The Collected Stories

the priests of Baal—waging the eternal war of the idolators against God and the seed of Jacob. I could hear the clanging of their swords and the din of their chariots. I sat down in a wicker chair and breathed the acrid scent of eternity.
    Sirens wailing a long and breathless warning wakened me from a doze. The sound was like the blast of a thousand rams’ horns, but I knew that the hotel had no shelter. If bombs fell on this building there would be no rescue. The door to my room opened as if by itself. I went in and sat on my bed, ready to live, ready to die.
    V

    Eight days later, I flew back to the United States. The following week Dora arrived. How strange, but on Yom Kippur Dora had escaped with her daughter and the newborn baby to Tel Aviv, and they had stayed in a hotel on Allenby Road only a few blocks from my hotel. The circumcision had been performed the day before Sukkoth. I told Dora that I had spent a few weeks as writer-in-residence at some college in California. Dora had the habit of questioning me closely whenever I returned from a trip, probing for contradictions. She believed that my lectures were nothing but a means to meet other women and deceive her. This time she accepted my words without suspicion.
    I went back to feeding the pigeons every day, but I never met Margaret. She neither called nor wrote, and as far as I knew she did not visit me astrally.
    Then one day in December when I was walking with Dora on Amsterdam Avenue—she was looking for a secondhand bookcase—a young man pushed a leaflet into my hand. Although it was cold and snow was falling, he was coatless and hatless and his shirt collar was open. He looked Spanish to me or Puerto Rican. Usually I refuse to accept such leaflets. But there was something in the young man’s appearance that made me take the wet paper—an expression of ardor in his black eyes. This was not just a hired distributor of leaflets but a believer in a cause. I stopped and glanced down to see the name Margaret Fugazy in large letters above her picture as she might have looked twenty years ago. “Are you lovelorn?” I read. “Have you lost a near and dear relative? Are you sick? Do you have business trouble, family trouble? Are you in an inextricable dilemma? Come and see Madame Margaret Fugazy, because she is the only one who can help you. Madame Margaret Fugazy, the famous medium, has studied yoga in India, the Cabala in Jerusalem, specializes in ESP, subliminal prayers, Yahweh power, UFO mysteries, self-hypnosis, cosmic wisdom, spiritual healing, and reincarnation. All consultations private. Results guaranteed. Introductory reading $2.”
    Dora pulled my sleeve. “Why did you stop? Throw it away.”
    “Wait, Dora. Where has he gone?” I looked around. The young man had disappeared. Was he waiting just for me?
    Dora asked, “Why are you so interested? Who is Margaret Fugazy? Do you know her?”
    “Yes, I do,” I answered, not understanding why.
    “Who is she—one of your witches?”
    “Yes, a witch.”
    “How do you know her? Did you fly with her to a Black Mass on a broomstick?”
    “You remember Yom Kippur when you went to the Golan kibbutz? While you were there I flew with her to Jerusalem, to Safad, to Rachel’s Tomb, and we studied the Cabala together,” I said.
    Dora was used to my playful chatter and absurdities. She chimed in, “Is that so? What else?”
    “When the war broke out the witch got frightened and flew away.”
    “She left you alone, eh?”
    “Yes, alone.”
    “Why didn’t you come to me? I am something of a witch myself.”
    “You too had vanished.”
    “You poor boy. Abandoned by all your witches. But you can get her back. She advertises. Isn’t that a miracle?”
    We stood there pondering. The snow fell dry and heavy. It hit my face like hail. Dora’s dark coat turned white. A single pigeon tried to fly, flapping its wings but falling back. Then Dora said, “That young man seemed strange. He must be a sorcerer. And all this for two dollars! Come, let’s go home—by subway, not by psychic journey.”
    Translated by Joseph Singer

The Manuscript

    W E sat, shaded by a large umbrella, eating a late breakfast at a sidewalk café on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. My guest—a woman in her late forties, with a head of freshly dyed red hair—ordered orange juice, an omelette, and black coffee. She sweetened the coffee with saccharine, which she plucked with her silvery fingernails from a tiny pillbox covered