The Collected Stories

boot made his legs buckle. It seemed to him he would not be able to reach the door. But he opened it and saw what he expected to see: four men were carrying a body on a stretcher, a dead man—Fulie. They entered without speaking, with the sullenness of pallbearers.
    “The murderers killed him,” one of them shouted. “Where should we put him down?” a second one asked. Reb Mordecai Meir pointed to the floor. The dead man was bleeding. A puddle of blood formed on the floor. A hand stuck out from under the cover—a lifeless hand, limp and pale, which no longer could take anything, no gift, no favor, no constitution …
    Reb Mordecai Meir’s belly swelled up like a drum. “Great God, I don’t want to live any longer. Enough!” He was angry with God for the punishment which He had visited upon him in his old age. He had to vomit and dragged himself to the toilet, where he retched as if he had eaten and drunk all day and not fasted. Fires leaped before his eyes. Never in his life had he complained to God. He murmured, “I don’t deserve this affliction!” And he knew that he was blaspheming.
    Late that night there was again a knocking at his door. “Who is it, another corpse?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked himself in his anxiety. He was sitting beside Fulie’s body reciting psalms. When he opened the door, first a policeman entered, followed by a civilian, and then by two more policemen and the janitor. They were saying something in Russian, but Reb Mordecai Meir did not understand their language. He pointed to the corpse but they turned away.
    A search began. Drawers were opened, papers thrown around. From the dresser the person in civilian clothes took Fulie’s thick envelope for Nekhama Katz. He opened it and removed several sheets of paper, a notebook, a nickel watch, other objects. He read a part of the letter to the others—in Russian. One of them smiled. Another stared silently. He then said to Reb Mordecai Meir in broken Yiddish, “Grandfather, come.”
    “What? Where?”
    “Come.”
    “What will happen to the corpse?”
    “Come, come.”
    Somewhere the janitor found Reb Mordecai Meir’s coat. Reb Mordecai Meir wanted to ask the one in charge why he was being arrested, but he could speak neither Polish nor Russian. Anyway, what good would it do to ask? The civilian took him by one arm, a policeman by the other, and they led him down the dark staircase. The janitor lit matches. He opened the gate. A small carriage with barred windows was waiting outside. They helped Reb Mordecai Meir get in and sat him down on a bench. One of the policemen sat next to him. Slowly the carriage began to move.
    “Well, let me imagine that it is my funeral,” Reb Mordecai Meir said to himself. “No one will say Kaddish for me anyhow.”
    A strange calm came over him and the complete surrender that accompanies misfortune so great that one knows nothing worse can occur. Before, when they had brought Fulie’s body, he had rebelled in his thought, but now he regretted his resentment. “Father in Heaven, forgive me.” There came to his mind the saying from the Talmud: “No one is subject to penalty for words uttered in agony.”
    “What time is it?” he wondered. Suddenly he remembered that he had not taken his prayer shawl and phylacteries. Well, it was too late even for that. Reb Mordecai Meir started to confess his sins. “We have transgressed, we have betrayed, we have cheated, we have deceived …” He raised his hand and tried to make a fist to beat his breast, but his fingers were rigid. Well, he has probably already atoned for his mistakes, Reb Mordecai Meir was thinking about Fulie. His intentions were good. He wanted to help the poor. He pitied the hungry. Perhaps that was his salvation. In Heaven everything is judged according to intention. Maybe his soul is already cleansed.
    It was not customary to say Kaddish without a quorum or for someone who had not yet been buried, but Reb Mordecai Meir knew that he had little time left. He mumbled the Kaddish. Then he recited a chapter from the Mishnah which he knew from memory. “At what time is it permissible to recite the Shema in the evening? From the time that the priests enter the Temple to eat their food offerings. So sayeth Rabbi Eliezer. And the sages say: Until midnight.”
    “Hey, you, Jew, old dog, who are you talking to, your God?” the policeman asked. Somehow Reb Mordecai Meir understood these few words. What does he know? How can he