Collected Stories (84 page)

“It was a spring night in 1948. A spring night in Paris can sometimes be bitter cold. We went to sleep separately—I on the cot, Dora on the sofa, and Ytta in bed. We put out the lights and lay down. I don’t remember such a cold night even in the camps. We covered ourselves with all the blankets and rags we had in the house, but we still couldn’t get warm. I put the sleeves of a sweater over my feet and threw my winter coat over the blanket. Ytta and Dora burrowed into their covers. We did all this without speaking and this silence lent our frantic efforts a brooding oppressiveness that defies description. I remember precisely lying there in bed and thinking that the punishment would come that night. At the same time, I silently prayed to God that it shouldn’t. I lay there for a while half frozen—not only from the cold but from the tension too. I searched in the dark for the
shed
(as I called the creature of spider webs and shadows), but I saw nothing. At the same time, I knew that he was there, hovering in some corner or possibly even behind the bedboard. I said to myself, ‘Don’t be an idiot, there are no such things as ghosts. If Hitler could slaughter six million Jews and America sends billions of dollars to rebuild Germany, there are no other forces except the material. Ghosts wouldn’t permit such an injustice …’

“I had to urinate and the toilet was out in the corridor. Usually I can hold myself in, if need be, but this time the urge was too insistent. I got up from the cot and went creeping toward the kitchen door, which led to the outside. I had taken only two steps when someone stopped me. Brother, I know all the answers and all the psychological flimflam, but this thing before me was a person and he blocked my path. I was too frightened to cry out. It’s not in me to scream. I’m sure that I wouldn’t scream even if it were killing me. Well, and who was there to help me, even if I did? The two half-mad sisters? I tried to push him aside and I touched something that might have been rubber, dough, or some sort of foam. There are fears from which you can’t run away. A furious wrangling erupted between us. I pushed him back and he yielded a bit, yet offered resistance. I remember now that I was less afraid of the evil spirit than of the outcry the sisters might raise. I can’t tell you how long this struggle lasted—a minute or perhaps only a few seconds. I thought I would pass out on the spot, but I stood there and stubbornly and silently wrestled with a phantom, or whatever it was. Instead of feeling cold, I became hot. Within a second, I was drenched as if standing under a shower. Why the sisters didn’t scream is something I’ll never understand. That they were awake I am sure. They were apparently terrified of their own fear. Suddenly I caught a blow. The Evil One vanished and I sensed that my organ was no longer there, either. Had he castrated me? My pajama bottoms had fallen. I felt around for my penis. No, he hadn’t torn it out but had jammed it so deep into me that it had formed a negative indentation rather than a positive. Don’t look at me that way! I’m not crazy now and I wasn’t crazy then. During this whole nightmare, I knew that it was nerves—nervousness that had assumed substance. Einstein contends that mass is energy. I say that mass is compressed emotion. Neuroses materialize and take on concrete form. Feelings put on bodies or are themselves bodies. Those are your dybbuks, the sprites, the hobgoblins.

“I walked out into the corridor on wobbly knees and found the toilet, but I literally had nothing to urinate with. I read somewhere that in the Arab lands such things happen to men, especially to those who keep harems. Strange, but during the whole excitement I remained calm. Tragedy sometimes brings a kind of brooding resignation that comes from no one knows where.

“I turned back to the apartment, but neither of the sisters made a rustle. They lay there quiet, tense, barely breathing. Had they cast a spell over me? Were they themselves bewitched? I began to dress slowly. I put on my drawers, my pants, my jacket, and my summer coat. I packed some shirts, socks, and manuscripts in the dark. I gave the two sisters enough time to ask me what I was doing and where I was going, but they didn’t utter a peep. I took my satchel and left in the middle of the night. Those are the bare facts.”

“Where did you go?”

