For several years, Father would get up before sunrise and travel on sooty buses up to Bethlehem and Ramallah, down to Jericho, out to Lydda, to supervise the villagers' cattle on behalf of the government.

The orange grove near the settlement of Nes Tsiyona began to yield a modest income, which he deposited, along with part of his government salary, in the Anglo-Palestine Bank. He furnished his small house in Tel Arza with a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and bookshelves. Above his desk he hung a large picture of his mother's uncle the famous geographer. Hans Walter Landauer looked down on Father with an expression of skepticism and mild surprise, particularly in the evenings.

As he traveled around the villages, Father collected rare thistles. He also gathered some fossils and pieces of ancient pottery. He arranged them all with great care. And he waited.

Meanwhile, silence cut him of? from his mother and sisters in Silesia.

As the years went by, Father learned to speak a little Arabic. He also learned loneliness. He put off composing his great poem. Every day he learned something new about the land and its inhabitants, and occasionally even about himself. He still saw in his dreams the cattle farm in Galilee, although the cellar and attic now seemed to him unnecessary, perhaps even childish. One evening, he even said aloud to his granduncle's pic toe:

"We'll see. All in good time. I'm just as determined as you are. You may laugh, but I don't care. Laugh as much as you like."

At night, by the light of his desk lamp, Father kept a journal in which he recorded his fears for his mother and sisters, the oppressiveness of the dry desert wind, certain peculiarities of some of his acquaintances, and the flavor of his travels among Godforsaken villages. He set down in carefully chosen words various professional lessons he had learned in the course of his work. He committed to writing some optimistic reflections about the progress of the Jewish community in various spheres. He even formulated, after several revisions, a few arguments for and against loneliness, and an embarrassed hope for a love that might come to him, too, one day. Then he carefully tore out the page and ripped it into tiny pieces. He also published, in the weekly The Young Worker, an article in favor of drinking goats' milk.

When he was not away on his wanderings, Ephraim used to sit all morning daydreaming among the broken irons and phonographs and antiquated radios. Sometimes he would explode with rage and attack these useless gadgets with screwdriver and pliers. He dismantled them completely, combined parts from different sources, and succeeded in transforming a heap of worthless junk into a gleaming piece of modern equipment. His favorite word was "rejuvenation." His work, as he described it, was to rejuvenate antediluvian equipment whose owners had given it up as beyond repair. But when his fit of rage had passed, he lapsed once more into drowsiness. The gray summer dust settled everywhere. Flies buzzed busily, while a spider lay in wait for them in its thicket in the corner. Ephraim would yawn like a whining fox, stretch himself furiously, spit twice on the floor, and repair Mrs. Vishniak's iron almost as an afterthought. Then he would plunge back into his usual morning reverie.

At lunchtime, he would fry potatoes for us all and share some sausages with his father. Then he would strip off his overalls and collapse onto the sweaty mattress in his underwear, as if exhausted by a hard morning's work. He slept restlessly till the onset of twilight, while we guarded him from the girls.

But in the evenings, I saw Ephraim come to hidden life, and then I was truly his lieutenant. He shinned up the drainpipe like a shadowy cat, rigged up various antennas on the roof, and began experimenting with frequencies. My task was to sit in the dark workshop among the glowing receivers and write down what I heard. Until I was called home to bed, and he continued on his own to search relentlessly for the single elusive signal that he was trying to isolate from the stream of astral rays.

Once he condescended to favor me with a simplified explanation. Gravity is a form of radiation. Here, look: in my left hand a hammer, in my right a cigarette; they both hit the ground at exactly the same time, but not with the same impact. Nature always contrives to produce opposing pairs: life and death, fire and water, hope and despair. So there must be some contrary ray somewhere that counteracts the ray of gravity and once we've found it everything will be possible and now just you scram and forget everything you've heard.

I could not understand the scientific meaning of all this. But as a military man myself, I fully realized what fate lay in store for the British Empire once we had mastered this secret ray.

At half past four there was another meeting of the local committee in my apartment. As I must have written to you already, even Kerem Avraham is setting up its own civil-defense council.

Four or five representatives of the neighbors came, including Mrs. Litvak, who qualified as a nurse before she married. She brought some homemade biscuits with her, and refused to allow me to help her serve the coffee; all I had to do was to tell her where I kept the sugar and the tray — no, no need, she'd already found them. She had found the lemon, too. And how wonderfully tidy my kitchen was! She would bring her husband, Litvak, here one day to let him see with his own eyes and learn a thing or two. The head of a school for workers' children, and he couldn't even wash a glass properly. Still, it was her fate. She mustn't complain.

And so the meeting began, while we were still being served coffee and shortcake, and I was being treated like a guest in my own home.

"Well," said Mrs. Litvak, "let's get down to business. Dr. Nussbaum, would you like to begin."

"Perhaps we might take up where we left off last week," I suggested. "There's no need to start from scratch every time."

"We were talking about the possibility of an apartment we could use as an HQ," Comrade Lustig said, "somewhere where the committee could organize itself, which could be manned day and night in an emergency. Or at least a room, or a basement."

He spoke standing up, and when he had finished he sat down. Lustig is a little man, with puffy bags under his brown eyes, and a perpetual look of silent amazement on his face, as though he has just been called some terrible name in the street for no reason. Zevulun Grill, a flaming redhead, whose two missing front teeth give him the look of a dangerous brawler, added:

"We were also talking about a radio transmitter. And, as usual, we did nothing about it."

Ephraim Nehamkin, the curly-haired radio technician, nodded his head twice, as if Grill's words corresponded precisely to what one might expect from him, and anyone who harbored any illusions about him had better wake up before it was too late.

