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his mortified face. I knew everything, but everything! And so for several months I was like him, Laizer, and stuck to him till I could not stop myself—it was no longer a matter of choice! I would imagine that I was Laizer. That I was married to Sarah-Beila … and he, saintly man that he was, did not reproach me, let me follow wherever he went, let me sit with him all day long in his little watchmaker’s stall and answer people’s questions in his stead, ah, for I knew exactly what he wanted to say before he could open his mouth! I never left his side, day or night! And because of this, I too found a rope for myself … Life had become a burden to him, you see, and it was even worse after the death of Sarah-Beila, my wife—pardon! his wife—Sarah-Beila, may she rest in peace. They killed her, you understand, she was sick in bed and they came into the house and killed her before our eyes … We wept for a week. Before our eyes! Nu, and in the middle of the night Laizer tells me that the time has come! You, he says, are a saint among saints, there is none like you in our world anymore, a lover of mankind such as you, but I can no longer endure it, he tells me, I can no longer endure your kindness, because your kindness is killing me with sorrow and compassion … Therefore, I am about to do the deed, and I will ask you to leave me now … let me be alone for a while … so he spoke to me. He worried lest I should follow his example with the rope, and I left the room, knowing what he wanted to do, and I made a noose for myself, because what was the sense of life without him? Without me, that is? What was left of the old, forgotten Malkiel Zeidman? Nothing! Dust and ashes! But he died, and I, nebuch, was saved. I was cut down from the noose and taken to the asylum and there, nu, injections and bandages and swathing, a plague on all doctors! Tfu! Pardon. And when I was released, that is, when the Germans arrived, may their names be blotted out, and scattered our council of the wise into the streets, inside me all was emptiness and death. I do net know, perhaps it was Laizer’s death alive in me that made me feel so hollow, so unresisting; you want me to be a rabbi, I’m a rabbi, I don’t complain, what is there to complain about? Life seems more interesting this way, and in any case, I have no choice now, because I trickle into others likewater and steal what is inside, but outwardly nothing changes, and even now, at this very moment, woe is me! No! Not now!” (He slaps his right hand with his left.)”At least here, control yourself, wretch! Where were we? Ah yes, these weaknesses overpowered me … they brought me down … the pores of my skin open like flowers thirsty for sunlight, my bones relax in their sockets, and everything melts and overflows so that the other whose essence cannot resist me is unwittingly, insensibly, sucked in to fill the void … A stealthy kind of PLAGIARISM [q.v.]; all his contents flow serenely into me, yes, his longings, his secret fears, his passions and pains, the lies he whispers to his soul; ah, Fried, my Friedchik, it would probably drive you mad, you would not believe the hell a person can live through, may you never know, and the devils in him, mama droga, but don’t eat any more of those biscuits, Friedchik, because you’ll get heartburn again and you won’t be able to sleep.” “Enough!” Fried screamed, jumping to his feet, and Paula, in amazement: “He sounds exactly like me, doesn’t he, Friedchik?” and the hollow biographer apologized and explained, ah well, he had these spells, at times acute, because he was consumed and hollow inside like a haunted house, like a ghostly watch ticking on though the watchmaker, alas, is dead, and someone else has to wind the mechanism … or, the old peddler at the zoo gate for example, with his dish of kaposzta, peas and cabbage. “I stand beside him for only a few moments, and he is suddenly inside me, his whole being, the blood humming in his veins and the passion in his heart and the secret of the fatal disease which he hides from his wife and children … And when I work near the parrot cage, ah, all at once I feel feathered and colorful and talkative” (Fried makes a frantic mental note to see to it that this little eccentric never works anywhere near the carnivores).”But the strange thing is, Pan Doctor, that the evil-hearted have no sway over me; that is, over my art … or rather, the common mean type—yes. But the utterly insensate—no. Never! A kind of barrier exists between us. For instance, I pass ‘their’ patrols a hundred times, you know who I’m talking about, and nothing happens inside me. Though I’ll tell you a secret, I ‘like’ to pass them, because then, if only for a second, I feel relieved of my tyrannical art, my calamity, and for a little while I am myself again, poor Malkiel Zeidman … the utterly insensate, it follows then—no. Murderers—never. And I do not know the reason for this. It will always remain a riddle! But as for the rest—on thecontrary, the kindhearted wreak havoc with me … I flow into them and they flow into me unchecked! Even here, in our zoological gardens … nu, yes, I never stop! Otto was the one who asked me. He said that we who lack physical strength are obliged to do everything we can, and I do as he bids me, because nobody refuses Otto, and that is why