry, laugh, and become wild. I often felt like an animal trainer-like one who puts his head in the mouth of a lion. I always knew that my successes with other women made sense only as long as Manya was in the background. If I had Manya, the Countess Potocka was a bargain. Without Manya, no conquest was worth a groschen.

"It sometimes happened that I returned from one of my adventures, perhaps at an inn or a nobleman's estate, and I would be with Manya that same night. She refreshed me and I would begin all over again as if nothing had happened. But as I grew older I began to worry that too much love might do me some damage. I am something of a hypochondriac. I read medical books and articles in the newspapers. I worried that I might be ruining my health. Once, when I returned completely exhausted and was to meet Manya, the thought ran through my mind: how good it would be if Manya would get her period and I would not have to spend the night with her. I called her and she said, 'A funny thing happened, I got my holiday'-this is what she called it-'in the middle of the month.' 'So you've turned into a miracle worker,' I said to myself. But I remained skeptical about its really having anything to do with my wish. Only after such things repeated themselves many times did I realize that I had the power to give orders to Manya's body. Every word I'm telling you is pure truth. A few times I willed her to become sick-of course, just for a while, because I loved her very much-and she immediately got a high fever. It became clear that I ruled over her body completely. If I had wanted her to die, she would have died. I had read books and pamphlets about mesmerism, animal magnetism, and such topics, but it never occurred to me that I possessed this power myself, and in such measure.

"Besides being able to do anything I wanted with her, I also knew her thoughts. I could literally read her mind. Once, after a bitter fight, Manya left, slamming the door so hard that the windowpanes trembled. The moment she left, it occurred to me that she was going to the Vistula to drown herself. I grabbed my overcoat and started after her silently. She went from one street to another and I trailed her like a detective. She never looked back. Finally she reached the Vistula and began to move straight toward the water. I ran after her and grabbed her shoulder. She screamed and struggled. I had saved her from death. After that, I ordered her in my mind never to think of suicide again. Later she told me, 'How strange, I often used to think of making an end to myself. Lately these thoughts have stopped completely. Can you explain this?'

"I could have explained everything. Once when she came to me, I told her, 'You have lost money today.' She became pale. It was the truth. She had returned from a savings bank and had lost six hundred zlotys."

III.

"I will tell you the story about the dog and one story more and that will be enough. One summer-it must have been 1928 or 1929-I was overcome by a terrible fatigue. Hypochondria, too. I was entangled in so many affairs and complications that I almost fell apart. My telephone rang constantly. There were bitter quarrels between Manya and me that began to take on an uncanny character. At the place where she worked, the old man's wife had died, and Manya kept threatening to marry him. She had a cousin in South Africa who wrote her love letters and offered to send her an affidavit. Her great love suddenly turned to terrible hatred. She talked about poisoning herself and me. She proposed a double suicide. A fire kindled in her black eyes, which made her look like a Tartar. We are all the descendants of God knows what murderers. Did you or someone else write in your newspaper that every man is potentially a Nazi? At night I usually slept like the dead, but now I suffered from insomnia. When I finally fell asleep, I had nightmares. One morning I felt that my end had come. My legs were shaky, everything whirled before my eyes, there was a ringing in my ears. I saw that if I did not make some change, I would be finished. I decided to leave everything and go away. I packed a bag. As I packed, the telephone rang madly, but I did not answer it. I went down the street and took a droshky to the Vienna depot. A train was about to leave for Crakow, and I bought a ticket. I sat down on the second-class bench and I was so tired that I slept through the whole trip. The conductor woke me at Crakow. In Crakow I again took a droshky and told the driver to take me to a hotel. The moment I entered the hotel room, I fell down on the bed in my clothes and dozed until dawn. I say dozed, because my sleep was fitful-I slept and I did not sleep. I went to the toilet and voices screamed in my ears and bells rang. I literally heard Manya crying and calling me back. I was on the verge of a breakdown. But with my last strength I curbed myself. I had fasted for a day and a night, and when I woke at about eleven o'clock in the morning I was more dead than alive. There are no baths in the Crakow hotel rooms-if you wanted a bath, you had to order it from the maid. There was a washstand and a pitcher of water in the room. Somehow I managed to shave, eat breakfast, and get myself to a railroad station. I rode a few stops, and there the rails ended. Of course I wanted to go to the mountains, but it was not the line to Zakopane but a spur. I arrived at a village near Babia Gora. This is a mountain apart from the other mountains-a mountain individualist-and few tourists go there. There was no hotel or rooming house and I got a room with an old peasant couple-gazdas. I guess you know the region and I don't have to tell you how beautiful it is. But this particular village was especially beautiful and wild, perhaps because it was so isolated. The old pair had a dog-a huge specimen-I don't know what breed. They warned me that he would bite and one should be careful. I patted him on the head, I tickled his neck, and he immediately became my pal. That's an understatement-the dog fell madly in love with me-and it happened almost at once. He did not leave me for a minute. The old couple rented the room every summer, but the dog had never become attached to any lodger. To make it short, I ran away from human love and fell into canine love. Burek had all the ways of a woman, even though he was a male. He made scenes of jealousy that were worse than Manya's. I took long walks and he ran after me everywhere. There were whole packs of dogs in the village and if I only looked at another dog Burek became wild. He bit them, and me too. At night he insisted upon sleeping on my bed. In those places, dogs have fleas. I tried not to let him into my room, but he howled and wailed so, he woke half the village. I had to let him in and he immediately jumped on the bed. He cried with a human voice. They began to say in the village that I was a sorcerer. I didn't stay long, because you could die there from boredom. I had taken a few books with me, but I soon read them all. I had rested and was ready for new entanglements. But parting from Burek was not an easy business. He had sensed, with God knows what instinct, that I was about to leave. I had telephoned Manya from the post office and had received telegrams and registered letters in that godforsaken village. The dog kept on barking and howling. The last day, he went into some kind of spasm; he foamed at the mouth. The peasants were afraid he was mad. Until then, he hadn't even been tied up, but his owner got a chain and tied him to a stake. His clamor and his tearing at the chain shattered my nerves.

