The Collected Stories

too soon. But let me tell you the rest. Nina was ready to help me, and even had a plan. We could easily have ended up in Siberia or on the gallows, but at such moments one becomes strangely courageous. We dressed the corpse in all her clothes. We decided to tell the janitor that the woman had had an attack of gallstones and we were taking her to the hospital. This janitor was an old drunkard and he never turned on the light when he opened the gate. Taking off Theresa Stein’s nightgown and dressing her in her bloomers and other things almost killed us. Her body was a ruin. When she was dressed I lifted her and carried her down three dark flights of stairs. She did not weigh much but still I almost ruptured myself carrying her. Nina helped me by holding her feet. How Nina the hysteric could do all this is still a riddle to me. Never before or since was she so normal—or perhaps I should say supernormal. In the dark passageway to the gate, I stood Theresa up, propping her against the wall. Her head fell on my shoulder and for a moment I imagined she was alive! Nina knocked on the janitor’s window and we heard a squeaking door and the typical growling of a man awakened in the middle of the night. He opened the gate, sighing and cursing, as Nina and I dragged the corpse along upright, holding her under the arms. I even managed to tip the janitor. He asked no questions and we told him nothing. If a policeman had happened to come along, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you. But the street was empty. We pulled the corpse to the nearest corner and set her carefully on the pavement. I put her pocketbook near her. The whole business did not last longer than a few minutes. I was so dazed that I didn’t know what to do next. But Nina took me to her home.
    “There is an old saying that there is no such thing as a perfect murder. What we did that night had all the elements of a perfect crime. If we had actually strangled Theresa, the whole thing could not have gone more smoothly. It’s true we probably left fingerprints, but the technique of discovering fingerprints was not known then in Warsaw. Little the Russian police cared that an old woman had been found dead in the street. She was taken to the morgue. When the Jews learned that Theresa Stein had been found dead, the community leaders arranged for her to be taken to the cleansing room at the Gęsia Street cemetery without an autopsy. Of course I learned all this later. You will not believe it, but that night—or what was left of the night—I slept with Nina and everything went as usual. At that time I still had good nerves. I also drank half a bottle of vodka. There is really no rule about how nerves will react.
    “I don’t have to tell you that Warsaw was shocked at the details of Theresa’s death. Our Yiddish newspapers gave the event full coverage. Theresa had told her landlady that she was spending the night with a sick relative. But who was that relative? No one ever learned. My janitor could have told the police we carried out a woman in the middle of the night, but he was half blind and never read the newspapers. Since her pocketbook was found near her, it was assumed that she had dropped dead from natural causes. I remember that the feuilletonist of
Today
developed a theory that Theresa Stein went out to help the poor and the sick. He compared her to the saint in Peretz’s story who, instead of going to night prayers, went to heat the oven of a sick widow.
    “Our Warsaw Jews adore funerals. But such a funeral as Theresa Stein had, I never saw before. Hundreds of droshkies followed the hearse. Women and girls cried as if it were Yom Kippur. Countless eulogies were spoken. The rabbi of the German synagogue preached that the spirits of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing were hovering over Theresa’s grave, as well as the souls of Judah ha-Levi and Solomon Ibn Gabriol. I wasn’t too sure about Nina’s power to keep a secret. Hysteria and denunciation often go together. I was afraid that at our first quarrel Nina would go to the police. But a real change had taken place in her. She stopped bothering me with her jealousy. We actually never again spoke of that night. It became our great secret.
    “Not long afterward the war began. Then Nina developed consumption, which she had really had for years before. Her family put her in a sanatorium at Otwock. I often visited her. Something in her character seemed to have altered. I never needed to stifle her hysteria