"Ephraim," I said, "it might be better if we conducted our discussion by means of words, rather than dumb show. Perhaps you'd like to tell us all what has made you so angry?"

"We've got one," Ephraim growled. "It's always the same old story with us: we talk about the past instead of the present."

"What have we got?"

"A radio. Didn't I say last week that I was putting a battery transmitter together for you. Anyway," he suddenly exploded, "what the hell do we need a transmitter for? To beg the English to do us a favor and stay here to save us from the Arabs? To prick the conscience of the world with biblical quotations? To explain nicely to the Arabs that they mustn't kill us, otherwise there'll be no one to cure their ringworm and their trachoma? What's the point of this whole committee, with two doctors and a bus driver? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Don't get so steamed up," Nachtshe said, smiling. "Simmer down. Everything'll be all right."

Nachtshe is a slim, strongly built young man who is a sort of occasional leader in one of the Socialist youth movements. His short trousers displayed his muscular, hairy legs. His hair was tousled. You must have heard of his father, Professor Guttmacher, the expert on Oriental mysticism, a world-famous scholar who is semiparalyzed. Sometimes, in the evenings, Nachtshe and his young charges light campfires in the woods, carry out night exercises with quarterstaves, or make the neighborhood re-echo to songs of rage and longing sung to Russian tunes.

"Instead of poking fun, why don't you tell us what you suggest," Grill demanded of Ephraim Nehamkin.

"An attack," Ephraim erupted in a deep growl, as if his heart were hoarse with emotion. "Organize a raid. That's what I suggest. Take the initiative. Go out to the villages. Shu'afat. Sheikh Jarrah. Issawiya. Burn down the mufti's house in the middle of the night. Or blow up the Najjara HQ. Hoist the blue-and-white flag on the minaret of Nabi Samwil, or even on the Temple Mount. Why not. Let's make them tremble, at long last. Let them start sending us deputations. Let them plead. What's the matter with us all."

At this point, Dr. Kipnis, the vet from Tel Arza, intervened. He was standing with his back to the window, wearing a gray battle-dress blouse and neatly pressed long khaki trousers. As he spoke, he kneaded his brown cap between his fingers, and he looked not at Ephraim but at Mrs. Litvak, as though she — or her black coif — were giving him hints on some vital principle.

"It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen," he began cautiously, "that we are venturing along the wrong road. I may claim to have some acquaintance with the neighboring villages."

"Of course you have," Ephraim whispered venomously. "Only they know you, too, and other Jews like you, and that's what's whetted their appetite."

"Excuse me," said Dr. Kipnis, "I didn't mean to get into an argument with you about your principles. At any rate, not at this moment. All I wanted to do was to try to evaluate the present situation, to discover what the possible lines of development are, and to make one or two suggestions."

"Let's get organized!" Comrade Lustig suddenly exclaimed, and he even thumped on the table. "Quit chattering! Let's get organized!"

As for me, the chairman, it was only with some difficulty that I resisted the temptation to return Nachtshe's fleeting smile, which was apparently directed at me alone.

"Dr. Kipnis," I said, "please continue. And it would be better if we did not keep interrupting one another."

"Very well. We have three possibilities open to us," said Dr. Kipnis, raising three piteously thin fingers and folding one of them back with each possibility he enumerated. "Firstly, the committee hands the whole country over to the Arabs, and we have to choose between a new Masada and a new Yavneh. Second, it recommends partition, and the Arabs either accept the verdict or have it imposed on them with the help of foreign powers. Not the British, naturally. In this eventuality, one of our tasks will be to be prepared for possible riots and — at the same time — to attempt to restore good relations with the Arab districts that surround us. To bury the hatchet, as they say."

"They must be driven out," Ephraim said wearily, "expelled, kicked out, what's the matter with you, let them go back to the desert where they belong. This is Jerusalem, Mr. Kipnis, the Land of Israel — maybe you've forgotten that, with your appeasement."

"Thirdly," the vet continued, apparently determined not to be deflected from his purpose by provocations, "total war. And in that case our local committee will not, of course, function independently, but will await orders from the national institutions."

"That's what I said," Lustig exclaimed delightedly, "we must get organized, organized, and again organized!"

"Dr. Kipnis," I insisted, "what exactly are you suggesting?"

"Yes, well. First of all, a delegation representing us, the Jewish districts of northwest Jerusalem, approaches the Jewish Agency, to explain the special difficulties arising from our geographical situation and to request instructions. I propose Dr. Nussbaum, Mrs. Litvak, and, naturally, Comrade Nachtshe. Second, a meeting with our neighbors. I mean the sheikhs and mukhtars. I am willing to volunteer myself for this assignment. We inform them that we, the inhabitants of the Jewish districts of northwest Jerusalem, will not take any hostile initiative, but will continue, no matter what happens to maintain neighborly relations. So that if they nevertheless choose the course of bloodshed, all the responsibility will fall on them, and they must accept the consequences and cannot complain that they have not been warned. And now I suggest that Comrade Nachtshe talk to us about the defense of our districts. He should at least outline the plans, on the assumption that we may have to withstand a local assault on our own for a while. That is all I have to say."

"Then I suggest that we start erecting barricades," said Lustig, and suddenly he burst out laughing. "Imagine — our Kerem Avraham as the Zionist Stalingrad."

"Let's be practical, please," I urged. "We still have to settle the allocation of tasks and so on."

"There's no risk," Ephraim remarked sadly, "of anyone here being practical. Forget it. Not here. Not in this Judenrat."

"I must insist," I said, with unnecessary sharpness.

