On the bed lay a small man, stark naked, with a little black beard and gray in the middle. His high sunburned forehead was pink and peeling. A beak-like nose, marked by a pince-nez, projected from between two round bird-like eyes. His false teeth rested on the night table beside a book bearing the title Spirit and Reality. Professor Javitz scratched his hairy chest and from time to time glanced absently at his forearm. “God, so much hair,” he thought aloud, then, “Darwin was certainly right.” The beads of perspiration forming on the professor’s forehead clung to the dead skin. The air conditioning in his Miami hotel room was not functioning though he had put in a complaint to room service several hours before. There was nothing further he could do. Meanwhile the thermometer registered a sweltering 98 degrees, and the professor shifted uncomfortably in the wet bedclothes.
Author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903–1991) was the author of numerous novels, stories, memoirs, and children’s books. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. (Translated from the Yiddish by Martha Glicklich)