§ 4
A night of carousing had just ended. Berel Pinsky looked about his studio. Wineglasses were strewn about. Hairpins and cigarette ashes littered the floor. A woman’s rainbow-coloured scarf, reeking with tobacco smoke and perfume, lay wantonly across the piano keys.
He strode to the window and raised the shade, but quickly pulled it down again. The sunlight hurt him. The innocent freshness of the morning blew accusingly against his hot brow.
He threw himself on the couch, but he could not rest. Like a distorted mirror, his mind reflected the happenings of the night before.
A table decked with flowers and glittering with silver and glass swam in vinous streaks of purple and amber. Berel saw white shoulders and sinuous arms—women’s soft flesh against the black background of men’s dress coats.
One mocking moment rose out of the reeling picture. A bright head pressed against his breast. His arms encircled a slender silken body. Pinnacled high above the devouring faces of his guests, hectic verses sputtered from his lips with automatic fluency.
It was this scene, spurting out of his blurred vision, that stabbed him like a hidden enemy within his soul. He had prostituted the divine in him for the swinish applause of the mob!
“God help me! God help me!” His body swayed back and forth in dumb, driven helplessness. “My sin!” he moaned, and sank to his knees.
Unconsciously he recalled the ritual chant of the Hebrews on the Day of Atonement—a chant he had not heard since he was a little child in Russia.
“‘My sin—the sin I committed wilfully and the sin without will. Behold, I am like a vessel filled with shame and confusion!’”