Azariah’s eyes fell upon Yolek’s books, which stood in long rows on their shelves, with photographs tucked here and there among them. Of Yonatan and Amos. Of Yolek with various socialist leaders from all over the world. Of five thistly strawflowers blossoming eternally in a porcelain vase. He felt that there was an unforgettably tormented, Ozymandian majesty about these two old men who never looked each other in the eye, who sat facing each other like two fallen Prometheans, like the ruins of two ancient castles in whose darkest keeps secret life lingered on with all its old battles, its exquisitely refined tortures, its witchcraft and foul play, its nightjars, owls, and bats. Like moss growing over a crack in a wall, an illusory peace stretched its tentacles between these ravaged citadels. Sunk in slumber, their remaining might still filled the room with an aura of palpable grandeur. A secretive, intricate, elusive current ran between them when they talked or even kept silent. The rancor of some old love, the last weary vestiges—like distant, receding thunder—of a great potency that Azariah craved with all his being to touch and be touched by. There must be a way, he thought, of penetrating this fatally charmed circle and rousing them from their repose.

He narrowed his green eyes and fixed them on the Prime Minister in a long, piercing stare of the kind that had the power (so he had once read in some book of Hindu lore) to make a person feel another’s eyes upon him. How desperately he wanted to cast his spell on Eshkol in just this kind of way, to make him look up at him or even speak to him, if only to ask the most banal question—to which his own reply would be so astoundingly momentous that the Prime Minister would want to hear more and still more.

The air of weary authority, the spellbinding ugliness of this man whom Azariah had known until now only from flattering photographs or from unkind cartoons in newspapers—the ham-like, liver-spotted hands resting limply on the arms of a chair, one of them loosely dangling a large, yellowish wrist watch from a frayed band—the swollen, cadaverish fingers—the leathery, lizardlike skin—all of this aroused in him a febrile excitement that was almost carnal.

“Now look here, Eshkol,” said Yolek after a long silence, “this may not be the time or place for it—”

“What’s that? Who? What did you say?” Eshkol, having dozed off, opened his eyes.

“I was saying that this may not be the time or place for it, but I’ve been wanting to tell you for quite a while now that I owe you an apology. For what I said about you at the last meeting. And for other things too. I was too hard on you.”

“As usual,” noted Hava dryly.