The Collected Stories

everything I could to shock her. I denounced all poets as imbeciles and told her I was having affairs with four women at the same time. Her eyes filled with tears. She said to me, ‘You are so young, so talented, and already so unhappy. You don’t know yet what real love is, and therefore you torture your immortal soul. True love will come to you and you will find treasures that will open the gates of Heaven to you.’ To comfort me for being so misled, she offered me tea with jam cake she had baked herself and a glass of cherry brandy. I did not wait long before I began to kiss her—almost out of habit. I will never forget her expression at the first kiss. Her eyes lit up with a strange light. She clutched both my wrists and said, ‘Don’t do it! I take such things seriously!’ She trembled and stuttered and tried to quote Goethe. Her body became unusually hot. I practically raped her, although not exactly. I spent the night at her house, and if someone could convey in a book all she said that night, it would be a work of genius. She promptly fell in love with me—with a love that endured to her last minute. I am far from being holy even today, but in those years I didn’t have a trace of conscience. I considered the whole thing a joke.
    “She began to telephone me every day—three times a day—but I had no time for her and invented countless excuses. Nevertheless, I used to visit her from time to time—mostly on rainy nights when I had no other engagements. Every visit was literally a holiday for her. If she could manage it, she prepared a festive supper, bought flowers in my honor, and dressed in fancy gowns or kimonos. She showered me with gifts. She tried to persuade me to read the German classics with her. But I tore them all to pieces and confessed to her brazenly all my sins, even about the brothels I had visited in my youth. There are some women who can be shocked constantly, and for her I never lacked material. Just because she spoke gently, with flowery phrases and noble quotations, I used the language of the streets and called everything by its name. She used to say, ‘God will forgive you. Since He bestowed talent upon you, you are His favorite.’ The truth is that it was impossible to spoil her. Figuratively speaking, she remained a virgin to the end. She possessed a purity and love for humanity not to be erased. She defended everyone, even that famous anti-Semite, Purish-kevitch. She said, ‘The poor man is deluded. There are souls who sink in darkness because they never have the chance to see the divine light.’ I did not realize it then but I slept with a saint, like the Saint Theresa whose namesake she was.
    “She was so pure that the things I forced her to do shattered her. I have a large bundle of her letters and they are stained with her tears—not false ones but true. A time is coming when no one will believe that such women existed. Meanwhile, years passed, she grew older and her hair became white, but her face remained young and her eyes shone with all the illusions of romanticism. I had less and less time for her. The rich Jews of Warsaw slowly lost their interest in German culture and Theresa earned less and less. But I could not completely sever our relationship. I always had the feeling that, if everything went wrong and I was forsaken by everyone, I could depend on Theresa to be my mother, my wife, my protector. She had developed the tolerance characteristic of such natures. I was allowed to do anything. I never had to defend myself. In my situation one has to be a chronic liar, but to Theresa I could tell the truth no matter how brutal. She always had the same answer, ‘You poor boy! You great artist!’
    “The years, meanwhile, did their job. Theresa became bent and wrinkled. She began to suffer from rheumatism. She had to lean on a cane. I was ashamed of myself for my charity, if it could be called that, but to leave her completely meant killing her. She clung to me with her last strength. At night in bed she became young again. Sometimes in the dark, words escaped her which astounded me. Among other things she promised me that after her death she would appear to me, if it were possible. I don’t want to disappoint you, so I am telling you in advance that she never kept that promise. But my story is just beginning.”
    Max Persky signaled the waitress and she came over at once, as though she had been waiting impatiently for this call. He spoke to her with caressing