l.L.PERETZ
418
-How many? Very few, unfortunately-answers Polnievsky.
We were both sadly silent. I do not know what my travelling
companion was thinking. I was thinking that even healthy and
strong minds are affected. There are at least two sides to the story:
sometimes the crowd drags the ablest and most intelligent with
it...The leader of the masses is a Columbus who seeks a new destiny
for mankind, a new America...
As
soon as bread and water become
scarce, the ship's crew mutinies and takes the helm...as a first step,
someone must be slaughtered. One must both eat and quell the
outrage...
* * *
-And don't think-Polnievsky interrupts my sad
thoughts-that I flatter myself into thinking that I am the powerful
spirit that can resist the epidemic, that I am a tall cedar which no
storm can move ...No, brother-he continues-! am no hero. I
might have been just the same as the others, the wind might have
plucked me, too, and blown me about in the air, like a decayed leaf
from the tree of knowledge. I might have believed, just like all the
decayed leaves, that there was a fall, that we dance in a frenzy of
desire , that the wind is our hired musician who accompanies us on
his pipe..
.!
was saved by a coincidence..
.!
became acquainted with a
Jewish woman...Listen to this!
I bent towards my travelling companion; his face had become
even more earnest and grim; he leaned his elbows on his knees
and pressed his head into his hands...
-And don ' t think-he tells me-that I met a hero out of a
novel, a steely character who breaks fences and walls and then goes
proudly on his way; don't think of the exceptional man either, or
of the intellectual with new ideas, or of ideals at all...No, I met a
simple Jewish woman, one of the better class, but of the un–
fortunates of that class. I fell in love with her, this is the truth. And
when I hear or read something bad aboutJews, she floats out of my
memory and with her limpid, melancholy eyes implores: don't
believe it, I am not like that!
He becomes lost in thought.