"I returned to Warsaw, sunburned but not really rested. What the dog did to me in that village, Manya and a few other females did in Warsaw. They all clung to me and bit me. I had orders to mend furniture, and the owners kept phoning me. A few days passed-or perhaps a few weeks; I don't remember exactly. After a difficult day, I went to bed early. I put out the lamp. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep immediately. Suddenly I woke up. Waking up in the middle of the night was not unusual for me, but this time I woke with the feeling that someone was in my room. I used to waken with a heaviness in my chest, but this time I felt an actual weight on my feet. I looked up and there was a dog lying on my blanket. The lamp was out, but it wasn't completely dark because a street lamp shone in. I recognized Burek.

"At first I had the idea that the dog had run after the train to Warsaw. But this was sheer nonsense. In the first place, he was tied up; then, no dog could run for so long after an express train. Even if the dog could have found his way to Warsaw by himself-and found my house-he could not have climbed up three flights of stairs. Besides, my door was always locked. I grasped that this was not a real dog, flesh and blood-it was a phantom. I saw his eyes, I felt the heaviness on my feet, but I didn't dare to touch him. I sat there terrified, and he looked me in the eyes with an expression utterly sad-and something else for which I have no name. I wanted to push him off and free my feet, but felt restrained. This was not a dog but a ghost. I lay down again and tried to fall asleep. After a while I succeeded. A nightmare? Call it a nightmare. But it was Burek just the same. I recognized his eyes, ears, his expression, his fur. The next day I wanted to write to the peasant to ask about the dog. But I knew that he couldn't read, and then I was too busy to write letters. I wouldn't have got an answer anyhow. I am absolutely convinced that the dog had died-what had visited me was not of this world.

"That wasn't the only time he came-over a number of years he kept returning, so that I had ample time to observe him even though he never appeared in the light. The dog was old when I left the village, and the way he looked that last day, I knew that he couldn't have lasted long. Astral body, spirit, soul-call it what you like-it is a fact so far as I'm concerned that a ghost of a dog came to me and lay on my legs, not once but dozens of times. Almost every night at first, then rarely. A dream? No, I wasn't dreaming-unless the whole of life is one dream."

IV.

