In the morning, after my coffee and a shave, I found I had a slight temperature and also some blurring of vision. I could read the newspaper, and I can still write. But when I reached out to pick up a piece of buttered toast from the kitchen table, I missed and upset a pot of yogurt. I may add, with no reference at all to this development, that a British reconnaissance plane has been circling low over Jerusalem since the early hours of this morning, perhaps because it was announced semiofficially in this morning's paper that the commission of inquiry will indeed recommend the partition of the country, and that Jerusalem and Bethlehem will be under international control, and will not be handed over either to the Jews or to the Arabs. It was Uri who told me, on his way home from school, that without Jerusalem there would be no Hebrew state, or else a terrible war would break out between the Hagganah and the Palmach, on the one hand, and the Irgun and the Stern Group on the other, and that that was precisely what the British were planning.
Incidentally, he is now in command of my laboratory. He does whatever he likes. He made me comfortable on the sofa, covered me with a woolen blanket, made me some lemon tea, and even selected a record and put it on the phonograph to please me. He also put a hot-water bottle on my feet. And while I was lying there, too weak to object, the boy began unloading a crate of empty bottles. Then he went to the laboratory to brew some concoction, chop off match heads, mix solutions. I am gradually being driven out of my own home: Nachtshe and Sonya Litvak in my kitchen, Uri in my laboratory, you in my dreams. Soon I shall leave.
"Be careful there, Uri."
"I'm only doing what you showed me, Dr. Emanuel, don't worry, I'm doing exactly what it says in your notes on the desk here, and when you're better we'll work together again."
I am at peace. Mozart on the phonograph, and from the laboratory sounds of test tubes, the spirit lamp, simmering.
Outside, at the window, another early-autumn evening.
The simple, searing, trivial things, what urgent information are they straining to convey to me. The fading light, Mina, the cawing of crows, a yelping dog, a ringing bell, these things have been since time immemorial and will go on being forever. I can even hear a train hooting in the distance, toward Emek Refaim. And a baby crying. And the woman next door singing a Polish song. The simple, familiar, trivial things — why do they seem to be taking their leave of me tonight. And what am I to do except turn to the wall and die at once. At once, too, like an electric shock, this limpid certainty strikes me: there is a meaning. There is a reason. Perhaps there is a way. And there is still some time left for me to try to discover the meaning, the purpose. Only a sadness continues to gnaw: I have lived some forty years. I was banished, more or less, from one country to another. Here I have even achieved something, to the best of my modest ability. Here, too, I loved you. And now you are gone and I am still here. But not for long. I am being rudely banished from this place, too. And the conclusion, Mina, the moral, the reason? What, as they say here, is the matter at hand?
Maybe this: Autumn outside, and everything is closing in. Something needs to be done. It needs to be done immediately, hopeless though it may be. What it is, I wish I knew. The present moment — is irrevocable. It has been, and it is no more.
I remember: A summer's day in Vienna. Early afternoon. A nip in the air. Wispy clouds suspended in a pale, almost gray sky. In the street there is a subtle blend of smells, fried meat, garbage, and flowering gardens. Perhaps also the perfume of passing women. The cafes are crowded. Through their windows can be seen gentlemen ia light suits, smoking, arguing, or doing business. Others are leafing through magazines or doing the crossword puzzle. Some are playing chess. I am on my habitual way home from the faculty library. My heart is empty. There is a slight temptation, not a real desire, to go and spend the evening with Charlotte or Margot on the first floor of the Weary Heart. As I pass the bridge, I pause for a moment. There, just by the bridge, stand a pair of Negro beggars. One is beating a drum while the other is wailing a kind of tune. There is a hat on the sidewalk with a few pennies in it. Neither of them is young. Neither of them is old, either. It is as if they are outside the European age scale, subject to another biological clock.
I stop and linger, watching them from a short distance away. Not long ago I took a course in anthropology, yet I believe these are the first Negroes I have ever seen. Outside the circus, of course. Yes, they are woolly-haired. Coffee-skinned, not cocoa-colored. A slight shudder ripples through me. I brush aside a fleeting mental image of the shape of their sexual organs. The taller of the two, the one who is wailing or singing, has a pierced nose but no nose ring. The other one's nose is so amazingly long and flat that it revives the suppressed image of their sexual organs. I can neither leave nor take my eyes off them. I am chained to the spot, as it were, by fear, fascination, and disgust. They are standing with their backs to the bridge and the water. One is wearing sandals held together with bits of string, the other a pair of large, worn-out shoes and no socks. I am suddenly overcome with shame, like the time when, as a child, I was caught gaping at the low neckline of my Aunt Crete's dress. Hurriedly I toss a coin into the hat.
Something is urging me, after all, to head for the Weary Heart, to spend the evening with Charlotte or Margot, or even both together for a change. But my feet are rooted to the ground. I look at my watch, pretending to be waiting for someone. And I wait. In any case, without prior arrangement by telephone there can be no Margot or Charlotte.