Cella, Or, the Survivors

Freudreich's face presented a sight both dreadful and lofty. Within half an hour, it had been transformed from the well-kept mask of the bank magnate to the terrifyingly sincere countenance of the wandering Jew. It gazed at us with eyes that were a thousand years old: they knew the entire truth. The bloody lips did not yet seem to know this truth, for they kept murmuring as before, "It is a mistake. They did not mean mean."They did not mean you, Freudreich! They did not mean me. Whom do they mean? Israel is not a nation, Israel is an order of the blood, which one enters by birth, involuntarily... The people of 1938 are not exempted from the payment day of the people who lived under Nebuchadnezzar, Nero, or Torquemada. Sometimes this destiny lurks for decades, in a leisurely fashion, so that the victim can grow nice and fat from his particular debt and stretch of pleasurably in the delusion of ownership and oblivion, a mirage that is permitted other mortals. But then an hour leaps up, and the ancient oath suddenly falls due.