III
PARTISAN REVIEW
giving the matter a good deal of thought, did not report Susskind;
first, because he had absolutely no proof, for the desk clerk swore
he had seen no stranger around in knickers; second, because he
was
afraid of the consequences for the refugee
if
he were written down
"suspected thief" as well as "unlicensed peddler" and inveterate
refugee. He tried instead to rewrite the chapter, which he felt sure he
knew by heart, but when he sat down at the desk, there were impor.
tant thoughts, whole paragraphs, even pages, that went blank in the
mind. He considered sending to America for his notes for the chapter
but they were in a barrel in his sister's attic in Levittown, among
many notes for other projects. The thought of Bessie, a mother of
five, poking around in his things, and the work entailed in sorting
the cards, then getting them packaged and mailed to
him
across the
ocean, wearied Fidelman unspeakably; he was certain she would
send the wrong ones. He laid down his pen and went into the street,
seeking Susskind. He searched for him in neighborhoods where he
had seen
him
before, and though Fidelman spent hours looking,
literally days, Susskind never appeared; or if he perhaps did, the
sight of Fidelman caused him to vanish. And when the student in·
quired about him at the Israeli consulate, the clerk, a new man on
the job, said he had no record of such a person or his lost passport;
on the other hand, he was known at the Joint Distribution Committee,
but by name and address only-an impossibility, Fidelman thought.
They gave him a number to go to but the place had long since been
torn down to make way for an apartment house.
Time went without work, without accomplishment. To put
an
end to this appalling waste Fidelman tried to force himself back into
his routine of research and picture viewing. He moved out of the
hotel, which he now could not stand for the harm it had done
him
(leaving a telephone number and urging he be called
if
the slightest
clue turned up), and he took a room in a small pensione near the
Stazione and here had breakfast and supper rather than go out. He
was much concerned with expenditures and carefully recorded them
in a notebook he had acquired for the purpose. Nights, instead of
wandering in the city, feasting himself upon its beauty and mystery,
he kept his eyes glued
to
paper, sitting steadfastly at his desk
in
an
attempt to recreate his initial chapter, because he was lost without
a beginning. He had tried writing the second chapter from notes
