THE HAND THAT FED ME
27
acknowledge that I knew you were waiting for me. I smiled. I mo–
tioned to you. But you would not admit it. You wouldn't look at me.
You curled up on the bench where you sat and pretended to go to
sleep-a wonder no one saw you and put you out. I knew you were
waiting for me, that you had already acknowledged me even more
deeply than I had ack,nowledged you-since at the outset I was only
responding to a flirtation, but what were you responding to? I don't
flirt. You were therefore responding to me! It made me so happy,
somewhat dizzy, it was even slightly alarming. I sang a song, I joked
with the man who stood ahead of me in line, a short and chubby
Negro whom I liked immensely. I offered him cigarettes. When he
took only one, I slipped some more into his hip pocket, so carefully,
I might have been stealing
his
wallet. He was now my friend. Having
become your friend, I was everybody's friend. I even smiled at the
relief worker who interviewed me, a bitter hag who resented my
happiness and detained me ·with unnecessary questions, as though to
extract my secret. And when I was through with her and came out,
startled to find you absent from the bench, only to see you standing
at the door, so clearly, so obviously waiting!
That whole afternoon, Ellen, the walk to your house, your
friendliness, your kindness in asking me up and inviting me to have
lunch with you! Even now I can hardly believe that I should ever
have received such gifts of kindness. Such absolute friendship, com–
radeship, trust, good will, and with it all the constant promise of
intimacy: one moment you are at my shoulder, the next, you take
my arm, or my hand, or you pretend a mosquito has landed and you
slap my cheek. And what a lunch! Rye bread and borscht, served by
your father, and with such good nature, even after he had learned my
name and drawn certain unavoidable inferences. Borscht, further–
more, with bits of green onion floating in it. I was so happy to learn
you were Russian ! I consider myself a Russian, you understand.
As
a Jew, I am also a German, an Italian, a Frenchman, a Pole, I am
all
Europe-but a Russian, foremost.
I am sure that all this did not come to naught because I am a
Jew. To begin with, you are the kind of gentile who knows how to
say "goy"-a word I distinctly heard you use. There is only one
nation on the earth- the nation of those who call the rest of the world
"goyim." We Jews use it in contempt, because of our fears, but it
is
capable of elevation into a word of pride and brotherhood. No,
