— But what do you mean, what has that to do with it? Does not Palestine have everything to do with it?
— My apologies. All right, then: from the beginning. The beginning — the journey there — was wonderful. Everything about it. Even the warm weather and clear skies. Already in Katowice you could see delegates gathering in the train from all over Galicia and Poland — a totally Zionist train, except for the invisible driver. Toward evening a second train arrived from Moscow and flooded our car with a large group of youngsters who made a great impression on me. They’re another breed of Jew, Father: full of life — earnest — simply dressed — unashamedly Jewish yet freethinkers, every one of them. They are different from us — self-assertive — the children of pogroms and Pobedonostsev — the bearers of bright hopes. All had brought parcels of food with them to save the expense of eating in the dining car. I could see at once that Linka was drawn to them. Oh, she tried not to show it — but not enough to keep them from noticing her and striking up a conversation. At first of course in Yiddish — and yet it did not take long to find someone who spoke a little French — and someone else who could jabber in English — at long last Madame Zwitowska’s language lessons were bearing fruit! And from then on, Father, everywhere we went — in Switzerland, in Palestine — every one of those languages went with us… although it was only in Palestine — and in English — that the real, the worst damage was done…
— I’ll get to that. Let me tell it in order. From now on it will all be in order, the painful parts too. There will be no avoiding them — they will grow harsher and harsher as this story outgrows its cradle — this story, Father, which —
— Precisely. We are still in that railway car, which by now was all Jewish, the Christians having fled long ago — still in that night that was so full of promise that it made Zionists out of us all, even out of me, who, as you know, has my grave doubts about the matter. Yes, even I was all ears. There was a young couple there from the Ukraine, a big bearded fellow in an embroidered peasant blouse and a girl he had with him. They could not get close to Linka, because she was already surrounded, and so they threw themselves on me — it has always struck me how couples are attracted to me most extravagantly — I am irresistible to them — and began explaining their “political position,” because they had a “program” of their own. Each kept finishing the other’s sentences. And they were not, I soon realized, even delegates, but only “observers,” although terribly revolutionary and conspiratorial ones, with a detailed plan of action. They considered your Dr. Herzl to be as big a tyrant as the Czar and not at all a mere spinner of fantasies…
— A spinner of fantasies.
— There is nothing wrong with fantasy.
— I never said that.
— Of course, Father.
— Nothing is impossible… In any event, dawn broke over the marvelous spires of Prague to find Linka laughing merrily — she laughed her way through the forests of Germany and past the reddish houses of Munich — and there, toward evening, the train spewed us out to stretch our limbs while the locomotive was restoked with coal and the cars were de-jew-migated… And so we went for a walk through the streets and lanes of that most beautiful city, although by now Linka was less walking than floating on air with all those young Russians while I brought up the rear with my couple — which had taken possession of me entirely — thinking that her beauty was far greater than had ever occurred to us here, in our remote little Jelleny-Szad. Apparently, dearest Papa, we had misinterpreted the silence of the flour mills…
— I am saying that that extraordinary, redheaded concentrate of femininity that I had always thought could be understood only by me now had everyone eating out of her hand, which left me imbecilically wondering how I could ever have doubted her powers of communication…
— It does not matter.
— It does not matter.
— Yes, I suppose that I do have a way of saying it does not matter when it does…
— Let me tell it in my own good time.
— I do feel up to it, but let me take my time. You know me: in the end even I always manage to get to the point…
— I did not betray a trust, Father. But even if I did not stick to our plan, don’t you want to know why? There has to be a reason, does there not? Because at first everything went according to schedule. The train left at midnight for your Basel, and we arrived at noon, and took a deep breath of your Swiss air, and went straight to your boardinghouse exactly as you told us that you did last year, where waiting for us were two clean and agreeable rooms…
— So they were. Three flights up.
— Yes, Frau Kuralnik remembered you, as did Herr Frisch.
— And the old man too, of course, the old man too. Everyone was most sorry you could not come, and when I told them about Mama, they were most sorry about her too. And they were all quite taken with Linka, who curtsied to them very prettily. They tried so hard to make the kitchen kosher that there were separate shelves for dairy and pork. Some delegates from England and Belgium had already arrived — everywhere you heard the hubbub of Jews — and suddenly I fell into such a black mood that I went up to my room and threw myself on the bed, quite unable to understand what I was doing there. I must have fallen asleep at once — in fact, I could have slept through that entire congress if Linka had not woken me toward evening, all flushed and excited, with two fancy-looking delegates’ cards that she had gotten hold of in the front office Dr. Efrayim Shapiro and Linka Shapiro, Delegates to the Third Zionist Congress… the devil only knows how she managed to talk them into it…
— So it would seem.
— They were expecting you — and when you did not show up, your only son was recognized as your heir apparent — and for good measure the inheritance was doubled to let your little daughter in too — in such a fashion does our Jewish democracy grow by leaps and bounds…
— I do believe that she was the youngest delegate at the congress.
— She charmed them into it. The minute we left Jelleny-Szad our Linka began to grow up so fast, quite from minute to minute, that no one was not swept off his feet by her. Mind you, Father, all along — inside that virginal shell of hers — in her childhood room with its pale blue curtains and its windows looking out on our gray fields — a woman, a real one, was secretly making herself. I could not get over it: no longer was I an elder brother with a little sister in tow, but a mournful and slightly balding gentleman doing his quiet best to keep up with a vivacious young lady. At first everyone mistook her for my wife — “Madame,” I was told, “is over there”—or, “But where is the charming Frau Shapiro? She promised us she would be here”—while I stood there stammering with a silly grin, “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that she’s only my younger sister.” Ah, what a twinge of sweet sorrow!…
— No matter. I’m talking rubbish.
— Yes, I suppose I have said it again. But you are hanging on my every word while I am talking as though in a dream, Father — you musn’t take me so literally — because the truth of the matter is that everything was upside down — here were you and Mama, sending your obstinate bachelor of a son off to a Jewish congress to find himself a wife — and what does he discover when he gets there but that he already has a wife, and a young and attractive one at that, whom he had better keep an eye on…
— You know as well as I do, my dearest Papa, that your passion for Zionism was not the real reason for sending me…
— Suppose we say the covert, the unspoken reason.