The Collected Stories

he’s always behind in his payments. They don’t know what it’s all about here. It’s not America. I’m starving and that’s the bitter truth. Don’t grab your wallet; it’s not really that bad. I’ve lived alone and I’ll die alone. I’m proud of it, and besides, it’s my fate. What I’m going through and what I’ve been through, nobody knows, not even God. There’s not a day without some catastrophe. But suddenly I walk into a café and there you are. That’s really something.”
    “Didn’t you know that I was here?”
    “Yes, but how did I know what you’d be like after all these years? I haven’t changed a bit, and that’s my tragedy. I’ve remained the same. I’ve the same desires, the same dreams—the people persecute me here, just as they did twenty years ago in Poland. They are all my enemies, and I don’t know why. I’ve read your books. I’ve forgotten nothing. I’ve always thought about you, even when I lay swollen from hunger in Kazakhstan and looked into the eyes of death. You wrote somewhere that one sins in another world, and that this world is hell. For you, that may have been just a phrase, but it’s the truth. I am the reincarnation of some wicked man from another planet. Gehenna is
in
me. This climate sickens me. The men here become impotent; the women are consumed with passion. Why did God pick out this land for the Jews? When the khamsin begins, my brains rattle. Here the winds don’t blow; they wail like jackals. Sometimes I stay in bed all day because I don’t have the strength to get up, but at night I roam about like a beast of prey. How long can I go on like this? But that I’m alive and seeing you makes it a holiday for me.”
    She pushed her chair away from the table, almost overturning it. “These mosquitoes are driving me crazy.”
    II

    Although I had already had dinner, I ate again with Dosha and drank Carmel wine with her. Then I went to her home. On the way, she kept apologizing for the poorness of her apartment. We passed a park. Though lit by street lamps, it was covered by darkness which no light could penetrate. The motionless leaves of the trees seemed petrified. We walked through dim streets, each bearing the name of a Hebrew writer or scholar. I read the signs over women’s clothing stores. The commission for modernizing Hebrew had created a terminology for brassières, nylons, corsets, ladies’ coiffures, and cosmetics. They had found the sources for such worldly terms in the Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Midrash, and even the Zohar. It was already late in the evening, but buildings and asphalt still exuded the heat of the day. The humid air smelled of garbage and fish.
    I felt the age of the earth beneath me, the lost civilizations lying in layers. Somewhere below lay hidden golden calves, the jewelry of temple harlots, and images of Baal and Astarte. Here prophets foretold disasters. From a nearby harbor, Jonah had fled to Tarshish rather than prophesy the doom of Nineveh. In the daylight these events seemed remote, but at night the dead walked again. I heard the whisperings of phantoms. An awakening bird had uttered a shrill alarm. Insects beat against the glass of the street lamps, crazed with lust.
    Dosha took my arm with a loyalty unprofaned by any past betrayal. She led me up the stairway of a building. Her apartment was actually a separate structure on the roof. As she opened the door, a blast of heat, combined with the smell of paint and of alcohol used for a primus stove, hit me. The single room served as studio, bedroom, kitchen. Dosha did not switch on the lights. Our past had accustomed us both to undress and dress in the dark. She opened the shutters and the night shone in with its street lamps and stars. A painting stood propped against the wall. I knew that in the daylight its bizarre lines and colors would have little meaning for me. Still, I found it intriguing now. We kissed without speaking.
    After years of living in the United States, I had forgotten that there could be an apartment without a bathroom. But Dosha’s had none. There was only a sink with running water. The toilet was on the roof. Dosha opened a glass door to the roof and showed me where to go. I could find neither switch nor cord to turn on the light. In the dark I felt a hook with pieces of torn newspaper stuck to it. As I was returning, I saw through the curtains of the glass door that Dosha had turned on the lamp.
    Suddenly