Wherever you look, in the party, in the government, in the army, in the kibbutz movement, everywhere, there’s nothing but Scyths, Huns, and Tatars closing in from all sides. Not to mention the plain ordinary scoundrels who have begun cropping up all around in alarming numbers. In a nutshell, no one knows better than you what an ill wind is loose in this land. Only what have you done about it? Stayed in harness, gritted your teeth, and said nothing, or at most sighed into your sleeve. And yet, if we were to use the last of our strength, we could perhaps still wield some influence, could perhaps still, ancient as we are, stem the tide. Well, I don’t mean to write a polemic. We’re old men, my dear friend and rival. We’re living off the capital now. Pardon me for saying so, but we’re on our way out. And I need take only one look at you to see how the state of things haunts and torments you. Believe me, it makes me shudder too. And by the way, forgive me for saying so, but you’ve also, as the Bible says, waxed fat and grown thick quite alarmingly. Physically, I mean. Why can’t you take better care of yourself? Why can’t you realize that après nous, as the French have it, the deluge?

Na. I’m getting carried away. Listen to me then. I’ll try to make it as short as I can. It’s time I got to the point. Only what, in God’s name, is the point? It’s precisely over this question that I agonize. It’s a winter night, long past midnight, and a torrential rain out there is ruining the crops that are already rotting from a surfeit of heavenly bounty. And just to make things worse, the electric power is off too, so that I’m writing you by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp, which, whether I like it or not, brings back old memories that, I am not ashamed to admit, make me feel very close to you. You do know, don’t you, that I quite literally loved you. Not that this made me anyone special. Who didn’t love you in those days? You were once, if I may be forgiven for saying so, a gorgeous young fellow, tall, dark, handsome—in fact, the only tall member of our whole short, squat crowd—a gypsy at heart, half Ukrainian peasant, half Don Juan, with a glorious tenor voice to boot. Just between the two of us, I may as well admit that we were all madly jealous of you. The girls said you were Eros incarnate and swooned when they spoke of you. Hartzfeld, behind your back, used to call you “that Cossack.”