"Yes, love affairs. I myself knew a Hebrew teacher, Deborah Soltis, who was madly in love with him. She was my patient. She died about ten years ago."

In connection with this, Eiserman told me of a curious episode. Joel Yabloner and Deborah Soltis saw each other over a period of twenty years, indulging in long conversations, often discussing Hebrew literature, the fine points of grammar, Maimonides, and Rabbi Judah ha-Levi, but the pair never went so far as to kiss. The closest they came was once when both of them were looking up the meaning of a word or an idiom in Ben-Yahudah's great dictionary and their heads met accidentally. Yabloner fell into a playful mood and said, "Deborah, let's trade eyeglasses."

"What for?" Deborah Soltis asked.

"Oh, just like that. Only for a little while."

The two lovers exchanged reading glasses, but he couldn't read with hers and she couldn't read with his. So they replaced their own glasses on their own noses-and that was the most intimate contact the two ever achieved.

Eventually, I stopped going down to East Broadway. I sent my articles to the newspaper by mail. I forgot Joel Yabloner. I didn't even know that he was still alive. Then one day when I walked into a hotel lobby in Tel Aviv I heard applause in an adjoining hall. The door to the hall was half open and I looked in. There was Joel Yabloner behind a lectern, making a speech. He wore an alpaca suit, a white shirt, a silk skullcap, and his face appeared fresh, rosy, young. He had a full set of new teeth and had sprouted a white goatee. I happened not to be especially busy, so I found an empty chair and sat down.

Yabloner did not speak modern Hebrew but the old holy tongue with the Ashkenazi pronunciation. When he gesticulated, I noticed the sparkling links in his immaculate shirt cuffs. I heard him say in a Talmudic singsong, "Since the Infinite One filled all space and, as the Zohar expresses it, 'No space is empty of Him,' how did He create the universe? Rabbi Chaim Vital gave the answer: 'Before creation, the attributes of the Almighty were all potential, not actual. How can one be a king without subjects, and how can there be mercy without anyone to receive it?' "

Yabloner clutched his beard, glanced at his notes. Once in a while, he took a sip from a glass of tea. I observed quite a number of women and even young girls in the audience. A few students took notes. How strange-there was also a nun. She must have understood Hebrew. "The Jewish state has resuscitated Joel Yabloner," I said to myself. One seldom has a chance to enjoy someone else's good fortune, and for me Yabloner's triumph was a symbol of the Eternal Jew. He had spent decades as a lonely, neglected man. Now he seemed to have come into his own. I listened to the rest of the lecture, which was followed by a question period. Unbelievable, but that sad man had a sense of humor. I learned that the lecture had been organized by a committee which had undertaken to publish Yabloner's work. One of the members of the committee knew me, and asked if I wished to attend a banquet in Yabloner's honor. "Since you are a vegetarian," he added, "here is your chance. They will serve only vegetables, fruits, nuts. When do they ever have a vegetarian banquet? Once in a lifetime."

Between the lecture and the banquet, Joel Yabloner went out on the terrace for a rest. The day had been hot, and now in the late afternoon a breeze was blowing from the sea. I approached him, saying, "You don't remember me, but I know you."

"I know you very well. I read everything you write," he replied. "Even here I try not to miss your stories."

"Really, it is a great honor for me to hear you say so."

"Please sit down," he said, indicating a chair.

God in Heaven, that silent man had become talkative. He asked me all kinds of questions about America, East Broadway, Yiddish literature. A woman came over to us. She wore a turban over her white hair, a satin cape, and men's shoes with low, wide heels. She had a large head, high cheekbones, the complexion of a gypsy, black eyes that blazed with anger. The beginnings of a beard could be seen on her chin. In a strong, mannish voice she said to me, "Adoni [Sir], my husband just finished an important lecture. He must speak at the banquet, and I want him to rest for a while. Be so good as to leave him alone. He is not a young man any more and he should not exert himself."

"Oh, excuse me."

Yabloner frowned. "Abigail, this man is a Yiddish writer and my friend."

"He may be a writer and a friend, but your throat is overstrained. If you argue with him, you will be hoarse later."

"Abigail, we aren't arguing."

"Adoni, please listen to me. He doesn't know how to take care of himself."

"Well, we shall talk later," I said. "You have a devoted wife."

"So they tell me."

