The Old Man – Farewell
Published in Issue #25 Translated from Hebrew by Daniella Zamir(Excerpt from a Novel)
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When asked where he lived as part of the Mini-Mental memory test, the old man couldn’t answer. When asked what day it was, he didn’t know what to say. Nor did he remember the year, and when requested to state his age he gave an inaccurate number. A deviation of thirty years. The old man’s daughter was sitting beside him, and only then grasped the reality of the situation; only then, so to speak, did the penny drop. What’s hanging on that wall there? The young examiner pointed at the wall. The old man looked at the wall clock and couldn’t remember the word for it. Please give me four words starting with the letter B, the young examiner read off her page. The letter B? the old man asked quietly. Yes, the young examiner said, and gave the word balloon as an example. She had no way of knowing the old man had once composed a dictionary and until recently still collected words, jotting them down on white pages that piled up in towering mounds. The old man thought for several moments and tried to find a word that began with the letter B. His daughter sat beside him and thought: box, bed, barber, boots. But the old man was silent. The longer his silence lasted, the more he shrank into himself. He could not recall the facts. He lost grasp of the words. But situations he could make sense of just the same, and feelings welled up in him just the same, and his...
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