421
PARTISAN REVIEW
I confess that I had no answer for Polnievsky.
We both sat in silence for a while and then Polnievsky con–
tinued his story.
-Once the woman failed to appear. For one entire day she
did not come to the window... "She must be ill," we thought. In
the evening her husband, the sallow one, came to our shop and
asked for medicine.
-What kind of medicine?
-How should I know-he says-medicine!
-For whom?
-That, too, you need to know? For my wife!
-What's wrong with her?
-I have no idea...she says that her heart aches ...
-This-says Polnievsky-was our first meeting. I'll make a
long story short...I'm something of a doctor, after all, so I went to
see her. ..
Polnievsky started to speak indistinctly; he groped for
cigarettes, then matches, and finally he opened his travelling
bag and busied himself with the contents for several minutes.
In the meantime I had some disturbing thoughts.
I began to see Polnievsky in a different light; his story began
to weigh on my spirits.
Can one ever know another person? Can one know what he
is made of? The thought crossed my mind that sitting across
from me may be a Christian skunk who sneaks into the chicken
coop. He polemicizes a bit too much about the Jewish woman's lot,
he searches too long for his matches; somehow, he is embar–
rassed in my presence. Why doesn't he want to give me more
details? Why won't he tell me everything the way it was? Who
knows what part he had in this business? Perhaps he played the
old role of the snake in the Garden of Eden? Do you think that his
conscience wouldn't let him? Especially with a young Jewish
wife! Why not? Once, to gain glory, it was necessary to bring
Jews to baptism; today it is enough to corrupt a Jewish woman
by
drawing her away from her God, from her parents, from her
husband, from her whole life.
It is called liberalism to visit a prison, to bring a fresh breath
of air and some sunshine, to awaken the prisoner, to give him a
piece of cake, and then to disappear. .. not to see how the prisoner
gnashes his teeth when the rusty key turns the lock once again;
