Dr. Rischel stood there amazed: he was in the midst of expounding his new ideas, and I had come along and interrupted him. Meanwhile, his companions had gone away, looking at me mockingly as they left. I looked this way and that. I tried to remember the name of my street, but could not. Sometimes I thought the name of the street was Humboldt and sometimes that it was West Street. But as soon as I opened my mouth to ask I knew that its name was neither Humboldt nor West. I put my hand in my pocket, hoping to find a letter on which I would see my address. I found two letters I had not yet torn up, but one had been sent to my old home, which I had left, and another was addressed poste restante. I had received only one letter in this house where I was living, and I had torn it up a short time before. I started reciting aloud names of towns and villages, kings and nobles, sages and poets, trees and flowers, every kind of street name: perhaps I would remember the name of my street — but I could not recall it.
Dr. Rischel’s patience had worn out, and he started scraping the ground with his feet. I am in trouble and he wants to leave me, I said to myself. We are friends, we are human beings, aren’t we? How can you leave a man in such distress? Today my wife came back from a journey and I cannot reach her, for the trivial reason that I have forgotten where I live. “Get into a streetcar and come with me,” said Dr. Rischel. I wondered why he was giving me such unsuitable advice. He took me by the arm and got in with me.
I rode on against my will, wondering why Rischel had seen fit to drag me into this tramcar. Not only was it not bringing me home, but it was taking me further away from my own street. I remembered that I had seen Rischel in a dream wrestling with me. I jumped off the tramcar and left him.
When I jumped off the car I found myself standing by the post office. An idea came into my head: to ask for my address there. But my head replied: Be careful, the clerk may think you are crazy, for a sane man usually knows where he lives. So I asked a man I found there to ask the clerk.
In came a fat, well-dressed man, an insurance agent, rubbing his hands in pleasure and satisfaction, who buttonholed him and interrupted him with his talk. My blood boiled with indignation. “Have you no manners?” I said to him. “When two people are talking, what right have you to interrupt them?” I knew I was not behaving well, but I was in a temper and completely forgot my manners. The agent looked at me in surprise, as if saying: What have I done to you? Why should you insult me? I knew that if I was silent he would have the best of the argument, so I started shouting again, “I’ve got to go home, I’m looking for my house, I’ve forgotten the name of my street, and I don’t know how to get to my wife!” He began to snigger, and so did the others who had gathered at the sound of my voice. Meanwhile, the clerk had closed his window and gone away, without my knowing my address.
Opposite the post office stood a coffeehouse. There I saw Mr. Jacob Tzorev. Mr. Jacob Tzorev had been a banker in another city; I had known him before the war. When I went abroad, and he heard I was in difficulties, he had sent me money. Since paying the debt I had never written to him. I used to say: Any day now I will return to the Land of Israel and make it up with him. Meanwhile, twenty years had passed and we had not met. Now that I saw him I rushed into the coffeehouse and gripped both his arms from behind, clinging to them joyfully and calling him by name. He turned his head toward me but said nothing. I wondered why he was silent and showed me no sign of friendship. Didn’t he see how much I liked him, how much I loved him?
A young man whispered to me, “Father is blind.” I looked and saw that he was blind in both his eyes. It was hard for me not to rejoice in my friend, and hard to rejoice in him, for when I had left him and gone abroad there had been light in his eyes, but now they were blind.
I wanted to ask how he was, and how his wife was. But when I started to speak I spoke about my home. Two wrinkles appeared under his eyes, and it looked as if he were peeping out of them. Suddenly he groped with his hands, turned toward his son, and said, “This gentleman was my friend.” I nodded and said, “Yes, that’s right, I was your friend and I am your friend.” But neither his father’s words nor my own made any impression on the son, and he paid no attention to me. After a brief pause, Mr. Tzorev said to his son, “Go and help him find his home.”
