I ate my breakfast quickly and left. Outside, I looked in the letter box, but there was nothing for me. Only two blocks away I could see the house Esther had rented the winter before last. She let rooms to people who wanted to spend their vacations near New York. I couldn’t visit her during the daytime; I used to steal over late at night. A lot of Yiddish writers and journalists lived there that summer, and they were not to know about my love affair with Esther. Since I didn’t intend to marry her, why jeopardize her reputation? Esther was almost ten years older than I. She had divorced her husband—a Yiddish poet, a modernist, a Communist, a charlatan. He took off for California and never sent a penny for their two little daughters. He was living with an artist who painted abstract pictures. Esther needed a husband to support her and the girls, not a Yiddish writer who specialized in werewolves and sprites.
I had been in America for eighteen months, but Coney Island still surprised me. The sun poured down like fire. From the beach came a roar even louder than the ocean. On the boardwalk, an Italian watermelon vender pounded on a sheet of tin with his knife and called for customers in a wild voice. Everyone bellowed in his own way: sellers of popcorn and hot dogs, ice cream and peanuts, cotton candy and corn on the cob. I passed a sideshow displaying a creature that was half woman, half fish; a wax museum with figures of Marie Antoinette, Buffalo Bill, and John Wilkes Booth; a store where a turbanned astrologer sat in the dark surrounded by maps and globes of the heavenly constellations, casting horoscopes. Pygmies danced in front of a little circus, their black faces painted white, all of them bound loosely with a long rope. A mechanical ape puffed its belly like a bellows and laughed with raucous laughter. Negro boys aimed guns at metal ducklings. A half-naked man with a black beard and hair to his shoulders hawked potions that strengthened the muscles, beautified the skin, and brought back lost potency. He tore heavy chains with his hands and bent coins between his fingers. A little farther along, a medium advertised that she was calling back spirits from the dead, prophesying the future, and giving advice on love and marriage. I had taken with me a copy of Payot’s The Education of the Will in Polish. This book, which taught how to overcome laziness and do systematic spiritual work, had become my second Bible. But I did the opposite of what the book preached. I wasted my days with dreams, worries, empty fantasies, and locked myself in affairs that had no future.
At the end of the boardwalk, I sat down on a bench. Every day, the same group of old men was gathered there discussing Communism. A little man with a round red face and white hair like foam shook his head violently and yelled, “Who’s going to save the workers—Hitler? Mussolini? That social Fascist Léon Blum? That opportunist Norman Thomas? Long live Comrade Stalin! Blessed be his hands!”
A man whose nose was etched with broken veins yelled back, “What about the Moscow trials? The millions of workers and peasants Stalin exiled to Siberia? What about the Soviet generals your Comrade Stalin executed?” His body was short and broad, as if his midsection had been sawed out. He spat into his handkerchief and shrieked, “Is Bukharin truly a German spy? Does Trotsky take money from Rockefeller? Was Kamenev an enemy of the proletariat? And how about yourself and the proletariat—you slum landlord!”
I often imagined that these men didn’t stop to eat or sleep but waged their debate without interruption. They jumped against one another like he-goats ready to lunge. I had taken out a notebook and a fountain pen to write down a topic (perhaps about these debaters), but instead I began to draw a little man with long ears, a nose like a ram’s horn, goose feet, and two horns on his head. After a while, I covered his body with scales and attached wings. I looked down at The Education of the Will. Discipline? Concentration? What help would that be if I was doomed to perish in Hitler’s camps? And even if I survived, how would another novel or story help humanity? The metaphysicians had given up too soon, I decided. Reality is neither solipsism nor materialism. One should begin from the beginning: What is time? What is space? Here was the key to the whole riddle. Who knows, maybe I was destined to solve it.
