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By Root 1194 0

Haim Schwarzbaum the red-headed folklorist, Israel Hanani, who worked at the Jewish Agency, and his wife Esther Hananit. They arrived after supper, at seven or half past, and left at half past nine, which was considered a late hour. In between, they drank scalding tea, nibbled honey cake or fresh fruit, discussed with well-bred anger all kinds of topics that I could not understand; but I knew that when the time came, I would understand them, I would participate in the discussions and would produce decisive arguments that they had not thought of. I might even manage to surprise them, I might end up writing books out of my own head like Mr. Zarchi, or collections of poems like Bialik and Grandpa Alexander and Levin Kipnis and Dr. Saul Tchernikhowsky, the doctor whose smell I shall never forget.

The Zarchis were not only Father's former landlords but also dear friends, despite the regular arguments between my Revisionist father and Zarchi the "Red": my father loved to talk and explain, and Zarchi liked to listen. My mother would interpose a quiet sentence or two from time to time. Esther Zarchi, for her part, tended to ask questions, and my father enjoyed giving her extensively detailed replies. Israel Zarchi would turn to my mother sometimes, with downcast eyes, and ask her opinion as though begging her in coded language to take his side in the argument: my mother knew how to cast a new light on everything. She did this with a few brief words, after which the conversation sometimes took on a pleasant, relaxed tone, a new calm, a cautious or hesitant note entered the argument, until after a while tempers became inflamed again and voices were once more raised in a civilized fury, which simmered with exclamation marks.

In 1947 the Tel Aviv publisher Joshua Chachik brought out my father's first book, The Novella in Hebrew Literature, from Its Origins to the End ofthe Haskalah. This book was based on my father's MA dissertation. The title page declared that the book had been awarded the Klausner Prize of Tel Aviv Municipality and was published with the assistance of the Municipality and that of the Zippora Klausner Memorial Fund. Professor Dr. Joseph Klausner in person contributed a foreword:

It is a twofold pleasure for me to see the publication of a Hebrew book on the novella that was submitted to me in my capacity as Professor of Literature in our one and only Hebrew University as a final dissertation in Modern Hebrew Literature by my long-standing pupil, my nephew Yehuda Arieh Klausner. This is no ordinary work ... It is a comprehensive and all-embracing study ... Even the style of the book is both rich and lucid, and is in keeping with the important subject matter ... I am unable therefore to forbear from rejoicing ... The Talmud says "Pupils are like sons"...

and on a separate page, after the title page, my father dedicated his book to the memory of his brother David:

To my first teacher of literary history—

my only brother

David

whom I lost in the darkness of exile.

Where art thou?

For ten days or a fortnight, as soon as my father got home from work at the library on Mount Scopus, he hurried to the local post office at the eastern end of Geula Street, opposite the entrance to Mea Shearim, eagerly awaiting copies of his first book, which he had been informed had been published and which someone or other had seen in a bookshop in Tel Aviv. So every day he rushed to the post office, and every day he returned empty-handed, and every day he promised himself that if the parcel from Mr. Gruber at Sinai Printers had not arrived by the next day, he would definitely go to the pharmacy and telephone forcefully to Mr. Chachik in Tel Aviv: This is simply unacceptable! If the books did not arrive by Sunday, by the middle of the week, by Friday at the latest—but the parcel did arrive, not by mail but by personal delivery, brought to our home by a smiling Yemenite girl, not from Tel Aviv but straight from Sinai Printers (Jerusalem, tel. no. 2892).

The parcel contained five copies of The Novella in Hebrew Literature, hot from