The Collected Stories

had she had the cot brought in? He saw her face distinctly now—the small nose, hollow cheeks, dark hair, the round forehead a bit too high for a woman. She slept calmly, the blanket over her breast. Her breathing couldn’t be heard. It occurred to Herman that she might be dead. He stared at her intently; her nostrils moved slightly.
    Herman dozed off again. Suddenly he heard a mumbling. He opened his eyes. The woman was talking in her sleep. He listened carefully but couldn’t make out the words. He wasn’t certain whether it was English or another language. What did it mean? All at once he knew: she was talking to her grandmother. He held his breath. His whole being became still. He made an effort to distinguish at least one word, but he couldn’t catch a single syllable. The woman became silent and then started to whisper again. She didn’t move her lips. Her voice seemed to be coming out of her nostrils. Who knows? Perhaps she wasn’t speaking a known language, Herman Gombiner thought. He fancied that she was suggesting something to the unseen one and arguing with her. This intensive listening soon tired him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
    He twitched and woke up. He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping—a minute or an hour. Through the window he saw that it was still night. The woman on the cot was sleeping silently. Suddenly Herman remembered. What had become of Huldah? How awful that throughout his long illness he had entirely forgotten her. No one had fed her or given her anything to drink. “She is surely dead,” he said to himself. “Dead of hunger and thirst!” He felt a great shame. He had recovered. The Powers that rule the world had sent a woman to him, a merciful sister, but this creature who was dependent on him for its necessities had perished. “I should not have forgotten her! I should not have! I’ve killed her!”
    Despair took hold of Herman. He started to pray for the mouse’s soul. “Well, you’ve had your life. You’ve served your time in this forsaken world, the worst of all worlds, this bottomless abyss, where Satan, Asmodeus, Hitler, and Stalin prevail. You are no longer confined to your hole—hungry, thirsty, and sick, but at one with the God-filled cosmos, with God Himself … Who knows why you had to be a mouse?”
    In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know—all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of the world—about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. And yet man demands compassion from heaven.” Herman clapped his hand to his mouth. “I mustn’t live, I mustn’t I can no longer be a part of it! God in heaven—take me away!”
    For a while his mind was blank. Then he trembled. Perhaps Huldah was still alive? Perhaps she had found something to eat. Maybe she was lying unconscious in her hole and could be revived? He tried to get off the bed. He lifted the blanket and slowly put one foot down. The bed creaked.
    The woman opened her eyes as if she hadn’t been asleep at all but had been pretending. “Where are you going?”
    “There is something I must find out.”
    “What? Wait one second.” She straightened her nightgown underneath the blanket, got out of bed, and went over to him barefooted. Her feet were white, girlishly small, with slender toes. “How are you feeling?”
    “I beg you, listen to me!” And in a quiet voice he told her about the mouse.
    The woman listened. Her face, hidden in the shadows, expressed no surprise. She said, “Yes, I did hear the mice scratching several times during the night. They are probably eating your books.”
    “It’s only one mouse. A wonderful creature.”
    “What shall I do?”
    “The hole is right here … I used to set out a dish of water for her and a piece of cheese.”
    “I don’t have any cheese here.”
    “Perhaps you can pour some milk in a little dish. I’m not sure that she is alive, but maybe …”
    “Yes, there is milk. First I’ll take your temperature.” She took a thermometer from somewhere, shook it down, and put it in his mouth with the authority of a