The Collected Stories

young woman with blond hair falling to her shoulders, a straw hat, with flowers and cherries, of the kind worn when I was still a cheder boy, a white blouse with lace at the neckline and sleeves, a black embroidered skirt, and buttoned shoes. Although it was sunny outside, she carried an umbrella with ribbons and bows—all in all, a photograph come to life from an album. Before she could even close the door behind her, I said, “Your husband just called. I don’t wish to alarm you, but your child is having an attack of asthma and your husband can’t get a doctor. He wants to know where the drops are.”
    I was sure my visitor would dash to the telephone, which stood on a table in the hall, but instead she measured me with her eyes from head to toe, then back again, while a sweet smile spread across her face. “Yes, it’s you!” She held out a hand in a white glove reaching to the elbow and presented me with a package wrapped in shiny black paper and tied in a red ribbon. “Don’t be concerned,” she said. “He does this every time I go somewhere. He can’t stand my leaving the house. It’s pure hysteria.”
    “What about the child?”
    “Bibi is as stubborn as her father. She doesn’t want to let me out of the house, either. She’s his child from a former wife.”
    “Please come in. Thank you for the present.”
    “Oh, you filled a gap in my life. I’ve always been a stranger to myself. By chance I discovered one of your novels in a bookstore and from then on I’ve read everything you’ve written. I believe I’ve told you that I’m the Klendev rabbi’s grandchild. That’s on my mother’s side. On my father’s side I stem from adventurers.”
    She followed me into the living room. She was short and slim, with a smooth white skin seldom seen in adults. Her eyes were pale blue tinged with yellow, and somewhat squinty. Her nose was narrow and on the long side, her lips thin, her chin receding and pointed. She had on no cosmetics. Usually I form a concept of a person from the face he presents, but I couldn’t form a clear one of this young woman. Not healthy, I thought: sensitive, aristocratic. Her English seemed to me not American but foreign. As I chatted with her and asked her to have a seat on the sofa, I unwrapped the package and took out a ouija board with a planchette, obviously handmade, of costly wood and edged in bone.
    She said, “I gather from your stories that you’re interested in the occult, and I hope this is a fitting gift.”
    “Oh, you give me too many gifts.”
    “You’ve earned them all.”
    I asked her questions, and she responded willingly. Her father was a retired lawyer. He was separated from Elizabeth’s mother and was living with another woman in Switzerland. The mother suffered from rheumatism and had moved to Arizona. She had a friend there, an old man of eighty. Elizabeth Abigail had met her husband in college. He had been her philosophy professor. He was also an amateur astronomer and used to sit up with her half the night at the observatory studying the stars. A Jew? No, Oliver Leslie was a Christian, born in England but descended from Basques. Two years after she married him he became sick, fell into a chronic depression, quit his job, and settled in a house a few miles from Croton-on-Hudson. He had isolated himself completely from people. He was writing a book on astrology and numerology. Elizabeth Abigail smiled the smile of those who have long since discovered the vanity of all human endeavors. At times her eyes grew melancholy and even frightened.
    I asked her what she did in that house in Croton-on-Hudson and she replied, “I go crazy. Leslie doesn’t speak for days or weeks at a time except to Bibi. He tutors her—she doesn’t go to school. We do not live as man and wife. For me, books have become the essence of my being. When I find a book that speaks to me, this is a great event in my life. That’s why—”
    “Who takes care of the household?”
    “No one, really. We have a neighbor, an ex-farmer who left his family, and he brings us food from the supermarket. At times he cooks for us, too. A simple man, but in his own fashion a philosopher. He is also our chauffeur. Leslie can’t drive the car any more. Our house stands on a hill that’s awfully slippery, not only in winter, but whenever it rains.”
    My visitor grew silent. I was already accustomed to the fact that many of those who wrote me or came to see me were eccentrics—odd,