Meanwhile, Nachtshe had returned from the kitchen. He had clearly made himself at home. He was chewing vigorously on a thick sandwich. From his bloodstained chin I detected that, besides cheese and onion, he had put some slices of tomato in it.

"Sorry," he said with a grin. "I was famished, so I raided your icebox. I didn't want to ask permission, in case I interrupted your symposium." As he spoke, he dropped crumbs shamelessly on the armchair and the rug. More crumbs clung to his mustache.

"Feel free," I said.

"Good," said Nachtshe. "Have we got over the ideological stage yet? Right. Well, then."

Nobody spoke. Even Comrade Lustig was silent for once.

"The English are going to pull out soon. That much is certain. And we're going to have problems. But I don't want to talk about the problems now. I'm here to talk about solutions. Well, then. We've got arms in the neighborhood. Only light arms at the moment. And thank God we've got a few boys who know what to do with them. We needn't go into details now. Sonya. Mrs. Litvak, I mean. You get all the old dears together in your apartment tomorrow — as you were today — to sew bags. Never mind what from. That's instead of knitting balaclava helmets for the troops. Balaclava helmets you can knit us another time. I need a thousand, twelve hundred bags. The youngsters can fill them with sand and gravel. They'll be used firstly for armed positions, then for windows in general. Protection against bullets and shells. Next. As of tomorrow morning, we keep a permanent watch on Schneller from the Kolodnys' balcony. That's another job for the youngsters. And another lookout post on Kapitanski's roof, toward Sheikh Jarrah and the police training school. I want Litvak to release twenty or thirty boys from the school for this, so that we know precisely what Tommy and Ahmed are both up to. Next. In the event that the English do pull out, or if we see that they're going to hand over the keys to King Abdullah's Bedouins, my boys will chip in and take over Schneller. That's got nothing to do with your committee, of course, but I wanted you to know, so that you can sleep soundly at night. Next. Communications. Ephraim. Tonight we'll come and look over what you've been putting together there, and if it's really what you say it is, then we'll tune you into Hagganah HQ. You and Lustig will take turns listening in, twenty-four hours a day. You'll sit quietly with the earphones on, and you won't argue with each other; you won't get up unless you need to take a piss or you have something to report to me. Now you, Grill. Listen carefully. There are two things. First, start collecting gardening tools from all over the district in your shed. Never mind whether people like it or not — requisition them. Whatever you can find, except watering cans. Spades, forks, hoes, everything. At a signal from me — as you were; at a signal from an authorized person — you and a few other neighbors grab the tools and get cracking, dig up the road at the bottom of Zephaniah Street, at the corner of Amos and Geulah, and the Tel Arza road. Dig in zigzags. Yes. Trenches. So they don't hit us with armor. And another thing, Grill. The HQ will be in your bedroom. That's because your house has three exits. You've got two days to get your wife out before we move in. Now, Kipnis. You, Kipnis, are not going to talk to the sheikhs and mukhtars. We don't want to risk any of the boys to go and rescue your mutilated corpse. Let's face it, doctor, after the war — by all means, why not, you're welcome to go and smoke the pipe of peace with them, and I'll even come with you for a good shish kebab. But in the meantime, if you're so set on your idea, why not send every sheikh a special-delivery registered letter proposing good neighborly relations. Go ahead. If it works, I shall personally beat my sword into a dagger. But till then, you just stay here and take charge of the grocer, the greengrocer, and the kerosene man for me. Make sure they bring in whatever they can get hold of. Only no black market and no panic. That's right, Sonya: hoarding. You heard. I want all the women to lay in supplies of canned food, biscuits, kerosene, sugar, as much as they can. Now let's talk about water. I want all the members of this committee — yes, all of you — to go from house to house and help move the water cisterns down from the roofs into the cellars. And then make sure they're full. And I want Almaliah to start making us tanks in his workshop. Water tanks, Ephraim, that's what I'm talking about, so don't jump off your chair. To begin with, anyway. Now our host. Nussbaum. You go to old Mrs. Vishniak's pharmacy tomorrow morning and check exactly what she's got and what she needs. Whatever she's short of, order it, at the committee's expense. And plenty of it. Your apartment here will be the first-aid station, with morphine and dressings and whatever else you need. Another thing: you, Grill, gradually start getting in supplies of gasoline for us. From your bus company or out of the rocks, I don't care where it comes from. Fifty gallons or so. The children are to collect several hundred bottles, and we — that's Ephraim and I — we'll start mixing cocktails. Nussbaum, you said you had something to suggest on this subject? Very good. But not now. It doesn't interest everyone. Now, is there anything else?"

"Yes," said Lustig, "we need to have some cyanide or something. If the Arabs do manage to get through despite everything, they'll butcher the children and violate the women. We need to be organized against even the worst eventualities."

"We're not in Warsaw now," said Nachtshe. "And if you come out with things like that outside this room, you'll be in trouble. And that's that."

"All right," muttered Comrade Lustig. "I've got the message."

"Any more questions?"

"Excuse me," I said. "What happens if the English don't pull out? Or if they hand over the whole of Jerusalem en bloc to King Abdullah?"

"If they don't go, they don't go. Don't ask me questions like that, ask Ben-Gurion. Who do you think I am? Right, then. Sonya, give these good people another cup of coffee. They're looking a bit pale all of a sudden. Dr. Nussbaum, thank you for your hospitality. I must be off now. As of lunchtime the day after tomorrow, anyone who wants me can find me or Akiva or Yigal in the Grills' bedroom. By the way, if the English come along to search or ask questions, don't forget that this district has a committee. Nobody knows me. I don't exist. Let the doctors talk to them. Nussbaum or Kipnis. That's all. Only don't worry, anybody: we haven't lost our hope, as the song says. Just one thing more: Ephraim, I want to say I'm sorry. If I've upset you at all, I didn't mean to. And now, good-bye."

