586
PARTISAN REVIEW
The mayor comes in from his room, "Troubled days! Troubled days!"
He shakes your hand, wringing his hands, "A friend of mine died today,
we were like brothers." He brings the pointing fingers of both his hands
closer, joins them together. "And another very close friend died today. Two
in one day," he comes out of one conversation and another on the phone,
dialing from small pieces of paper, an attendant comes in with cups of cof–
fee, a clerk enters and hands the city secretary, with an attentive bending
of her head, a document condemning terrorism in which he marks down
his corrections. She exits; the city secretary exits; the mayor says, "Soon
we'll start the meeting," and turns to leave.
You say,
"Where is your honored deputy, he's not participating in the meeting?
It's important that he does."
The mayor is at the door, explaining, "Some men have just come to
see him."
"Women are more important than men," you say, and he wi th a big
"Ahah!" smiles, exits. Alone in an empty room you write down, "I came
all the way from Tel Aviv and if I had been for example Rabin or the last
of the men, they wouldn't have expected any understanding from me and
my time would have been respected. Remember please how this morning
you got up at seven-thirty in the morning and said, 'I don't want to go
nothing will come out of it nothing nothing nothing a waste of another
day without writing. ...'"
The room is full.
Asking, as usual, "How much time do we have?"
The mayor replies not as usual, in a soft voice, "However much is
needed. However much is needed."
"Who was it who said on the radio, on the bus, maybe the president,
yes, the president, that we must do things which spread peace, and this pro–
ject is like that," you say, and the mayor, who two months later is killed in
a car accident, says, ''I'm dying to have such a project
in
this city. We have
to check the budget and the location. The location is a problem because
they requisitioned our lands when they built Upper Nazareth. We have in
the entire city two thousand acres; now they're adding more and we're
going to have three thousand acres, which is very little for a city with sixty
thousand residents, through which every year nine hundred thousand
tourists are passing, only passing through! Because we have less than five
hundred hotel rooms."
"I write stories as well, not only poems, but there's no time, no time
to write," he sighs and turns to answer another phone call, talks to his aides,
tells you, "Now we'll go and fill up our bellies. We'll go to a restaurant,"
