I tried my best to set my thoughts in order. The trouble was, I hadn’t the foggiest idea where to begin. Of course, I had already heard some of the gossip about young Gitlin, who was said to have moved in with Rimona and Yoni. All kinds of insinuations, snickers, salacious innuendos. Until now I hadn’t felt any need to take a stand on the matter. A society that prides itself on living by enlightened ideals must restrain itself—or at least so I think—from intruding into anyone’s personal life. What goes on between a man and his wife, or between friends of whatever sex, is a strictly private affair in my opinion and deserves a Keep Out sign. And now along comes Hava insisting that “something terrible” has happened. Who’s to say? Certainly not I. Anything having to do with sex, or the emotions, or the connection between the two, is terra incognita to me.

Once, as a boy in Leipzig, I fell in love with a dreamy high-school girl, but she much preferred a young tennis star—of the type then popularly called a “blond beast”—who was also a great fan of Hitler’s. I pined away for a while but managed to get over it. Around that time, one morning at five o’clock, the family maid stepped into my room and into my bed. Not long after I joined a Zionist pioneering group in Poland and came to Palestine. Once here, some twenty-five years ago, I fell in love with P. In fact, I may still be in love with her in my fashion, but I’ve never let her know. Now she has four grandchildren to her credit, and I’m a confirmed bachelor. Of my few casual, awkward, acutely embarrassing sexual liaisons the less said the better. Sorry, unaesthetic affairs all of them, and instantly regretted. The whole business, as far as I can see, involves a great deal of pain and human degradation in exchange for a very few moments of pleasure—keen pleasure, I’ll admit, but far too brief and meaningless to be worth the effort. Of course, it’s only fair to point out that my experience is too limited to generalize, but I will allow myself one observation here. Built into this world is an irremediable erotic injustice so great that it makes a mockery of all our attempts to construct a better society. This is not to say that we mustn’t set our sights beyond it and keep trying, only that we should do so without any grand illusions. On the contrary, as modestly, cautiously, and unpretentiously as we can. But now I’d better turn over the record, because this is most definitely a night for Brahms and still more Brahms.