Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer [Singer, Isaac Bashevis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141970868
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

2

Warsaw was so quiet I could hear the echo of my own footsteps. Candles still burned in the windows. The gate in the house on Leszno Street was closed, and the janitor was slow in coming to open it. He grumbled, as if he knew that I intended to move out soon. Although I had my key to the elevator with me, I walked up the dark stairs.

I knocked at the apartment door and Tekla opened it. She said, ‘The phone rang for you today maybe a hundred times. Miss Betty.’

‘Thank you, Tekla.’

‘You don’t go to the synagogue on such a holy day?’ she asked with reproof.

I didn’t know how to answer her. I went to my room. Without putting on the lights, I took off my clothes and lay down, but even though I was tired I couldn’t sleep. What would I do after the few zlotys I had left were gone? I saw no possibility of earning money. I lay there, frightened by my situation. Feitelzohn had at least a semblance of a living from his lectures. He took money from Celia and from other women, too. He had a rent-controlled apartment, for which he paid no more than thirty zlotys a month. I had accepted the responsibility for a sick girl.

I fell asleep and wakened with a start. The phone in the corridor was ringing. On my watch the luminous hands showed a quarter past two. I heard the sound of bare feet – Tekla was running to answer. I heard her whispering. The door to my room opened. ‘It’s for you!’ Her voice expressed the indignation of a Jew forced to desecrate the holiest day of the year.

I got out of bed and bumped into her. She was wearing only her nightgown. In the hall I picked up the receiver and heard Betty’s voice. It was hoarse and grating, like that of someone in the midst of a quarrel. She said, ‘You must come over to the hotel at once! If I call you in the middle of Yom Kippur night, it’s not because of some trifle.’

‘What’s happpened?’

‘I’ve been calling you all day. Where do you wander off to on Yom Kippur eve? I didn’t sleep a wink last night and I haven’t closed my eyes tonight. Sam is very sick. He has to have an operation. I told him all about us.’

‘What’s the matter with him? Why did you need to tell him?’

‘Last night he got up to go to the toilet, but he couldn’t pass water. He was in such pain I had to call the First Aid. They relieved him with a catheter, but he requires an operation. He refuses to go to the hospital here and insists on returning to America to his own doctor. The doctor who saw him today told me that he has a weak heart and is not likely to recover from surgery. My dear, I have a feeling he won’t make it. He called me to his side and said, “Betty, I’m cashing in my chips, but I want to provide for you.

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