440
PARTISAN REVIEW
leaves permeated the air. The darkness was thick, but windless. He re–
membered the two women he had chatted with. Suddenly it seemed to
him that they were standing at the end of the platform and looking at
him.
"Why don't you come here? There's nothing to be afraid of," he
called out. It was an illusion, apparently. He fell to his knees, curled up
on the ground, and closed his eyes.
The ticket windows opened noisily and awakened him. Kurt rose,
and as in a dream he approached the ticket window. "To Mannhausen,
miss," he said, glad he had remembered the name of that remote place.
The train came on time, and it was quiet, not crowded. It immediately
sped out across the wintry fields. All the cognac he had drunk gradually
dissipated from his body. He sat in the dining car and drank the cup of
coffee that was served him.
Three Jewish merchants sat in a corner and argued about some
complex transaction. They argued with vehemence and picked on each
other. Kurt felt a kind of revulsion from them, perhaps because they
were speaking faulty German. Their grimaces reminded him of his mer–
chants, who only two days earlier had threatened to close the syna–
gogue. He shut his eyes and fell asleep.
When he awoke, the merchants were still sitting in the corner and
provoking each other, but by now the fire had gone out; they were
reminiscing about bygone days and mulling them over. Kurt ordered a
cup of coffee. The strong coffee cleared his mind, and he knew that he
had spent last night in the station and that he was now on his way to
Donia's. For a long while he sat without moving. The fields passed by
him, green and gray. Here and there was an animal or a hut, as though
to remind him that man had a place in that vast green sea as well.
He reached Mannhausen at noon . The old, rural station had two
stories, reminding him of other stations where he had lingered on his
way to or from a village. He knew in such a station he would find a hot
meal on the second floor, cheese turnovers and a cup of coffee.
"I'll rest for a while" he said to himself and went upstairs.
It was a roomy cafe whose large windows faced the open landscape.
The furniture was simple and warm. The landlady, a young woman, im–
mediately told him what there was to eat. Kurt thanked the woman for
offering him her dishes as though she had kept him from making a
dreadful error. Now he wanted to ask her where the Lumpel family
lived, but the question that was well formulated in his head suddenly
seemed inappropriate to him. The woman apparently sensed his hidden
intention and hurried over to tell him. She said, "This is a small place,
and we are few. Just three families . We live near the station and make a
