The Missing Line

...I told him that I must see another copy...

...Of course I knew beforehand that his piece could not be anything but bad...

...No, let's not put the blame on the poor demons...

...If there is a man who cannot be fooled by abracadabra and hocus-pocus, it is he...

...I don't know how you feel about him, but to me he is an abomination...

...But that a metal line would fly from the Haint composing room at 8 Chlodna Street to the Moment composing room at 38 Nelewski—this I certainly did not expect...

...But what does it add...

...Let me see it again.' " 'No trick and no glue,' I said...

...For you it is theory first and facts last...

...This is your missing line!' " 'Yes, my friend,' I said...

...Does Gottlieb know this...

...Of course...

...Not at all...

...Sure enough, my line was there on the same page in the same item: 'He came home from the tavern and saw his daughter in bed and the transcendental unity ojthe apperception . . . ' I was so baffled and distressed that I began to laugh...

...Among them were the two unemployed proofreaders who had been playing chess in a corner...

...I've heard that story many times...

...Then he said, "My young friend, I tell you all this just to prove to you that one should not be in a rush to decide that Mother Nature has given up her eternal laws...

...I asked, just to say something...

...If you can explain this " 'Really, I cannot believe it,' Gavza said...

...We spoke about old times and the countless absurdities published in the Yiddish press, God bless it...

...Maybe demons really did steal your line from The Haint and carry it to The Moment.' ' 'For a long while we stood looking at each other with the painful feeling of two adults who realize that their world has turned to chaos, with logic gone and so-called reality totally bankrupt...

...I showed him my manuscript and said, 'Please, read this paragraph.' Before I even finished my sentence he said, 'I know, I know, a line was missing in your feuilleton about Kant...

...Although they consider themselves ardent Yiddishists, they don't have the slightest respect for their language...

...I read the proofs three times as usual, and miraculously the words came out correctly every time...

...Then I heard him say, 'If this can happen, anything can happen...

...As far as I'm concerned, the goblins and sprites have not taken over, and the laws of nature are still valid, whether I like them or not...

...Our conversation turned to the supernatural and Dr...

...After an hour of utter resentment and extreme anti-Yiddishism, I began a search for the line in the other articles and news items of our Friday issue...

...In all 20 years of our competition, I've never read anything good by this scribbler...

...Gottlieb tells it well— and very carefully...

...As you know, I am a great admirer of Kant, but to me causality is more than a category of pure "The Musing Line" is a selection from The Death of Methuselah by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published by Forfar, Straits & Guoux, Inc Copyright® 1988 by Isaac Bashevis Singer All rights reserved ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER reason...

...He never says that was the explanation...

...I showed him the Friday Moment with the news item and said, 'Now read this.' Gavza shrugged, began to read, and never before have I seen an expression like that on Gavza's quiet face...

...As soon as the door shut, he spoke...

...As a matter of fact, I thought I would write a story about it myself...

...Rationalist that I am, I said to myself, 'If this actually happened and it was not a dream, I will have to reappraise everything I learned from the first grade in Gymnasium to the universities of Bonn and Bern.' But then I heard the explanation and it was as convincing and as simple as only the truth can be...

...That night I went to sleep as hopeful as a writer in Yiddish can afford to be...

...At a table in a corner two unemployed proofreaders played chess...

...My missing line has jumped from The Haint to The Moment a dozen streets away, over all the buildings, all the rooftops, and settled down right into their printing room, into this item...

...I have another copy of The Moment in my pocket.' " 'My God, how could this have happened?' Gavza asked...

...21...

...I knew that no hallucination has ever been shared by two people...

...He smoked a long cigar and blew the smoke out through his nostrils...

...I turned to an item with the title 'A Man a Beast,' the story of a janitor who came home from the tavern at night and raped his daughter...

...The whole article became senseless...

...However, I don't want to compete with our literati...

...There are cases of collective hallucinations," I said...

...Suddenly the most impossible, unbelievable, preposterous thing happened—my missing line was right before my eyes...

...How a typesetter can make a mistake of this kind will always be a riddle to me...

...What burned me up more than anything else is that readers, even my friends in the Writers' Club, complimented me and seemed not to have noticed the missing line...

...I've promised myself a million times not to read The Haint on Friday, but you know, there is an element of masochism in each of us...

