The Penitent by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780241350478
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

THE SECOND DAY

* * *

10

I thought that those I’d left in New York would look for me and find me in Israel. I wasn’t traveling on a false passport and the police could easily have tracked me down. But apparently Celia had accepted the idea that everything was over between us. I assumed that she could collect alimony from me and who knows what else. That’s how the Gentile and the Jewish-Gentile laws are—they favor the guilty. The judge, the criminal, and the defense attorneys are often part and parcel of the same institution, They can easily exchange positions. They read the same books, they attend the same nightclubs, they often go out with the same kind of women. Few of them have regard for justice or faith in a higher power. But so far no one had bothered me and I was able to wander freely through Tel Aviv.

In the first days, I didn’t seek out any acquaintances. I wanted to be alone and to take stock—for perhaps the first time—of my life. I strolled along Ben Yehuda Street, went to Dizengoff Boulevard for a cup of coffee, and watched the other idlers who sat at the tables outside, chattered endlessly, read newspapers, and looked at the passersby. When a good-looking woman walked by, the men’s eyes lit up as if they were starved for sex and hadn’t been with a woman for ages. Their hungry gazes seemed to me to be asking: Maybe? … Maybe this is the one I’ve been dreaming of … Perhaps chance will bring us together and it will be the beginning of that great happiness that writers describe in books … This sudden-born hope would last until the woman turned the corner into Frishman Street or I. L. Gordon Street and then the potential Don Juans turned back to their wrinkled newspapers and their cigarette butts. The women who sat at the tables also looked at the passing women and made all kinds of snide remarks: this one had fat legs, that one’s hips were too wide, that one dressed in bad taste … The store windows displayed dresses, jackets, lingerie in the latest style. The Language Committee had already found Hebrew words for all the knickknacks sold here. Whatever else he may be, modern man isn’t ever at a loss for words. I was sitting near a bookstore and from time to time I glanced at the window. All the kitsch novels in the world had already been translated into the Holy Tongue. The kiosks displayed posters advertising cheap plays. If not for the Hebrew characters, I might have been in Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, or Rome. Yes, the Enlightened have attained their goal. We are a people like all other peoples. We feed our souls the same dung as they do. We’re already raising our daughters to be depraved. We already publish Hebrew magazines that describe in detail which Hollywood harlot slept with what Hollywood pimp.

There was one café here where writers and maybe actors and actresses congregated.

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