Collected Stories (56 page)

Dr. Walden seemed shaky. His face was yellow. He had forgotten to button his fly. He stared at us and muttered. Then he said, “Excuse me,” and he went back into the washroom.

IV

Dr. Walden had asked for my address and telephone number, and I gave him both. I could not cheat this learned man. The day after his arrival in New York, Liebkind Bendel left for Mexico City. Lately he was always flying to Mexico. I suspected he had a mistress there, and most probably business, too. In a strange way, Liebkind Bendel combined the roles of merchant and art connoisseur. He went to Washington to try to get a visa for a Jewish writer in Germany, and there he became a partner in a factory that produced airplane parts. The owner was a Jew from Poland who was in the leather business and had not the slightest knowledge of aviation. I had begun to realize that the world of economy, industry, and so-called practical matters was not much more substantial than that of literature and philosophy.

One day when I came home after lunch, I found a message that Dr. Walden had called. I telephoned him and I heard a stammering and a wheezing. He spoke to me in Germanized Yiddish. He mispronounced my name. He said, “Please come over. I am
kaput.
”

Liebkind Bendel had put Dr. Walden in an Orthodox Jewish hotel downtown, though the two of us lived uptown. I suspected that he wanted to keep him as far away as possible. I took the subway to Lafayette Street and walked over to the hotel. The lobby was full of rabbis. They seemed to be having a conference. They strolled up and down in their long gaberdines and velvet hats. They gesticulated, clutched at their beards, and all spoke at the same time. The elevator stopped at each floor and through the open doors I saw a bride being photographed in her wedding dress, yeshiva boys packing prayer books and shawls, and waiters in skullcaps cleaning up after a banquet. I knocked on Dr. Walden’s door. He appeared in a burgundy-red bathrobe down to his ankles. It was covered with spots. He wore scuffed slippers. The room reeked of tobacco, valerian drops, and the rancid smell of illness. He looked bloated, old, confused. He asked, “Are you Mr.—what is the name—the editor of
Jugend
?”

I told him my name.

“Do you write for that jargon
Tageblatt
?”

I gave him the name of my newspaper.

“Well—
ja.
”

After Dr. Walden tried again and again to speak to me in German, he finally changed to Yiddish, with all the inflections and pronunciations of the village he came from. He said, “What kind of calamity is this? Why all of a sudden did she fly to California? For years I could not make up my mind whether to take this trip or not. Like Kant, I suffer from travel phobia. A friend of mine, Professor Mondek, a relative of the famous Mondek, gave me pills but they prevented me from urinating. I was sure my end had come. A fine thing, I thought, if the airplane arrives to New York with me dead. Instead, she is gone. I just cannot grasp it. I asked someone and he had not heard of this plane crash. I called her number and an old woman answered. She must be deaf and senile—she sounded incoherent. Who was the other little man who met me at the airport?”

“Lipman Geiger.”

“Geiger—a grandson of Abraham Geiger? The Geigers don’t speak Yiddish. Most of them are converted.”

“This Geiger comes from Poland.”

“What was his connection with Miss Eleanor Seligman-Braude?”

“Friends.”

“I am completely bewildered.” Dr. Walden spoke half to me, half to himself. “I know English from reading Shakespeare. I have read
The Tempest
in the original a number of times. It is Shakespeare’s greatest work. Each line is deeply symbolic. A masterpiece in every way. Caliban is actually Hitler. But here they speak an English that sounds like Chinese. I don’t understand a single word they say. Did Miss Eleanor Seligman-Braude have any family?”

“Distant relatives. But as far as I know she kept away from them.”

“What will happen to her fortune? Usually rich people leave a will. Not that I have any interest in such matters—absolutely none. And what about the body? Isn’t there going to be a funeral in New York?”

“Her body is somewhere in the ocean.”

“Do they fly from California to New York over the ocean?”

“It seems that instead of east the plane flew west.”

“How could this be? Where was this crash reported? In what newspaper? When?”

“All I know is what Lipman Geiger told me. He was her friend, not I.”

