The Collected Stories

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