"I will tell you one last incident. I have already told you that a number of the women with whom I had affairs I met in the drawing rooms where I went to repair furniture. This plain man who sits here has made love to Polish countesses. What is a countess? We are all made of the same stuff. But once I met a young woman who really made me jump out of my skin. I was hired to go to a noblewoman's house in Vilanov, to mend an old pianoforte decorated with gilded garlands. While I was working, a young woman glided through the drawing room. She stopped for no more than a second, saw what I was doing, and our eyes met. How can I describe to you how she looked? Both Polish aristocrat and strangely Jewish-as if, by some magic, a gentle yeshiva student had turned into a Polish panienka. She had a narrow face and black eyes, such deep ones that I became confused. They actually burned me. Everything about this woman was full of spirituality. Never before have I seen such beauty. She disappeared in an instant, and I remained shattered. Later I asked the owner who that beauty was, and she said it was a niece who was visiting. She mentioned the name of some estate or town from which she came. But in my confusion I wasn't able to pay attention. I could easily have learned her name and address if I hadn't been so dazed. I finished my work; she did not show up again. But her image always stood before my eyes. I began to think about her day and night without stopping. My thoughts wore me out, and I decided to make an end of them, no matter what the cost. Manya realized that I wasn't myself and this was the cause of new scenes. I was so mixed up that, even though I knew Warsaw like my ten fingers, I got lost in the streets and made silly mistakes. It went on like this for months. Slowly my obsession weakened-or perhaps it just sank deeper inside me; I could think about someone else and at the same time brood about her. So the summer passed and it was winter, then it was spring again. One late afternoon-almost dusk-I don't remember if it was April or May-my telephone rang. I said hello, and no one answered. However, somebody was holding the receiver at the end of the line. I called again, 'Hello, hello, hello!' and I heard a crackle and a stammering voice. I said, 'Whoever you are, be so good as to speak up.'

"After a while I heard a voice that was a woman's voice but also the voice of a boy. She said to me, 'You once worked in Vilanov, in such and such a house. Do you happen to remember someone passing through the drawing room?' My throat became tight, and I almost lost the ability to move my tongue. 'Yes, I remember you,' I said. 'Could anyone forget your face?' She was so quiet I thought she had hung up. But she began to speak again-murmur is more like it. She said, 'I have to talk to you. Where can we meet?' 'Wherever you wish,' I said. 'Would you want to come to me?' 'No, out of the question,' she said. 'Perhaps in a cafe-' 'No, not in a cafe,' I said. 'Tell me where you could meet me and I will be there.' She became silent; then she mentioned a little street near the city library, way uptown, near Mokotow. 'When do you want it to be?' I asked. And she said, 'As soon as possible.' 'Perhaps now?' 'Yes, if you can make it.' I knew that there was no cafe, no restaurant, not even a bench to sit on in that little street, but I told her that I was leaving at once. There had been a time when I thought that if this miracle should happen I would jump for joy. But somehow everything was silent in me. I was neither happy nor unhappy-only amazed.

"When I arrived at our meeting place, it was already night. The street had trees on both sides and few lamps. I could see her in the half darkness. She seemed leaner, and her hair was combed up in a bun. She stood near a tree, wrapped in shadow. Except for her, the street was deserted. She started when I approached her. The trees were blooming and the gutter was full of blossoms. I said to her, 'Here I am. Where can we go?' 'What I want to tell me?' I asked. She hesitated. 'I want to ask you to leave me in peace.'

"I was startled, and said, 'I don't know what you mean.' 'You know very well,' she said. 'You don't leave me in peace. I have a husband and I am happy with him. I want to be a faithful wife.' It wasn't talking but stammering. She paused after each word. She said, 'It wasn't easy to learn who you were and your telephone number. I had to invent a story about a broken chest to get the information from my aunt. I am not a liar; my aunt did not believe me. Still, she gave me your name and address.' Then she became silent.

"I asked, 'Why can't we go somewhere to talk it over?' 'I can't go anywhere. I could have told you this on the telephone-it is all so strange, absolutely insane-but now you know the truth.' 'I really don't know what's on your mind,' I said, just to prolong the conversation. She said, 'I beseech you, by whatever is holy to you, to stop tormenting me. What you want I cannot do-I'd rather die.' And her face became as pale as chalk.

"I still played the fool and said, 'I want nothing from you. It is true that when I saw you in your aunt's drawing room you made a strong impression on me-but I haven't done anything that should upset you.' 'Yes, you have. If we weren't living in the twentieth century, I would think you were a sorcerer. Believe me,' she went on, 'I didn't come easily to the decision to call you. I was even afraid that you might not know who I was-but you knew immediately.'