I closed my eyes and determined once and forever to break through the fence between idea and being, the categories of pure reason and the thing in itself. Through my eyelids the sun shone red. The pounding of the waves and the din of the people merged. I felt, almost palpably, that I was one step from truth. “Time is nothing, space is nothing,” I murmured. But that nothingness is the background of the world picture. Then what is the world picture? Is it matter? Spirit? Is it magnetism or gravitation? And what is life? What is suffering? What is consciousness? And if there is a God, what is He? Substance with infinite attributes? The Monad of Monads? Blind will? The Unconscious? Can He be sex, as the cabalists hint? Is God an orgasm that never ceases? Is the universal nothingness the principle of femininity? I wouldn’t come to any decision now, I decided. Maybe at night, in bed …
I opened my eyes and walked toward Brighton. The girders of the el threw a net of sun and shade on the pavements. A train from Manhattan zoomed by with a deafening clatter. No matter how time and space are defined, I thought, it is impossible to be simultaneously in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I passed by windows displaying mattresses, samples of roofing shingles, kosher chickens. I stopped at a Chinese restaurant. Should I go eat lunch? No, in the cafeteria it might be a nickel cheaper. I was down to almost my last cent. If my sketch, “After the Divorce,” didn’t appear in the Sunday edition, nothing remained but suicide.
Walking back, I marveled at myself. How could I have allowed my finances to dwindle this way? It was true that a tourist wasn’t permitted to work, but how would the Immigration and Naturalization Service know if I washed dishes in a restaurant, or if I got a job as a messenger, or as a Hebrew teacher? It was crazy to wait until you were completely broke. True, I had convinced myself that I could be sustained by the leftovers on cafeteria tables. But sooner or later the manager or cashier would notice a human scavenger. The Americans would rather throw food into the garbage can than let it be eaten without payment. Thinking of food made me hungry. I remembered what I had read about fasting. With water to drink, a man can live for sixty days or so. I had read somewhere else that on an expedition to the South or North Pole Amundsen had eaten one of his boots. My present hunger, I told myself, was nothing but hysteria. Two eggs and a roll contain enough starch, fat, and protein for days to come. Just the same, I felt a gnawing in my stomach. My knees were weak. I was going to meet Esther that night, and starvation leads to impotence. I barely reached the cafeteria. I entered, took a check, and approached the buffet counter. I knew that those who are condemned to death order last meals; people don’t even want to be executed on an empty stomach. This, I thought, was proof that life and death have no connection. Since death has no substance, it cannot end life. It is only a frame for living processes that are eternal.
I had not yet become a vegetarian, but I was brooding about vegetarianism. Nevertheless, I picked out flanken in horseradish with boiled potatoes and lima beans, a cup of noodle soup, a large roll, a cup of coffee, and a piece of cake—all for sixty cents. Holding my tray, I passed tables littered with the remains of meals, but I stopped at a clean one. On a chair lay the afternoon tabloid. Although I wanted to read it, I remembered Payot’s words: intellectuals should eat slowly, chew each bite thoroughly, and not read. I glanced at the headlines just the same. Hitler had again demanded the Polish Corridor. Smigly-Rydz had announced in the Sejm that Poland would fight for every inch of territory. The German ambassador in Tokyo had had an audience with the Mikado. A retired general in England had criticized the Maginot Line and predicted that it would be broken at the first attack. The powers that rule the universe were preparing the catastrophe.
After I finished eating, I counted my money, and I remembered that I had to call the newspaper and ask about my sketch. I knew that a call from Coney Island to Manhattan cost ten cents, and the Sunday editor, Leon Diamond, rarely came to the office. Still, I couldn’t leave everything to fate. One dime wouldn’t
change the situation. I got up resolutely, found an empty telephone booth, and made the call. I prayed to the same powers preparing the world catastrophe that the operator wouldn’t give me a wrong number. I pronounced my number as clearly as I could in my accent, and she told me to put in my dime. The girl at the switchboard answered and I asked for Leon Diamond. I was almost sure she would tell me he wasn’t in the office, but I heard his voice on the line. I began to stutter and excuse myself. When I told him who I was, he said brusquely, “Your story will be in on Sunday.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Send me a new story. Goodbye.”