...On page 379, "They took the train to Lublin...

...When it comes to philosophic terms, our typesetters get especially rattled...

...Or: 'On page 87 it is written, "He had a very strong appetite...

...Who made causality...

...We may publish the most interesting ones in a subsequent issue...

...The setting sun threw a purple shine on his huge bald head...

...However, hallucinations last no longer than a split second...

...As it happens, the Jewish National Fund appeal didn't appear in that issue of The Haint or of The Moment...

...Another article was written about bacteria, 'which are so small that they can be seen only with the help of a telescope.' " Dr...

...I think I know what happened.' he exclaimed...

...The papers are brought to me every morning about eight o'clock, and Friday is always my crisis day of the week...

...When I lose my glasses and then find them in a drawer which I thought I hadn't opened in two years, I know I must have put them there myself and that they were not hidden by your demons or imps...

...It was carried over to The Moment and there someone noticed the mistake, took out the line from the appeal page, and it promptly got stuck into this news item...

...If the facts don't match the theories, it is the fault of the facts...

...He was the president of the journalists' syndicate, a doctor of philosophy, a former student of such famous scholars as Hermann Cohen, Professor Bauch, Professor Messer Leon, Kuno Fischer...

...And when I have to convey a message to my old wife, or to my not-much-younger girlfriend, I still use the telephone, not telepathy...

...By error, my line must have been put into the metal page of the appeal...

...The shorter of the unemployed proofreaders was a slender man with thin lips, a wispy white beard, high red cheekbones and a receding forehead that reached half way back his skull to a small black yarmulke...

...To be completely on the safe side, I asked my boy to read the whole item out loud...

...Of course I was angry and cursed all the Yiddish typesetters with the vilest oaths...

...That Friday, his concoction seemed worse than ever, so I gave up in the middle and began to read the news...

...I knew our typesetters would make mincemeat out of it, but I had to use it...

...Here is ours: By this time, the few Club regulars who remained had crowded around the table, listening to the good doctor's story...

...But, who knows, maybe the appeal was delivered to The Moment a week early...

...I. B. Singer's brittiant story, "The Missing Line,"prompted the MOMENT staff to write a shghlty different ending, invoiving the addition of two paragraphs to the story as Singer wrote it...

...Anyhow, that Friday and Saturday I couldn't sleep and could barely eat...

...Then Gavza burst out laughing...

...I wanted to see the expression on his face when he saw what I saw...

...On the way to The Haint I decided it would be a good thing to find the manuscript of my feuilleton, assuming it wasn't thrown out...

...Does my cigar bother you...

...Let me tell you—about two years ago something happened to me which had all the earmarks of one of your miracles...

...On that day I quoted a phrase which offered a perfect target for misprints: the transcendental unity of the apperception...

...I decided to go on Sunday morning to speak to the manager of our printing department, my old friend, Mr...

...Only it could be...

...Somehow this was a disappointment to me...

...But a man of my age knows that events have a logic of their own...

...I was eager to find the solution to this riddle, but I didn't want the solution to be based on some silly blunder, ludicrous misunderstanding or lapse of memory...

...I asked if the copy of my article was still around, and lo and behold, they found it, and the words were there as I remembered them...

...Who was it who said that 99 percent of all writers die not from cancer or consumption but from misprints...

...Sometimes they make changes to adjust the appeal for the readers of the respective newspapers...

...I knew that it must be a hallucination...

...With my manuscript in one hand and The Moment in the other, I went to see Mr...

...But to me the greatest and most wonderful miracle is what Spinoza called the order of things...

...It should read: "He had a long gray beard...

...But no, the line with the words 'the transcendental unity of the apperception' was missing...

...Gavza...

...They seemed to play and doze simultaneously...

...And this was his explanation...

...It may sound like a sacrilege to you, but I find more human fallacies, more psychology, and even more entertainment in the daily press than in all your literary magazines...

...Only the week before and the week after...

...But I uttered a little prayer for the future, just in case...

...I closed my eyes, certain that when I opened them again the mirage would have vanished, but when I did, there it was—the unthinkable, the ridiculous, the absurd...

...Then they don't make a matrix but carry the whole metal page by car from one newspaper to the other for adjustments...

...Why make a good story too complicated...

...The Jewish National Fund often publishes an appeal in both The Haint and The Moment...

