The Collected Stories

million.
    “Loshikl, I crossed the border without any incident, reached Warsaw, and found the house intact. One thing saved me—the rains and the cold had started. The nights were pitch dark. Warsaw had no electricity. The Jews had not yet been herded into a ghetto. Besides, I don’t look especially Jewish. I had covered my hair with a kerchief and could easily have been taken for a peasant. Also, I avoided people. When I saw someone from a distance, I hid and waited until he was gone. Our apartment was occupied by a family. They were sleeping in our beds and wearing our clothes. But they had not touched Menashe’s manuscripts. The man was a reader of the Yiddish press and Menashe was a god to him. When I knocked on the door and told them who I was, they became frightened, thinking that I wanted to reclaim the apartment. Their own place had been destroyed by a bomb and a child had been killed. When I told them that I had come back from Bialystok for Menashe’s manuscript, they were speechless.
    “I opened Menashe’s drawer and there was his novel. I stayed with these people two days and they shared with me whatever food they had. The man let me have his bed—I mean my bed. I was so tired that I slept for fourteen hours. I awoke, ate something, and fell asleep again. The second evening, I was on my way back to Bialystok. I had made my way from Bialystok to Warsaw, and back to Bialystok, without seeing one Nazi. I did not walk all the time. Here and there a peasant offered me a ride. When one leaves the city and begins to hike through field, woods, and orchards, there are no Nazis or Communists. The sky is the same, the earth is the same, and the animals and birds are the same. The whole adventure took ten days. I regarded it as a great personal victory. First of all, I had found Menashe’s work, which I carried in my blouse. Besides, I had proved to myself that I was not the coward I thought I was. To tell the truth, crossing the border back to Russia was not particularly risky. The Russians did not make difficulties for the refugees.
    “I arrived in Bialystok in the evening. A frost had set in. I walked to our lodgings, which consisted of one room, opened the door, and lo and behold, my hero lay in bed with a woman. I knew her quite well: an atrocious poetess, ugly as an ape. A tiny kerosene lamp was burning. They had got some wood or coal because the stove was heated. They were still awake. My dear, I did not scream, I did not cry, I did not faint as they do in the theater. Both gaped at me in silence. I opened the door of the stove, took the manuscript from my blouse, and put it in the fire. I thought that Menashe might attack me, but he did not utter a word. It took a while before the manuscript caught fire. With a poker, I pushed the coals onto the paper. I stood there, watching. The fire was not in a hurry and neither was I. When
Rungs
became ashes, I walked over to the bed with the poker in hand and told the woman, ‘Get out or you will soon be a corpse.’
    “She did as I told her. She put on her rags and left. If she had uttered a sound, I would have killed her. When you risk your own life, other people’s lives, too, are worthless.
    “Menashe sat there in silence as I undressed. That night we spoke only a few words. I said, ‘I burned your
Rungs,
’ and he mumbled, ‘Yes, I saw.’ We embraced and we both knew that we were doing it for the last time. He was never so tender and strong as on that night. In the morning, I got up, packed my few things, and left. I had no more fear of the cold, the rain, the snow, the lonesomeness. I left Bialystok and that is the reason I am still alive. I came to Vilna and got a job in a soup kitchen. I saw how petty our so-called big personalities can be and how they played politics and maneuvered for a bed to sleep in or a meal to eat. In 1941, I escaped to Russia.
    “Menashe, too, was there, I was told, but we never met—nor would I have wanted to. He had said in an interview that the Nazis took his book from him and that he was about to rewrite it. As far as I know, he has never rewritten anything. This really saved his life. If he had been writing and publishing, he would have been liquidated with the others. But he died anyhow.”
    For a long while we sat in silence. Then I said, “Shibtah, I want to ask you something, but you don’t have to answer me. I am asking from sheer curiosity.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Were you faithful to