The Collected Stories

replied, “If people could, they’d steal each other’s eyes.”
    In the summer, I took a long holiday. I went to Switzerland, France, Israel. I left in the middle of August, when my hay fever begins, and came back at the beginning of December. I had paid my rent in advance, locking up my apartment before I left. There was nothing in it for thieves except books and manuscripts.
    The day I returned, snow was falling in New York. When I got out of the taxi in front of my building, I was stunned by what I saw. Margit Levy was creeping along on a cane and a crutch, with Morris Terkeltoyb holding on to her arm. With his free hand he was pushing a cartful of food from the supermarket on Columbus Avenue. Margit’s face was yellow from the cold and more wrinkled than ever. She wore a mangy fur coat and a black hat that reminded me of my childhood in Warsaw. She seemed ill, emaciated. Her eyes, too close together, had a piercing expression like those of a bird of prey. Morris Terkeltoyb had also aged. His beaked nose was red, and white whiskers sprouted on his face.
    No matter how unusual an event may seem, my astonishment never lasts more than an instant. I approached them and asked, “How are you, my friends?”
    Margit shook her head. “The facts speak for themselves.”
    Later a neighbor told me that the old maid in whose apartment Margit boarded had given up her place to go to Miami. Margit would have been thrown out into the street. Instead, she had moved in with Morris Terkeltoyb. How this came about my neighbor did not know. I noticed that the name of Margit Levy had been added on Morris Terkeltoyb’s letter box.
    A few days after my return, Margit visited me. She wept, mixed German with English, and told me at great length how the selfish spinster had decided without warning to move away, how all the neighbors had treated her misfortune with indifference. The only one who showed humanity was Morris Terkeltoyb. Margit acted as if he had taken her in as just a boarder. But the next day Morris knocked at my door, and from his unfinished sentences and gesticulations it became clear that their relationship was more than that of tenant and boarder. He said, “One gets older, not younger. When you are ill, you need someone to bring you a glass of tea.” He nodded, winked, smiled guiltily and sheepishly, inviting me to come see them in the evening.
    I went down after supper. Margit received me as a hostess. The apartment looked clean, there were curtains at the windows, the table had a tablecloth and dishes that could only have belonged to Margit. I brought flowers; she kissed me and wiped away her tears. Margit and Morris continued to address each other as “you” instead of the familiar “thou,” but I thought that I heard Margit forget herself once and use “thou.” They talked to one another in a mishmash of German-English-Yiddish. When Morris Terkeltoyb ate herring with his fingers and started to wipe his hands on his sleeves, Margit said to him, “Use your napkin. This is New York, not Klimontow.”
    And Morris Terkeltoyb replied in a typical Polish Chassidic intonation, “
Nu
, so be it.”
    That winter Morris Terkeltoyb had a long spell of sickness. It started with the flu. Then the doctor discovered that he had diabetes and prescribed insulin. He stopped going down to the newspaper and sent his manuscripts by mail. Margit told me that Morris couldn’t read his own articles in the paper, they contained so many errors. He got palpitations of the heart every time he read one. She asked me to bring proofs uptown for him. I was willing to help, but I rarely had time to go to the paper anymore. I lectured a lot, leaving the city for weeks. Once when I entered the composing room, I saw Margit Levy. She stood there waiting for proofs. She now took the subway downtown twice each week—first to pick up the proofs and the second time to return them. She said to me, “Aggravation does more damage to the health than any medicine can cure.” She also said something that could only have come from Morris Terkeltoyb: “A writer doesn’t die of medical errors, only of printing errors.” Jake, the printer’s devil, tossed the proofs to her hurriedly. Margit put on her glasses and began to look them over. Jake often ran off proofs so sloppily that letters were missing on the margins or lines were missing because the paper was too short to carry the whole column. Even though she didn’t know Yiddish, she seemed