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grandson of Reb Dan Katzenellenbogen, the rabbi of Tereshpol Minor. He had with him a letter of recommendation to the learned Dr. Shmaryahu Jacobi, secretary of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw. In his pocket rested a worn volume, the Ethics of Spinoza in a Hebrew translation.
    -20-The youth was
    tall and thin, with a long, pale face, a high, prematurely creased forehead, keen blue eyes, thin lips, and a sharp chin covered with a sprouting beard. His blond, almost col-orless earlocks were combed back from his ears. He was wearing a gaberdine and a velvet cap. A scarf was wrapped around his throat.
    " Warsaw," he said aloud, his voice strange to himself, "Warsaw at last."
    People milled about the station. A porter in a red hat tried to take the basket from him, but he refused to surrender it. Though the year was well into October, the day was still warm. Low clouds floated about in the sky, seeming to merge with the puffs of steam from the locomotives. The sun hung in the west, red and large. In the east the pale crescent of the moon was visible.
    The young man crossed to the other side of the railing that separated the railroad station from the street. On the wide thor-oughfare, paved with rectangular cobblestones, carriages bowled along, the horses seeming to charge straight at the knots of pedestrians. Red-painted tramcars went clanging by. There was a smell of coal, smoke, and earth in the moist air. Birds flew about in the dim light, flapping their wings. In the distance could be seen row upon row of buildings, their window panes reflecting the daylight with a silver and leaden glow or glinting gold in the path of the setting sun. Bluish plumes of smoke rose from chimneys. Something long forgotten yet familiar seemed to hover about the uneven roofs, the pigeon cotes, the attic windows, the balconies, the telegraph poles with their connecting wires. It was as if Asa Heshel had seen all of this before in a dream, or maybe in a previous existence.
    He took a few steps and then stood still, leaning against a street lamp as though to protect himself against the hurrying throngs.
    His limbs were cramped from the long hours of sitting. The ground seemed still to be shaking beneath him, the doors and windows of the houses receding as though he were still watching them from the speeding train. It had been long since he had slept.
    His brain was only half awake.
    "Is it here I will learn the divine truths?" he thought vaguely.
    "Among this multitude?"
    Passers-by brushed past him, shoving the basket with their feet. A coachman in a blue coat and oilcloth hat, whip in hand, said something to him, but in the general tumult he could not hear -21-what the man
    asked him nor tell whether he was speaking in Yiddish or Polish.
    A heavy-set man in a ragged coat came to a stop near him, looked at him, and asked: "A provincial, eh? Where do you want to go?"
    "To Franciskaner Street. To a hotel."
    "Over there."
    A legless man rolled by on a small wooden platform. He stretched out his hand toward Asa Heshel.
    "Help a cripple," he whined in a singsong. "May the new month bring you fortune."
    Asa Heshel's pale face became bloodless. He took a copper coin from his pocket. "And according to Spinoza I should feel no pity for him," he thought. "What did he say about a lucky month for me? Has another month rolled around?"
    He suddenly remembered that he had neglected to pray both this day and the day before. Nor had he put on his phylacteries.
    "Has it gone as far as that with me?" he murmured.
    He picked up the basket and started walking quickly. Another winter. So little time left.
    The streets became even more crowded. The Nalevki was lined with four-and five-story buildings with wide entrances, plastered with signs in Russian, Polish, and Yiddish. A world of trade: shirts and canes, cotton and buttons, umbrellas and silk, chocolate and plush, hats and thread, jewelry and prayer shawls. Wooden platforms were piled high with wares. Draymen unloaded