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After a moment he resurfaced, holding two glasses in one hand and a bottle of cheap fruit drink in the other. Energetically he poured a glass for himself, then he poured one for me and declared:

"Drink it!"

I drank it all, in a single gulp. Down to the last drop.

David Ben-Gurion, meanwhile, took three noisy swallows, like a thirsty peasant, and resumed his lecture on Spinoza.

"As a Spinozist I say to you without a shadow of doubt that the whole essence of Spinoza's thought can be summed up as follows. A man should always stay composed! He should never lose his calm! All the rest is hair-splitting and paraphrase. Composure! Calm in any situation! And the rest—frippery!" (Ben-Gurion's peculiar intonation stressed the last syllable of each word with something like a little roar.)

By now I could not take the slur on Spinoza's honor any longer. I could not remain silent without betraying my favorite philosopher. So I summoned up all my courage, blinked, and by some miracle I dared to open my mouth in the presence of the Lord of All Creation, and even to squeak in a small voice:

"It's true that there is calm and composure in Spinoza, but surely it's not right to say that that's the whole essence of Spinoza's thought? Surely there's also—"

Then fire and brimstone and streams of molten lava erupted over me from the mouth of the volcano:

"I've been a Spinozist all my life! I've been a Spinozist since I was a young man! Composure! Calm! That is the essence of the whole of Spinoza's thought! That's the heart of it! Tranquility! In good or in evil, in victory or in defeat, a man must never lose his peace of mind!

Never!"

His two powerful, woodcutter's fists landed furiously on the glass top of the desk, making our two glasses jump and rattle with fear.

"A man must never lose his temper!" The worlds were hurled at me like the thunder of judgment day. "Never! And if you can't see that, you don't deserve to be called a Spinozist!"

At this he calmed down. He brightened up.

He sat down opposite me and spread his arms out wide on his desk as though he was about to clasp everything on it to his breast. A pleasant, heart-melting light radiated from him when he suddenly smiled a simple, happy smile, and it seemed not only as though it was his face and his eyes that smiled but as though his whole fistlike body relaxed and smiled with him, and the whole room smiled too, and even Spinoza himself. Ben-Gurion's eyes, which had turned from a cloudy gray to bright blue, scrutinized me all over, with no thought for good manners, as though he were feeling me with his fingers. There was something mercurial about him, something restless and ferocious. His arguments were like punches. And yet when he suddenly brightened without warning, he was transformed from a vengeful deity to a delightful old grandfather, radiating good health and satisfaction. A seductive warmth gushed from him, and for a moment he displayed the charming quality of a cheeky child with an insatiable curiosity.

"And what about you? You write poetry? Yes?"

He winked mischievously. As though he had laid a playful little trap for me. And had won the game.

I was startled again. All I had authored at that time were two or three worthless poems in out-of-the-way quarterlies published by the kibbutz movement (which I hope have crumbled to dust by now together with my miserable attempts at poetry). But Ben-Gurion must have seen them. He was reportedly in the habit of poring over everything that was published: gardening monthlies, magazines for lovers of nature or chess, studies in agricultural engineering, statistical journals. His curiosity knew no bounds.

He also apparently had a photographic memory: once he had seen something, he never forgot it.

I mumbled something.

But the prime minister and minister of defense was no longer with me. His restless spirit had moved on. Now that he had explained once and for all, in one crushing blow, everything that had been left unexplained in the thought of Spinoza, he started