The Collected Stories

mist, gravitation, the earth tearing away from the sun and cooling off. He denied the exodus from Egypt, that the Red Sea was split, that the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. It was all a legend. Each of Fulie’s words pained Reb Mordecai Meir’s insides, as if he had swallowed the molten lead which, in ancient times, was given to those who were condemned to be burned. A cry tore from his throat. He wanted to shout, “Blackguard, Jeroboam, son of Nebat, get out of my house, go to the devil!” But he remembered that the boy was an orphan, a stranger in the city, without means. He could, God forbid, become a convert, or commit suicide.
    “May God forgive you. You are deluded,” he said.
    “You asked, Grandfather, so I answered.”
    From then on, grandfather and grandson stopped debating. They actually didn’t speak. Reb Mordecai Meir sat in the living room, Fulie stayed in the kitchen and slept there on the cot. When Pesha cooked something, she also gave him a plate of food. She bought him bread, butter, cheese. She washed his shirt. Fulie was given a key to the outer door. Though he was not registered, the janitor let him in at night. Each time Fulie gave him ten groschen. Some nights he didn’t come home at all.
    Reb Mordecai Meir slept little. Right after evening prayers fatigue overcame him and he went to bed, but after an hour or two he awoke. In the morning Fulie was gone before Reb Mordecai Meir began to recite the Shema. “One must not estrange them,” Reb Mordecai Meir said to himself. “The birth throes of the Messiah have begun.”
    In the kitchen, in a box of books, Reb Mordecai Meir found a Yiddish pamphlet with frayed pages. He tried to read it but could understand little of what was written there. The writer seemed to argue with another writer of his kind. He mentioned such strange names as Zhelyabov, Kilbatchitch, Perovskaya. One, it said, was a martyr. A bitter taste came to Reb Mordecai Meir’s mouth. In his old age he had to room with a heretic who was his grandchild. In the Alexandrow study house he asked what was going on in the world and was told things which utterly amazed him. Those who, years, before, had murdered the czar had begun to arouse the populace anew. Among them were many Jews. Somewhere in Russia a bomb had been thrown, a train derailed, sacks of gold robbed. In some faraway city a governor had been shot. The jails were full. Many rebels were sent to Siberia. The Hasid who recounted these events said, “They kill and are killed. It is each man’s sword in his neighbor!”
    “What do they want?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked.
    “That all should be equal.”
    “How is this possible?”
    “Sons of the rich have joined their group.”
    The Hasid reported that the daughter of a wine dealer, a Hasid of the Rabbi of Gur, got mixed up with these instigators and was imprisoned in the Citadel. There she fasted for eighteen days and had to be fed by force.
    Reb Mordecai Meir was stunned. The Redemption must be near! He asked, “If they don’t believe in the world to come, why do they torment themselves so?”
    “They want justice.”
    That evening, when Reb Mordecai Meir returned home after evening prayers, he saw Fulie seated at the kitchen table, his black blouse unbuttoned, his hair unkempt, chewing on a piece of bread and reading a book.
    “Why do you eat dry bread? The woman cooks for you too.”
    “Pesha? She was taken to the hospital.”
    “Really? We must pray for her.”
    “She had an attack of gallstones. If you like I can make something.”
    “You?”
    “I’ll make sure it’s kosher.”
    “You believe in it?”
    “For your sake.”
    “Well, no.”
    From that day on grandfather and grandson ate only dry food. Fulie brought rolls, sugar, cheese from the store. He brewed tea. Reb Mordecai Meir was not sure he should trust such a one even with the making of tea. It was one thing to be a Gentile cook, who, the Talmud presumed, would not damage his livelihood and so could be trusted, and something entirely different to be a renegade Jew. However, bread and sugar could not be made unclean. Fulie bought the cheese from David in the dairy store across the street. If Fulie looked for a Gentile shop on another street, it meant he was an apostate out of spite, of whom it is said, “He knows his master and wants to defy Him.” But so low he had not fallen.
    The Sabbath meal was prepared by another neighbor. Reb Mordecai Meir lit the Sabbath candles himself.