I took part in the banquet-ate the nuts, almonds, avocados, cheese, bananas that were served. Yabloner again made a speech, this time about the author of the cabalistic book The Treatise of the Hasidim. His wife sat near him on the stage. Each time his voice became scratchy she handed him a glass of white fluid-some variety of yogurt. After the speech, in the course of which Yabloner demonstrated much erudition, the chairman announced that an assistant professor at the Hebrew University was writing Yabloner's biography and that funds were being raised to publish it. The author was called out on the stage. He was a young man with a round face, shining eyes, and the tiniest of skullcaps, which blended into his pomaded hair. In his closing words, Yabloner thanked his old friends, his students, all those who came to honor him. He paid tribute to his wife, Abigail, saying that without her help he would never have been able to put his manuscripts in order. He mentioned her first husband, whom he referred to as a genius, a saint, a pillar of wisdom. From a huge handbag that resembled a valise more than a lady's purse, Mrs. Yabloner took out a red kerchief like the ones used by old-fashioned rabbis and blew her nose with a blast that reverberated throughout the hall. "Let him intercede for us at the Throne of Glory!" she called out.

After the banquet I went over to Yabloner and said, "Often when I saw you sitting all alone in the cafeteria I was tempted to ask you why you didn't go to Israel. What was your reason for waiting so long?"

He paused, closing his eyes as if the question required pondering, and finally shrugged his shoulders. "Man does not live according to reason."

Again a few years passed. The typesetter on the newspaper for which I worked had lost a page of my most recent article, and since the article had to appear the next day-Saturday-there wasn't time to send the copy by mail. I had to take a cab to deliver it to the composing room myself. I gave the missing page to the foreman and went down to the editorial department to see the editor and some of my old colleagues. The winter day was short, and when I came back onto the street I felt the long-forgotten hustle and bustle of the oncoming Sabbath. Even though the neighborhood was no longer predominantly Jewish, some synagogues, yeshivas, and Hasidic study houses had refused to leave. Here and there I saw in a window a woman lighting her Sabbath candles. Men in wide-brimmed velvet or fur hats were going to prayers, accompanied by boys with long sidelocks. My father's words came to my mind: "The Almighty will always have His quorum." I remembered the chants of the Sabbath-eve liturgy: "Let us exalt," "Come my bridegroom," "The temple of the King."

I was not in a hurry any more, and I decided to have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria before I took the subway home. I pushed the revolving door. For a moment I imagined that nothing had changed, and I thought I could hear those voices of my first years in America-the cafeteria filled with Old World intellectuals shouting their opinions of Zionism, Jewish Socialism, the life and culture in America. But the faces were not familiar. Spanish was the language I heard. The walls had been painted over, and the scenes of Orchard Street with its pushcarts and peddlers had disappeared. Suddenly I saw something I could not believe. At a table in the middle of the room sat Joel Yabloner-without a beard, in a shabby suit and an unbuttoned shirt. He was emaciated, wrinkled, and disheveled, and his mouth again appeared sunken and empty. His bulging eyes stared at the empty wall opposite. Was I mistaken? No, it was Yabloner, all right. In his expression there was the desperation of a man caught in a dilemma from which there is no escape. With the cup of coffee in my hand, I stopped. Should I approach him to greet him, should I ask permission to sit down at his table?

Someone pushed me, and half of my coffee spilled over. The spoon fell on the floor with a clang. Yabloner turned around and our eyes met for a second. I nodded to him, but he did not respond. Then he turned his face away. Yes, he recognized me, but he was not in a mood for conversation. I even imagined that he had shaken his head in refusal. I found a table against the wall and sat down. I drank what was left of my coffee, all the while looking at him sideways. Why had he left Israel? Did he miss something here? Was he running away from someone? I had a strong desire to go over and ask him, but I knew that I would not get anything out of him.

A power stronger than man and his calculations has driven him out of Paradise, back to Hell, I decided. He did not even go to the Friday-night services. He was hostile not only to people but to the Sabbath itself. I finished the coffee and left.

A few weeks later, I read among the obituaries that Joel Yabloner had died. He was buried somewhere in Brooklyn. That night I lay awake until three o'clock, thinking about him. Why did he return? Had he not atoned enough for the sins of his youth? Had his return to East Broadway some explanation in the lore of the Cabala? Had some holy sparks strayed from the World of Emanation into the Evil Host? And could they have been found and brought back to their sacred origin only in this cafeteria? Another idea came into my head-perhaps he wanted to lie near that teacher with whom he exchanged eyeglasses? I remembered the last words I heard from him: "Man does not live according to reason."

