The Collected Stories

to the gate of the house where Simcha David lived and bought two rolls. But where could he eat them? He remembered the proverb “One who eats in the street resembles a dog.” He stood in the gateway and bit into the roll.
    He had already committed sins that were punishable by death, but eating without washing his hands and without reciting a benediction disturbed him. He found it difficult to swallow. Well, it’s a matter of habit, the rabbi comforted himself. One must get accustomed even to being a transgressor. He ate one roll and put the other into his pocket. He walked aimlessly. On one street, three funeral processions drove past him. The first hearse was followed by several men. A few droshkies rode after the second. No one accompanied the third. “Well, it doesn’t make any difference to them,” the rabbi said to himself. “ ‘For the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward,’ ” he quoted Ecclesiastes.
    He turned right and went by long, narrow dry-goods stores lit up inside by gas lamps although it was midday. From wagons nearly as large as houses, men were unloading rolls of woolens, alpaca, cottons, and prints. A porter walked along with a basket on his shoulders, his back bent under the load. High-school boys in uniforms with gilded buttons and insignias on their caps toted books strapped to their shoulders. The rabbi stopped. If you didn’t believe in God, why raise children, why support wives? According to logic, a nonbeliever should care only for his own body and for no one else.
    He walked on. In the next block a bookstore displayed books in Hebrew and Yiddish:
The Generations and Their Interpreters, The Mysteries of Paris, The Little Man, Masturbation, How to Prevent Consumption.
One book was titled
How the Universe Came into Being.
I’m going to buy it, the rabbi decided. There were a few customers inside. The bookseller, a man with gold-rimmed glasses attached to a ribbon, was talking to a man who had long hair and wore a hat with a wide brim and a cape on his shoulders. The rabbi stopped at the shelves and browsed among the books.
    A salesgirl approached him and asked, “What do you want—a prayer book, a benedictor?”
    The rabbi blushed. “I noticed a book in the window but I’ve already forgotten its name.”
    “Come out, show it to me,” the girl said, winking at the man with the gold-rimmed glasses. She smiled and dimples formed in her cheeks.
    The rabbi had an impulse to run away. He pointed out the book.
    “
Masturbation?
” the girl asked.
    “No.”
    “
Vichna Dvosha Goes to America?
”
    “No, the one in the middle.”
    “
How the Universe Came into Being?
Let’s go back inside.” The girl whispered to the store owner, who now stood behind the counter. He scratched his forehead. “It’s the last copy.”
    “Shall I take it from the window?” the girl asked.
    “But why do you need that book in particular?” the store owner said. “It’s out of date. The universe didn’t come into being the way the author describes. Nobody was there to tell.”
    The girl burst out laughing. The man in the cape asked, “Where do you come from, the provinces?”
    “Yes.”
    “For what did you come to Warsaw? To buy merchandise for your store?”
    “Yes, merchandise.”
    “What kind of merchandise?”
    The rabbi wanted to answer that it was no business of his, but it wasn’t in his nature to be insolent. He said, “I want to know what the heretics are saying.”
    The girl laughed again. The merchant took off his glasses. The man in the cape stared at him with his big black eyes. “That’s all you need?”
    “I want to know.”
    “Well, he wants to know. Will they allow you to read it? If they catch you with such a book, they’ll throw you out of the study house.”
    “No one will know,” the rabbi replied. He realized that he was speaking like a child, not like an adult.
    “Well, I guess the Enlightenment is still alive, the same as fifty years ago,” the man in the cape said to the owner. “This is the way they used to come to Vilna and ask, ‘How was the world created? Why does the sun shine? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ ” He turned to the rabbi. “We don’t know, my dear man, we don’t know. We have to live without faith and without knowledge.”
    “So why are you Jews?” the rabbi asked.
    “We have to be Jews. An entire people cannot become assimilated. Besides, the Gentiles don’t want us. There are several