He brushed the crumbs from his mustache, wiped the tomato juice off his chin, bared his perfect teeth in a broad grin, and left.

Hans Kipnis remarked softly:

"What can one say?"

Ephraim said:

"Don't you start all over again. You heard what you were told: you can write letters to all the sheikhs in the neighborhood."

Sonya Litvak said:

"Pray God he takes care of himself. What boys!"

Comrade Lustig:

"Like Cossacks. Always talking instead of getting organized. They'll end up by killing us, heaven forbid!"

And Dr. Nussbaum, dear Mina, your Dr. Nussbaum, said in an indulgent, ironic tone:

"With your permission, it seems to me that the meeting is over."

In my mind's eye I followed this angry, lissome youth as he disappeared from my apartment into the evening shadows. Nachtshe, short for Menahem or Nahum, Guttmacher, in his shorts, with his tousled hair, his eyes the color of late-summer dust, his loneliness. No doubt he went back to his comrades, in the woods or the wadi. Dropping with fatigue, perhaps. Probably he hasn't eaten a proper meal in days. And I asked myself: Has he known a woman, and if so, was it the same way as he tore into the sandwich, or was he perhaps trembling, confused?

And what could I do, Mina? What would you have done in my place? Trusted him and said nothing? Rebuked him and made fun of his bravado? Tried to analyze his dreams? Or perhaps fallen in love and conquered him for yourself?

I feel at a loss. Perhaps I should have silenced him, squashed his arrogance, called him to order? But could I have done it? In my heart of hearts, as you must surely have guessed, I had made him into the secret child you bore me and hid from me in a kibbutz somewhere in Galilee, or in the valleys; he had grown up surrounded by horses and agricultural machinery, and now he had come up to Jerusalem to rescue us all. I must stop and conclude this letter at once.

Only this: when my visitors had left, while I was still washing the coffee cups and picking the crumbs off my rug, the sky suddenly altered. A damp, icy rage began to blow up from the northwest. Gone was the savage blue. Jerusalem darkened. Subsided. Then the first drops, and it was wintry night outside. I shall also start collecting empty bottles. At any rate, Nachtshe will have to come to me to learn what to put into a Molotov cocktail if he wants it to blow up an armored car. I shall stop now. I'll take a pill. I won't go to bed, I'll spend this rainy night in my laboratory. Time is short. Henry Gurney, the British administration secretary, is on the radio urging the members of all communities in Palestine to calm down and maintain law and order until the situation improves. The "Voice of Jerusalem" announcer translates into official Hebrew: It is strictly forbidden to congregate in the streets, it is forbidden to interfere with the normal course of life.

September 8, 1947

Dear Mina,

The rain was light. Not the autumn rains yet, but a slow night drizzle. This morning the city brightened again, and a damp, fresh smell rose from the gardens. Even the falling leaves today were washed clean of dust. I could not get to sleep until just before the dawn. I did not even want to. An idea for a formula kept running through my head after yesterday's meeting, a simple, fascinating chemical possibility, and I could not relax. From time to time the pain became so intense that the desk, the ceiling, and the walls went misty. I deliberately did without an injection, because it seemed to me that it was precisely in this mist that my hope of clarifying my idea lay. You are smiling. The notion of illumination or inspiration coming out of a fog of pain may strike you as immature romanticism. So be it. I even jotted down in the night various symbols and figures on a scrap of paper. Suddenly, long after midnight, as the Schneller clock struck three or two, with my tongue and palate parched from thirst and pain, in a mood of ecstatic longing, I had the feeling that I had discovered the way to produce a chain reaction by an amazingly simple means, with no need for fantastic temperatures. A way of releasing energy from the cheapest and commonest substances. It may be precisely thus that the elemental life force may erupt with holy dreadfulness in the mind of, say, a composer who hears in the night the strains of his final symphony, which is not yet his, and who knows that there is no way of capturing it in notes. Ecstasy and despair. I can decipher the meaning of all this: it is the rumor of approaching death. The bit of paper I scrawled on in the night is in front of me now, and it is all nonsense. Scientific ravings in the style of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. It is worthless. What is more, at the time I was so feverish that I could see the Dead Sea blazing in the eastward-facing window, illuminating the night with a kind of mineral glare as of hellfire, and I did not doubt for a moment that my nocturnal discovery was already operating in the outside world. In a twilight. You and Uri were con coding something in the laboratory. You and Jasmine and Nachtshe on the rug, making love and calling me to join you. And outside a mushroom of fire bursting into the heart of the night sky, while I, with the help of a simple mirror, followed it from here, from my room, over the mountains and across the valleys. I fell asleep fully dressed again, toward dawn, on the floor of my laboratory, and in my sleep I knew that the time had come to send for Dushkin, and with him came Rabbi Zweik, the sick mystic from Safed, and together they tried to talk you into agreeing that the only way to arrest the tumor in my glands was to operate and remove my head, while you maintained strenuously that a heavy concentration of X-rays directed at a mixture of sodium and phosphorus would unleash a chain reaction that would save my life and also radically alter the overall military situation.