“What? A riddle, a riddle. One should not go against one’s own nature. Once, Immanuel Kant was about to take a trip from Königsberg to some other town in Prussia. He had traveled only a short distance when there was rain, lightning, and thunder, and he immediately gave orders to turn back. Somewhere I knew all the time that this trip would be a fiasco. I have nothing to do here—absolutely nothing. But I cannot fly back to London in my present condition. To go by ship would be even worse. I will tell you the truth, I brought almost no money with me. My great friend and benefactor, Dan Kniaster, is now a refugee himself. I worked on an encyclopedia, but we left the plates in Berlin—even the manuscripts. The Nazis had placed a time bomb in our office and we just missed being torn to pieces. Does anybody know that I am in New York? I traveled, as they say, incognito. As things are now, perhaps it would be useful to let the newspapers know. I have many enemies here, but perhaps somewhere a friend might be found.”

“I think Lipman Geiger notified the newspapers.”

“There is no mention of me anywhere. I asked for the papers.” Dr. Walden pointed to a pile of Yiddish newspapers on a chair.

“I will do my best.”

“At my age one should not undertake such adventures. Where is that Mr. Geiger?”

“He had to fly to Mexico but he will be back soon.”

“To Mexico? What is he doing in Mexico? So, this is my end. I am not afraid of death, but I have no desire to be buried in this wild city. True, London is not much quieter but at least I have a few acquaintances there.”

“You will live, Dr. Walden,” I said. “You will live to see the fall of Hitler.”

“What for? Hitler still has something to spoil on this earth. But I have already committed all my blunders. Too many. This unlucky trip is not even a tragedy. Just a joke—well—
ja,
my life is one big joke, from the beginning to the end.”

“You have given much to humanity, to the Jewish reader.”

“Trifles, rubbish, junk. Did you personally know Miss Seligman-Braude?”

“Yes—no. I just heard of her.”

“I didn’t like that Geiger—a buffoon. What do you write in the Yiddish newspapers? What is there to write about? We are returning to the jungle.
Homo sapiens
is bankrupt. All values are gone—literature, science, religion. Well, for my part I have given up altogether.”

Dr. Walden took a letter from his pocket. It was stained with coffee and ashes. He scrutinized it, closing one eye, wincing and snorting. “I begin to suspect that this Miss Seligman-Braude never existed.”

V

Late one evening when I was lying on my bed fully dressed, brooding about my laziness, neglected work, and lack of will power, I got the signal that I was wanted on the pay telephone downstairs. I ran down the three flights of steps, lifted the receiver, which dangled from a cord, and heard an unfamiliar voice saying my name. The voice said, “I am Dr. Linder. Are you a friend of Dr. Alexander Walden?”

“I have met him.”

“Dr. Walden has had a heart attack and is in the Beth Aaron Hospital. He gave me your name and telephone number. Are you a relative?”

“No relative.”

“Doesn’t he have any family here?”

“It seems not.”

“He asked me to call Professor Albert Einstein, but nobody answers. I cannot be bothered with such errands. Come tomorrow to the hospital. He is in the ward. That’s all we could give him for the time being. I’m sorry.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Not too good. He has a whole list of complications. You can visit him between twelve and two or six and eight. Goodbye.”

I searched for a nickel to call Friedel but found only a fifty-cent piece and two dollar bills. I went out on Broadway to get change. By the time I had it and found a drugstore with an unoccupied telephone booth, more than half an hour had passed. I dialed Friedel’s number and the line was busy. For another quarter of an hour I kept on dialing the same number and it was always busy. A woman entered the next booth and lined up her coins. She looked back at me with a smug expression that seemed to say, “You’re waiting in vain.” As she spoke, she gesticulated with her cigarette. From time to time she twirled a lock of her bleached hair. Her scarlet, pointed claws suggested a rapaciousness as deep as the human tragedy.

I found a penny and weighed myself. According to this scale, I had lost four pounds. A slip of cardboard fell out. It read, “You are a person with gifts but you waste them on nothing.”

I will try once more, and if the telephone is still busy I will go home immediately, I vowed to myself. This scale told the bitter truth.

