190
PARTISAN REVIEW
by prostitutes, some heartbreakingly pretty, one a slender, unhappy–
looking girl with bags under her eyes whom he desired mightily, but
Fidelman feared for
his
health. He had got to know the face of Rome
and spoke Italian fairly fluently, but
his
heart was burdened, and
in
his blood raged a murderous hatred of the bandy-legged refugee–
although there were times when he bethought himself he might
be
wrong-so Fidelman more than once cursed
him
to perdition.
One Friday night, as the first star glowed over the Tiber, Fidel–
man, walking
aiml~ly
along the left riverbank, came upon a
syna–
gogue and wandered in among a crowd of Sephardim with Italianate
faces. One by one they paused before a sink in an antechamber
to
dip their hands under a flowing faucet, then in the house of worship
touched with loose fingers their brows, mouths, and breasts as they
bowed to the
AIc,
Fidelman doing likewise. Where in the world
am
I? Three rabbis rose from a bench and the service began, a long
prayer, sometimes chanted, sometimes accompanied by invisible
gan music, but no Susskind anywhere. Fidelman sat at a desk-like
pew in the last row, where he could inspect the congregants yet keep
an eye on the door. The synagogue was unheated and the cold rose
like an exudation from the marble floor. The student's freezing nose
burned like a lit candle. He got up to go, but the beadle,
3i
stout
man in a high hat and short caftan, wearing a long thick silver chain
around his neck, fixed the student with his powerful left eye.
"From New York?" he inquired, slowly approaching.
Half the congregation turned to see who.
"State, not city," answered Fidelman, nursing an active
guilt
for the attention he was attracting. Then, taking advantage of a
pause, he whispered, "Do you happen to know a man named Sus–
kind? He wears knickers."
"A relative?" The beadle gazed at him sadly.
"Not exactly."
"My own son-killed in the AIdeatine Caves." Tears stood forth
in his eyes.
"Ah, for that I'm sorry."
But the beadle had exhausted the subject. He wiped
his
wet
lids
with pudgy fingers and the curious Sephardim turned back to
their
prayer books.
"Which Susskind?" the beadle wanted to know.
