306 BERSCHADSKI
understand that there are certain things not to be explained, while the impossibility of explaining them may lead to a misunderstanding. This hint made the position no clearer to us, and the fact of Yossef's not answering me confirmed us in our previous suspicions.
Meanwhile our old friend fell ill, and quickly under- stood that she would soon die. Among the things she begged me to do after her death and having reference to her burial, there was one particular petition several times repeated: to send a packet of Hebrew books, which had been left by her husband, to her son Yossef, and to inform him of her death by telegram. "My American children" she explained with a sigh "have certainly forgotten everything they once learned, for- gotten all their Jewishness! But my son Yossef is a different sort; I feel sure of him, that he will say Kaddish after me and read a chapter in the Mishnah, and the books will come in useful for his children Grandmother's legacy to them."
When I fulfilled the old woman's last wish, I learned how mistaken she had been. The answer to my letter written during her lifetime came now that she was dead. Her children thanked us warmly for our care of her, and they also explained why she and they had remained apart.
She had never known and it was far better so by what means her son had obtained the right to live out- side the Pale. It was enough that she should have to live forlorn, where would have been the good of her knowing that she was forsaken as well that the one of her children who had gone altogether over to "them" was Yossef?
