Rivkele’s face was drenched with tears. She trembled, convulsed by hiccuplike sobs. Soon the truth came out. He had made her pregnant; she was in her fifth month. Rivkele moaned. “Nothing is left me but to hang myself!”
“Do your parents know that—”
“No, they don’t know. They’d die of shame.”
This was another Rivkele. She bent down to take a draw on my cigarette. She had to go to the bathroom, and I took her through the living room. The doctor’s wife—a small, thin woman with a pointed face, many warts, and popping eyes that were yellow as if from jaundice—glared at her. Rivkele lingered in the bathroom for such a long time that I feared she had taken poison.
“Who is that creature?” the doctor’s wife demanded. “I don’t like the looks of her. This is a respectable house.”
“Madam, you have no reason to be suspicious.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. Be so good as to find lodgings somewhere else.”
After a while Rivkele came back to my room. She had washed her face and powdered it. She had put on lipstick.
“You are responsible for my misfortune,” she said.
“I am?”
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have let myself go with him. Your words stuck in my mind. You spoke in such a way that I wanted to leave home right then and there. When he came, I was—as they say—already ripe.”
I had the urge to scold her and tell her to be on her way, but she started to cry again. Then she began to sing a tune as old as the female sex: “Where do I go now and what do I do? He has slaughtered me without a knife …”
“Did he leave you some money at least?” I asked.
“There is a little left.”
“Maybe something can still be done.”
“Too late.”
We sat without speaking, and the lessons of the moral primers came back to me. No word goes astray. Evil words lead to iniquitous deeds. Utterings of slander, mockery, and profanity turn into demons, hobgoblins, imps. They stand as accusers before God, and when the transgressor dies they run after his hearse and accompany him to the grave.
As if Rivkele guessed my thoughts, she said, “You made me see America like a picture. I dreamed of it at night. You made me hate my home—Yantche, too. You promised to write me, but I didn’t get a single letter from you. When Morris arrived from America, I clutched at him as if I were drowning.”
“Rivkele, I have to report for conscription. I’m liable to be sent to the barracks tomorrow.”
“Let’s go away somewhere together.”
“Where? America has closed its gates. All the roads are sealed.”
III
Nine years went by. It was my third year in New York. From time to time, I published a sketch in a Yiddish newspaper. I lived in a furnished room not far from Union Square. My room was dark. I had to climb four stories to get to it, and it stank of disinfectant. The linoleum on the floor was torn, and cockroaches crawled from beneath it. When I turned on the naked bulb that hung from the ceiling, I saw a crooked bridge table, an overstuffed chair with torn upholstery, and a sink with a faucet that dripped rusty water. The window faced a wall. When I felt like writing—which was seldom—I went to the Public Library at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. Here in my room, I only lay on the sagging bed and fantasized about fame, riches, and women who threw themselves at me. I had had an affair, but it ended, and I had been alone for months. I kept my ears cocked to hear if I was being summoned to the pay phone below. The walls of the house were so thin that I could hear every rustle—not only on my floor but on the lower floors as well. A group of boys and girls who called themselves a “stock company” had moved in. They were getting ready to put on a play somewhere. In the meantime, they ran up and down the stairs, shrieking and laughing. The woman who changed my bedding told me that they practiced free love and smoked marijuana. Across from me lived a girl who had come to New York from the Middle West to become an actress, and for whole days and half the nights she sang wailing melodies that someone told me were called the “blues.” One evening, I heard her sing over and over again in a mournful chant:
He won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Never, never, never, never.
Won’t come back!
I heard footsteps and my name being called. I sat up so hastily that I nearly broke the bed. The door opened and by the dim light of the hall I saw the figure of a woman. I didn’t put on my light because I was ashamed of the condition of my room. The paint on the walls was peeling. Old newspapers lay scattered around, together with books I had picked up along Fourth Avenue for a nickel each, and dirty laundry.
“May I ask who you are looking for?” I said.
“It’s you. I recognize your voice. I’m Rivkele—Lazar the shoemaker’s daughter from Old-Stikov.”
“Rivkele!”
“Why don’t you put on the light?”
“The light is broken,” I said, baffled by my own lie. The blues singer across the way became quiet. This was the first time that I had ever had a visitor here. For some reason her door stood always ajar, as if deep inside her she still hoped that he who wouldn’t come back would one day come back after all.
Rivkele mumbled, “Do you at least have a match? I don’t want to fall.”
It struck me that she spoke Yiddish in an accent that wasn’t exactly American but no longer sounded the way they had spoken back home. I got off the bed carefully, led her over to the easy chair, and helped her sit down. At the same time I snatched one of my socks from the back of the chair and flung it aside. It fell into the sink. I said, “So you’re in America!”
“Didn’t you know? Didn’t they write you that—”
“I asked about you time and again in my letters home, but they never answered.”
She was silent for a time. “I didn’t know that you were here. I only found out about it a week ago. No, it’s two weeks. What a time I had finding you! You write under another name. Why, of all things?”
