594
PARTISAN REVIEW
"In some experiments, nearly the heat of the sun's surface," he
replied, and paused. "But we cannot cheat nature. We cannot concen–
trate the sun's light until it is hotter than the sun from which it comes."
In English, he added, "That is apparently against the First Principles."
"Oh, Avram, are there really First Principles?" I was surprised into
asking. It was the most comforting thing I'd ever heard, unassailable
ground rules that accounted for the world, and perhaps for my being in
it. Avram didn't answer; his bent, octogenarian hands rested on his
knees. "It's amazing that my father never told me about the Science
Corps," I hinted. "I heard of it by accident.. . ." A smile glowed in his
still visage.
"You've come to the right person for that history," he granted. And
from Avram's exact, laconic words I imagined the story that I'm telling
here fifty years after Israel's war of independence-and twenty years
after my father died without ever having mentioned the Science Corps
to his only child .
Hell Car
FIFTY YEARS AGO, long before Avram directed the solar reactor at the
Weizmann Institute, I imagine he must have been one of those young
men-blond, big-browed, keen, and stolid-whose clear idea of their
future gives them a marvellous air of command. When the bookseller
led his white-nosed donkey through the university campus, Avram,
surely, did not dash up. A girl got there first. The donkey lipped the
sugar in her hand as a kerchief fluttered above her rolled, shining bangs;
and Avram smiled, charmed, but not
to
the point of overexcitement. He
rummaged through the saddlebags knowing what he needed and what
he was prepared
to
pay.
He saw his future as a garden overlooking terraced mountains, in the
middle of which stood a rustic table flanked by fruit trees. Seated at the
head, his broad palm covering the small paw of a valiant wife, he would
quote the psalm about one's children being like olive shoots around
one's table. His professional life would be equally satisfying. He
respected nature, whose laws seemed
to
him like discreet promises that
were always kept.
This well-ordered young man joined the troubled throng on the
porch of the National Library. From between the limestone columns, on
the summit of Mount Scopus, people with books under their arms were
craning their necks, gabbling and pointing toward Jerusalem: the walled
