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I saw her again, years later, in the United States. She had read the review of my book The Town Beyond the Wall in Time magazine. Excited, she phoned me at the Jewish Daily Forward. She was passing through New York and invited me to join her at the Sherry Netherland. Having converted to Judaism to marry an industrialist from the Midwest, she treated me to a lively account of her new life: Passover seders, Bar Mitzvahs, fund-raising for Israel, receptions, cocktail parties, dinners. She offered to buy a thousand copies of my book to help it climb onto the best-seller lists. I asked her whether she had that many friends or just that much money. She tactfully spoke of her marriage, but not of her husband. “Do you love him?” I asked. She blushed and moved to another subject, telling me of her conversion under the guidance of a reform rabbi, and she paid me a compliment: “In becoming a Jew, I felt closer to you.” In other words, it was to please me that she married her super-rich husband. What happened to the Greek fiancé? On that subject too she was discreet. But she took my hand. Here we go again, I said to myself. And yes, she was still attractive, and I was still receptive to her beauty. Our rediscovered “love” endured one afternoon.

Feeling once again the need for a change of scene, I decided to return to Israel. I had a reservation on an El Al flight but a friend of Bea’s from Montreal pleaded with me to yield my seat to her since she had had trouble getting three seats on that flight for herself and her two children. The plane was shot down over Bulgaria by the Bulgarian air force. I felt awful and vaguely responsible. I thought of the legend of the Grand Vizier and his escape to Samarkand. The same fate that saved me doomed them. Who had taken my place? Bea’s friend? One of her daughters? All I knew about them was the voice of the mother. It remained with me.

I went by sea. Despite my tendency to get seasick, I enjoy traveling by ship. The lure of the sea is such that desperate people often succumb to its promise of peace. It was the lure I had felt during my first crossing, and now, as I leaned against the railing, I was overwhelmed by the darkly powerful idea of letting go, of allowing all bonds to unravel once and for all. I was convinced that, rocked by the waves, I would at last be at peace.

I spent several weeks in Israel, staying with Dov and Leah but making many trips through the country. I went to Bnei Brak, the most religious suburb of Tel Aviv, which some call Israel’s least religious city. But I had a sudden desire to see the “young” Rebbe of Wizhnitz, for he represented an essential part of my past to which I needed to cling. I have spoken of the love and respect I felt for his father, Rebbe Israel.

Slumped in his armchair as if crushed by the weight of years, he gazed at me with a mixture of tenderness and frustration. Perhaps he was looking for the adolescent who had spent exhilarating shabbats under his roof.

“I look at you,” the Rebbe said, “and wonder who you are. I know who you were, but not who you are.” I didn’t answer. I was thinking of his father. Had I really changed that much? Yet, like the adolescent who went on a pilgrimage to the neighboring town, Grossvardein, I contemplated the Rebbe with respect and devotion. All at once I forgot everything I had learned in philosophy about being and about the immanent forms of transcendence. I felt guilty, and I now understand why. In days past I had visited the Rebbe that he might question me; but this time I had come to question him, about such things as fate’s place in existence and about the all-powerful Creator and His devastated creation. But I didn’t know how to articulate my doubts and apprehensions. My lips stubbornly remained sealed. To put me at ease the Rebbe began to smile, as his father once had long ago. He invited me to explain how I had changed.

“Times, too, have changed, Rebbe,” I said.

“What of it? If times have changed, that’s their business, not yours. Times change because