The young man stood still for a while. It was obvious that he found it hard to leave his father alone. Finally the father opened his eyes and gazed at me. His two beautiful eyes shone, and I saw myself standing beside my home.
Metamorphosis
1
She was wearing a brown dress, and her warm, brown eyes were moist. As she came out of the rabbi’s house with the bill of divorcement in her hand, she found fair-haired Svirsh and Dr. Tenzer waiting for her, two bachelors who had been friendly with her since the first year of her marriage. Through the tears on her lashes, she could see how overjoyed they were: not even in their dreams had they pictured the happy day when Toni Hartmann would be parted from her husband. They both sprang eagerly toward her and clasped her hands, Then Svirsh took the parasol, hung it from her belt, and, taking both her hands in his, swung them affectionately back and forth. Next Tenzer took them in his large, clammy hands and gazed at her with the cold, furtive look of a sensualist who is uncertain of his pleasures. Toni withdrew her tired hands from them both and wiped her eyes.
Svirsh took her arm in his and prepared to accompany her. Tenzer stationed himself on her right and thought: That albino has got in first. But never mind; if it’s him today it’ll be me tomorrow. And he derived a kind of intellectual satisfaction from the thought that tomorrow he would be walking with Toni, who had been Hartmann’s yesterday, and who was Svirsh’s today.
As they were about to go, Hartmann emerged from the rabbi’s house. His face was lined and his forehead furrowed. For a moment he stood there looking about him like someone who has just come out of the dark and is wondering which way to go. Catching sight of Toni with the two men, he looked at her with his hard, tired eyes. “Going with them?” he asked. Toni lifted her veil to her forehead and said, “Don’t you want me to?” Her voice sent a tremor through him. He linked his thumbs one in the other and said, “Don’t go with them.” Toni crumpled her handkerchief in her hand, raised her sad eyes, and stood looking at him helplessly. Her entire appearance seemed to say, “Do I look as if I could go alone?”
He went up to Toni. Svirsh drew back and let her arm fall. Tenzer, who was taller than Hartmann, drew himself up bravely to his full height. But he soon lowered his head and relaxed his posture. He said to himself, “After all, it wasn’t from me that he took her.” Waving his hat, he walked off as his friend Svirsh had done — humming a little impromptu tune as he went.
As they went, they looked over their shoulders at the man who had been Toni’s husband. Svirsh mumbled petulantly: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” Tenzer broke off his tune and wiped his heavy spectacles. “By the Pope’s slipper,” he said, “it’s enough to make Mohammed wag his beard.” Svirsh shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips, but at Hartmann’s anger rather than at Tenzer’s levity.
Left alone with Toni, Hartmann made as if to take her arm, but desisted, so that she should not feel his agitation. For a moment or two they stood silently together. The whole business of the divorce had suddenly become very real, as if they were still standing in front of the rabbi, and the old man’s bleating voice were still ringing in their ears. Toni gripped her handkerchief tightly and checked her tears with an effort. Hartmann removed his hat for relief. Why are we standing here? he asked himself. Once again he heard bleating in his ears — not the rabbi’s voice, but that of the scribe who had read out the bill of divorce, and he thought there was a mistake in it. Why was the wretched man in such a hurry? Because Toni and I…The whole thing was so strange. But as Hartmann could not define exactly what it was that was so strange, he became confused. He felt he must do something. He crumpled his hat and waved it about. Then he smoothed out the creases, crumpled it again, put his hat back on his head, and passed his hands over his face, from temples to chin. He could feel the stubble on his face: in his preoccupation with the divorce, he had forgotten to shave. What a disgusting sight I must look to Toni, he thought. Ausgerechnet heute — today of all days, he muttered between his teeth. He consoled himself with the thought that, although the greater part of the day was over, his beard was not yet noticeable. At the same time he was dissatisfied with himself for seeking lame excuses for his negligence. “Let’s go,” he said to Toni. “Let’s go,” he repeated, not certain whether he had uttered the words the first time or, if so, whether she had heard them.