Collected Stories (59 page)

“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 café—’ ‘No, not in a café,’ 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 café, 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.”

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?