The Collected Stories

on uptown Broadway are interested in telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and the immortality of the soul.
    For once, the pigeons did not crowd around me. I looked up and saw that a few steps away stood a woman who was also throwing out handfuls of grain. I started to laugh—under her arm she carried a copy of the new issue of
The Unknown.
Despite the hot summer day, she was wearing a black dress and a black, broad-brimmed hat. Her shoes and stockings were black. She must be a foreigner, I thought; no American would dress in such clothes in this weather, not even to attend a funeral. She raised her head and I saw a face that seemed young—or, at least, not old. She was lean and swarthy, with a narrow nose, a long chin, and thin lips.
    I said, “Competition, eh?”
    She smiled, showing long false teeth, but her black eyes remained stern. She said, “Don’t worry, sir. There will be more pigeons. Enough for us both. Here they are now!” She pointed prophetically to the sky.
    Yes, a whole flock was flying in from downtown. The plot grew so full that the birds hopped and fluttered to force their way to the food. Pigeons, like Hasidim, enjoy jostling each other.
    When our bags were emptied, we walked over to the litter can. “After you,” I said, and I added, “I see we read the same magazine.”
    She replied in a deep voice and a foreign accent, “I’ve seen you often feeding the pigeons, and I want you to know that those who feed pigeons never know need. The few cents you spend on these lovely birds will bring you lots of luck.”
    “How can you be sure of that?”
    She began to explain, and we walked away together. I invited her to have a drink with me and she said, “Gladly, but I don’t drink alcoholic beverages, only fruit juices and vegetable juices.”
    “Come. Since you read
The Unknown,
you’re one of my people.”
    “Yes, my greatest interest is in the occult. I read similar publications from England, Canada, Australia, India. I used to read them back in Hungary, where I come from, but today for believing in the higher powers over there you go to jail. Is there such a magazine in Hebrew?”
    “Are you Jewish?”
    “On my mother’s side, but for me separate races and religions don’t exist, only the one species of man. We lost the sources of our spiritual energy, and this has given rise to a disharmony in our psychic evolution. The divisions are the result. When we emit waves of brotherliness, reciprocal help, and peace, these vibrations create a sense of identification among all of God’s creatures. You saw how the pigeons flew in. They congregate around the Central Savings Bank on Broadway and Seventy-third Street, which is too far for pigeons to see what’s happening in the Eighties. But the cosmic consciousness within them is in perfect balance and therefore …”
    We had gone into a coffee shop that was air-conditioned, and we sat down in a booth. She introduced herself as Margaret Fugazy.
    “It’s remarkable,” she said. “I’ve observed that you always feed the pigeons at one o’clock when you go out for lunch, while I feed them in the mornings. I fed them as usual this morning. All of a sudden a voice ordered me to feed them again. Now, at six o’clock pigeons aren’t particularly eager to eat. They’re starting to adjust to their nightly rhythm. The days are growing shorter and we’re in another constellation of the solar cycle. But when a voice repeats the same admonition over and over, this is a message from the world powers. I came out and found you too about to feed the pigeons. How is it you were late?”
    “I also heard a voice.”
    “Are you psychic?”
    “I was only fooling.”
    “You mustn’t fool about such things!”
    After three-quarters of an hour, I had heard a lot of particulars. Margaret Fugazy had come to the United States in the nineteen-fifties. Her father had been a doctor; her parents were no longer living. Here in New York she had grown close to a woman who was past ninety, a medium, and half blind. They had lived together for a time. The old lady had died at the age of a hundred and two, and now Margaret supported herself by giving courses in Yoga, concentration, mind stimulation, biorhythm, awareness, and the I Am.
    She said, “I watched you feeding the pigeons a long time before I learned that you’re a writer and a vegetarian. I started reading you. This led to a telepathic communication between us, even if it has been one-sided. I