Translated by Alma Singer and Herbert Lottman.

A Quotation from Klopstock.

THOSE who have to do with women must boast. In literary circles in Warsaw, Max Persky was known as a woman chaser. His followers contended that if he hadn't spent so much of his time on females, he might have become a second Sholem Aleichem or a Yiddish Maupassant. Although he was twenty years older than I, we became friends. I had read his work and listened to all his stories. That summer evening we sat in a little garden cafe, drinking coffee and eating blueberry cookies. The sun had already set and a pale September moon hung in the sky above the tin roofs. But remnants of the sunset were still reflected in the glass door which led to the interior of the cafe. The air was warm and smelled of the Praga forest, freshly baked babkas, and the manure that peasants gathered from the stables to dump into the fields. Max Persky smoked one cigarette after another. The tray filled with ashes and butts. Even though he was already in his forties-some maintained he was nearly fifty-Max Persky looked young. He had a boyish figure, a head of black shiny hair, a brown-complexioned face, full lips, and the penetrating eyes of a hypnotist. The two lines at the sides of his mouth gave him an air of fatalistic awareness. His enemies gossiped that he took money from wealthy women. It was also said that a woman had committed suicide over him. Our waitress, middle-aged, with a young figure, kept staring at him. From time to time she smiled guiltily at me as if to say, I can't help it. She had a short nose, sunken cheeks, and a pointed chin. I noticed that the middle finger was missing from her left hand.

Max Persky suddenly asked me, "What happened to that woman who was twelve years older than you? Do you still see her?"

I wanted to answer him but he shook his head. He said, "There is something about older women that the younger ones cannot supply. I, myself, had one, not twelve years older than I but thirty. I was a young man of about twenty-seven and she must have been in her fifties. She was a spinster, a teacher of German literature. She also knew Hebrew. In those years the rich Jews in Warsaw wanted their daughters to be versed in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. If they weren't, they lacked kultur. A pinch of Hebrew did no harm either. Theresa Stein made a living teaching these subjects. You most probably have never heard of her, but in my time she was well known in Warsaw. This was a woman who took poetry very seriously, which proves that she was not too clever. She certainly was no beauty. To enter her small apartment on Nowolipki Street was an experience. Poverty hovered all around it, but she had turned her rooms into a kind of old maid's temple. She spent half of her earnings on books, mostly gold-embossed with velvet bindings. She bought paintings also. When I was introduced to her she was still a kosher virgin. I needed a quotation from Klopstock's Messiah for one of my stories, and I telephoned and she asked me to visit her that evening. When I arrived, she had already found the quotation I needed and many others. I brought her my first book, which had just been published. She knew Yiddish quite well. She worshipped Peretz. Whom did she not worship? She spoke the word 'talent' as solemnly as a pious Jew mentions God. She was small and roundish with brown eyes, from which radiated goodness and naivete. Women like that don't exist any more. Since I was young and played the part of a cynic, I immediately did everything I could to shock her. I denounced all poets as imbeciles and told her I was having affairs with four women at the same time. Her eyes filled with tears. She said to me, 'You are so young, so talented, and already so unhappy. You don't know yet what real love is, and therefore you torture your immortal soul. True love will come to you and you will find treasures that will open the gates of Heaven to you.' To comfort me for being so misled, she offered me tea with jam cake she had baked herself and a glass of cherry brandy. I did not wait long before I began to kiss her-almost out of habit. I will never forget her expression at the first kiss. Her eyes lit up with a strange light. She clutched both my wrists and said, 'Don't do it! I take such things seriously!' She trembled and stuttered and tried to quote Goethe. Her body became unusually hot. I practically raped her, although not exactly. I spent the night at her house, and if someone could convey in a book all she said that night, it would be a work of genius. She promptly fell in love with me-with a love that endured to her last minute. I am far from being holy even today, but in those years I didn't have a trace of conscience. I considered the whole thing a joke.

