A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer [Singer, Isaac Bashevis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780374132170
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 1973-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

LOST

WHEN I was counseling readers for the Yiddish newspaper where I worked, all kinds of people used to bring their problems to me: betrayed husbands and wives; relatives with quarrels from the old country; immigrants who had come to America many years before and wanted to apply for citizenship but did not know the dates of their arrivals or the names of their ships. In most of the cases, my help consisted in listening and offering words of comfort. Sometimes I gave them the address of the HIAS or of an organization that provided legal assistance. Usually, these advice seekers came in the middle of the week—almost never on Friday. During the years I held this job, I learned that even Jews who worked on Saturday looked upon Friday as a day of preparation for the holy Sabbath. Whether this was a matter of tradition or of atavism is of no consequence here.

But one particular man came to me on Friday, late in the day, when I was ready to go home. He appeared to be in his seventies. His back was stooped. He had a white goatee and hags under his eyes. He wore a long black coat, and I thought he must be a new arrival to America. But the moment he sat down at my desk he said, “Do you see me? I began to read your paper more than sixty years ago on the first day I came to this country.”

I asked him where he came from, and he mentioned a town in Poland. He told me that he had studied in a yeshiva and had tried to pass examinations to enter the university. Here in America he became a teacher in a Talmud Torah, and later, with training, a dental technician. Of course, he was retired now.

He said, “I know your job is to give advice, but I did not come to ask that of you. What advice can you give to a man of eighty-three? I have everything I require, and when I die there is a cemetery plot that my landsleit have prepared for me. I came to you because I thought that what happened to me might interest you. You often write about the mysterious powers. You believe in demons, imps—what have you. I am not going to argue with you about their existence. Neither you have seen them nor I. Even if demons do exist, they are not in New York. What would a demon do in New York? He would get run over by a car or tangle himself in a subway and never find his way out. Demons need a synagogue, a ritual bathhouse, a poorhouse, a garret with torn prayer books—all the paraphernalia you describe in your stories. Still, hidden powers that no one can explain exist everywhere. I am not speaking just about theories. I have had an experience with them. The Yiddish newspapers wrote about it, and the English ones too. But how long do they

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