Collected Stories (53 page)

We drank coffee and shared the egg cookie. Esther put down her cup. “I can’t believe that I’m sitting with you at this table. I read all your articles under all your pen names. You tell so much about yourself I have the feeling I’ve known you for years. Still, you are a riddle to me.”

“Men and women can never understand one another.”

“No—I cannot understand my own father. Sometimes he is a complete stranger to me. He won’t live long.”

“Is he so sick?”

“It’s everything together. He’s lost the will to live. Why live without legs, without friends, without a family? They have all perished. He sits and reads the newspapers all day long. He acts as though he were interested in what’s going on in the world. His ideals are gone, but he still hopes for a just revolution. How can a revolution help him? I myself never put my hopes in any movement or party. How can we hope when everything ends in death?”

“Hope in itself is a proof that there is no death.”

“Yes, I know you often write about this. For me, death is the only comfort. What do the dead do? They continue to drink coffee and eat egg cookies? They still read newspapers? A life after death would be nothing but a joke.”

III

Some of the cafeterianiks came back to the rebuilt cafeteria. New people appeared—all of them Europeans. They launched into long discussions in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, even Hebrew. Some of those who came from Hungary mixed German, Hungarian, Yiddish-German—then all of a sudden they began to speak plain Galician Yiddish. They asked to have their coffee in glasses, and held lumps of sugar between their teeth when they drank. Many of them were my readers. They introduced themselves and reproached me for all kinds of literary errors: I contradicted myself, went too far in descriptions of sex, described Jews in such a way that anti-Semites could use it for propaganda. They told me their experiences in the ghettos, in the Nazi concentration camps, in Russia. They pointed out one another. “Do you see that fellow—in Russia he immediately became a Stalinist. He denounced his own friends. Here in America he has switched to anti-Bolshevism.” The one who was spoken about seemed to sense that he was being maligned, because the moment my informant left he took his cup of coffee and his rice pudding, sat down at my table, and said, “Don’t believe a word of what you are told. They invent all kinds of lies. What could you do in a country where the rope was always around your neck? You had to adjust yourself if you wanted to live and not die somewhere in Kazakhstan. To get a bowl of soup or a place to stay you had to sell your soul.”

There was a table with a group of refugees who ignored me. They were not interested in literature and journalism but strictly in business. In Germany they had been smugglers. They seemed to be doing shady business here, too; they whispered to one another and winked, counted their money, wrote long lists of numbers. Somebody pointed out one of them. “He had a store in Auschwitz.”

“What do you mean, a store?”

“God help us. He kept his merchandise in the straw where he slept—a rotten potato, sometimes a piece of soap, a tin spoon, a little fat. Still, he did business. Later, in Germany, he became such a big smuggler they once took forty thousand dollars away from him.”

Sometimes months passed between my visits to the cafeteria. A year or two had gone by (perhaps three or four; I lost count), and Esther did not show up. I asked about her a few times. Someone said that she was going to the cafeteria on Forty-second Street; another had heard that she was married. I learned that some of the cafeterianiks had died. They were beginning to settle down in the United States, had remarried, opened businesses, workshops, even had children again. Then came cancer or a heart attack. The result of the Hitler and Stalin years, it was said.

One day, I entered the cafeteria and saw Esther. She was sitting alone at a table. It was the same Esther. She was even wearing the same fur hat, but a strand of gray hair fell over her forehead. How strange—the fur hat, too, seemed to have grayed. The other cafeterianiks did not appear to be interested in her any more, or they did not know her. Her face told of the time that had passed. There were shadows under her eyes. Her gaze was no longer so clear. Around her mouth was an expression that could be called bitterness, disenchantment. I greeted her. She smiled, but her smile immediately faded away. I asked, “What happened to you?”

“Oh, I’m still alive.”

“May I sit down?”

“Please—certainly.”

“May I bring you a cup of coffee?”

“No. Well, if you insist.”

