The Cafeteria by Isaac Bashevis Singer - Summary

I

Aaron, 60-70 year old writer and lecturer, in New York, often eats at a cafeteria where he meets people who speak Yiddish from Poland and other artist types and talks with them. He is extremely familiar with his neighborhood. He lived in Poland for 30 years and then in his neighborhood for the same amount of time.

In the 1950s Esther joined the group who was a holocaust survivor. She was still happy and admired Aaron's work and this charmed him. Her father told him about life in Siberia.

II

Aaron had to leave for Israel and when he came back he couldn't find her. He goes to look for her in the cafeteria and find it has burned down. He can't be bothered to keep searching. Half a year later he goes to the library and finds her. She says she has been sick as has her father. She does not want an idiot husband or an uncouth husband. They discuss the afterlife; Aaron is optimistic whereas Esther is pessimistic.

III

The cafeterianiks came back. They keep talking to him about his work. Lots of refugees and survivors go there. Years later he meets Esther again. They have both grown older, and Esther is bitter and disillusioned it seems. She starts ranting about reparation money and her health and how she's not getting any because she escaped to Russia.

IV

Esther calls Aaron, distressed. He invites her to his apartment. She comes up. She says she decided to confide in him because of the person he was as she discerned from his work. She confesses she saw Hitler in the cafeteria one night with a group of Nazis and ran home. They explore the reasons behind this, Aaron claiming it is a vision and Esther denying this. Aaron suggests she tell the psychiatrist to get compensation money but she doesn't like the idea. He wonders if the same sort of thing would happen to him.

V

He is afraid Esther would call him but she doesn't. He becomes more and more successful and as he does he has increasing fear of his apartment catching fire. He goes to Toronto via subway and train, because he can't get a taxi, and sees Esther looking good with a man he knew from the cafeteria twenty years before. The more he thinks about the encounter, the stranger it seems to him – he even thinks he had read that the man died. He starts seeing heavenly bodies behaving strangely and getting death conflated with life. Esther's Hitler story seems more plausible. He returns from Toronto and an ex-Rabbi tells him she died. He resolves to find out more about Esther, but grows busy and doesn't. He concedes that corpses do walk on Broadway.

Isaac Bashevis Singer