The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [40]
"Rubbish. Tripe. Just no good."
Mathilda appeared at the door, small and round as a barrel, wearing a silk kimono and open sandals which left her twisted toes exposed. Whenever Dr. Margolis looked at her, he was astonished. Was this really the woman he had fallen in love with and taken from another man thirty-two years ago? She had grown smaller and smaller and puffier and puffier; her stomach stuck out like a man's. Since she had practically no neck, her large square head just sat on her shoulders. Her nose was flat and her thick lips and jowls made him think of a bulldog. Her scalp showed through her hair. Worst of all she had begun to grow a beard, and though she had tried to cut, shave, singe off the hair, it had merely grown denser. The skin of her face was covered with roots from each of which sprouted a few prickly shoots of a nondescript color. Rouge peeled from the creases on her face like plaster. Her eyes stared with a masculine severity. Dr. Margolis remembered a saying of Schopenhauer: Woman has the appearance and mentality of a child. If she becomes intellectually mature, she develops the face of a man.
"What do you want, eh?" Dr. Margolis asked.
"Open a window. It stinks in here."
"All right, let it stink."
"What about the manuscript? They're waiting for it in Berne."
"Let them wait."
"How long are they supposed to wait? Such opportunities don't come every day."
Dr. Margolis laid down his pen. He half-turned towards Mathilda and blew a cloud of smoke at her. He took a last pull and spat out a small fragment of tobacco which was still smoldering.
"I'll send back the five hundred francs, Mathilda."
Mathilda edged away.
"Send back the money? You're mad."
"It's no use. I can't publish something I don't even like. It doesn't matter if others tear me to pieces. But I must be convinced the work has merit."
"All these years you've insisted it's a work of genius."
"I said no such thing. I hoped it might be worth something but at home they used to say: Hoping and having are worlds apart." Dr. Margolis groped for another cigar.
"I won't return one franc," Mathilda cried.
"Come now, do you want me to become a thief in my old age?"
"Send them the manuscript then. It's the best thing you've done. What crazy idea has got into you? And anyway, how can you be your own judge?"
"Who can, then? You?"
"Yes, I. Other people publish a book a year, but you brood over your wretched scribblings like a hen over her eggs. . . . You fiddle around and spoil everything. ... I don't have the money; I've spent it. . . . The less you tinker with it, the better off you'll be. I'm beginning to think you're getting senile."
"Maybe--maybe I am."
"I don't have the money any longer."
"Well, well, it'll be all right," Dr. Margolis grunted half to Mathilda and half to himself. For days he had been preparing to tell her his decision, but he had feared a scene. Now the worst was over. One way or another he'd manage to dig up the five hundred francs. If everything else failed, he'd borrow from a bank. Morris Traybitcher would sign for him. And as for his so-called immortality, that was lost anyway. He had squandered his last years (the years in Berlin as well as those in Warsaw) on lectures and articles and Zionist conferences. And indeed what if the work were published and several professors praised it? Now philosophy had become nothing but the history of human illusions. Hume had given it the coup de grace and had buried it. Kant's attempts at resurrection had failed. Those who had followed the German had written merely afterthoughts. With his tobacco-stained fingers Dr. Margolis began to search for a match. He had an overpowering desire to smoke. Then once more he turned toward the door.
"Still here, eh?"
"I just want you to know that I intend to send the manuscript tomorrow whether you like it or not."
"So you're in command now? No, today it goes out with the garbage."
"You wouldn't dare. What will we do