"She began to telephone me every day-three times a day-but I had no time for her and invented countless excuses. Nevertheless, I used to visit her from time to time-mostly on rainy nights when I had no other engagements. Every visit was literally a holiday for her. If she could manage it, she prepared a festive supper, bought flowers in my honor, and dressed in fancy gowns or kimonos. She showered me with gifts. She tried to persuade me to read the German classics with her. But I tore them all to pieces and confessed to her brazenly all my sins, even about the brothels I had visited in my youth. There are some women who can be shocked constantly, and for her I never lacked material. Just because she spoke gently, with flowery phrases and noble quotations, I used the language of the streets and called everything by its name. She used to say, 'God will forgive you. Since He bestowed talent upon you, you are His favorite.' The truth is that it was impossible to spoil her. Figuratively speaking, she remained a virgin to the end. She possessed a purity and love for humanity not to be erased. She defended everyone, even that famous anti-Semite, Purish-kevitch. She said, 'The poor man is deluded. There are souls who sink in darkness because they never have the chance to see the divine light.' I did not realize it then but I slept with a saint, like the Saint Theresa whose namesake she was.

"She was so pure that the things I forced her to do shattered her. I have a large bundle of her letters and they are stained with her tears-not false ones but true. A time is coming when no one will believe that such women existed. Meanwhile, years passed, she grew older and her hair became white, but her face remained young and her eyes shone with all the illusions of romanticism. I had less and less time for her. The rich Jews of Warsaw slowly lost their interest in German culture and Theresa earned less and less. But I could not completely sever our relationship. I always had the feeling that, if everything went wrong and I was forsaken by everyone, I could depend on Theresa to be my mother, my wife, my protector. She had developed the tolerance characteristic of such natures. I was allowed to do anything. I never had to defend myself. In my situation one has to be a chronic liar, but to Theresa I could tell the truth no matter how brutal. She always had the same answer, 'You poor boy! You great artist!'

"The years, meanwhile, did their job. Theresa became bent and wrinkled. She began to suffer from rheumatism. She had to lean on a cane. I was ashamed of myself for my charity, if it could be called that, but to leave her completely meant killing her. She clung to me with her last strength. At night in bed she became young again. Sometimes in the dark, words escaped her which astounded me. Among other things she promised me that after her death she would appear to me, if it were possible. I don't want to disappoint you, so I am telling you in advance that she never kept that promise. But my story is just beginning."

Max Persky signaled the waitress and she came over at once, as though she had been waiting impatiently for this call. He spoke to her with caressing familiarity, "Panna Helena, I am beginning to get hungry."

"My God, today we have what you like-tomato soup."

"What are you going to have?" he asked me.

"Tomato soup, also."

"Panna Helena, make it two." He winked at her and I understood that he had the same conspiratorial relationship with her that he had had with Theresa Stein. Max Persky was in his own way a philanthropist-not with money but with love.

After the soup Max Persky lit a cigarette and asked, "Where did I stop? Yes, she grew old. She had to move out of her apartment and become a boarder with other people. This was a real tragedy, but I could not help her. You know, I never had a penny. I could not even lend a hand with the packing and moving, because Theresa Stein had a spotless reputation in Warsaw and the slightest gossip would have caused her to lose her last lessons. To tell the truth, no one would have really believed that Theresa was capable of doing what she actually did. The older she became the more guilty she felt about it and, nevertheless, shamefully asked for her due. As long as she had her private apartment, it was not difficult to keep the conspiracy. I always came to her early in the evening, and never failed to carry a book with me to pretend I was her pupil. If the neighbors ever saw me, they certainly did not suspect that I was Theresa's lover. But when she boarded with other people, I could not visit her any more. This should have been the end, but with women such as Theresa it's as difficult to end as to begin. She kept calling me and writing me long letters. We began to meet in cafes in the faraway Gentile streets. Every time I met her she brought me some kind of present-a book, a tie, even handkerchiefs and socks.

At this time I was having an affair with a niece of the Biala Rabbi whose name was Nina. I think I've told you already about this Nina. She ran away from the rabbi's court and tried to become a painter in Warsaw. She kept threatening her uncle the rabbi that if he refused to help her with money, she would convert. She was half crazy. The love between us was what pulp novels call stormy. She burned with jealousy and always suspected the women who were most innocent. Every few weeks she attempted suicide. Until then I had never hit a woman, but Nina's hysteria was the kind that could be quieted only with blows. She admitted it herself. When she began her wild antics, tearing her hair, crying, laughing, and trying to throw herself out the window, there was no other remedy but to give her a few fiery slaps in the face. It worked like a charm. After the slaps she usually started to kiss. Until then I knew well how to manage my women. But Nina harassed me with her jealous behavior. If she caught me with another woman, she grabbed her hair and tore at it like a fishwife. She drove all my girls away. To get rid of Nina was impossible. She carried poison with her. I fell into such despair that I began to write a play-the one they ruined later in the Central Theater.

