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not at all relevant to the subject. He quoted Zalmanson, his adulterous friend, who had once confessed that in the streets of Warsaw, especially in springtime, when women walked through town wearing high-heeled shoes and all their finery, he was often seized with a terrible passion. Zalmanson: “At such times I want to ravage the whole world! To flatten it under me! And I walk along, groaning shamelessly, and the women … they look at me and smile, the bitches! And I walk among them in the street like a satyr, and at such moments—how strange it is—I feel an enmity, a strange enmity toward them …” Wasserman, who listened to Zalmanson’s confession with mixed emotions (“The brute had almost raped my wife! And I sit before him in the darkened office, and a smile rises to my lips … a smile of agreement, feh!”), asked Zalmanson what he meant exactly by “enmity,” and the editor, who had lost his usual stinging arrogance for the moment, said he felt enmity not because of something any particular woman had done to him, heaven forbid, for women had always dealt charitably with him, all of them, and he was a sworn lover of womankind (the editorial staff is prepared to wager that Anshel Wasserman smiled approvingly at this). No, he felt enmity because of what they compelled him to be by their very nature. By his very nature. Becausehe, if anybody cared to know, could love anything, everything. Zalmanson: “I could love the whole world and love nothingness with the same passion,” in order to learn fresh nuances, the subtleties of falling in love with a flowering lilac tree or a mad flight of butterflies, or the sound of the accordion. Zalmanson’s ideas here are a bit vague. One may suppose he felt degraded because of his lust for women, because he was a rebel by nature, and in his warped mind the desire to love them was a limitation. He felt degraded like Aaron Marcus [see under: FEELINGS] when he realized that we are all imprisoned by our limiting emotions, and therefore we—Marcus: “have our ears pierced like slaves against the door of the pale world that speaks to us in its one, halting language!” Zalmanson, with a sigh: “Women, they drive me crazy, you know; I adore them, the way they move, the way they smell, their marvelous bodies, yet what are they but the small, monotonous, finite, and limited materialization of the superhuman passion imprinted inside me, inside us all … for they are the jail, the narrow channel, the impoverished speech into which I must translate all the abundance in me.” Wasserman, with nonexistent strength: “And they, too, women, I suppose, feel the same toward you; that is, toward us.” And Zalmanson: “But of course! I’m certain of it! We and they—like prisoners condemned to uninspired exile together on a desert island.” And having said this to Neigel, Wasserman was silent, while upon his face played all the human expressions that signal tough decisions are being reached somewhere deep inside, and suddenly, driven by some inscrutable urge, Wasserman told the German something very intimate, which even the editorial staff was embarrassed to hear, let alone Neigel. Wasserman told the German about his sexual embraces with his wife. It is possible that he did so because he had grown accustomed to speaking to Neigel as one speaks to oneself. Or perhaps there was a different reason, totally incomprehensible. In any case, he expressed amazement: “Tell me, Herr Neigel, you are an intelligent man, after all, how is it that with such great love between man and woman, and such passion that consumes the heart and flesh, all you do is stick a little smitchikel into a hole and that is that! But only that? The woman’s body should divide before you like the Red Sea! A raging Sambation River should flow between you and drown you seven times, and you should rise gray as ashes, your eyes dim, unable to utter a single word for a year to come, having reached the land of love! As if once having seen the face of heaven-knows-what you were saved by a veritable miracle!” Neigel nodded insilent agreement. For a moment he appeared to be distinctly envious of the Jew for his ability to say all this out loud, for having such confidence in another human being. Marcus said, “Do you hear, Rabbi Anshel? I say, about love I say that a man may love anything, anything in the world, but true love, ah, he can feel for only one person.” Wasserman: “You yourself, if I am not mistaken, love music very much. And sometimes it even brings you to tears?” “Ah, a great love that, yes. But abstract. And therefore, not a true love. It is lacking, it is too noble and ideal.” Fried: “And I prefer to turn your formula around, Mr. Marcus, and say that a man may hate anything, anything in the world, but he can never hate anything as much as he hates another person.”

MALKODET

TRAP

Twice during the course of their meetings Neigel claimed Wasserman “led me into a trap.” The first time was when Wasserman brought Hitler and the Nuremberg Laws into Fried and Paula’s relationship [see under: HITLER, ADOLF; see also, THIS SWINISHNESS], and Neigel demanded that Wasserman remove his provocative anti-German references. It should be noted, too, that Neigel flew into an almost childish rage: he stomped around the room with big, violent steps, pounded the open door of the office cupboard, leaned over his desk, and pressed all ten fingers against it. Wasserman looked away, rebelling inwardly against this censorship. He smiled an embittered smile at Neigel’s empty chair and, tugging irritably at his wispy beard, avowed that “the story will lead us whither it will.” Neigel insisted, his back to Wasserman and his face to the curtained window, that Wasserman had hidden intentions he wasn’t prepared