AMOS OZ
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and reptiles, and the very soil seems to bubble. Our children suf–
fer from boils and rashes all through the summer, the old folk die
from degeneration of the respiratory tract, and even the living exude
a stench of death. I, who have been sent here by the Bureau for the
Assistance of Underdeveloped Regions, still go out every day,
towards evening, to spray the swamp water with disinfectants and to
dispense carbolic acid, ointments, essential hints on hygiene, DDT,
and chlorinated water to the settlers . I am still holding the fort until
a replacement arrives. And in the meantime, I am pharmacist,
teacher, notary, go-between, and peacemaker. Before I arrived, a
few years ago, perhaps four years, though the old people stubbornly
insist it was six, the District Commissioner came on a tour of in–
spection with his staff, and gave orders for the river to be diverted
immediately so as to put an end to the malignant swamp . The Com–
missioner was accompanied by officers and clerks, surveyors and
men of God, a legal expert, a singer, an official historian, and
representatives of the various branches of the secret service . They
spent a whole day here, and the Commissioner recorded his find–
ings: dig, divert, dry out, purify, and turn over a fresh page .
Since then nothing has happened.
The old folk and the babies continue to die and the youngsters
are growing older. The population, according to my cautious
calculations, is declining. By the end of the century, so says the table
I have drawn up, there will not be a single living soul remaining
here- apart from the insects and reptiles . Large numbers of babies
are born, but most of them die in infancy and their death hardly
seems to stir a ripple of grief any more. The young men run away,
the girls farm potatoes and wither before my eyes at the age of fifteen
or twenty. Sometimes desire bursts out and inflames the whole vil–
lage to nocturnal orgies by the light of bonfires of damp wood, and
they all run riot, old folk and children, girls and cripples; I cannot
record the details, because on nights like these I lock myself into the
dispensary and put a loaded pistol under my pillow, in case they get
some mad idea. But such nights are infrequent. The days are blaz–
ing hot. The work in the potato fields is apparently crushing. Some
time ago, two of the gravedigger's sons joined a gang of smugglers .
The two widows with their children moved in with the youngest
brother, a mere lad, not yet fourteen. As for the gravedigger himself,
a stubborn, silent, broad-boned man, he determined not to pass
over the matter in silence . But the years are slipping past in silence.
The gravedigger himself moved into the hut of his surviving son,
