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

me one must never mix work and sentiment, but instead of being appeased by this, Neigel groaned and stared at me in horror, as though, heaven forbid, I had uttered obscene words.”

“Enough!” screams Neigel suddenly. “Enough of this talking! Youstart work today, Wasserman, you hear? Now shut up a minute!” And Wasserman says, “Work? What work, your honor?” And Neigel: “Trying to be clever again, eh? I’ve already informed you: you will lay out a flower garden and a vegetable patch. And in the evening after work, after I finish with my meetings and reports, you will come in here and do your duty.” “Pardon?!” “You will tell me a story, Wasserman. You know exactly what I’m talking about. A story! Not for children, of course, a special story for me!” “I? Heaven forbid. I am no longer adept at telling stories.” “You are no longer adept? Then who is adept? You listen, Scheherazade, I’m giving you a chance to justify your nickname. Tell me a story and stay alive.” And Wasserman says, “No, no, I cannot, your honor. You see I never … this is the truth … moreover … I cannot … it died … the desire … the imagination—” And Neigel, tempting him: “You have a great imagination. You always had, you know. That story with the gladiator in Rome, the Children of the Heart come to his rescue, and the little one, Fried, persuades the lion not to eat him, ah! Or when they help Edison just when he’s going to give up on the invention of the electric light—who else could have thought of that?” And Anshel Wasserman says gloomily, like a bird plucked clean of every plume of pride, “Anyone, your honor.”

I record here word for word what Wasserman disclosed. “Yes, Shleimeleh, it was not modesty that made me say this to Esau. And to you I will tell even more, because today I am no longer afraid of the literary critics who made my life a misery in the days when I wrote my stories. But they did well to smite me below the belt! What they wrote about me was true: that my cleverness is feeble. That I know only how to plagiarize from other authors, and employ their cleverness. And the sharpest among the critics was a wickedly clever man by the name of Shapira, whose arrow-like pen dubbed me ‘the writers’ matchmaker,’ an epithet that stuck forevermore. Ai, Shleimeleh, is there anything I keep from you? Yes, yes, they were right. I was greatly taken with Jack London, the American, and Jules Verne, the Frenchman, and the young Karl May and Daniel Defoe of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, and why deny the part played by H. G. Wells and the time machine I borrowed in friendly fashion? And Franz Hoffman and James Fenimore Cooper and Korczak, from all of them I borrowed something, whether in Polish or Hebrew, and also from translations in the Holy Tongue by Grozovsky and Ben-Yehuda and Sperling and Andres and KalmanSchulman and the good Taviov, and many others, nu, yes, it was not for want of skillfulness that I did this—in my youth, you know, they say I wrote with penetration! I used to compose poems you see, and some were even published in magazines and created a kind of stir, nu, yes, and it was because of this that Zalmanson the editor looked upon me with favor and took me out of the archives, where I had been bored for five years, and made me an author; only when my writings began to be published, I turned coward and was afraid to give of myself and my milk and blood. My powers of creation ebbed as my villainous powers of imitation flowed. And I do not deny it, Shleimeleh, with so much yearning in me again, the passion of the artist stirring in my bones, I wished to write something else, something all mine, out of the singular spark in the chambers of my heart, to quote Bialik’s famous words, a small spark, but all mine, neither borrowed nor stolen … and so—I tried. Ten years ago it was … oh, the fire that raged in me then! But I was frightened … drowning in chaos … The story that began with human beings unfolded with ghosts and goblins and other insolent dogs … and words of wickedness, lechery, and magic, and loathsome, unearthly laughter, all with a kind of despair which cast my spirits down and left me too weak to crush it into letters … Perhaps you will laugh—but I thought constantly about what they would say in the village, my Bolichov, when they read these things, and how it would grieve my mother … and in the end, I had not enough strength left me at the age of fifty to set off in this new direction, to go to war, nu, well … you understand? I tossed it in the fire … of course I regretted that, I have given you but an inkling of my regret … Here in the camp, I told Zalmanson about it, too, and he was sorry. He said it was time I wrote something worthy of myself … that now that I had been carried off beyond my life, as it were, I should write with daring, with madness … ai.”

And Neigel continues: “Listen, Wasserman, let me speak plainly. I need some distraction around here. Something to occupy my mind after work.” Wasserman, weakly: “Is there no club here for, nu, gentlemen officers?” And Neigel, with a certain pride: “You see before you one German who docs not enjoy beer. I’m neither a beer Deutscher nor a wine Deutscher nor a schnapps Deutscher. But I do need to let off a little steam. That’s why I’ve decided that you will sit here with me in the evenings for half an hour, an hour, and tell me a story.” AndWasserman, nearly screaming: “A