The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [30]
He went into the bedroom and lay down--but sleep would not come. He could still hear the music from the ball--polkas, mazurkas, military marches. Distant laughter and sounds of violence drifted towards him. A warm breeze bore the scents of grass, leaves, flowers from beneath his window. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked. The night swarmed with myriads of creatures, each of them calling. Dogs bayed, cats caterwauled. A neighbor's child awoke in its crib. The moon, obscured earlier, now appeared, suspended miraculously in the sky. Stars of many colors sparkled around it. "What is it she sees in me? Why is her love so strong?" mused Dr. Yaretzky. "It's only that old urge to reproduce." The Doctor considered himself a follower of Schopenhauer. No one understood the truth as well as that pessimistic philosopher. His collected works, bound in leather, tooled in gold, stood in Dr. Yaretzky's bookcase. Yes, it was only the blind will to propagate, to perpetuate suffering, the eternal human tragedy. But for what purpose? Why give in to the will if one were aware of its blindness? Man was given his drop of intellect so that he might expose the instincts and their devices.
The Doctor realized that it was useless to try to sleep. He was even out of the sleeping pills he had taken on similar nights. He put on his clothes. He suddenly felt like walking. It might help him sleep later.
V
A WINDOW IN THE RABBI'S STUDY
Dr. Yaretzky walked without knowing where. Did it matter? He felt unusually alert and agile. His feet hadn't seemed this light in years. He observed that although this day's triumph had only embarrassed him, his nervous system reacted as it had to previous triumphs. His body felt buoyant as if Helena's kiss on his hand had diminished the effect of gravity. He breathed more deeply. His senses grew keener. "If I were to go hunting right now," he thought, "I could trap a stag with my bare hands. I'd grab him by his antlers and snap his spine." He felt an urge to fire a gun but had left his revolver at home. He wanted to rap on a shutter and frighten a Jew--but controlled himself. After all, a doctor couldn't behave like a wanton boy.
Yaretzky grew more serious. He recalled that afternoon, years ago, when, having divided a sheet of paper into many slips, each bearing the name of a county seat, he had picked from a hat the name of this town. What if he had picked another town? Would his life have been different? Consequently, everything that had happened to him had been pure chance. But what, actually, was chance? If everything was predetermined, no such thing as chance existed. And then again, if causality was nothing but a category of reason, then there certainly was no such thing as chance. The thought swiftly went further. Conceding that Schopenhauer was right, then that which Kant called "The thing in itself" was will. But how did it follow that the will was blind? If the world-will could bring out Schopenhauer's intellect, why couldn't the world-will itself be endowed with intelligence? "I'll have to consult 'The World as Will and Idea'," Dr. Yaretzky decided. "There's bound to be some sort of an answer in there. I've neglected my reading shamelessly."
He realized that he was in the street, near the rabbi's house. A shutter in the rabbi's study was open. On a table near the stove, a candle flickered in a brass candleholder. Books and manuscripts were heaped on the table. The venerable rabbi, his white beard distended, a skull cap above his high forehead, an unbuttoned gabardine over a yellow-gray fringed garment, sat engrossed in a book, glass of tea in hand. On one side of him was a samovar, on the other, a fan of chicken feathers, used no doubt to fan the coals. Everything, it seemed, was precisely where it should be. The old rabbi was pouring over one of his theological volumes, but Dr. Yaretzky watched, amazed. Did the rabbi keep such late hours, or had he already risen for the day? And what in that book engrossed him so much? The rabbi seemed withdrawn from the world. The Doctor knew the old man.