" 'We cannot stand here on the street and talk,' I said. 'We have to go somewhere.' 'Where? If someone who knows me should see me, I am lost.' I said, 'Come with me.' She hesitated for a while, and then she followed me. She seemed to have difficulty walking on her high heels and she took my arm. I noticed, even though she was wearing gloves, that she had most beautiful hands. Her hand fluttered on my arm, and each time a shudder ran through my body. After a while the young woman became more relaxed with me, and she said, 'What kind of powers do you possess? I have heard your voice several times. I have seen you, too. I woke up in the middle of the night and you were standing at the foot of my bed. Instead of eyes, two green beams shone from your sockets. I woke my husband, but in a second you vanished.'

" 'It's a hallucination,' I said. 'No, you wander in the night.' 'If I do, it's without knowing it.'

"We approached the shore of the Vistula and sat down on a log. It's quiet there. It's not completely safe because it's full of drunks and bums. But she sat with me. She said, 'My aunt will not know what has become of me. I told her that I was going for a walk. She even offered to accompany me. Give me a holy promise that you will let me go. Perhaps you have a wife and you wouldn't want anybody to molest her.'

" 'I have no wife,' I said, 'but I promise you that, as far as it depends on me, I will not molest you. That's all I can promise.'

" 'I will be grateful to you until my last breath.'

"That is the story. I never saw the woman again. I don't even know her name. I don't know why, but of all the strange things that have happened to me this made the strongest impression. Well, that's all. I won't disturb you any more."

"You don't disturb me," I said. "It's good to meet a person with such powers. It strengthens my own faith. But how did it happen that Manya had the grippe when you left Warsaw? Why didn't you order her to get well?"

"What? I ask myself this question constantly. It seems that my power is only negative. To heal the sick, one must be a saint and, as you see, I am far from being a saint. Or it may be-who knows-that to have a woman along in those days was dangerous."

The stranger hung his head. He began to drum on the table with his fingers and to hum to himself. Then he got up. It seemed to me that his face had changed; it had become gray and wrinkled. Suddenly he looked his age. He even appeared less tall than before. I noticed that his raincoat was full of spots. He gave me his hand to say goodbye, and I accompanied him to the elevator.

"Do you still think about women?" I asked.

He thought it over as though he hadn't grasped my words. He looked at me sadly, with suspicion. "Only about dead women."

Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.

Something Is There.

I.

As a rule, Rabbi Nechemia from Bechev knew the cunning of the Evil One and how to subdue him, but the last few months he had been plagued by something new and terrifying: wrath against the Creator. A part of the rabbi's brain quarreled with the Lord of the Universe, rebelliously arguing: Yes, you are great, eternal, all mighty, wise, even full of mercy. But with whom do you play hide-and-seek-with flies? What help is your greatness to the fly when it falls into the net of the spider that sucks out its life? Of what avail are all your attributes to the mouse when the cat clamps it in its claws? Rewards in Paradise? The beasts have no use for them. You, Father in heaven, have the time to wait for the End of Days, but they can't wait. When you cause a fire in Feitl the water carrier's hut and he has to sleep with his family in the poorhouse on a cold winter's night, that is an injustice beyond repair. The dimming of your light, free choice, redemption, may serve to explain you, but Feitl the water carrier needs to rest after a day's toil, not to toss about on a bed of rotten straw.

The rabbi knew well that Satan was talking to him. He tried every means to silence him. He submerged himself in the icy water of the ritual bath, fasted, and studied the Torah until his eyes closed from weariness. But the Devil refused to be thwarted. His insolence grew. He screamed from morning till night. Lately, he had begun to defile the rabbi's dreams. The rabbi dreamed of Jews being burned at the stake, of yeshiva boys led to the gallows, of violated virgins, tortured infants. He was shown the cruelties of Chmielnitzki's and Gonta's soldiers and those of the savages who consume the limbs of animals before the beasts expire. Cossacks impaled children with their spears and buried them still alive. A Haydamak with a long mustache and murderous eyes ripped open a woman's belly and sewed a cat inside. In his dream, the rabbi waved his fists toward heaven and shouted, "Is all this for your glory, Heavenly Killer?"

