Interruption

Among historians, it is generally agreed that one cannot possibly assess one’s own times in an objective manner.  For the era that we inhabit saturates our awareness with its vision, its agenda, its own particular rhetoric whose logic seems to fit the exact dimensions of our consciousness.  Only with the passage of time, sometimes decades, sometimes centuries, can we perceive that that vision, that agenda, that rhetoric, were not the imperative of truth, but rather, the embodiments of a passing fashion.  It follows, therefore, that we can never achieve an accurate understanding of the forces that shape our lives.  We are doomed to live as blind men, ignorant of impending dangers, vulnerable to obstacles, with nothing but base instinct and meager intuition to inform us.

      Yakov Steiner drew out a cotton handkerchief from his pocket, wiped a delicate film of sweat from his forehead, and reread the paragraph.  He had been phrasing it in his head for some time, but now when appeared written out before him, he was unsettled by the notion that what had begun as a personal rumination was now at liberty to make its way in the world.   He raised his pen to continue, and then lowered it.  The conditions felt wrong; the air in the room was too hot, the table too dusty, the sun too bright.  From somewhere outside, the cry of a baby floated by, leaving an empty quiet in its wake.  Most of the kibbutz members were away on the long awaited trip to Jericho.  Yakov and his wife, Ada, would have gone too, had they not been in mourning for his oldest...