I noticed that she was smoking, and also that she was reading not the newspaper to which I contribute but a competition paper. She had gone over to the enemy. I brought her coffee and for myself stewed prunes—a remedy for constipation. I sat down. “Where were you all this time? I have asked for you.”

“Really? Thank you.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing good.” She looked at me. I knew that she saw in me what I saw in her: the slow wilting of the flesh. She said, “You have no hair but you are white.”

For a while we were silent. Then I said, “Your father—” and as I said it I knew that her father was not alive.

Esther said, “He has been dead for almost a year.”

“Do you still sort buttons?”

“No, I became an operator in a dress shop.”

“What happened to you personally, may I ask?”

“Oh nothing—absolutely nothing. You will not believe it, but I was sitting here thinking about you. I have fallen into some kind of trap. I don’t know what to call it. I thought perhaps you could advise me. Do you still have the patience to listen to the troubles of little people like me? No, I didn’t mean to insult you. I even doubted you would remember me. To make it short, I work but work is growing more difficult for me. I suffer from arthritis. I feel as if my bones would crack. I wake up in the morning and can’t sit up. One doctor tells me that it’s a disc in my back, others try to cure my nerves. One took X-rays and says that I have a tumor. He wanted me to go to the hospital for a few weeks, but I’m in no hurry for an operation. Suddenly a little lawyer showed up. He is a refugee himself and is connected with the German government. You know they’re now giving reparation money. It’s true that I escaped to Russia, but I’m a victim of the Nazis just the same. Besides, they don’t know my biography so exactly. I could get a pension plus a few thousand dollars, but my dislocated disc is no good for the purpose because I got it later—after the camps. This lawyer says my only chance is to convince them that I am ruined psychically. It’s the bitter truth, but how can you prove it? The German doctors, the neurologists, the psychiatrists require proof. Everything has to be according to the textbooks—just so and no different. The lawyer wants me to play insane. Naturally, he gets twenty percent of the reparation money—maybe more. Why he needs so much money I don’t understand. He’s already in his seventies, an old bachelor. He tried to make love to me and whatnot. He’s half meshugga himself. But how can I play insane when actually I
am
insane? The whole thing revolts me and I’m afraid it will really drive me crazy. I hate swindle. But this shyster pursues me. I don’t sleep. When the alarm rings in the morning, I wake up as shattered as I used to be in Russia when I had to walk to the forest and saw logs at four in the morning. Naturally, I take sleeping pills—if I didn’t, I couldn’t sleep at all. That is more or less the situation.”

“Why don’t you get married? You are still a good-looking woman.”

“Well, the old question—there is nobody. It’s too late. If you knew how I felt, you wouldn’t ask such a question.”

IV

A few weeks passed. Snow had been falling. After the snow came rain, then frost. I stood at my window and looked out at Broadway. The passers-by half walked, half slipped. Cars moved slowly. The sky above the roofs shone violet, without a moon, without stars, and even though it was eight o’clock in the evening the light and the emptiness reminded me of dawn. The stores were deserted. For a moment, I had the feeling I was in Warsaw. The telephone rang and I rushed to answer it as I did ten, twenty, thirty years ago—still expecting the good tidings that a telephone call was about to bring me. I said hello, but there was no answer and I was seized by the fear that some evil power was trying to keep back the good news at the last minute. Then I heard a stammering. A woman’s voice muttered my name.

“Yes, it is I.”

“Excuse me for disturbing you. My name is Esther. We met a few weeks ago in the cafeteria—”

“Esther!” I exclaimed.

“I don’t know how I got the courage to phone you. I need to talk to you about something. Naturally, if you have the time and—please forgive my presumption.”

“No presumption. Would you like to come to my apartment?”

“If I will not be interrupting. It’s difficult to talk in the cafeteria. It’s noisy and there are eavesdroppers. What I want to tell you is a secret I wouldn’t trust to anyone else.”