In the morning, after my coffee and a shave, I found I had a slight temperature and also some blurring of vision. I could read the newspaper, and I can still write. But when I reached out to pick up a piece of buttered toast from the kitchen table, I missed and upset a pot of yogurt. I may add, with no reference at all to this development, that a British reconnaissance plane has been circling low over Jerusalem since the early hours of this morning, perhaps because it was announced semiofficially in this morning's paper that the commission of inquiry will indeed recommend the partition of the country, and that Jerusalem and Bethlehem will be under international control, and will not be handed over either to the Jews or to the Arabs. It was Uri who told me, on his way home from school, that without Jerusalem there would be no Hebrew state, or else a terrible war would break out between the Hagganah and the Palmach, on the one hand, and the Irgun and the Stern Group on the other, and that that was precisely what the British were planning.

Incidentally, he is now in command of my laboratory. He does whatever he likes. He made me comfortable on the sofa, covered me with a woolen blanket, made me some lemon tea, and even selected a record and put it on the phonograph to please me. He also put a hot-water bottle on my feet. And while I was lying there, too weak to object, the boy began unloading a crate of empty bottles. Then he went to the laboratory to brew some concoction, chop off match heads, mix solutions. I am gradually being driven out of my own home: Nachtshe and Sonya Litvak in my kitchen, Uri in my laboratory, you in my dreams. Soon I shall leave.

"Be careful there, Uri."

"I'm only doing what you showed me, Dr. Emanuel, don't worry, I'm doing exactly what it says in your notes on the desk here, and when you're better we'll work together again."

I am at peace. Mozart on the phonograph, and from the laboratory sounds of test tubes, the spirit lamp, simmering.

Outside, at the window, another early-autumn evening.

The simple, searing, trivial things, what urgent information are they straining to convey to me. The fading light, Mina, the cawing of crows, a yelping dog, a ringing bell, these things have been since time immemorial and will go on being forever. I can even hear a train hooting in the distance, toward Emek Refaim. And a baby crying. And the woman next door singing a Polish song. The simple, familiar, trivial things — why do they seem to be taking their leave of me tonight. And what am I to do except turn to the wall and die at once. At once, too, like an electric shock, this limpid certainty strikes me: there is a meaning. There is a reason. Perhaps there is a way. And there is still some time left for me to try to discover the meaning, the purpose. Only a sadness continues to gnaw: I have lived some forty years. I was banished, more or less, from one country to another. Here I have even achieved something, to the best of my modest ability. Here, too, I loved you. And now you are gone and I am still here. But not for long. I am being rudely banished from this place, too. And the conclusion, Mina, the moral, the reason? What, as they say here, is the matter at hand?

Maybe this: Autumn outside, and everything is closing in. Something needs to be done. It needs to be done immediately, hopeless though it may be. What it is, I wish I knew. The present moment — is irrevocable. It has been, and it is no more.

I remember: A summer's day in Vienna. Early afternoon. A nip in the air. Wispy clouds suspended in a pale, almost gray sky. In the street there is a subtle blend of smells, fried meat, garbage, and flowering gardens. Perhaps also the perfume of passing women. The cafes are crowded. Through their windows can be seen gentlemen ia light suits, smoking, arguing, or doing business. Others are leafing through magazines or doing the crossword puzzle. Some are playing chess. I am on my habitual way home from the faculty library. My heart is empty. There is a slight temptation, not a real desire, to go and spend the evening with Charlotte or Margot on the first floor of the Weary Heart. As I pass the bridge, I pause for a moment. There, just by the bridge, stand a pair of Negro beggars. One is beating a drum while the other is wailing a kind of tune. There is a hat on the sidewalk with a few pennies in it. Neither of them is young. Neither of them is old, either. It is as if they are outside the European age scale, subject to another biological clock.

I stop and linger, watching them from a short distance away. Not long ago I took a course in anthropology, yet I believe these are the first Negroes I have ever seen. Outside the circus, of course. Yes, they are woolly-haired. Coffee-skinned, not cocoa-colored. A slight shudder ripples through me. I brush aside a fleeting mental image of the shape of their sexual organs. The taller of the two, the one who is wailing or singing, has a pierced nose but no nose ring. The other one's nose is so amazingly long and flat that it revives the suppressed image of their sexual organs. I can neither leave nor take my eyes off them. I am chained to the spot, as it were, by fear, fascination, and disgust. They are standing with their backs to the bridge and the water. One is wearing sandals held together with bits of string, the other a pair of large, worn-out shoes and no socks. I am suddenly overcome with shame, like the time when, as a child, I was caught gaping at the low neckline of my Aunt Crete's dress. Hurriedly I toss a coin into the hat.

Something is urging me, after all, to head for the Weary Heart, to spend the evening with Charlotte or Margot, or even both together for a change. But my feet are rooted to the ground. I look at my watch, pretending to be waiting for someone. And I wait. In any case, without prior arrangement by telephone there can be no Margot or Charlotte.

Just then a group of youngsters in the uniform of a national youth movement draws to a halt beside the black beggars. I am fixed to the spot. They are quiet-looking boys, handsome, thirsty for knowledge, all with close-cropped hair, and from their bronzed skin one senses that their prolonged hikes in the mountains and forests have instilled in them an element of military toughness, although without undermining their fundamental good manners. Then their leader steps forward. He is a short, taut, athletic man of middle years, with ruthlessly cropped gray hair and thin, molded lips. There is something about his gait or the set of his shoulders that suggests that he would be equally at home on a river, alone in the mountains, or in a spacious mansion. The sort of man that my father longs for his only son to resemble, at least in outward appearance. The leader is wearing the same clean, neatly pressed uniform, distinguished only by his lanyard and by the colors of his badges and epaulets. He starts to explain something to the youths. His voice is clipped. Each short sentence ends in a bark. As he speaks, he waves a finger in the air; he has no compunction about pointing it an inch or two from the head of the nearer of the two Negroes. He indicates the outline of the skull. He emphasizes and demonstrates. I edge closer, to catch what he is saying. He is expatiating in a Bavarian accent on the subject of racial difference. His short lecture, as far as I can follow it, is a blend of anthropology, history, and ideology. The rhythm: staccato.