“What’s the difference? I went to a cheap hotel and took a room. Gradually everything began to return to normal and I was able to function again. I somehow managed to overcome the nightmarish night and the next morning I caught a plane to London. I had an old friend there, a journalist on the local Yiddish newspaper, who had invited me to come a few times. The editorial office consisted of a single room and the whole paper went under soon afterward, but in the meantime I got some work and lodgings. From there, I left for Buenos Aires in 1950. Here I met Lena, my present wife.”

“What became of the two sisters?”

“Do
you
know? That’s as much as I know.”

“Didn’t you ever hear from them?”

“Never.”

“Did you look for them?”

“Such things you try to forget. I hypnotized myself into thinking that the whole thing had been only a dream, but it really happened. It’s as real as the fact that I’m sitting here with you right now.”

“How do you explain it?” I asked.

“I don’t.”

“Maybe they were dead when you left.”

“No, they were awake and listening. You can differentiate between the living and the dead.”

“Aren’t you curious to know what happened to them?”

“And if I am curious, what of it? They’re probably alive. The witches are somewhere—maybe they’ve married. I was in Paris three years ago, but the house where we lived no longer exists. They put up a garage there.”

We sat there silently; then I said, “If mass consisted of emotion, every stone in the street would be a skein of misery.”

“Maybe they are. Of one thing I’m sure—everything lives, everything suffers, struggles, desires. There is no such thing as death.”

“If that’s true, then Hitler and Stalin didn’t kill anyone,” I said.

“You have no right to kill an illusion, either. Drink your coffee.”

For a long while neither of us spoke; then I asked half in jest, “What can you learn from this story?”

Haim Leib smiled. “If Nietzsche’s crazy theory about the exhaustion of all atomic combinations and the eternal return is true, and if there’ll be another Hitler, another Stalin, and another Holocaust, and if in a trillion years you’ll meet a female in Stettin—don’t go with her to look for her sister.”

“According to this theory, I will have no choice but to go and to experience everything that you did,” I said.

“In that case, you’ll know how I felt.”

I

I
LEFT
home at seventeen. I told my parents the truth: I didn’t believe in the Gemara or that every law in the
Shulchan Aruch
had been given to Moses on Mount Sinai; I didn’t wish to become a rabbi; I didn’t want a marriage arranged by a matchmaker; I was no longer willing to wear a long gaberdine or grow earlocks. I went to Warsaw, where my parents had once lived, to seek an academic education and a profession. My older brother, Joshua, lived in Warsaw and had become a writer, but he wasn’t able to help me. At twenty I came back home with congested lungs, a chronic cough, no formal education, no profession, and no way that I could see of supporting myself in the city. During the time I was away, my father had been appointed rabbi of Old-Stikov in Eastern Galicia—a village of a few dozen crooked shacks, with straw-covered roofs, built around a swamp. At least, in the fall of 1924 that’s how Old-Stikov appeared to me. It had rained all October, and those shacks lay reflected in the swamp as if it were a lake. Ruthenian peasants, stooped Jews in gaberdines, women and girls wearing shawls over their heads and men’s boots waded in the mud. Clouds of mist swirled in the air. Crows soared overhead, cawing. The sky hung low, leaden, heavy with storms. The smoke from chimneys didn’t rise but drifted downward toward the soaked earth.

The community had assigned Father a semi-ruin of a house. In the three years I was away, his beard, red when I left, had become streaked with strands of white. Mother had discarded her wig for a kerchief. She had lost her teeth and her sunken cheeks made her nose hooked, her chin receded. Only her eyes remained youthful and sharp.

Father warned me, “This is a pious community. If you don’t conduct yourself as you should, they’ll drive us out of here with sticks.”

“Father, I’m giving in. My only hope is that the army won’t take me.”

“When do you have to report for conscription?”

“In a year.”

“We’ll arrange a match for you. God willing, your father-in-law will ransom you. Put aside your foolishness and study the Yoreh Deah.”

I went to the study house but no one was studying there. The congregation, mostly artisans and dairymen, came to pray early in the morning and returned for the evening services; in between time, the place was deserted. I found an old volume on the Cabala there. I had brought along from Warsaw an algebra book and a Polish translation of Baudelaire’s poems.

