The old man shrugged his shoulders.
"Her descendants still live in the ghetto. The family is a respected one in Jewish circles and, because of that, we are loath to talk about it. In the forty years since her death a whole host of legends have grown up about her. She had a love affair with a young man from the Kleinseite, from the Malteserplatz. For Jewish people generally the honour of their family is paramount. In matters where the honour of a family is at stake we are punctilious and can be very cruel. Suffice it to say that the poor creature ended her life unhappily and that the story is a sad one."
When the old man opened up the gate to Beth-Chaim for me, he had good reason to stare at me, shaking his head. Like a drunken man I wandered up and down that day and tried in vain to weigh my guilt and innocence against each other. In vain I did everything possible to shift the burden weighing now so heavy on my soul elsewhere or at least to make it lighter by telling myself that the words of this young girl were merely the meaningless whims and fancies of an immature mind.
Finally I staggered back to my room in Nekazalka Street, took out my medical textbooks and my slovenly and intermittent lecture notes and began, all of a tremble, with unflagging application, to con all that was written therein on the subject of the human heart, the actual physical entity itself, its functions, its well-being and its various ailments. I later wrote a book about these things which medical science has deemed most useful and which has been reprinted several times. If only medical science knew what this reputation as a leading authority on heart disease has cost me in personal terms. Not only literary works are born out of personal sorrow and grief.
It was very sultry that day. Heavy white clouds came rolling up over the rooftops and congregated there in threatening, leaden grey cloudbanks and, in spite of the fact that there was hardly a breath of air anywhere, I was driven from my room yet again, down into the hot and sticky streets. As the first clap of thunder reverberated sonorously, making windows in the town vibrate in their frames, I pulled on the rickety bell of the gatekeeper's house at the entrance to the old Jewish cemetery.
Instead of the long-bearded, venerable head of the ancient there appeared at the grille the wrinkled sallow face of the gatekeeper's old female servant.
"Where is your master? I must speak to him at once."
"God in heaven, young man. You look awful. Whatever's happened? Why have you come back again so soon? What spell is it that binds you to this place?"
Without so much as bothering to answer her questions, I pushed my way past the old chatterbox. On over the dark, now, in the thunderstorm, frightening, appallingly dark, paths of the cemetery I hurried, and, on reaching the grave of the Chief Rabbi, found there the old man, unperturbed by the ever more powerful outbreaks of the storm.
Whoever has not seen the place where I now was at a time like the one I am describing knows nothing whatsoever about it. There is no other place in the whole of the world where the advent of doomsday will be awaited with greater trepidation. The sky will then, as now, become "as black as sackcloth", the lightning flash, the thunder crack and people bow their heads in fear and trembling. How those old elder bushes writhe as they resist the storm's ravages. They shriek and groan like living beings at the end of their tether. Not like other trees and bushes do they rustle in the rain. The earth laps up the constant streams of water trickling down the topsy-turvy gravestones with a grateful and uncanny gurgle. Today is the day of the Lord; today is truly a "destruction from the Almighty".