Some of his charges produce identical notebooks and pencils from the pockets of their brown shirts and take eager notes. The two Negroes, meanwhile, grin relaxedly from ear to ear. They roll their eyes ingratiatingly. They are brimming with good will, perhaps stupidity, innocent gaiety, respect, and gratitude. I must admit that at this moment they look to me like a pair of stray dogs about to be taken in by a new master. And all the while the leader is employing such words as evolution, selection, degeneration. From time to time he snaps his fingers loudly, and the two Negroes respond as one man with high-pitched laughs and flashing, milk-white teeth.

The leader holds out his thumb and forefinger, measures their foreheads without touching them, then measures his own and says, "Also."

The short lecture concludes with the word "Zivilisation."

The boys put their pencils and notebooks back in their pockets. The spell is broken. Silently they go on their way. To me they look very worried as they march briskly away downstream, toward the city center and the museums. For an instant they resemble a military patrol, a forward-reconnaissance party that has stumbled on an outlying detachment of enemy troops, disengaged and retreated to seek reinforcements.

The spell was broken. I, too, resumed my homeward journey. On the way, ruminating, I was almost inclined to agree: Europe is indeed in danger. The jungle races are indeed on the threshold. Our music, our laws, our sophisticated system of commerce, our subtle irony, our sensitivity to double meanings and ambiguities — all are in mortal peril. The jungle races are on the threshold. And surely history teaches us that the Mongol hordes have already swept once out of the depths of Asia and reached the very banks of the Danube and the gates of Vienna.

At home, Lisel was silently serving dinner. Father was also silent. His face was overcast. Business was going from bad to worse. There was an ugly atmosphere in the city. Things would never be the same again. On the radio, a minister was vowing to crush Communism, cosmopolitanism, and other destructive elements. The government had displayed great forbearance toward the parasites, the minister declared, and had been repaid only with ingratitude. Father turned it off. Still he said nothing. Perhaps he privately blamed the Eastern Jews who were pouring in in droves, bringing us nothing but trouble. I, too, ate my dinner in silence, and retired to my room. Margot, her shoulders, her neck, was still at the edge of my thoughts. And what could I tell Father? He was always convinced that his only son was up to his neck in student flirtations and had no idea what was going on in the city and the world.

At midnight, I went downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water and found him sitting there alone, in his dressing gown, silently smoking, with his eyes closed.

"Are you in pain again, Father?"

He opened an eye.

"What are you blathering about, Emanuel?"

And after a short silence:

"I got some Zionist prospectuses in the mail today. Brochures from Palestine. With pictures."

I shrugged, excused myself, said good night, and returned to my room.

Precisely a week later, the letter arrived.

It was anonymous. On the envelope Father's name was typed, in correct style, with the address of his factory. He opened it in the presence of his secretary, Inge, and suddenly his world went dark. Inside the envelope there was a small sheet of good-quality notepaper, with a watermark and gold-embossed edges, but with no heading, date, or signature. There was just a single word, inscribed in the very middle of the page, in a fine, rounded hand: Jude. And an exclamation point.

What do you think of that, Inge, Father asked as soon as he had recovered his voice. It's a fact, Inge replied politely, and she added: There's nothing to get upset about, Herr Doktor. It's just a plain fact.

Father muttered, with bloodless lips: Have I ever denied it, Inge, I have never attempted to deny it.

In less than a month, an eager buyer was found for the house with its beautiful garden. A partnership in Linz purchased the factory. Inge was frostily dismissed, while Lisel was packed off to her village in the mountains with an old suitcase full of Mother's clothes.

Father and I had no difficulty in getting immigration certificates for Palestine from the British consul himself: the privilege of wealth.

Father had already managed to collect information and draw up detailed plans for the establishment of a small factory in a new town not far from Tel Aviv. He had already learned something about conditions there and had even made certain calculations. But from time to time, he would talk about his longing to be speedily reunited with Mother in a world where there was no evil. Old family friends still tried to reason with him, arguing, pleading with him to reconsider. They were of the opinion that shock and humiliation had provoked a self-destructive impulse in him. The Viennese Jews firmly believed at that time that everything could be explained by psychology, and that the situation would soon improve because whole nations do not suddenly take leave of their senses.

Father was like a rock: gray and unshakable.

Nevertheless, he adamantly refused to admit that Dr. Herzl had foreseen all this. On the contrary, he argued, it was Dr. Herzl and his friends who had plunged us all into this mess.

But a year later, in Ramat Gan, he changed his mind completely. He even joined the General Zionist party.

I received my medical diploma four days before our departure, on the morning we got our visas. I was summoned to the rector's office. They explained politely that they did not think I would feel comfortable at the official graduation ceremony, they were bound to take into account the general mood of the students, and so they had decided to hand me my diploma informally, in a plain buff envelope. Wide vistas, they said, opened up for a young doctor in western Asia. The ignorance, dirt, and disease there were unbelievable. They even mentioned Albert Schweitzer, who was healing lepers in the middle of the jungle in Africa. They mistakenly stressed that Schweitzer, too, was of Jewish extraction. Then they turned to the bitter feelings I must be harboring in my heart, and begged me to remember, even when I was far away, how much Vienna had given me, and not only that she had humiliated me. They wished me bon voyage and, after a slight hesitation, shook hands.