“A miracle! A miracle of Heaven!” I shouted to myself. The moment I hung up, another miracle occurred; money began to pour from the telephone—dimes, nickels, quarters. For a second I hesitated; to take it would be theft. But the Telephone Company would never get it back anyway, and someone who needed it less than I might find it. How many times had I put dimes into the telephone without getting a connection! I looked around and saw a fat woman in a bathing suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat waiting for the booth. I grabbed all the coins, shoved them into my pocket, and left, feeling like a new person. In my thoughts I apologized to the powers that know everything. I walked out of the cafeteria and strode toward Sea Gate. I calculated: if I got fifty dollars for the sketch, I would give Mrs. Berger thirty to cover my rent and breakfasts and I would still have twenty dollars to spend. Besides, I would re-establish credit with her and could stay on. In that case, I should call Lieberman, the lawyer. Who knows, maybe he had news from the consul in Toronto. A tourist could not get a permanent visa while in the United States. I would have to go to Cuba or Canada. The trip to Cuba was too expensive to consider, but would Canada allow me to enter? Lieberman had warned me that I would have to be smuggled from Detroit to Windsor, and whoever took me across the bridge would ask a fee of a hundred dollars.
Suddenly I realized that I had committed not one theft but two. In my elation, I had forgotten to pay for my lunch. I still held the check in my hand. This was certainly the work of Satan. Heaven was tempting me. I decided to go back and pay the sixty cents. I walked briskly, almost running. In the cafeteria, a man in a white uniform was standing next to the cashier. They spoke English. I wanted to wait until they were finished, but they kept on talking. The cashier threw a sidelong glance at me and asked, “What do you want?”
I answered in Yiddish, “I forgot to pay for my meal.”
He grimaced and muttered, “Never mind, get out of here.”
“But—”
“Get out of here, you,” he growled, and then he winked.
With that, I understood what was going on. The man in the white uniform must have been the owner, or the manager, and the cashier didn’t want him to see that he had let a customer get by without paying. The powers were conspiring to provide me with one stroke of luck after another. I went out, and through the glass door I saw the cashier and the man in the white uniform laughing. They were laughing at me, the greenhorn, with my Yiddish. But I knew that Heaven was trying me out, weighing my merits and iniquities on a scale: did I deserve to stay in America or must I perish in Poland. I was ashamed at having so much faith after calling myself an agnostic or unbeliever, and I said to my invisible critics, “After all, even according to Spinoza everything is determined. In the universe there are no large and small events. To eternity, a grain of sand is as important as a galaxy.”
I didn’t know what to do with the check. Should I keep it till tomorrow or throw it away? I decided I would give the money to the cashier without it. I tore it to bits and threw them into the trash can.
At home, I collapsed on my bed and fell into a heavy sleep, where I found the secret of time, space, and causality. It seemed unbelievably simple, but the moment I opened my eyes it was all forgotten. What remained was the taste of something otherwordly and marvelous. In my dream I gave my philosophic discovery a name that might have been Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, or a combination of all three. I remembered myself saying, “Being is nothing but …” and there came the word that answered all questions. Outside, it was dusk. The bathers and swimmers had all gone. The sun sank into the ocean, leaving a fiery streak. A breeze brought the smell of underwater decay. A cloud in the form of a huge fish appeared out of nowhere, and the moon crept behind its scales. The weather was changing; the lighthouse fog bell rang sharply. A tugboat pulled three dark barges. It seemed unmovable, as if the Atlantic had turned into the Congealed Sea I used to read about in storybooks.
I no longer needed to scrimp, and I went to the café in Sea Gate and ordered cheesecake and coffee. A Yiddish journalist, a contributor to the paper that printed my sketches, came over and sat at my table. He had white hair and a ruddy face.
“Where have you been hiding these days? Nobody sees you. I was told you live here in Sea Gate.”
“Yes, I live here.”
“I’ve rented a room at Esther’s. You know who she is—the crazy poet’s ex-wife. Why don’t you come over? The whole Yiddish press is there. They mentioned you a few times.”
“Really? Who?”
“Oh, the writers. Even Esther praises you. I think myself that you have talent, but you choose themes no one cares about and nobody believes in. There are no demons. There is no God.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Who created the world?”
“Oh, well. The old question. It’s all nature. Evolution. Who created God? Are you really religious?”
“Sometimes I am.”
“Just to be spiteful. If there is a God, why does He allow Hitler to drag innocent people to Dachau? And how about your visa? Have you done anything about it? If you haven’t, you’ll be deported and your God will worry very little about it.”
