AMOSOZ
521
stands pensively relieving himself. Beyond him there is only a row of
streetlamps, an empty pavement, silent walls. And further still the
end of the town and the deserted fields . At last you are alone.
On an upturned crate you sit in the dark. You see the shadowy
mountains. Stars . There is no breeze. Lift up your eyes and see. At
the end of your silence you whisper a plea for pardon. How little that
literary expert was demanding, and how arrogantly you denied him
even that little. How little was needed to please the cultural orga–
nizer who received you so warmly and so self-effacingly. Alone
before the mirror in her room Ruchele Reznik is getting undressed
now and sadly consoling herself, if only I had breasts my whole life
would change for the better. The senior teacher or deputy head–
master was right when he stood up and declared that the function of
literature is to provide consolation and encouragement, and that
that is precisely where all the modern writers including tonight's
speakers have failed miserably . Mataniah Starkman was quite
mistaken when he wrote that for a wedding you need a groom as well
as a bride. On the contrary, it would be instructive to reflect for a
moment on the life of Mr. Ovadia Hazzam for example: he was the
man who divorced his wife, led an outrageous life, borrowed
enormous amounts of money, threw himself into politics, lived like a
lord or a king, and then finally developed cancer of the liver,
returned to his former wife, and is now lying sleeplessly in a hot
dank hospital corridor dying alone in the dark, perhaps uttering
from time to time a stifled chuckle, and this too is in vain. What an
insignificant man this writer is, despicable, contemptible, utterly
loathsome.
I ought to talk to myself about myself. And if there does come
some grace, perhaps it is when I talk about myself to myself that it
will happen, and I may produce a good rumor, a gesture of sympa–
thy to the hopeless, a flicker of excitement for the downcast, a partial
consolation for some of those tortured souls. Poor Jacqueline. Doc–
tor Pesah Yikhat. Mr. Baghdadi the gangsters' stooge and his shab–
by sidekick. The young poet Yuval Dotan-Deutsch. The expert in
literature. Mrs. Miriam Nehorait. The wretched Ovadia Hazzam.
The cultural organizer Yeruham Shdamati and the reader Ruchele
Reznik. It's late at night now, time to go to sleep . I must carefully
extract the evening newspaper from their tired fingers. I know a bed–
time story and I'll tell it to them all to try to help them sleep peaceful–
ly if possible and dream peaceful dreams . Berl Katznelson was a
kindly, cunning man who knew how to achieve good and desirable