I do indeed remember. And what I feel in my heart is neither bitterness nor humiliation but — how can I write it when I can see before me the expression of cold irony on your mouth and the cigarette smoke pouring contemptuously from your nostrils — Jewish sorrow and rage. No, not in my heart, in the marrow of my bones. I won't make homemade explosives for the Hagganah. I'll make them the ultimate explosive. I shall surprise Uri, Nachtshe, Ben-Gurion himself. If only my strength holds out. I myself shall be the jungle races on the threshold. I am the Mongol hordes.

I'm joking again, as usual, at the wrong time, as usual, joking without being funny, in my usual ludicrous way.

We reached Palestine by way of the Tirol, Trieste, Piraeus, and a French steamship. Father did indeed set up a candy factory in Ramat Gan that became well known. He even married again, a husky, bejeweled refugee from southern Poland. Perhaps it was his wife's influence that made him become an active member of the General Zionist Council and of several committees.

He occasionally sends me money. Unnecessarily. I have enough of my own.

Twice a year, at Passover and the New Year, I used to visit them and spend a few days among the vases, tea sets, and chandeliers. In the evenings there was a stream of visitors: middle-aged men of affairs, party workers and businessmen, middlemen who enjoyed choolant and snuff and cracked bawdy jokes in three languages with chesty, man-of-the-world laughter. "Felix," they would say as they winked at Father, "Reb Pinhasel, when are you going to marry off the boy? When are you going to initiate him into the mysteries of business? What are they saying about him, a Socialist you've got in your family?" While Father's wife, with a gold watch held between the jaws and tail of a gold snake wrapped around her freckled wrist, would leap to my defense: "What do you mean, business? Business nothing. Our Emanuel will soon be a professor at the Hadassah, and we'll all have to line up for three months before he'll so much as look at us, and even then only as a special favor."

I did indeed work at Hadassah for a while and put up uncomplainingly with Alexander Dushkin's rumbustious despotism. One evening he summoned me to his home in Kiryat Shemuel, and at the end of the tea, the jokes, and the gossip, I was informed: "Next week you're being handed over lock, stock, and barrel to the government of Palestine. To the bacteriological department. They've issued me an ultimatum to hand over to them some first-rate Svidrigai'lov who'll keep an eye on the whole water supply of Jerusalem and the surrounding area. So I sold you to them right away. Free, gratis, and for nothing. I didn't even claim my thirty pieces of silver. The pay's not bad, and you'll be able to travel around at His Majesty's expense, from Hebron to Jericho and from Ramallah to Rosh Ha'ayin. You'll have your own private empire. You'll like O'Leary. He's an educated, cultivated sort of chap. Not like me, a Tartar cannibal. You and I, Nussbaum, let's speak frankly, well, you're more the phlegmatic type, while I'm a madman — anyway, we're horses of a different color. I just want to say, Emanuel," Dushkin suddenly roared, as his eyes filled with tears "that you'll always find my door and my heart open to you. Day or night. I really love you. Only don't let me down. Now what's the matter with your tea? Drink it up!"

So I took my leave of Samovar and joined Edward O'Leary and my dear friend Dr. Antoine al-Mahdi. And I started my tours of the springs and wells.

Two or three times a week, we went out into the country. We passed beautiful gardens, olive groves and vineyards, and tiny vegetable-patches. We saw minarets reaching upward from the hilltops. The three of us together forced our way through thorn hedges and tramped for hours on end to inspect some far-flung spring or Godforsaken well. The smell of dung and ashes brought me a sensation of peace and calm. Occasionally Antoine would say apologetically: "The cattle are cattle and so are the fellahin. You can't tell the difference." If O'Leary jokingly asked him, "Do you enjoy the thought that one day every villager will wear a tweed jacket and tie like you?" he would reply, "That would be against nature." Edward would chuckle: "And what about the Jews? In the kibbutzim you can find lawyers milking cows and mucking out." Antoine would flash me an affectionate smile: "The Jews are a remarkable people. They always go against nature."

We used to go to King Solomon's Pools. To Nahal Arugot in the Judean Desert. To the Elah Valley. We collected specimens in glass phials and took them back to the laboratory in Julian's Way to examine them under the microscope. O'Leary would lend us books by English travelers from the last century who described the desolate state of the country in all its details.

"How does she do it?" O'Leary would ask in tones of amusement. "How does this worn-out, barren old girl make them all fall madly in love with her? I was once in southern Persia: exactly the same miserable hills, dotted with gray rocks, with a few olive trees and pieces of old pottery. Nobody crossed half the world to conquer them."

"Woman comes from the earth," Dr. Mahdi said in a velvety whisper, in careful English. "Man comes from the rain. And desire comes from the Devil. Look at the Jordan. For thousands of years it has flowed into the Dead Sea, where there is neither fish nor tree, and it never comes out again. There's nothing like that in Persia, Edward, and the moral of the story is: if it's hard to get in, then it's hard to get out."

I would contribute an occasional remark, such as:

"The Land of Israel is full of simple symbols. Not only the Jordan and the Dead Sea — even the malaria and bilharzia here take on a symbolic significance."

"You two use similar words to express totally different sentiments. We all three do, actually."

"Is that really so?" O'Leary would murmur politely. He would refrain from offering an explanation and would deftly change the subject.

***

Antoine ran a private practice in the afternoons and evenings in Katamon, and I had my home clinic in Kerem Avraham. I learned to cultivate polite relations with my neighbors and to be a good listener in hard times. I lost track of the hours 1 spent battling against diphtheria and dysentery. If I was called out at night or over the weekend, when I was busy in my amateur laboratory or listening to music, I never complained. If the children made fun of me in the street for my German ways, I never lost my temper. I fulfilled my obligations, more or less.

