When it was all over she opened her eyes wide and stared at me, as though she were taking me in for the first time. I hadn’t a word to say to her; the only thought in my head was to get out as quickly as possible. As we were washing up I noticed a note on the floor near the door. It was from Kronski. His wife had just been taken to the hospital—he wanted her to meet him at the hospital. I felt relieved! It meant that I could break away without wasting any words.
The next day I had a telephone call from Kronski. His wife had died on the operating table. That evening I went home for dinner; we were still at the table when the bell rang. There was Kronski standing at the gate looking absolutely sunk. It was always difficult for me to offer words of condolence; with him it was absolutely impossible. I listened to my wife uttering her trite words of sympathy and I felt more than ever disgusted with her. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We walked along in absolute silence for a while. At the park we turned in and headed for the meadows. There was a heavy mist which made it impossible to see a yard ahead. Suddenly, as we were swimming along, he began to sob. I stopped and turned my head away. When I thought he had finished I looked around and there he was staring at me with a strange smile. “It’s funny,” he said, “how hard it is to accept death.” I smiled too now and put my hand on his shoulder. “Go on,” I said, “talk your head off. Get it off your chest.” We started walking again, up and down over the meadows, as though we were walking under the sea. The mist had become so thick that I could just barely discern his features. He was talking quietly and madly. “I knew it would happen,” he said. “It was too beautiful to last.” The night before she was taken ill he had had a dream. He dreamt that he had lost his identity. “I was stumbling around in the dark calling my own name. I remember coming to a bridge, and looking down into the water I saw myself drowning. I jumped off the bridge head first and when I came up I saw Yetta floating under the bridge. She was dead.” And then suddenly he added: “You were there yesterday when I knocked at the door, weren’t you? I knew you were there and I couldn’t go away. I knew too that Yetta was dying and I wanted to be with her, but I was afraid to go alone.” I said nothing and he rambled on. “The first girl I ever loved died in the same way. I was only a kid and I couldn’t get over it. Every night I used to go to the cemetery and sit by her grave. People thought I was out of my mind. I guess I was out of my mind. Yesterday, when I was standing at the door, it all came back to me. I was back in Trenton, at the grave, and the sister of the girl I loved was sitting beside me. She said it couldn’t go on that way much longer, that I would go mad. I thought to myself that I really was mad and to prove it to myself I decided to do something mad and so I said to her it isn’t her I love, it’s you, and I pulled her over me and we lay there kissing each other and finally I screwed her, right beside the grave. And I think that cured me because I never went back there again and I never thought about her any more—until yesterday when I was standing at the door. If I could have gotten hold of you yesterday I would have strangled you. I don’t know why I felt that way but it seemed to me that you had opened up a tomb, that you were violating the dead body of the girl I loved. That’s crazy, isn’t it? And why did I come to see you tonight? Maybe it’s because you’re absolutely indifferent to me . . . because you’re not a Jew and I can talk to you . . . because you don’t give a damn, and you’re right. . . . Did you ever read The Revolt of the Angels?”
We had just arrived at the bicycle path which encircles the park. The lights of the boulevard were swimming in the mist. I took a good look at him and I saw that he was out of his head. I wondered if I could make him laugh. I was afraid, too, that if he once got started laughing he would never stop. So I began to talk at random, about Anatole France at first, and then about other writers, and finally, when I felt that I was losing him, I suddenly switched to General Ivolgin, and with that he began to laugh, not a laugh either, but a cackle, a hideous cackle, like a rooster with its head on the block. It got him so badly that he had to stop and hold his guts; the tears were streaming down his eyes and between the cackles he let out the most terrible, heartrending sobs. “I knew you would do me good,” he blurted out, as the last outbreak died away. “I always said you were a crazy son of a bitch. . . . You’re a Jew bastard yourself, only you don’t know it. . . . Now tell me, you bastard, how was it yesterday? Did you get your end in? Didn’t I tell you she was a good lay? And do you know who she’s living with? Jesus, you were lucky you didn’t get caught. She’s living with a Russian poet—you know the guy, too. I introduced you to him once at the Café Royal. Better not let him get wind of it. He’ll beat your brains out . . . and then hell write a beautiful poem about it and send it to her with a bunch of roses. Sure, I knew him out in Stelton, in the anarchist colony. His old man was a Nihilist. The whole family’s crazy. By the way, you’d better take care of yourself. I meant to tell you that the other day, but I didn’t think you would act so quickly. You know she may have syphilis. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just telling you for your own good. . . .”
This outburst seemed to really assuage him. He was trying to tell me in his twisted Jewish way that he liked me. To do so he had to first destroy everything around me—the wife, the job, my friends, the “nigger wench,” as he called Valeska, and so on. “I think some day you’re going to be a great writer,” he said. “But,” he added maliciously, “first you’ll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don’t know what the word means yet. You only think you’ve suffered. You’ve got to fall in love first. That nigger wench now . . . you don’t really suppose that you’re in love with her, do you? Did you ever take a good look at her ass . . . how it’s spreading, I mean? In five years she’ll look like Aunt Jemima. You’ll make a swell couple walking down the avenue with a string of pickaninnies trailing behind you. Jesus, I’d rather see you marry a Jewish girl. You wouldn’t appreciate her, of course, but she’d be good for you. You need something to steady yourself. You’re scattering your energies. Listen, why do you run around with all these dumb bastards you pick up? You seem to have a genius for picking up the wrong people. Why don’t you throw yourself into something useful? You don’t belong in that job—you could be a big guy somewhere. Maybe a labor leader . . . I don’t know what exactly. But first you’ve got to get rid of that hatchet-faced wife of yours. Ugh! when I look at her I could spit in her face. I don’t see how a guy like you could ever have married a bitch like that. What was it—just a pair of steaming ovaries? Listen, that’s what’s the matter with you—you’ve got nothing but sex on the brain. . . . No, I don’t mean that either. You’ve got a mind and you’ve got passion and enthusiasm . . . but you don’t seem to give a damn what you do or what happens to you. If you weren’t such a romantic bastard I’d almost swear that you were a Jew. It’s different with me—I never had anything to look forward to. But you’ve got something in you—only you’re too damned lazy to bring it out. Listen, when I hear you talk sometimes I think to myself—if only that guy would put it down on paper! Why you could write a book that would make a guy like Dreiser hang his head. You’re different from the Americans I know; somehow you don’t belong, and it’s a damned good thing you don’t. You’re a little cracked, too—I suppose you know that. But in a good way. Listen, a little while ago, if it had been anybody else who talked to me that way I’d have murdered him. I think I like you better because you didn’t try to give me any sympathy. I know better than to expect sympathy from you.