"One night, it was in the winter, Nina had to go to Biala to see her uncle. Whenever she went on a trip, she waited to let me know at the last minute to prevent me from making other rendezvous. The insane are very sly. This evening when she told me she was leaving, I began to telephone all my victims. But it was one of those nights when everyone was either busy or sick. There was an epidemic of grippe. Since I had been promising Theresa for weeks and months that I would meet her, it occurred to me that this was the right opportunity. I telephoned her and invited her for supper in a Gentile restaurant. Then I took her to my home. Even though we had been lovers for years, each time she behaved like a frightened virgin. She had to find an explanation for her landlord about not coming home to sleep. She was so alarmed and she stammered and sighed so on the telephone that I regretted the whole business. She was never much of an eater, but that evening she could not swallow a bite. A withered old woman sat opposite me at the table. The waiter thought she was my mother and asked, 'Why isn't your mother eating?' I felt awful. After supper she wanted to go home. But I knew that if I consented she would be bitterly disappointed. I also noticed that she had a nightgown in her bag. To make it short, I persuaded her to go to my apartment. When a young girl fusses too much it's bad enough, but when an old woman behaves like a frightened virgin, it's both comical and tragic. We climbed up the three flights of stairs and a few times she stopped to rest. She had brought me a present, a suit of woolen underwear. I made tea. I tried to cheer her up with a glass of cognac. But she refused to drink. After much hesitation, many apologies, and quotations from Faust and Heine's Buch der Lieder, she went to bed with me. I was sure that I wouldn't have the slightest desire for her but sex is full of caprices. After a while we both fell asleep. I had already decided that this night was the end of our miserable affair. Even she had hinted that we shouldn't make fools of ourselves any more.

"I was tired and fell asleep soundly. I awoke with an uncanny feeling. At first I did not remember with whom I was in bed. For a moment I thought it was Nina. I stretched out my hand and touched her. At that instant I knew the truth: Theresa was dead. To this day I don't know if she became sick and tried to wake me, or simply died in her sleep. I have gone through many tragedies, but what I experienced that night was sheer terror. My first impulse was to call an ambulance, but all Warsaw would immediately have known that Theresa Stein had died in Max Persky's bed. If the Pope had been caught stealing from an attic in Krochmalna Street, it would not have created a greater sensation. A man fears nothing as much as ridicule. Half of Warsaw would have cursed me, and the other half jeered. When I lit the lamp and looked at her face, I was frozen with horror. She appeared not sixty but ninety. I wanted to run to the end of the earth so that no one would ever learn what had happened to me. But I had spent all my money in the restaurant and for the droshky. I realized that coming home with me and walking up all those steps had killed her. I had actually committed a murder and I had done it out of pity.

"I lit all the lamps, covered the corpse with a blanket, and began to look for a way to end my own idiotic life. To die near her would create the impression that it was a double suicide. One is ashamed of what people will say and think even after one has gone. Prestige, not love, is stronger than death. I looked at my watch and it was ten minutes after three. As I stood there bewildered, cursing the day of my birth, the doorbell rang. I was sure it was the police. They could easily have accused me of murder. I did not answer, but the ringing soon became insistent and loud. I was sure that the next step would be breaking down the door. I did not ask who it was and opened. It was Nina.

"She had missed her train. Nina was an expert at being late for trains, theaters, rendezvous. She said there was no other train that night and she had gone home. But in the middle of the night she was assailed by the desire to be with me. Or perhaps she thought she would catch me with someone else and scratch out her eyes. How strange that I felt overjoyed to see Nina. To be alone with a corpse in such circumstances is so painful that all other suffering and shame is pallid by comparison. Nina said, 'Why are all the lamps burning?' She looked at the bed and exclaimed, 'There is no use hiding her!' She ran to the bed and wanted to tear off the blanket, but I held her hands and said, 'Nina, a corpse is lying there.' She saw from my face that I was not lying. I expected her to make a terrible rumpus and to wake the neighbors. Nina could be thrown into a panic at the sight of a little mouse or a beetle. But at this moment she became calm and seemed cured of all her madness. She said, 'A corpse? Who is it?' When I told her it was Theresa Stein, she began to laugh, not hysterically but in the way a healthy person would break out laughing at a good joke. I said, 'Nina, this is no joke. Theresa Stein died in my bed.'

"Nina knew Theresa Stein. The whole of intellectual Warsaw knew her. She still did not believe it, until I opened Theresa's pocketbook and showed Nina her passport. With the Russians everyone had to carry a passport, even women."

