See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

and affectionate struggle against his ferocious little cub on the carpet, and very gently pinned his arm behind his back and forced him to surrender according to the family formula.” Fried: “I declare my total and unconditional surrender to my father, sir, family physician to the archduke …” and then finally he marched the boy on his enormous feet up and down the room singing—Fried: “Shefi malenki/Zamakni ocheh tiuva … Sleep my child/Close your sweet eyes …” and when Kazik gave a throaty giggle of delight in response, Fried felt he was a real doctor for the first time in his life.

YETZIRA

CREATION

The act of creating the world. The formation of something new. The work of the artist.

During the big argument between Wasserman and Neigel [see under: TRAP], when the German asked Wasserman to change the story and get rid of those “anti-German parts,” Wasserman admitted to the editorial staff that he does not fully understand most of the clues he scatters for himself through various stages of his writing. He swore, in fact, that for a long time he had no idea why the Children of the Heart had banded together again and whom they were going to fight. He only knew, he says, that he had to “risk his life” (he’s so melodramatic!) in order to “remember the story from its beginning, a story forever slipping away from memory.” Wasserman: “Ai, I do not yet know the story’s ending, but now there is a spark in me, a kind of passion that knows before I do … a spark that flies from letter to letter and word to wordinside me, and lights up the story like a Hanukkah menorah … and at first I knew not the real art of writing; indeed, the spark did not exist in me … the passion was hidden … and now—see! A precious light! Now I know that even a shlimazel such as I, who performed no daring deeds nor ever set the world afire, who was not a duke or minister or intriguer, and never lusted after houris or explored the world; in short, even a simple Jew like me has the dough to bake a bagel for Neigel to choke on, heaven forbid. Beware, Neigel, beware! I said to him in my heart. Beware, for I am a writer!”

And shortly thereafter, when Neigel accused Wasserman of “ruining the story! I don’t understand why you can’t write like a human being. Think of your reader, Wasserman!” the writer replied, a light blush of pride in his voice, “I am telling the story for no one but myself … Yes, this is the important lesson I have learned here, Herr Neigel, as I never learned it before in all my days, for now I know that there is no other way once you have set your heart on creating a work of art. A work of truth, that is. Yes, so it is: for no one but myself!”

COACH

FORCE

See under: JUSTICE

LEV, TECHIAT YALDEI HA

HEART, REVIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF THE

OTTO BRIG [q.v.] was responsible for banding the Children of the Heart together again after fifty years of idleness. The events leading up to this are unclear at times for lack of proper DOCUMENTATION [q.v.], due to Otto’s lamentable and even sinful ignorance of the tremendous importance of historical records and the chronicling of individual actions. It is nevertheless possible to reconstruct a (hypothetical!) picture of the days that preceded the band’s revival: when the world turned “topsy-turvy” (Wasserman), Otto began to wander the streets of the Jewish ghetto looking for workers to replace the drafted zoo employees who did not return when the fighting was over. Polish patrols checked Otto’s permits and sent him to search among the slave laborers lined up on Gezibowska Street, where Jewish work brigades were organized—builders,cobblers, professors, violin teachers, etc.—to clean the streets and latrines of Warsaw. But Otto wasn’t just looking for volunteers. He had no intention of forcing anything on anybody. On Carmelitzka Street, by the last linden tree in the ghetto (the Jews were drawn to it like bees to nectar, and gazed with longing at its golden, life-filled flowers), an old Jew explained to him that Jews have an inborn aversion to working with animals, “and it’s a little late to change us now.” Other Jews recoiled from him without any explanation. They suspected a trap. A man Otto remembered from the old days who used to sell him meat scraps for the zoo (he was a hotel supplier) advised him to go over to Delizhneh Street, to the Paviak, and bribe the man in charge of prisoners to give him volunteers for one day’s work. The word “prisoners” moved Otto, for some reason, and he rushed to the prison, feeling more and more oppressed by the sense of doom emanating from everyone in the street. Otto: “Things were really bad, heartrending. All these Jews looking like hunted animals, and I didn’t have the strength to run away. Yes. Then I understood that I had to do something. I had to help. Yes, to fight. And on those first days when I looked for workers in the ghetto, I thought to myself, Here, Otto, you’ll help these poor people, you’ll give them a good meal and treat them like human beings. But a few days later I knew that wouldn’t be enough, that a whole lot more had to be done. Because in the store windows on Krakowska and Pashdmishzche and on Yarozolimska Street, too, the Germans had put up giant pictures of the poor Jews made out to be fiendish murderers, with a sign saying THE JEWISH-BOLSHEVIK MENACE, as if we were all idiotic enough to believe such things, and at every intersection they stationed barkers, that’s what we used to call them, who read the OKV news all morning and announced the latest victories