The Collected Stories

crickets chirped. The night rained meteors. I could make out the whitish luminous band which was the Milky Way. The sky, like the earth, could not rest. It yearned with a cosmic yearning for something which would take myriads of light-years to achieve. Even though Sylvia had just helped me make peace with Dosha, she took my hand. The night light made her face feminine and her black eyes emitted golden sparks. We stopped in the middle of the dirt road and kissed with fervor, as if we had been waiting for each other God knows how long. Her wide mouth bit into mine like the muzzle of a beast. The heat from her body baked my skin, not unlike the glowing roof a few hours earlier. I heard a blaring sound, mysterious and otherworldly, as though a heavenly heifer in a faraway constellation had awakened and begun a wailing not to be stilled until all life in the universe shall be redeemed.
    Translated by the author and Ruth Schachner Finkel

A Tale of Two Sisters

    L EON , or Haim Leib, Bardeles poured cream into his coffee. He put in a lot of sugar, tasted it, grimaced, added more cream, and took a bite of the macaroon the waiter had brought him.
    He said, “I like my coffee sweet, not bitter. In Rio de Janeiro they drink tiny little cups of coffee that’s as bitter as gall. They serve it here, too—espresso—but I like a glass of coffee like you used to get in Warsaw. When I sit here with you, I forget that I’m in Buenos Aires. It seems to me we’re in Lurs’s in Warsaw. What do you say to the weather, eh? It took me a long time to get used to Sukkoth falling in the spring and Passover in the fall. I can’t even begin to tell you the confusion this topsy-turvy calendar brings out in our people. Hanukkah comes during a heat wave and you can melt. On Shevuoth, it’s cold. Well, at least the spring smells are the same—the lilac has the same aroma that used to waft in from the Praga woods and the Saxony Gardens. I recognize the smells, but I cannot identify them. The Gentile writers list every flower and plant, but how many names are there for flowers in Yiddish? I know only two kinds of flowers—roses and lilies. When I go to a florist’s once in a while to buy someone a bouquet, I always rely on the clerk. Drink your coffee!”
    “Tell the story,” I said.
    “Eh? Can it be told? Where shall I begin? I promised to tell you everything, the whole truth, but can you tell the truth? Wait, I’ll have a cigarette first. Actually, one of your American cigarettes.”
    Leon Bardeles took out one of the packs of cigarettes I had brought him from New York. I had known him over thirty years. I had once even written an introduction for a book of his poems. He was fifty-three or fifty-four and had survived the Hitler hell and the Stalin terror, but he still looked young for his age. He had a head of black curly hair, big black eyes, a thick lower lip, and a neck and shoulders that exuded masculine strength. He still wore a shirt with a
Slowacki
collar, just as in Warsaw. He blew smoke rings and gazed at me with narrowed eyes, like an artist at a model.
    He said, “I’ll begin in the middle. I beg you: Don’t ask me for any dates, because when it comes to that I’m completely disoriented. It must have been 1946, or maybe it was still the end of ’45. I had left Stalin’s Russia and gone back to Poland. In Russia I was supposed to go into the Polish army, but I wormed my way out of it. I went through Warsaw and saw the ruins of the ghetto. You wouldn’t believe this, but I actually went looking for the house where I had lived in 1939—maybe I’d find some of my manuscripts among the bricks. The chances of recognizing the house on Nowolipki Street and finding a manuscript after all the bombardments and fires were less than zero, but I recognized the ruins of the house and found a printed book of mine, actually the one with your introduction. Only the last page was missing. I was amazed, but not terribly so. So many incredible things have occurred in my life that I have become completely blasé. If I came home and found my dead mother tonight, I wouldn’t blink an eye. I’d say, ‘Mamma, how are you?’
    “From Warsaw I stumbled on to Lublin and from there to Stettin. Most of the cities lay in ruins and we slept in stables, barracks, and in the street, too. They berate me here in Buenos Aires why I don’t write about my experiences. First of all, I’m not a prose writer. Secondly, everything has grown jumbled in