"How does it happen that you never wrote about this?" I asked Max Persky.

"No one has heard the truth until now. There are still too many people who knew Theresa Stein."

He lit another cigarette. It was now night. The moon was as yellow as brass.

"What a story it would make," I said.

"Perhaps I will write it someday, but only in my old age, when no one in Warsaw remembers Theresa Stein. It's still too soon. But let me tell you the rest. Nina was ready to help me, and even had a plan. We could easily have ended up in Siberia or on the gallows, but at such moments one becomes strangely courageous. We dressed the corpse in all her clothes. We decided to tell the janitor that the woman had had an attack of gallstones and we were taking her to the hospital. This janitor was an old drunkard and he never turned on the light when he opened the gate. Taking off Theresa Stein's nightgown and dressing her in her bloomers and other things almost killed us. Her body was a ruin. When she was dressed I lifted her and carried her down three dark flights of stairs. She did not weigh much but still I almost ruptured myself carrying her. Nina helped me by holding her feet. How Nina the hysteric could do all this is still a riddle to me. Never before or since was she so normal-or perhaps I should say supernormal. In the dark passageway to the gate, I stood Theresa up, propping her against the wall. Her head fell on my shoulder and for a moment I imagined she was alive! Nina knocked on the janitor's window and we heard a squeaking door and the typical growling of a man awakened in the middle of the night. He opened the gate, sighing and cursing, as Nina and I dragged the corpse along upright, holding her under the arms. I even managed to tip the janitor. He asked no questions and we told him nothing. If a policeman had happened to come along, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. But the street was empty. We pulled the corpse to the nearest corner and set her carefully on the pavement. I put her pocketbook near her. The whole business did not last longer than a few minutes. I was so dazed that I didn't know what to do next. But Nina took me to her home.

"There is an old saying that there is no such thing as a perfect murder. What we did that night had all the elements of a perfect crime. If we had actually strangled Theresa, the whole thing could not have gone more smoothly. It's true we probably left fingerprints, but the technique of discovering fingerprints was not known then in Warsaw. Little the Russian police cared that an old woman had been found dead in the street. She was taken to the morgue. When the Jews learned that Theresa Stein had been found dead, the community leaders arranged for her to be taken to the cleansing room at the Gasia Street cemetery without an autopsy. Of course I learned all this later. You will not believe it, but that night-or what was left of the night-I slept with Nina and everything went as usual. At that time I still had good nerves. I also drank half a bottle of vodka. There is really no rule about how nerves will react.

"I don't have to tell you that Warsaw was shocked at the details of Theresa's death. Our Yiddish newspapers gave the event full coverage. Theresa had told her landlady that she was spending the night with a sick relative. But who was that relative? No one ever learned. My janitor could have told the police we carried out a woman in the middle of the night, but he was half blind and never read the newspapers. Since her pocketbook was found near her, it was assumed that she had dropped dead from natural causes. I remember that the feuilletonist of Today developed a theory that Theresa Stein went out to help the poor and the sick. He compared her to the saint in Peretz's story who, instead of going to night prayers, went to heat the oven of a sick widow.

"Our Warsaw Jews adore funerals. But such a funeral as Theresa Stein had, I never saw before. Hundreds of droshkies followed the hearse. Women and girls cried as if it were Yom Kippur. Countless eulogies were spoken. The rabbi of the German synagogue preached that the spirits of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing were hovering over Theresa's grave, as well as the souls of Judah ha-Levi and Solomon Ibn Gabriol. I wasn't too sure about Nina's power to keep a secret. Hysteria and denunciation often go together. I was afraid that at our first quarrel Nina would go to the police. But a real change had taken place in her. She stopped bothering me with her jealousy. We actually never again spoke of that night. It became our great secret.

"Not long afterward the war began. Then Nina developed consumption, which she had really had for years before. Her family put her in a sanatorium at Otwock. I often visited her. Something in her character seemed to have altered. I never needed to stifle her hysteria with a slap again. She died in 1918."

"She never tried to appear to you?" I asked.

"You mean Nina or Theresa? Both had promised, but neither kept her word. Even if such an entity as a soul exists, I don't believe it cares to come down with messages from the other world. I really hope that death is the end of all our nonsense.

