The Collected Stories

no connection with literature. The real editor of
Das Wort
was Friedel. The Yiddish version never came to be, but something attracted me to that playful little man. Perhaps it was that I could not fathom him. Every time I thought I knew him, some new whim popped up.
    Liebkind Bendel often spoke about his correspondence with an old and famous Hebrew writer, Dr. Alexander Walden, a philosopher who had lived for years in Berlin. There he edited a Hebrew encyclopedia, whose early volumes appeared before the First World War. The publication of this encyclopedia dragged on for so many years that it became a joke. It was said that the last volume would appear after the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead, when the names included in it would have three dates: the day of birth, the day of death, and the day of arising from the grave.
    From the beginning, the encyclopedia had been supported by a Berlin Maecenas, Dan Kniaster, now an old man in his eighties. Although Alexander Walden was supported by Dan Kniaster, he acted like a rich man. He had a large apartment around the Kurfürstendamm, owned many paintings, kept a butler. When he was young, a miracle had happened to Alexander Walden: the daughter of a Jewish multimillionaire, a relative of the Tietzs and the Warburgs, Mathilda Oppenheimer, had fallen in love with him. She lived with him only a few months and then divorced him. But the knowledge that Dr. Alexander Walden had for a time been the husband of a German heiress and wrote in German made the Hebraists stand in awe of him. Since he ignored them, they accused him of being a snob. He avoided even speaking Yiddish, though he was the son of a rabbi from a small village in Poland. He was said to be on intimate terms with Einstein, Freud, and Bergson.
    Why Liebkind Bendel was eager to correspond with Dr. Alexander Walden is not clear to me to this day. Dr. Walden had the reputation of not answering letters, and Liebkind Bendel liked to show that no one could defy him. He wrote, asking Alexander Walden to contribute to
Das Wort.
His letters were ignored. He sent long cables, but still Dr. Walden kept silent. At this, Liebkind Bendel resolved to get a letter from Dr. Walden at any price.
    In New York, Liebkind Bendel met a Hebrew bibliographer, Dov Ben Zev, who had become half blind from too much reading. Dov Ben Zev knew by heart almost every word Dr. Walden had written. Liebkind Bendel invited Dov Ben Zev to his apartment, had Friedel prepare a supper of blintzes and sour cream, and with the two of them worked out an elaborate scheme. A letter was sent to Dr. Walden, supposedly written by a wealthy girl in New York, a connection of the Lehmans’ and the Schiffs’, an heiress to many millions—Miss Eleanor Seligman-Braude. It was a letter full of love and admiration for Dr. Walden’s works and personality. The knowledge of Dr. Walden’s writings was Dov Ben Zev’s, the classic German was Freidel’s, and the flattery was Liebkind Bendel’s.
    Liebkind Bendel grasped correctly that in spite of his age Dr. Walden still dreamed of a new rich match. What could be better bait than an American millionairess, unmarried and deeply immersed in Dr. Walden’s work? Almost immediately came an airmail handwritten letter eight pages long. Dr. Walden answered love with love. He wanted to come to New York.
    Friedel never wrote more than the one letter; she protested that the whole business was an ugly trick and would have nothing more to do with it. But Liebkind Bendel got hold of an old refugee from Germany, a Frau Inge Schuldiener, who was willing to collaborate with him. A correspondence began that lasted from 1933 to 1938. During these years, only one thing kept Dr. Walden from arriving in New York—the fact that he suffered severely from seasickness. In 1937, Dan Kniaster, his property in Berlin about to be confiscated, his business taken over by his sons, had moved to London. He took Dr. Walden with him. On the short trip across the Channel, Dr. Walden became so sick that he had to be carried off the boat at Dover on a stretcher.
    One morning in the summer of 1938, I was called to the pay telephone downstairs in my rooming house at seven o’clock. I had gone to sleep late, and it took me some time to get into my bathrobe and slippers and to go down the three flights of stairs. Liebkind Bendel was calling. “Did I wake you, huh?” he screamed. “I’m in a jam. I haven’t slept a wink all night. If