Chapters 21-30 Summary

21) The Joke: A Yiddish publisher in New York, Leibkind Bendel, has tried for years to start a correspondence with Alexander Walden, a Jewish philosopher living in Berlin at the time of the Second World War. He works out a scheme to get a letter from an aged Walden by having his wife write an admiring letter to the scholar posing as a millionairess infatuated with his work. The correspondence goes on for several years. Suddenly Walden announces he is coming to New York to meet the fictitious Eleanor Seligman-Braude. When he arrives, Liebkind informs him that Eleanor has just died in a plane crash. Confused, the old man goes to stay in an apartment provided by his friends. During the night he is taken ill and goes to the hospital where he dies.

22) Powers: A tall stranger drops by the newspaper...