Until you and I met in Arza, that is. And until my illness appeared.

So there you have a résumé of the story of my life. Some of it you knew already, and the rest you could probably have deduced, in your usual way, from an analysis of my behavior.

Now I shall return to my observations.

Uri has gone off, probably on instructions from one of Nachtshe's mysterious assistants, to stand on the Kapitanski brothers' roof and keep watch on the Sheikh Jarrah district and the traffic on the Ramallah road. And I, too, am on the lookout, sitting here on my balcony. The details I am amassing will be of no military use: A Jerusalem street vendor, what he sells, how he sells, who buys. My lower-middle-class Eastern European neighbors, and why they quarrel so much among themselves. And what, exactly, their communal ideal is. Their children, what is new about them and what is ancient. And the youths, boys like Nachtshe, Yigal, and Akiva, how, and with what measure of success, they all attempt to dress, talk, and joke on the basis of some abstract archetype from Galilee, from the Palmach, a venerated image of the pioneering hero.

And I myself: apart from my impending death and the code of pains and symptoms, why do I sometimes abhor these brave boys, and secretly call them "Asiatics," and sometimes feel a powerful love for them as though I have an unidentified son among them, a dark-skinned, barefoot, physically tough young man, an expert with machines and weapons, contemptuous of words, contemptuous of me and my worries? I don't know.

More rhetorical questions of an observer: What is regarded as funny here. What is considered embarrassing. What do they talk about and what do they pass over in silence. Who has come to Jerusalem, and where from, what did each of them hope to find here, and what has he actually found. Helena Grill compared to Sonya Litvak. The poet Nehamkin from the electrical and radio repair shop as contrasted with Comrade Lustig. What did they hope to find here and what have they actually found. And I don't exclude myself from the question.

Other questions: What is transitory in Jerusalem, and what is permanent. Why are the colors different here, the autumn colors and the evening colors. And on another level: What are the intentions of the British. Is there going to be a political vacuum. What are the real limits of our power, and how much is simply delusion and arrogance. Is Dr. Mahdi the real, deadly enemy. Is it weakness of will in me that I cannot desire his death, and that I keep trying to think up arguments that might convince him. Everything leads me on to the final point, to the single question: What is going to happen. What lies in store for us.

Because apart from this, what else have I got to think about? The sunsets, perhaps. The embers of my love for you. Doubts and hesitations. Pathetic preparations. Worries.

Mina. Where are you now, tonight. Come back.

These last words may seem to you like a cry for help. That was not what I meant. Forgive me. I'm sorry.

Tuesday, September 9

Dear Mina,

This morning I went to the Jewish Agency to hand in my report on readily available chemicals that may have military uses. On a separate sheet I offered some suggestions, even though it seemed to me that there was nothing new in them, and that any chemist in the university on Mount Scopus would have indicated precisely the same possibilities. My appointment was for nine o'clock, and I was a few minutes early. On the way, a fine drizzle lashed my cheeks. Later, the rain began to beat heavily on the windows of the office. They relieved me of the cardboard folder, thanked me, and then, to my great surprise, led me to Ben-Gurion's office. Somebody, apparently, had exaggerated and told him that there was a side doctor here in Jerusalem who also happened to be an original chemist with daring ideas on the subject of explosives. In brief, he had asked to see me without further delay. Somebody had spun a meaningless myth about me.

Ben-Gurion began with an inquisition. I was asked about my origins, my family, was I related in any way to Nussbaum the well-known educationalist, were my views not close to those of the pacifist Brith Shalom movement. A volcanic man, with gestures reminiscent of Dushkin's, running backward and forward between the window and the bookcase, refusing to waste time on qualifications or reservations. He kept interrupting me almost before I had begun speaking, and goaded me on: The danger was imminent. A critical moment had been reached and we were almost without resources. What we lacked in materials we would make up in spirit and inventiveness. The Jewish genius, he said, would not let us down. We were up to our necks in it. Mr. Ben-Gurion, I tried to say, if you will permit me… But he did not permit me. On the contrary, on the contrary, he said, you will receive everything you need, and you will start work this very night. Make a note of that, Motke. Right. And now, out with it, doctor: tell us what you need.

And I stood there in confusion, with my arms held stiffly at my sides, and explained awkwardly that there appeared to be some misunderstanding. I was not a new Albert Einstein. I was simply a doctor with a modest competence in chemistry, who had volunteered a memorandum and some minor suggestions. The Jewish genius, by all means, but not me. A misunderstanding.

And so I came home, covered with shame and confusion. If only I could live up to their great expectations. Comrade Rubashov writes in the Davar newspaper that we will withstand the coming tests. My heart shuddered at these words. Tests. A real war is coming, we are without resources, and enthusiastic amateurs persist in using words like "tests." No doubt you will be smiling at this point, not at Comrade Rubashov's words but at mine: I wrote "a real war." I can imagine from far away the exhalation of smoke from your nostrils, the twist of your lips.

Last night I heard the drone of engines from the direction of Chancellor Street. Another British convoy on its way northward toward the port of Haifa, perhaps with blacked-out headlights. Is this the beginning of the evacuation? Are we being left to shift for ourselves? What if there is no truth in the image of the fearless fighter from the hills of Galilee? What if regular armies cross the Jordan and the deserts and we fail the test?

This morning from my balcony I watched Sarah Zeldin the kindergarten teacher, a little old Russian woman with a blue apron and a wrinkled face. It was immediately after I got back from the Agency. She was teaching the little children to sing:

My pretty little village