The Stories in My Life: Isaac Bashevis Singer's story set in Warsaw just before WWII explores complex ideas with simplicity

There are stories, read long ago, which live on in the backrooms of the mind, becoming perennial furnishings of our mental lives, refusing to fade even after the passage of decades. ‘They would come to class, wearing their gold-embroidered fraternity caps… always ready to provoke a fight.’ They even looked all of a kind, all true to type, ‘- as if their common hatred of the Jew had turned them into members of the same family.’ The professor is an old widower, cared for by his devoted servant, who had promised the professor’s dying wife that she would look after him in the lonely years ahead. When Tekla complains about the mess the birds make he retorts affectionately: ‘Little fool, everything that belongs to God’s creatures is clean.’ The conversations between master and servant are among the most endearing things about this story: ‘I’ve boiled the milk.’ ‘I don’t want any.’ ‘ Your throat will get dry.’ ‘Where is it written that the throat has to stay moist?’ ‘ It’s time for the professor’s medicine.’ ‘ What medicine? No heart can pump forever.’ They are two ancient people living in peace and what comes across as a scarcely noticed detail, because it hardly matters, is that while the Professor is a Jew, Tekla is Christian. ‘If this is our Poland, it should go up in flames!’- Tekla screams but the professor calms her down with the words: ‘Enough, Tekla, enough… there are many good people in Poland.’ In the privacy of his thoughts, he realises: ‘Sooner or later you have to feel everything on your own skin.’ The physical injury is bad, the hurt to his soul is worse.