“Didn’t they tell you from home that I’m here?” I asked in return.
Rivkele didn’t reply, as if she were thinking the question over. Then she said, “I see you know nothing. I’m no longer Jewish. Because of this, my parents have disowned me as a daughter. Father sat shivah for me.”
“Converted?”
“Yes, converted.” Rivkele made a sound that was something like laughter.
I pulled the string and lit the naked bulb that was half covered with paint. I didn’t know myself why I did this. My curiosity to see Rivkele in the role of a Gentile must have outweighed any shame I felt about my poverty. Or maybe in that fraction of a second I decided her disgrace was worse than mine. Rivkele blinked her eyes, and I saw a face that wasn’t hers and that I would never have recognized on the street. It seemed to me broad, pasty, and middle-aged. But this unfamiliarity lasted only an instant. Soon I realized that she hadn’t really changed since the last time I had seen her in Warsaw. Why, then, had she seemed so different at first glance? I wondered.
Apparently Rivkele went through the same sensations, because after a while she said, “Yes, it’s you.”
We sat there, observing each other. She wore a green coat and a hat to match. Her eyelids were painted blue and her cheeks were heavily rouged. She had gained weight. She said, “I have a neighbor who reads the Yiddish paper. I had told her a lot about you, but since you sign your stories by another name, how could she know? One day she came in and showed me an account of Old-Stikov. I knew at once that it was you. I called the editorial office, but they didn’t know your address. How could that be?”
“Oh, I’m here on a tourist visa and it’s expired.”
“Aren’t you allowed to live in America?”
“I must first go to Canada or to Cuba. Only from the American consul in a foreign country can I get a permanent visa to return.”
“Then why don’t you go?”
“I can’t go on a Polish passport. It’s all tied up with lawyers and expenses.”
“God in heaven!”
“What happened to you?” I asked. “Did you have a child?”
Rivkele placed a finger with a red, pointed nail to her lips. “Hush! I had nothing. You know nothing!”
“Where is it?”
“In Warsaw. In a foundling home.”
“A boy?”
“A girl.”
“Who brought you to America?”
“Not Morris—somebody else. It didn’t work out. We split up and I went to Chicago, and there I met Mario …” Rivkele began to speak in a mixture of Yiddish and English. She had married Mario in Chicago and adopted the Catholic faith. Mario’s father owned a bar that was patronized by the Mafia. Once, in a quarrel, Mario stabbed a man and he was serving his second year in prison. Rivkele—her name was now Anna Marie—was working as a waitress in an Italian restaurant in New York. Mario had at least a year and a half left to serve. She had a small apartment on Ninth Avenue. Her husband’s friends came by, wanting to sleep with her. One had threatened her with a gun. The owner of the restaurant was a man past his sixties. He was good to her, took her to the theater, the movies, and to nightclubs, but he had an evil wife and three daughters, each one more malicious than the next. They were Rivkele’s mortal enemies.
“Are you living with him?”
“He is like a father to me.” Rivkele changed her tone. “But I never forgot you! Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of you. Why this is I don’t understand. When I heard that you were in America and read that article about Old-Stikov, I became terribly excited. I called the paper maybe twenty times. Someone told me that you sneak into the pressroom at night and leave your articles there. So I went there late one night after work, hoping to find you. The elevator man told me that you had a box on the ninth floor where I could leave a letter for you. I went up and all the lights were on, but no one was there. Near the wall a machine was writing by itself. It frightened me. It reminded me of what they recite on Rosh Hashanah—”
“The Heavenly Book that reads itself and everyone inscribes his own sins in it.”
“Yes, right. I couldn’t locate your box. Why are you hiding from the newspapermen? They wouldn’t denounce you.”
“Oh, the editor adds all kinds of drivel to my pieces. He spoils my style. For the few dollars he pays me, he makes me look like a hack.”
“That article about Old-Stikov was good. I read it and cried all night.”
“Do you miss home?”
“Everything together. I’ve fallen into a trap. Why do you live in such a dump?”
“I can’t even afford this.”
“I have some money. Since Mario is in jail, it would be easy for me to get a divorce. We could go to Canada, to Cuba—wherever you ought to go. I’m a citizen. We’ll marry and settle down. I’ll bring my daughter over. I didn’t want any children with him, but with you …”
“Idle words.”
“Why do you say that? We are both in trouble. I got myself into a mess and was feeling hopeless. But when I read what you wrote everything came back to me. I want to be a Jewish daughter again.”
“Not through me.”
“You are responsible for what has happened to me!”
We grew silent, and the girl across the way who had stopped singing and seemed to be listening to her own perplexity, like the cricket in Old-Stikov, resumed her mournful song:
He won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Won’t come back,
Never, never, never, never.