The line wasn’t busy. I heard Friedel’s mannish voice. At that very moment, the lady with the bleached hair and scarlet nails hurriedly left the booth. She winked at me with her false eyelashes. “Mrs. Bendel,” I said, “I am sorry to disturb you. Dr. Walden has had a heart attack. They have taken him to Beth Aaron Hospital. He is in the ward.”

“Oh, my God! I knew that nothing good would come of that joke. I warned Liebkind. It was a crime—absolutely a crime. That is the way Liebkind is—a trick occurs to him and he doesn’t know when to stop. What can I do? I don’t even know where he is now. He was supposed to stop in Cuba. Where are you?”

“In a drugstore on Broadway.”

“Perhaps you could come here. This is no trifling matter. I feel guilty myself. I should have refused to write that first letter. Come up, it’s still early. I never go to sleep before two o’clock.”

“What do you do until two?”

“Oh, I read, I think, I worry.”

“Well, this evening is lost already,” I mumbled or thought. I had only a few blocks to walk to Liebkind Bendel’s apartment on Riverside Drive. The doorman there knew me. I went up to the fourteenth floor, and the moment I touched the bell Friedel opened the door.

Friedel was short, with wide hips and heavy legs. She had a crooked nose and brown eyes under masculine brows. As a rule, she dressed in dark clothes, and I had never noticed a trace of cosmetics on her. Most of the time when I visited Liebkind Bendel, she immediately brought me half a glass of tea, spoke a few words, and returned to her books and manuscripts. Liebkind Bendel used to say jocosely, “What can you expect from a wife who is an editor? It’s a miracle that she can prepare a glass of tea.”

This time Friedel had on a white sleeveless dress and white shoes. She was wearing lipstick. She invited me into the living room, and on the coffee table stood a bowl of fruit, a pitcher filled with something to drink, and a plate of cookies. Friedel spoke English with a strong German accent. She indicated the sofa for me and sat down on a chair. She said, “I knew it would end badly. From the beginning, it was the Devil’s own game. If Dr. Walden dies, Liebkind will be responsible for his death. Old men are romantic. They forget their years and their powers. That imbecile Frau Schuldiener wrote to him in such a way that he had every reason to give himself illusions. One can fool anybody, even a sage.” (Friedel used the Yiddish word
chochom.
)

One could even fool Liebkind Bendel, something whispered in my brain—a dybbuk or an imp. Aloud I said, “You should not have permitted things to go so far, Madame Bendel.”

Friedel frowned with her thick brows. “Liebkind does as he pleases. He doesn’t ask my advice. He goes away, and I really don’t know where or for what purpose. He was supposed to go to Mexico. At the last minute he announced that he wanted to stop in Havana. He has no business either in Havana or in Mexico City. You probably know much more about him than I do. I’m sure he boasts to you about his conquests.”

“Absolutely not. I haven’t the slightest idea why he went and whom he is seeing.”

“I do have an idea. But why talk about it? I know all his Galician tricks …”

There was silence for a while. Friedel had never spoken to me in such a manner. The few conversations we had had dealt with German literature, Schlegel’s translation of Shakespeare, and with certain Yiddish expressions still in use in some German dialects, which Friedel had discovered were derived from Old German. I was about to answer that there were decent people among the Galicians when the telephone rang. The instrument stood on a little table near the door. Friedel walked over slowly and sat down to answer it. She spoke softly, but I could tell that she was talking to Liebkind Bendel. He was calling from Havana. I expected Friedel to tell him immediately that Dr. Walden was sick and that I was visiting. But she didn’t mention either fact. She spoke to him with irony: Business? Certainly. A week? Take as much time as necessary. A bargain? Buy it, why not? I? I do my work as always—what else is there?

As she spoke, she threw sidelong glances at me. She smiled knowingly. I imagined that she winked at me. What kind of crazy night is this, I thought. I got up and moved hesitatingly toward the door in the direction of the bathroom. Suddenly I did something that perplexed even me. I bent down and kissed Friedel’s neck. Her left hand clutched mine and pressed with strength. Her face became both youthful and sneering. At the same time, she asked, “Liebkind, how long will you stay in Havana?”