"I forgot to add one fact. It has no real connection with my story but it is interesting just the same. During all these years Nina had threatened her uncle, the Biala Rabbi, with conversion. The rabbi was terribly afraid of having a convert in his family and sent her money. After her death, when the family was going to bury her and documents were necessary, they learned that she had been a Catholic for years. It created a commotion among the Hasidim. Warsaw was already under German occupation. They bribed the authorities and buried her in the Jewish cemetery. As a matter of fact, she is lying not too far from Theresa Stein, in the first row. Why she converted I will never know. She often spoke about the Jewish God and mentioned her holy ancestors."

Max Persky became silent. The night grew cool. Around the lamp above the door flies, moths, butterflies, and all kinds of gnats had a summer night's orgy. Max Persky nodded his head over a truth that hung on his lips. "In love you don't do favors," he said. "You have to be an egotist or else you destroy yourself and your lover."

He hesitated awhile and then he looked at the waitress. She came to the table at once. "More coffee?"

"Yes, Helena. Tell me, how late are you working today?"

"As usual we close at twelve."

"I will wait for you outside."

Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus.

A Dance and a Hop.

HOUSES sometimes bear a strange resemblance to those who inhabit them. Leizer, my uncle Jekhiel's former brother-in-law, owned such a house. Beila, Leizer's sister, was Uncle Jekhiel's second wife. She was no longer alive and my uncle had married for the third time after my parents brought me to Shebrin.

A man in his sixties, Leizer was tall and broad-boned. In his youth he was a giant, but in his later years he became bent and broken from troubles. His wife was dead. He was plagued by a hernia, and a bad leg caused him to walk with a limp. The granary he possessed had burned down and his grain business was gone. His two older daughters baked bread and flatcakes, and from their meager earnings he maintained himself. Actually, all his misfortunes stemmed from his three daughters, Rachel, Leah, and Feigel, who remained spinsters. How was it possible for three girls in a Jewish village not to be married? Everyone in Shebrin asked the same question, and I think that Leizer and his daughters were as baffled as the others, perhaps more so.

But let us go back to the house. Its brick walls were unusually thick, its roof green from moss, and the chimney, no matter how often it was swept, always spewed forth a mixture of smoke and flames. Grzymak, the chimney sweep, swore that he once saw an imp in the chimney: a creature black as soot, hunched both in front and in back, with an elflock in the middle of his skull and a nose that reached to his belly. He seemed to live there. A neighbor's daughter had also seen this monster. In the middle of the night, when she went to pour out the slops, she heard him giggling. As she glanced up at Leizer's roof, the creature, crouching on the tip of the chimney, beckoned her to come to him and stretched out his tongue that was the length of a shovel.

Why did the builder who constructed this house make the walls almost a yard thick, with no windows facing the front and with a long entranceway that was dark even in broad daylight? Why were the ceilings low and heavily beamed and the attic unproportionately high? No one knew the answer, as the building was about two hundred years old. The small, crooked windows looked out over a swamp which led to the river. On murky summer nights, mysterious lights hovered over the swamp and it was said that those who went toward the lights never returned.

Leizer's rupture caused his intestines to drop and there was one woman in Shebrin who could manipulate them back. If not for her, people said, Leizer would have died long ago. It was a disgrace for Leizer that a strange female should touch his private parts, but when it's a question of saving a life, such things must be overlooked. This woman refused payment. It was her good deed. She also specialized in warding off the evil eye and removing the pips from chickens, thus enabling them to eat again.

Leah was already past forty when my parents and I arrived in Shebrin. Tall and broad like her father, she had the hands of a man and a face that was as wide and as brown as the pumpernickel loaves she baked. It was difficult to get a word out of her. Her strength, too, was that of a man. She chopped wood, brought water from the well, and carried sacks of flour from the mill on her back. In spite of all this, one could see that she was quite good-looking, with regular features and black, fiery eyes.

I heard it told that one day when she carried a sack of grain to the mill, she was attacked by two brigands. One of them held a rifle to her chest. Leah grabbed the gun, broke it in two, and with the butt hit the brigands until they passed out. The culprits were caught, taken to the hospital, and later jailed.

Rachel, who was younger than Leah, resembled her physically; but all that was hard, strong, and resolute in Leah appeared weak, soft, and indecisive in her sister. No one dared ask Leah why she had never married but everybody asked Rachel. Her reply was always the same: "When you serve dinner, you serve the soup first, then the meat."

I remember my mother once said to her, "Is it so terrible if one serves the meat first? There's no law against this."