The whole court at Bechev was on the verge of collapse. The old rabbi, Reb Eliezer Tzvi, Rabbi Nechemia's father, had died three years before. He had suffered from cancer of the stomach. Rabbi Nechemia's mother had developed the same disease in her breast. Besides the rabbi, one daughter and a son remained. The rabbi's younger brother, Simcha David, became an "enlightened one" while his parents were alive. He left the court and his wife, the daughter of the Zhilkovka rabbi, and went to Warsaw to study painting. The rabbi's sister, Hinde Shevach, had married the son of the Neustater rabbi, Chaim Mattos, who immediately after the marriage sank into melancholia and returned to his parents. Hinde Shevach became an abandoned wife. Since he was considered insane, Chaim Mattos was not permitted to go through divorce proceedings. Rabbi Nechemia's own wife, a descendant of the rabbi of Kotzk, had died together with her infant at childbirth. The matchmakers proposed various mates for the rabbi, but he gave them all the same answer: "I will think it over."

Actually, no appropriate match was offered. Most of the Bechev Hasidim had deserted Reb Nechemia. In the rabbinical courts, the same laws prevailed as among the fish in the sea: the big ones devoured the little ones. The first to leave were the rich. What could keep them in Bechev? The study house was half ruined. The roof of the ritual bath had caved in. Weeds grew everywhere. Reb Nechemia was left with a single beadle-Reb Sander. The rabbi's house had many rooms, which were seldom cleaned, and a layer of dust covered everything. The wallpaper was peeling. Windowpanes were broken and not replaced. The entire building had settled in such a way that the floors all slanted. Beila Elke, the maid, suffered from rheumatism; her joints became knotted. Reb Nechemia's sister, Hinde Shevach, had no patience for housework. She sat on the couch all day long reading books. When the rabbi lost a button from his coat, there was no one to sew it on.

The rabbi was barely twenty-seven years old, but he appeared older. His tall figure was stooped. He had a yellow beard, yellow eyebrows, yellow sidelocks. He was nearly bald. He had a high forehead, blue eyes, a narrow nose, a long neck with a protruding Adam's apple. He had a consumptive pallor. In his study, Reb Nechemia, wearing a faded housecoat, a wrinkled skullcap, and shoddy slippers, paced back and forth. On the table lay a long pipe and a bag of tobacco. The rabbi would light it, take one puff, and put it down. He would pick up a book, open it, and close it without reading. He even ate impatiently. He bit off a piece of bread and chewed it while walking. He took a sip of his coffee and continued to pace. It was summer, between Pentecost and the Days of Awe, when no Hasidim go forth on pilgrimages, and during the long summer days the rabbi had time enough to brood. All problems blended into one-why the suffering? There was no answer to be found to this question, neither in the Pentateuch, in the books of the Prophets, in the Talmud, in the Zohar, nor in The Tree of Life. If the Lord is omnipotent, He could reveal Himself without the aid of the Evil Host. If He is not omnipotent, then He is not really God. The only solution to the riddle was that of the heretics: There is neither a judge nor a judgment. All creation is a blind accident-an inkwell fell on a sheet of paper and the ink wrote a letter by itself, each word a lie, the sentences chaos. In that case, why does he, Rabbi Nechemia, make a fool of himself? What kind of a rabbi is he? To whom does he pray? To whom does he complain? On the other hand, how can spilled ink compose even a single line? And from where does the ink and the sheet of paper come? Nu, and from where does God come?

Rabbi Nechemia stood at the open window. Outside, there was a pale blue sky; around a golden-yellow sun, little clouds curled like the flax that is used to protect the ethrog in its case. On the naked branch of a desiccated tree stood a bird. A swallow? A sparrow? Its mother was also a bird, and so, too, its grandmother-generation after generation, thousands of years. If Aristotle was right that the universe always existed, then the chain of generations had no beginning. But how could that be?

The rabbi grimaced as if in pain. He formed a fist. "You want to conceal your face?" He spoke to God. "So be it. You conceal your face and I will conceal mine. Enough is enough." He decided to put into action what he had contemplated for a long time.

II.

That Friday night the rabbi slept little. He napped and awoke intermittently. Each time he fell asleep, horrors seized him anew. Blood flowed. Corpses lay strewn in the gutters. Women ran through flames, with singed hair and charred breasts. Bells clanged. A stampede of beasts with ram's horns, pig's snouts, with skins of hedgehogs and pussy udders emerged from burning forests. A cry rose from the earth-a lament of men, women, serpents, demons. In the confusion of his dream, the rabbi imagined that Simchas Torah and Purim had fallen on the same day. Had the calendar been altered, the rabbi wondered, or had the Evil One taken dominion? At dawn an old man with a crooked beard, wearing a torn robe, ranted at him and shook his fists. The rabbi tried to blow the ram's horn to excommunicate him, but instead of a blast the sound was a wheeze that might have come from a deflated lung.