Abraham Getzel the matchmaker came to look me over—a little man with a white beard ranging nearly to his loins. He was also the village beadle, the cantor, and the Talmud teacher. He measured me up and down and sighed. “These are different times,” he complained. “Girls want a husband who’s a provider.”

“I can’t blame them.”

“The Torah has lost its value in our generation. But don’t you worry, I’ll find you a bride.”

He proposed a widow who was six or seven years older than I and had two children. Her father, Berish Belzer, managed a brewery owned by an Austrian baron. (Before the war, Galicia had been ruled by Emperor Franz Josef.) When the weather cleared somewhat during the day, one could see the brewery chimney. Black smoke sat on it like a hat.

Berish Belzer came to the study house to have a chat with me. He had a short beard the color of beer. He wore a fox coat and a derby. A watch on a silver chain dangled from his silk vest. After we had talked for a few minutes, he said, “I see you’re no businessman.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Then what are you?”

And the match was off.

All of a sudden the mail brought news from Warsaw. My brother had become co-editor of a literary weekly and I was offered the job of being its proofreader. He said that I could publish my stories there if they proved good enough. The moment I read the letter my health improved. From then on I didn’t cough once during the night. I regained my appetite. I ate so much that my mother grew alarmed. Enclosed with the letter was the first issue of the magazine. It discussed a new novel by Thomas Mann,
The Magic Mountain,
and it contained poems in free verse, illustrated with Cubistic drawings. It reviewed a book of poetry entitled
A Boot in the Lapel.
Its articles spoke of the collapse of the old world and the emergence of a new man and a new spirit that would reappraise all values. It printed a chapter of Oswald Spengler’s
The Decline of the West,
as well as translations of poems by Alexander Blok, Mayakovsky, and Esenin. New writers had appeared in America during the war years, and their work was beginning to be published in Poland. No, I could not while away my days in Old-Stikov! I waited only for the train fare to be sent me from Warsaw.

Now that I was about to return to modern culture, I began to observe what was happening in Old-Stikov. I listened to the women who came to consult Father on ritual matters and to gossip with Mother. We had a neighbor, Lazar the shoemaker, and his wife brought us the good tidings that their only daughter, Rivkele, was marrying her father’s apprentice. Soon afterward Rivkele herself came to invite us to the engagement party. I looked at her with amazement. She reminded me of a Warsaw girl. She was tall, slim, with unusually white skin, black hair, dark-blue eyes, a long neck. Her upper lip drew back slightly to reveal white teeth without a blemish. There was a watch on her wrist and earrings dangled from the small lobes of her ears. She wore a fancy shawl with fringe and boots with high heels. She glanced at me shyly and said, “You are invited!”

We both blushed.

The next day I went with my parents to the party. Lazar the shoemaker’s house had a bedroom and a big room where the family cooked, ate, and worked. Scattered on the floor around the worktable were shoes, boots, heels. Rivkele’s fiancé, Yantche, was short, broad, and dark, with two gold front teeth. The nail of his right index finger was deformed. For the party he had put on a paper collar and dickey. He passed cigarettes to the male guests. I heard him say, “Marry and die are two things you must do.”

Warsaw was in no rush to send me train fare. Snow had fallen and a frost gripped Old-Stikov. Father had gone to the house of prayer to study and warm himself at the stove. Mother went to pay a call on a woman who had slipped on the ice near the well and broken a leg. I sat alone at home, going over my manuscripts. Although it was daytime, a cricket chirped, telling of a story as old as time. It stopped, listening to its own silence, then commenced again. The upper panes of the window were covered with frost flowers, but through the lower panes I could see a water carrier with icicles in his beard carrying two pails of water on a wooden yoke. A peasant in a sheepskin hat, his feet wrapped in rags, followed a sledge loaded with logs and pulled by an emaciated horse. I could hear the tinkling of the bell on its neck.