Won’t come back …
Translated by Joseph Singer
Passions
“WHEN a man persists he can do things which one might think can never be done,” Zalman the glazier said. “In our village, Radoszyce, there was a simple man, a village peddler, Leib Belkes. He used to go from village to village, selling the peasant women kerchiefs, glass beads, perfume, all kinds of gilded jewelry. And he would buy from them a measure of buckwheat, a wreath of garlic, a pot of honey, a sack of flax. He never went farther than the hamlet of Byszcz, five miles from Radoszyce. He got the merchandise from a Lublin salesman, and the same man bought his wares from him. This Leib Belkes was a common man but pious. On the Sabbath he read his wife’s Yiddish Bible. He loved most to read about the land of Israel. Sometimes he would stop the cheder boys and ask, ‘Which is deeper—the Jordan or the Red Sea?’ ‘Do apples grow in the Holy Land?’ ‘What language is spoken by the natives there?’ The boys used to laugh at him. He looked like someone from the Holy Land himself—black eyes, a pitch-black beard, and his face was also swarthy.
“Once a year a messenger used to come to Radoszyce, a Sephardic Jew. He was sent to collect the alms that were given in the name of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker, that he should intercede for them in the next world. The messenger wore a robe with black and red stripes and sandals that looked as though they were of ancient times. His hat was also outlandish. He smoked a water pipe. He spoke Hebrew and also Aramaic. His Yiddish he had learned in later years. Leib Belkes was so fascinated by him that he went with him from house to house to open the alms boxes. He also took him to his home, where he ate and slept. While the messenger stayed in Radoszyce, Leib Belkes did no work. He kept on asking questions like ‘What does the Cave of Machpelah look like?’ ‘Does one know where Abraham is buried and where Sarah?’ ‘Is it true that Mother Rachel rises from her grave at midnight and weeps for her exiled children?’ I was still a boy then, but I too followed the messenger wherever he went. When could one see such a man in our region?
“Once, after the messenger left, Leib Belkes entered a store and asked for fifty packs of matches. The merchant asked him, ‘What do you need so many matches for? You want to burn the village?’ And Leib said, ‘I want to build the Holy Temple.’ The storekeeper thought that he had lost his mind. Just the same, he sold him all the matches he had.
“Later, Leib went into a paint store and asked for silver and gold paint. The storekeeper asked him, ‘What do you need these paints for? Do you intend to make counterfeit money?’ And Leib answered, ‘I am going to build the Holy Temple.’ The messenger had sold Leib a map, a large sheet of paper showing the Temple with the altar and all the other objects of ritual. At night when Leib had time he sat down and began to build the Temple according to this plan. There were no children in the house. Leib Belkes and his wife had two daughters but they had gone into domestic service in Lublin. His wife asked him, ‘Why do you play with matches? Are you a cheder boy again?’ And he replied, ‘I am building the Temple of Jerusalem.’
“He managed to build everything according to this plan: the Holy of Holies, the Inner Court, the Outer Court, the Table, the Menorah, the Ark. When the people of Radoszyce learned what he was doing, they came to look and admire. The teachers brought their pupils. The whole edifice stood on a table, and it couldn’t be moved, because it would have collapsed. When the rabbi had word of it, he too came to Leib Belkes, and he brought some yeshiva boys with him. They sat around the table and they were dumfounded. Leib Belkes had constructed out of matches the Holy Temple exactly as it was described in the Talmud!
“Well, but people are envious and begrudge others their accomplishments. His wife began to complain that she needed the table for her dishes. There were firemen in Radoszyce, and they were afraid that so many matches would cause a fire and the whole town might go up in flames. There were so many threats and complaints that one day when Leib returned from his travels his temple was gone. His wife swore that the firemen came and demolished it. The firemen accused the wife.
“After his temple had been destroyed, Leib Belkes became melancholic. He still tried to do business, but he earned less and less. He often sat at home and read Yiddish storybooks that dealt with the land of Israel. At the study house he bothered the scholars and yeshiva boys by asking them questions about the coming of the Messiah. ‘Will one huge cloud tak
e all the Jews to the Holy Land, or will a cloud descend for each town separately?’ ‘Will the Resurrection of the Dead take place immediately, or will there be a waiting period of forty years?’ ‘Will there still be a need to plow the fields and to gather the fruit from the orchards, or will manna fall from the sky?’ People had something to scoff at.
“Once, late in the evening, when his wife told him to close the shutters, he went outside and did not return. There was an uproar in Radoszyce. Some people believed that the demons had spirited him away. Others thought that his wife nagged him so much that he ran away to his relatives on the other side of the Vistula. But what man would run away at night without his overcoat and without a bundle? If this had happened to a rich man, they would have sent out searchers to find him. But when a poor man disappears, there is one pauper less in town. His wife—Sprintza was her name—was deserted. She earned a little from kneading dough in wealthy houses on Thursday. She also got some support from her daughters when they married.
“Five years passed. Once on a Friday, when Sprintza was standing over the oven and cooking her Sabbath meal, the door opened, and in came a man with a gray beard, dusty and barefooted. Sprintza thought it was a beggar. Suddenly he said, ‘I was in the Holy Land. Give me some prune dessert.’
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Page 65