Rachel listened and replied, "It is the custom, first you serve the soup and then the meat."

Leah kneaded the dough, shaped the loaves, shoveled them into the oven, and then removed the finished baked goods. Selling was Rachel's job. On Thursdays she stood in the marketplace with a basket of loaves, flatcakes, bagels, and rolls. Fridays she sold hallah and Sabbath cookies.

Feigel, the youngest, was only twenty-nine years old at that time and the matchmakers had not yet given up on her. Her mother had died at her birth. Unlike her sisters, Feigel was fair, small statured, and bore no resemblance to the rest of the family. She was supposed to have taken after a great-aunt from Janov. Three times she was engaged. Her first fiance died, she returned the engagement contract to the second, and the third one went to war and was never heard from again.

Leah and Feigel were not on speaking terms for more than ten years. They even avoided looking at each other. Feigel liked to sing. She had a cat. Her father bought her a sewing machine and she became a seamstress, making shirts, men's underwear, and brassieres. She had long discussions with the matchmakers. From time to time introductions and meetings were arranged with a potential suitor, but somehow nothing came of them. Feigel often visited my mother. She told horror stories about the 1915 cholera epidemic and gossiped about the girls and young women in Shebrin who became smugglers during the war. The Austrian gendarmes frequently made them undress when they searched them, and they touched intimate parts of their bodies, where no decent woman allows herself to be touched by a strange man. My mother nodded her bewigged head. "It's all a result of our long exile."

Feigel accused Leah of witchcraft, saying that Leah didn't desire marriage herself and that she had prevented Rachel from getting a husband. Every time Feigel became engaged, Leah cast an evil spell. Feigel would say to my mother, "My dear aunt, that Leah is a male, not a female."

"What are you talking about?" My mother winced. "She has breasts."

"She has the feet of a Cossack. God made a mistake."

"How can you say this? The Almighty doesn't make any mistakes."

"If so, she's a mooncalf."

This family did not come up to our standards. My uncle Jekhiel had fallen in love with his second wife, though she was much beneath him, and when Feigel called my mother "aunt" it was like a slap in the face. But my mother had compassion for Leizer's daughters because they were orphans. She sent me to buy baked farfel from them and ordered my shirts to be sewn by Feigel. Her fingers tickled me when she took the measurements and I had to laugh. My mother's comment about Leah having breasts preyed on my mind. Until then I thought that only women who nurse children have breasts. Yes, Leah had a huge bosom, but she had the deep voice of a man. Could she be what the Talmud called androgynous? I was as fearful of her as of the dark gateways that was full of holes and ditches. From reading storybooks I knew that there existed sinful females who copulated with demons and gave birth to sprites and succubi. Perhaps Leah was having an affair with the demon who dwelt in her chimney. I was close to bar mitzvah age and kept thinking more and more about what I had studied in the Gemara concerning relations between men and women. Novels, too, began to interest me. It was at about this time that my mother asked Feigel to make me several pairs of drawers and shirts.

I brought the linen to Feigel, and as I approached the house I noticed a thick black smoke issuing from the chimney. I pondered about the devil who lurked in his sooty lair. When I passed the bakery I saw Leah standing in a shabby skirt and huge boots. As she sprinkled water on the freshly baked loaves, the steam rose into the air.

The threshold of the gate was high and I tripped over it. It was a hot day and the door of Leizer's room was ajar. His white beard had turned brown in spots from the snuff tobacco he used. The thought that a female rummaged around with his genitals invoked in me feelings of curiosity and disgust. He had a workshop equipped with hammers, saws, pliers, screwdrivers, and knives. Boards and metal rods were stacked in the corner. I remembered my mother saying that when he was young he tried to invent a cradle that would be self-rocking with the force of weights and springs. This was the reason that his business went to pieces.

After a while I entered Feigel's room. It was the brightest in the house. Father and daughters did not live as a family. They were rather like neighbors. Some of the rooms were ruined and remained locked. Feigel had a mannequin in her room-a female without a head but with hips and breasts. Pieces of thread caught in Feigel's hair gave her a special charm in my eyes. It was hard to believe that she was nearing thirty, as her appearance was that of a young girl. She deftly stepped on the treadle of her sewing machine with her small foot and quickly moved her index finger out of the way of the needle.

"You are here, huh?" She smiled at me invitingly.

"Yes, my mother sent me."

"You love your mother?"

I stood there embarrassed. "Yes, why not?"

"Is a Hasid allowed to love a female?" she asked.