...It should have been "The chicken is not kosher...

...My son came into the room, and I must have looked as if I had seen a ghost, because he said to me, 'Papa, what's the matter?' I don't know why, but I said to him, 'Please, go down and buy me a copy of The Moment.' 'But you are reading The Moment right now,' my boy said...

...Here the words lingered in black type before me: the transcendental unity of the apperception...

...Your mystics feel insulted if things happen in what we call a natural way...

...Gottlieb paused, trying to revive his extinguished cigar, sucking at it violently...

...At first everything seemed quite smooth and I hoped against hope that this time I would be spared...

...I admit that even while disbelieving in what you call the supernatural, I often toyed with the idea that one day a phenomenon might occur which would force me to lose faith in logic and reality...

...I guess you want to publish a correction...

...He would not have invited a beginner like myself to his table, but there was no one else available at this hour, and he liked to talk and tell stories...

...Singer happily gave us his permission to publish these two paragraphs, which we do below...

...Send us your proposed endings...

...An Alternate Ending Great works of art often provoke creative thought in others...

...What brings you here on Sunday morning?' Gavza asked...

...I was sitting at a table with the most important member of the club—Joshua Gottlieb, the main feuilletonist of The Haint...

...Gottlieb, ignoring them all, picked himself up, strode through the small group of admiring listeners and walked into the night...

...About two years ago I happened to write an article about Kant, a jubilieum of a sort...

...I also know that no matter how many incantations I might have recited to retrieve them, the eyeglasses would have stayed in the drawer forever...

...Maybe someone glued in the line...

...Every week I read three proofs of my Friday feuilleton, but when they correct one mistake they immediately make another, and sometimes two, three, or four...

...The chances that such a thing should happen are not as small as one may think, considering our sort of typesetters and proofreaders,' Gavza said...

...Above all, they are the product of causality...

...Again and again he compared my manuscript with the line in The Moment...

...He gaped at the news item, at my manuscript, at me, at the paper, again at me, and said, 'Am I seeing things...

...They are the worst bunglers...

...Believe me, no one ever reads them.' 'No, I don't want to publish any corrections,' I said...

...We had so much fun writing them that we thought we would give our readers a simitar opportunity...

...No demon is as ignorant and as careless as our printer and printer's devils.' "We had a great laugh, and in honor of that historic solution, we went and had coffee and cake...

...Besides, the man who makes up the page layout has a tradition of losing at least one line from my feuilleton every time, and I often find it in another article, sometimes even in the news...

...Gavza...

...Especially strange were the misprints listed in the back of Yiddish books, such as: 'On page 69 it is printed, "She went to see her mother in Bialystok...

...The boy looked at me as if to say, 'The old man is meshugga altogether,' but he went down and bought another copy...

...No, it wasn't the demons, not even the angels...

...After a while, I decided I had suffered enough and began to read The Moment, our rival newspaper, to see what their feuilletonist, Mr...

...This must be some trick, some kind of practical joke...

...It should have said, "He went to see his former wife in Vilna...

...Is it possible that demons did the job...

...You certainly know—I don't need to tell you—that our typesetters on The Haint and in the Yiddish press generally make more errors than all the other typesetters in the whole world...

...I was absolutely convinced that no explanation of it was possible...

...In my imagination I took revenge on the typesetters, the editors, the proofreaders by shooting them, beating them, and making them memorize all my feuilletons since the year 1910...

...No one, and therein is its beauty...

...Gottlieb was tall, broad-shouldered, with' a straight red neck and a potbelly...

...It is the very essence of creation...

...Again he have me that look which meant, 'My father is not all there,' but he read it slowly...

...This line fell out of my article and appeared in The Moment last Friday...

...I guess you know that I don't have too high an opinion of fiction...

...Gottlieb was saying, ' 'You young men are in a rush to explain everything according to your theories...

...You may even call it the thing in itself...

...Tell me quickly before I burst,' I said...

...Helfman, had written that Friday...

...But this time it seemed to have been lost altogether...

...When he came to the transposed line, he smiled and asked, 'Is this why you wanted me to buy another copy?' I didn't answer...

...Mina, the cat, had forgotten she was a literary cat written up in the newspapers and went out in the yard to hunt for a mouse or perhaps a bird...

...I don't sleep nights because of these barbarians...