The Collected Stories

she said. ‘You don’t leave me in peace. I have a husband and I am happy with him. I want to be a faithful wife.’ It wasn’t talking but stammering. She paused after each word. She said, ‘It wasn’t easy to learn who you were and your telephone number. I had to invent a story about a broken chest to get the information from my aunt. I am not a liar; my aunt did not believe me. Still, she gave me your name and address.’ Then she became silent.
    “I asked, ‘Why can’t we go somewhere to talk it over?’ ‘I can’t go anywhere. I could have told you this on the telephone—it is all so strange, absolutely insane—but now you know the truth.’ ‘I really don’t know what’s on your mind,’ I said, just to prolong the conversation. She said, ‘I beseech you, by whatever is holy to you, to stop tormenting me. What you want I cannot do—I’d rather die.’ And her face became as pale as chalk.
    “I still played the fool and said, ‘I want nothing from you. It is true that when I saw you in your aunt’s drawing room you made a strong impression on me—but I haven’t done anything that should upset you.’ ‘Yes, you have. If we weren’t living in the twentieth century, I would think you were a sorcerer. Believe me,’ she went on, ‘I didn’t come easily to the decision to call you. I was even afraid that you might not know who I was—but you knew immediately.’
    “ ‘We cannot stand here on the street and talk,’ I said. ‘We have to go somewhere.’ ‘Where? If someone who knows me should see me, I am lost.’ I said, ‘Come with me.’ She hesitated for a while, and then she followed me. She seemed to have difficulty walking on her high heels and she took my arm. I noticed, even though she was wearing gloves, that she had most beautiful hands. Her hand fluttered on my arm, and each time a shudder ran through my body. After a while the young woman became more relaxed with me, and she said, ‘What kind of powers do you possess? I have heard your voice several times. I have seen you, too. I woke up in the middle of the night and you were standing at the foot of my bed. Instead of eyes, two green beams shone from your sockets. I woke my husband, but in a second you vanished.’
    “ ‘It’s a hallucination,’ I said. ‘No, you wander in the night.’ ‘If I do, it’s without knowing it.’
    “We approached the shore of the Vistula and sat down on a log. It’s quiet there. It’s not completely safe because it’s full of drunks and bums. But she sat with me. She said, ‘My aunt will not know what has become of me. I told her that I was going for a walk. She even offered to accompany me. Give me a holy promise that you will let me go. Perhaps you have a wife and you wouldn’t want anybody to molest her.’
    “ ‘I have no wife,’ I said, ‘but I promise you that, as far as it depends on me, I will not molest you. That’s all I can promise.’
    “ ‘I will be grateful to you until my last breath.’
    “That is the story. I never saw the woman again. I don’t even know her name. I don’t know why, but of all the strange things that have happened to me this made the strongest impression. Well, that’s all. I won’t disturb you any more.”
    “You don’t disturb me,” I said. “It’s good to meet a person with such powers. It strengthens my own faith. But how did it happen that Manya had the grippe when you left Warsaw? Why didn’t you order her to get well?”
    “What? I ask myself this question constantly. It seems that my power is only negative. To heal the sick, one must be a saint and, as you see, I am far from being a saint. Or it may be—who knows—that to have a woman along in those days was dangerous.”
    The stranger hung his head. He began to drum on the table with his fingers and to hum to himself. Then he got up. It seemed to me that his face had changed; it had become gray and wrinkled. Suddenly he looked his age. He even appeared less tall than before. I noticed that his raincoat was full of spots. He gave me his hand to say goodbye, and I accompanied him to the elevator.
    “Do you still think about women?” I asked.
    He thought it over as though he hadn’t grasped my words. He looked at me sadly, with suspicion. “Only about dead women.”
    Translated by the author and Dorothea Straus

Something Is There

    I

    As a rule, Rabbi Nechemia from Bechev knew the cunning of the Evil One and how to subdue him, but the last few months he had been