The Collected Stories

mockery, and profanity turn into demons, hobgoblins, imps. They stand as accusers before God, and when the transgressor dies they run after his hearse and accompany him to the grave.
    As if Rivkele guessed my thoughts, she said, “You made me see America like a picture. I dreamed of it at night. You made me hate my home—Yantche, too. You promised to write me, but I didn’t get a single letter from you. When Morris arrived from America, I clutched at him as if I were drowning.”
    “Rivkele, I have to report for conscription. I’m liable to be sent to the barracks tomorrow.”
    “Let’s go away somewhere together.”
    “Where? America has closed its gates. All the roads are sealed.”
    III

    Nine years went by. It was my third year in New York. From time to time, I published a sketch in a Yiddish newspaper. I lived in a furnished room not far from Union Square. My room was dark. I had to climb four stories to get to it, and it stank of disinfectant. The linoleum on the floor was torn, and cockroaches crawled from beneath it. When I turned on the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling, I saw a crooked bridge table, an overstuffed chair with torn upholstery, and a sink with a faucet that dripped rusty water. The window faced a wall. When I felt like writing—which was seldom—I went to the Public Library at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. Here in my room, I only lay on the sagging bed and fantasized about fame, riches, and women who threw themselves at me. I had had an affair, but it ended, and I had been alone for months. I kept my ears cocked to hear if I was being summoned to the pay phone below. The walls of the house were so thin that I could hear every rustle—not only on my floor but on the lower floors as well. A group of boys and girls who called themselves a “stock company” had moved in. They were getting ready to put on a play somewhere. In the meantime, they ran up and down the stairs, shrieking and laughing. The woman who changed my bedding told me that they practiced free love and smoked marijuana. Across from me lived a girl who had come to New York from the Middle West to become an actress, and for whole days and half the nights she sang wailing melodies that someone told me were called the “blues.” One evening, I heard her sing over and over again in a mournful chant:

He won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Never, never, never, never.
Won’t come back!
    I heard footsteps and my name being called. I sat up so hastily that I nearly broke the bed. The door opened and by the dim light of the hall I saw the figure of a woman. I didn’t put on my light because I was ashamed of the condition of my room. The paint on the walls was peeling. Old newspapers lay scattered around, together with books I had picked up along Fourth Avenue for a nickel each, and dirty laundry.
    “May I ask who you are looking for?” I said.
    “It’s you. I recognize your voice. I’m Rivkele—Lazar the shoemaker’s daughter from Old-Stikov.”
    “Rivkele!”
    “Why don’t you put on the light?”
    “The light is broken,” I said, baffled by my own lie. The blues singer across the way became quiet. This was the first time that I had ever had a visitor here. For some reason her door stood always ajar, as if deep inside her she still hoped that he who wouldn’t come back would one day come back after all.
    Rivkele mumbled, “Do you at least have a match? I don’t want to fall.”
    It struck me that she spoke Yiddish in an accent that wasn’t exactly American but no longer sounded the way they had spoken back home. I got off the bed carefully, led her over to the easy chair, and helped her sit down. At the same time I snatched one of my socks from the back of the chair and flung it aside. It fell into the sink. I said, “So you’re in America!”
    “Didn’t you know? Didn’t they write you that—”
    “I asked about you time and again in my letters home, but they never answered.”
    She was silent for a time. “I didn’t know that you were here. I only found out about it a week ago. No, it’s two weeks. What a time I had finding you! You write under another name. Why, of all things?”
    “Didn’t they tell you from home that I’m here?” I asked in return.
    Rivkele didn’t reply, as if she were thinking the question over. Then she said, “I see you know nothing. I’m no longer Jewish. Because of this, my parents have disowned me as a daughter. Father sat shivah