“Please, come up.”

I gave Esther directions. Then I tried to make order in my apartment, but I soon realized this was impossible. Letters, manuscripts lay around on tables and chairs. In the corners books and magazines were piled high. I opened the closets and threw inside whatever was under my hand: jackets, pants, shirts, shoes, slippers. I picked up an envelope and to my amazement saw that it had never been opened. I tore it open and found a check. “What’s the matter with me—have I lost my mind?” I said out loud. I tried to read the letter that came with the check, but I had misplaced my glasses; my fountain pen was gone, too. Well—and where were my keys? I heard a bell ring and I didn’t know whether it was the door or the telephone. I opened the door and saw Esther. It must have been snowing again, because her hat and the shoulders of her coat were trimmed with white. I asked her in, and my neighbor, the divorcée, who spied on me openly with no shame—and, God knows, with no sense of purpose—opened her door and stared at my guest.

Esther removed her boots and I took her coat and put it on the case of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I shoved a few manuscripts off the sofa so she could sit down. I said, “In my house there is sheer chaos.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I sat in an armchair strewn with socks and handkerchiefs. For a while we spoke about the weather, about the danger of being out in New York at night—even early in the evening. Then Esther said, “Do you remember the time I spoke to you about my lawyer—that I had to go to a psychiatrist because of the reparation money?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I didn’t tell you everything. It was too wild. It still seems unbelievable, even to me. Don’t interrupt me, I implore you. I’m not completely healthy—I may even say that I’m sick—but I know the difference between fact and illusion. I haven’t slept for nights, and I kept wondering whether I should call you or not. I decided not to—but this evening it occurred to me that if I couldn’t trust you with a thing like this, then there is no one I could talk to. I read you and I know that you have a sense of the great mysteries—” Esther said all this stammering and with pauses. For a moment her eyes smiled, and then they became sad and wavering.

I said, “You can tell me everything.”

“I am afraid that you’ll think me insane.”

“I swear I will not.”

Esther bit her lower lip. “I want you to know that I saw Hitler,” she said.

Even though I was prepared for something unusual, my throat constricted. “When—where?”

“You see, you are frightened already. It happened three years ago—almost four. I saw him here on Broadway.”

“On the street?”

“In the cafeteria.”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “Most probably someone resembling him,” I said finally.

“I knew you would say that. But remember, you’ve promised to listen. You recall the fire in the cafeteria?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“The fire has to do with it. Since you don’t believe me anyhow, why draw it out? It happened this way. That night I didn’t sleep. Usually when I can’t sleep, I get up and make tea, or I try to read a book, but this time some power commanded me to get dressed and go out. I can’t explain to you how I dared walk on Broadway at that late hour. It must have been two or three o’clock. I reached the cafeteria, thinking perhaps it stays open all night. I tried to look in, but the large window was covered by a curtain. There was a pale glow inside. I tried the revolving door and it turned. I went in and saw a scene I will not forget to the last day of my life. The tables were shoved together and around them sat men in white robes, like doctors or orderlies, all with swastikas on their sleeves. At the head sat Hitler. I beg you to hear me out—even a deranged person sometimes deserves to be listened to. They all spoke German. They didn’t see me. They were busy with the Führer. It grew quiet and he started to talk. That abominable voice—I heard it many times on the radio. I didn’t make out exactly what he said. I was too terrified to take it in. Suddenly one of his henchmen looked back at me and jumped up from his chair. How I came out alive I will never know. I ran with all my strength, and I was trembling all over. When I got home, I said to myself, ‘Esther, you are not right in the head.’ I still don’t know how I lived through that night. The next morning, I didn’t go straight to work but walked to the cafeteria to see if it was really there. Such an experience makes a person doubt his own senses. When I arrived, I found the place had burned down. When I saw this, I knew it had to do with what I had seen. Those who were there wanted all traces erased. These are the plain facts. I have no reason to fabricate such queer things.”