518
PARTISAN REVIEW
But everything is in order. Nobody has snickered. He must have
been mistaken. He rests his elbows on the table, leans his chin on his
fists, and adopts an air of profundity and humility as the literary ex–
pert rises to his feet and in rhetorical tones draws comparisons and
parallels, lays bare tangled webs of hidden motifs, indicates the liter–
ary artifices employed by the author, casts doubt on the legitimacy of
a certain artistic device, without denying the essential relevance of
the ironic dimension of the work, etc., until he finally arrives at the
problem of the inner meaning. In vain. By now the author is fully
immersed in his masquerade: he has stopped listening and is sending
acquisitive glances round the hall, snatching here a wry or oafish ex–
pression, there a fine pair of crossed legs, a distinguished mop of
gray hair, a look of rapt attention, body odors on the close air. As
though he were rifling their handbags while they are absorbed in the
secrets of his art as expounded by the literary expert. Opposite him,
for example, with her thick legs spaced well apart, sits a broad
middle-aged woman, who has long since abandoned all efforts and
diets, renounced her femininity, her body is soft and swollen like an
overripe tomato but she has long given up worrying about appear–
ances and ascended to higher spheres, her eyes are fixed now on the
celebrated author and her face is set in an expression of supreme
cultural rapture. Right behind her is a pleasant-looking lad of
sixteen or so, probably a secret poet, his complexion disfigured with
acne. A passionate ravenous youth, with curly, dusty-looking hair,
eyeing the author through his glasses from the depths of his being
with a tortured secret love, your soul is my soul your sufferings are
my sufferings you and only you can understand I am the enchanted
soul in your stories. From him the author's glance roams to the
furious figure of a man with a Labour Party look, probably a senior
teacher, forceful and ideal-ridden, in a state school in a well-to-do
suburb, perhaps even a deputy headmaster. He has probably come
along with the single aim of stating once and for all his adverse judg–
ment on the emerging Hebrew literature which lacks absolutely
everything which we need and contains what we have no need of
whatsoever.
The author decides to attach to this character the name of Dr.
Pesah Yikhat. The waitress from the cafe will beJacqueline. Messrs.
Baghdadi and Cohen can keep their real names. The youthful poet
will be Yuval Deutsch or Yuval Dotan. The culture-thirsty woman
will be called Miriam Nehorait. The plot will revolve around a scan–
dal: the woman and the boy. Debauchery, remorse and anger.