The rabbi trembled and his bed shook. His pillow was wet and twisted, as if it had just been wrung out from the washtub. The rabbi's eyes were half glued together. "Abominations," the rabbi muttered. "Scum of the brain." For the first time since he could remember, the rabbi did not perform the ablutions. "The power of evil? Let's see what evil can do! The sacred can only stay mute." He walked over to the window. The rising sun rolled among the clouds like a severed head. At a pile of garbage, the community he-goat was trying to chew last year's palm leaves. "You are still alive?" the rabbi addressed him. And he remembered the ram whose horns were caught in the thicket which Abraham had sacrificed instead of Isaac. He always had a need of burnt offerings, the rabbi thought of God. His creatures' blood was a sweet savor to Him.

"I will do it, I will do it," the rabbi said aloud.

In Bechev they prayed late. On the summer Sabbaths there was barely a quorum, even counting the few old men who were supported by the court. The night before, the rabbi had resolved not to put on his fringed garment, but he did so anyway out of habit. He had planned to go bareheaded, but reluctantly he placed the skullcap on his head. One sin at a time is enough, he decided. He sat down on his chair and dozed. After a while, he started and got up. Until yesterday the Good Spirit had attempted to reprimand the rabbi and to threaten him with Gehenna or a demeaning transmigration of the soul. But now the voice from Mount Horeb was stifled. All fears had vanished. Only anger remained. "If He does not need the Jews, the Jews don't need Him." The rabbi spoke no longer directly to the Almighty but to some other deity-perhaps to one of those mentioned in the Eighty-second Psalm: "God standeth in the Congregation of the mighty, He judgeth among the Gods." Now the rabbi agreed with every kind of heresy-with those who deny Him entirely and with those who believe in two dominions; with the idolators who serve the stars and the constellations and those who uphold the Trinity; with the Karaaites, who renounced the Talmud; with the Samaritans, who forsook Mount Sinai for Mount Gerizim. Yes, I have known the Lord and I intend to spite Him, the rabbi said. Many matters suddenly became clear: the primeval snake, Cain, the Generation of the Flood, the Sodomites, Ishmael, Esau, Korach, and Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. To a silent torturer one does not speak, and to a persecutor one does not pray.

The rabbi hoped that somehow at the last moment a miracle would occur-God would reveal Himself or some power would restrain him. But nothing happened. He opened the drawer and took out his pipe, an object forbidden to the touch on the Sabbath. He filled it with tobacco. Before striking the match, the rabbi hesitated. He admonished himself, "Nechemia, son of Eliezer Tzvi, this is one of the thirty-nine tasks prohibited on the Sabbath! For this, one is stoned." He looked around. No wings fluttered; no voice called. He withdrew a match and lit the pipe. His brain rattled in his skull like a kernel in the nutshell. He was plummeting into the abyss.

Usually the rabbi enjoyed smoking, but now the smoke tasted acrid. It scratched his throat. Someone might knock at the door! He poured a few drops of ablution water into the pipe-another major violation, to extinguish a fire. He had a desire for further transgression, but what? He wanted to spit on the mezuzah but refrained. For a while, the rabbi listened to the turmoil within him. Then he went out into the corridor and passed along to Hinde Shevach's room. He pulled at the latch and tried to open the door.

"Who is there?" Hinde Shevach called out.

"It is I."

The rabbi heard her rustling, murmuring. Then she opened the door. She must just have awakened. She wore a house robe with arabesques, slippers, and on her shaven head a silk kerchief. Nechemia was tall, but Hinde Shevach was small. Though she was barely twenty-five years old, she looked older, with dark circles under her eyes and the grieved expression of an abandoned wife. The rabbi rarely came to her room, never so early and on the Sabbath.

She asked, "Has something happened?"

The rabbi's eyes filled with laughter. "The Messiah has come. The moon fell down."

"What kind of talk is that?"

"Hinde Shevach, everything is finished," the rabbi said, astounded by his own words.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not a rabbi any more. There is no more court unless you want to take over and become the second Virgin of Ludmir."

Hinde Shevach's yellowish eyes measured him crookedly. "What happened?"

"I've had my fill."