The Cafeteria

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,