“Hava! What exactly are you getting at?”

“Shut up is what I’m getting at! For once in your life let me finish a sentence before you start a speech that lasts all night. You’ve made far too many speeches already. And I’ve heard far too many of them too. And so has your precious history. You’ve been preaching to it for the last fifty years without letting it get a word in edgewise or ever stopping to hear what it might have to say for itself. But this time you’re going to hear me out to the end. And spare me that ‘can’t-you-see-I’m-deaf’ look of yours, because I know you’d rather not hear a word. And that “please-all-the-neighbors-will-hear-you” look too. What do I care about the damn neighbors? I wish they would hear. I wish this whole stinking kibbutz would hear, and the party, and the government, and the Knesset, and the whole United Nations! Let them! What do I care? I know I’m talking loud—that’s because you’re deafer than God himself, but I’m not screaming. And if I want to scream, you’re not going to stop me. I’ll scream until they break down the door to see if you’re murdering me. That’s how I’ll scream if you don’t shut up and let me talk for once in my life.”

“Hava! Please. You can talk all you want. No one is stopping you.”

“Again you’re interrupting when all I’m begging you for is the chance to finish a sentence, because it’s a life-and-death matter, and if you interrupt one more time, I’m taking this can of kerosene and pouring it on the floor and putting a match to it and burning down the whole house with all your precious letters from Ben-Gurion and Berl and Erlander and Richard Crossman and the King of Siam. So shut up and listen carefully to what I say because it’s the last time I’ll ever say anything. I’m telling you now that you have until noon tomorrow to get rid of that psychopathic pervert whom you brought here in cold blood to destroy your son’s life, and had accepted by the kibbutz, and even invited to my house to talk about justice and philosophy and give his damn music recitals. Either he’s out of here and out of Yoni’s life on his rear end by tomorrow, or I’ll do something so terrible you’ll wish you’d never been born. You’ll feel sorrier than you ever felt in your big fat life—even sorrier than you were after your glorious resignation from the cabinet that you’re eating your heart out over to this day. And I hope you go on eating it out until there’s nothing left but a shell! Ty zboju, ty morderco!”