In another cellar an old man sits in his overcoat on a pile of wood, counting his coal. He sits in the dark, as he did in Cracow, stroking his beard. His life is all coal and wood, little voyages from darkness to daylight. In his ears is still the ring of hoofs on cobbled streets, the sound of shrieks and screams, the clatter of sabres, the splash of bullets against a blank wall. In the cinema, in the synagogue, in the coffee house, wherever one sits, two kinds of music playing—one bitter, one sweet. One sits in the middle of a river called Nostalgia. A river filled with little souvenirs gathered from the wreckage of the world. Souvenirs of the homeless, of birds of refuge building again and again with sticks and twigs. Everywhere broken nests, egg shells, fledgelings with twisted necks and dead eyes staring into space. Nostalgic river dreams under tin copings, under rusty sheds, under capsized boats. A world of mutilated hopes, of strangled aspirations, of bulletproof starvation. A world where even the warm breath of life has to be smuggled in, where gems big as pigeons' hearts are traded for a yard of space, an ounce of freedom. All is compounded into a familiar liver paste which is swallowed on a tasteless wafer. In one gulp there is swallowed down five thousand years of bitterness, five thousand years of ashes, five thousand years of broken twigs, smashed egg-shells, strangled fledgelings....

In the deep sub-cellar of the human heart the dolorous twang of the iron harp rings out.

Build your cities proud and high. Lay your sewers. Span your rivers. Work feverishly. Sleep dreamlessly. Sing madly, like the bulbul. Underneath, below the deepest foundations, there lives another race of men. They are dark, sombre, passionate. They muscle into the bowels of the earth. They wait with a patience which is terrifying. They are the scavengers, the devourers, the avengers. They emerge when everything topples into dust.

20

For seven days and nights I was alone. I began to think that she had left me. Twice she telephoned, hut she sounded far away, lost, swallowed up by grief. I remembered Mr. Eisenstein's words. I wondered, wondered if she had been reclaimed.

Then one day, towards closing time, she stepped out of the elevator and stood before me. She was all in black except for a mauve turban which gave her an exotic cast. A transformation had taken place. The eyes had grown still softer, the skin more translucent. Her figure had become seductively suave, her carriage more majestic. She had the poise of a somnambulist.

For a moment I could scarcely believe my eyes. There was something hypnotic about her. She radiated power, magnetism, enchantment. She was like one of those Italian women of the Renaissance who gaze at you steadily with enigmatic smile from a canvas which recedes into infinity. In those few strides which she took before throwing herself into my arms I felt a gulf, such as I had never known could exist between two people, closing up. It was as though the earth had opened up between us, as if, by a supreme and magical effort of will, she had leaped the void and rejoined me. The ground on which she stood a moment ago fell away, slipped into a past altogether unknown to me, just as the shelf of a continent slips into the sea. Nothing so clear and tangible as this formulated itself in my mind then; it was only afterwards, because I rehearsed this moment time and again later, that I understood the nature of our reunion.

Her whole body felt strangely different, as I pressed her close. It was the body of a creature who had been reborn. It was an entirely new body that she surrendered, new because it contained some element which hitherto had been missing. It was, strange as it may seem to say so, as if she had returned with her soul—and not her private, individual soul, but the soul of her race. She seemed to be offering it to me, like a talisman.

Words came to our lips with difficulty. We simply gurgled and stared at one another. Then I saw her glance roving over the place, taking everything in with a remorseless eye, and finally resting on my desk and on me.

«What are you doing here?» she seemed to say. And then, as it softened, as she gathered me up in the folds of the tribe—«What have they done to you?» Yes, I felt the power and the pride of her people. I have not chosen you, it said, to sit among the lowly. I am taking you out of this world. I am going to enthrone you.

And this was Mona, the Mona who had come to me from the center of the dance floor and offered herself, as she had offered herself to hundreds and perhaps thousands of others before me. Such a strange, wondrous flower is the human being! You hold it in your hand and while you sleep it grows, it becomes transformed, it exhales a narcotic fragrance.

In a few seconds I had become worshipful. It was almost unbearable to look at her steadily. To think that she would follow me home, accept the life I had to offer her, seemed unbelievable. I had asked for a woman and I had been given a queen.

What happened at dinner is a complete blank. We must have eaten in a restaurant, we must have talked, we must have made plans. I remember nothing of all this. I remember her face, her new soulful look, the brilliance and magnetism of the eyes, the translucent tone of the flesh.

I remember that we walked for a time through deserted streets. And perhaps, listening only to the sound of her voice, perhaps then she told me everything, all that I had ever longed to know about her. I remember not a word of it. Nothing had any importance or meaning except the future. I held her hand, clasped it firmly, the fingers entwined, walking with her into the overabundant future. Nothing could possibly be what it had been before. The ground had opened up, the past had been swept away, drowned, drowned as deep as a lost continent. And miraculously—how miraculously I only realized as the moments prolonged themselves!—she had been saved, had been restored to me. It was my duty, my mission, my destiny in this life to cherish and protect her. As I thought of all that lay ahead I began to grow, from within, as if from a small seed. I grew inches in the space of a block. It was in my heart that I felt the seed bursting.

And then, as we stood at a corner, a bus came along. We jumped in and went upstairs on the deck. To the very front seat. As soon as the fare had been paid I took her in my arms and smothered her with kisses. We were alone and the bus was careening over the bumpy pavement.

Suddenly I saw her give a wild look around, raise her dress feverishly, and the next moment she was straddling me. We fucked like mad in the space of a few drunken blocks. She sat on my lap, even after it was over, and continued to caress me passionately.

When we entered Arthur Raymond's home the place was ablaze. It was as if they had been expecting her return. Kronski was there and Arthur's two sisters, Rebecca, and some of her friends. They greeted Mona with the utmost warmth and affection. They almost wept over her.

It was the moment to celebrate. Bottles were brought out, the table was spread, the phonograph wound up. «Yes, yes, let us rejoice!» every one seemed to say. We literally flung ourselves at one another. We danced, we sang, we talked, we ate, we drank. More and more joyous it became. Every one loved every one. Union and reunion. On and on into the night, even Kronski singing at the top of his lungs. It was like a bridal feast. The bride had come back from the grave. The bride was young again. The bride had blossomed.

Yes, it was a marriage. That night I knew that we were joined on the ashes of the past.

«My wife, my wife!» I murmured, as we fell asleep.