The Cafeteria

though recuperating from a sickness. Could that grippe have been the start of a serious illness? I went over to her table and asked, ‘What’s new in buttons?’
    She started and smiled. Then she called out, ‘Miracles do happen!’
    ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘Where did you disappear to?’ she replied. ‘I thought you were still abroad.’
    ‘Where are our cafeterianiks?’
    ‘They now go to the cafeteria on Fifty-seventh Street and Eighth Avenue. They only reopened this place yesterday.’
    ‘May I bring you a cup of coffee?’
    ‘I drink too much coffee. All right.’
    I went to get her coffee and a large egg cookie. While I stood at the counter, I turned my head and looked at her. Esther had taken off her mannish fur hat and smoothed her hair. She folded the newspaper, which meant that she was ready to talk. She got up and tilted the other chair against the table as a sign that the seat was taken. When I sat down, Esther said, ‘You left without saying goodbye, and there I was about to knock at the pearly gates of heaven.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Oh, the grippe became pneumonia. They gave me penicillin, and I am one of those who cannot take it. I got a rash all over my body. My father, too, is not well.’
    ‘What’s the matter with your father?’
    ‘High blood pressure. He had a kind of stroke and his mouth became all crooked.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Do you still work with buttons?’
    ‘Yes, with buttons. At least I don’t have to use my head, only my hands. I can think my own thoughts.’
    ‘What do you think about?’
    ‘What not. The other workers are all Puerto Ricans. They rattle away in Spanish from morning to night.’
    ‘Who takes care of your father?’
    ‘Who? Nobody. I come home in the evening to make supper. He has one desire – to marry me off for my own good and, perhaps, for his comfort, but I can’t marry a man I don’t love.’
    ‘What is love?’
    ‘You ask me! You write novels about it. But you’re a man – I assume you really don’t know what it is. A woman is a piece of merchandise to you. To me a man who talks nonsense or smiles like an idiot is repulsive. I would rather die than live with him. And a man who goes from one woman to another is not for me. I don’t want to share with anybody.’
    ‘I’m afraid a time is coming when everybody will.’
    ‘That is not for me.’
    ‘What kind of person was your husband?’
    ‘How did you know I had a husband? My father, I suppose. The minute I leave the room, he prattles. My husband believed in things and was ready to die for them. He was not exactly my type but I respected him and loved him, too. He wanted to die and he died like a hero. What else can I say?’
    ‘And the others?’
    ‘There were no others. Men were after me. The way people behaved in the war – you will never know. They lost all shame. On the bunks near me one time, a mother lay with one man and her daughter with another. People were like beasts – worse than beasts. In the middle of it all, I dreamed about love. Now I have even stopped dreaming. The men who come here are terrible bores. Most of them are half mad, too. One of them tried to read me a forty-page poem. I almost fainted.’
    ‘I wouldn’t read you anything I’d written.’
    ‘I’ve been told how you behave – no!’
    ‘No is no. Drink your coffee.’
    ‘You don’t even try to persuade me. Most men around here plague you and you can’t get rid of them. In Russia people suffered, but I have never met as many maniacs there as in New York City. The building where I live is a madhouse. My neighbors are lunatics. They accuse each other of all kinds of things. They sing, cry, break dishes. One of them jumped out of the window and killed herself. She was having an affair with a boy twenty years younger. In Russia the problem was to escape the lice; here you’re surrounded by insanity.’
    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,