I told him my complications, and he said, “There’s only one way out for you—marry a woman who’s an American citizen. That’ll make you legal. Later, you can get the papers and become a citizen yourself.”
“I would never do that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s an insult to both the woman and to me.”
“And to fall into Hitler’s hands is better? It’s nothing but silly pride. You write like a ripe man, but you behave like a boy. How old are you?”
I told him.
“At your age, I was exiled to Siberia for revolutionary activities.”
The waiter came over, and I was about to pay when the writer grabbed my check. I’m too lucky today, I thought.
I looked toward the door and saw Esther. She often dropped in here in the evening, which was the reason I avoided the café. Esther and I had conspired to keep our affair a secret. Besides, I had become pathologically bashful in America. My boyish blushing had returned. In Poland, I never thought of myself as short, but among the American gaints I became small. My Warsaw suit looked outlandish, with its broad lapels and padded shoulders. In addition, it was too heavy for the New York heat. Esther kept reproaching me for wearing a stiff collar, a vest, and a hat in the hot weather. She saw me now and seemed embarrassed, like a provincial girl from Poland. We had never been together in public. We spent our time in the dark, like two bats. She made a move to leave, but my companion at the table called out to her. She approached unsteadily. She was wearing a white dress and a straw hat with a green ribbon. She was brown from the sun, and her black eyes had a girlish sparkle. She didn’t look like a woman approaching forty, but slim and youthful. She came over and greeted me as if I were a stranger. In the European fashion, she shook my hand. She smiled self-consciously and said “you” to me instead of “thou.”
“How are you? I haven’t seen you for a long time,” she said.
“He’s hiding.” The writer denounced me. “He’s not doing anything about his visa and they’ll send him back to Poland. The war is going to break out soon. I advised him to marry an American woman because he’d get a visa that way, but he won’t listen.”
&n
bsp; “Why not?” Esther asked. Her cheeks were glowing. She smiled a loving, wistful smile. She sat down on the edge of a chair.
I would have liked to make a clever, sharp reply. Instead, I said sheepishly, “I wouldn’t marry to get a visa.”
The writer smiled and winked. “I’m not a matchmaker, but you two would make a fitting pair.”
Esther looked at me questioningly, pleading and reproachful. I knew I had to answer right then, either seriously or with a joke, but not a word came out. I felt hot. My shirt was wet and I was stuck to my seat. I had the painful feeling that my chair was tipping over. The floor heaved up and the lights on the ceiling intertwined, elongated and foggy. The café began to circle like a carrousel.
Esther got up abruptly. “I have to meet someone,” she said, and turned away. I watched her hurry toward the door. The writer smiled knowingly, nodded, and went over to another table to chat with a colleague. I remained sitting, baffled by the sudden shift in my luck. In my consternation I took the coins from my pocket and began to count and recount them, identifying more by touch than by sight, doing intricate calculations. Every time, the figures came out different. As my game with the powers on high stood now, I seemed to have won a dollar and some cents and to have lost refuge in America and a woman I really loved.
Translated by the author and Laurie Colwin
The Cabalist of East Broadway
As happens so often in New York, the neighborhood changed. The synagogues became churches, the yeshivas restaurants or garages. Here and there one could still see a Jewish old people’s home, a shop selling Hebrew books, a meeting place for landsleit from some village in Rumania or Hungary. I had to come downtown a few times a week, because the Yiddish newspaper to which I contributed was still there. In the cafeteria on the corner, in former times one could meet Yiddish writers, journalists, teachers, fund raisers for Israel, and the like. Blintzes, borscht, kreplech, chopped liver, rice pudding, and egg cookies were the standard dishes. Now the place catered mainly to Negroes and Puerto Ricans. The voices were different, the smells were different. Still, I used to go there occasionally to eat a quick lunch or to drink a cup of coffee. Each time I entered the cafeteria, I would immediately see a man I’ll call Joel Yabloner, an old Yiddish writer who specialized in the Cabala. He had published books about Holy Isaac Luria, Rabbi Moshe of Cordova, the Baal Shem, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Yabloner had translated part of the Zohar into Yiddish. He also wrote in Hebrew. According to my calculations, he must have been in his early seventies.