The Collected Stories

protests against the Swiss government for refusing to give women the vote, yet at the same time she castigates women in the most violent fashion.
    “I noticed her talking to you when you were sitting together and I know she told you how mean I am with money. But the woman has a buying mania. She buys things that will never be used. I have a large apartment she’s crowded with so much furniture, so many knickknacks and idiotic pictures that you can barely turn around. No maid will work for us. We eat in restaurants even though I hate not eating at home. I must have been mad to agree to go on this trip with her. But it looks as if we won’t last out the twelve days. While I sit talking here with you, my mind is on forfeiting my money and leaving the bus before we even get to Spain. I know I shouldn’t be confiding my personal problems like this, but since you are a writer maybe they can be of use to you. I tell myself that the camps and wanderings totally destroyed her nerves, but I’ve met other women who survived the whole Hitler hell, and they are calm, civilized, pleasant people.”
    “How is it that you didn’t see this before?” I asked.
    “Eh? A good question. I ask myself the same thing. The very fact that I’m telling you all this is a mystery to me, since we Swiss are reticent. Apparently ten years of living with this woman have altered my character. She is the one who allegedly converted, but I seem to have turned into almost a Polish Jew. I read all the Jewish news, particularly any dealing with the Jewish state. I often criticize the Jewish leaders, but not as a stranger—rather as an insider.”
    The bus stopped. We had come to the Spanish frontier. The driver went with our passports to the border station and lingered there a long time.
    Dr. Weyerhofer began talking quietly, in almost a mumble, “I want to be truthful. One good trait she did have—she could attract a man. Sexually, she was amazingly strong. I don’t believe myself that I am speaking of these things—in my circles, talk of sex is taboo. But why? Man thinks of it from cradle to grave. She has a powerful imagination, a perverse fantasy. I’ve had experience with women and I know. She has said things to me that drove me to frenzy. She has more stories in her than Scheherazade. Our days were cursed, but the nights were wild. She wore me out until I could no longer do my work. Is this characteristic of Jewish women in Eastern Europe? The Swiss Jewish women aren’t much more interesting than the Christian.”
    “You know, Doctor, it is impossible to generalize.”
    “I have the feeling that many Jewish women in Poland are of this type. I see it in their eyes. I made a business trip to the Jewish state and even met Ben-Gurion, along with other Israeli leaders. We did business with the Bank Leumi. I have a theory that the Jewish woman of today wants to make up for all the centuries in the ghetto. Besides, the Jews are a people of imagination, even though in modern literature they haven’t yet created any great works. I’ve read Jakob Wassermann, Stefan Zweig, Peter Altenberg, and Arthur Schnitzler, but they disappointed me. I expected something better from Jews. Are there interesting writers in Yiddish or Hebrew?”
    “Interesting writers are rare among all peoples.”
    “Here is our driver with the passports.”
    We crossed the border, and an hour later the bus stopped and we went to have lunch at a Spanish restaurant.
    In the entrance, Mrs. Weyerhofer came up to me and said, “You sat with my husband this morning and I know that the whole time he talked about me. I can read lips like a deaf-mute. You should know that he’s a pathological liar. Not one word of truth leaves his lips.”
    “It so happens he praised you.”
    Celina Weyerhofer tensed. “What did he say?”
    “That you are unusually interesting as a woman.”
    “Is that what he said? It can’t be. He has been impotent several years, and being next to him has made me frigid. Physically and spiritually he has made me sick.”
    “He praised your imagination.”
    “Nothing is left me except my imagination. He drained my blood like a vampire. He isn’t sexually normal. He is a latent homosexual—not so latent—although when I tell him this he denies it vehemently. He only wants to be with men, and when we still shared a bedroom he spent whole nights questioning me about my relationships with other men. I had to invent affairs to satisfy him. Later, he