He felt the questioning gaze of Solomon directed at him. The boy asked him nothing, but seeing that his father was practising again, he lost heart, and began to avoid the house as he had done after the apostasy of Mikhail. The doctor felt guilty in respect to the boy, and avoided all conversation with him. Each day the boy became paler and more self-centered. Once the doctor suddenly called him into his cabinet. The boy was ghastly, and one could hear his heart beat. He was ashamed to look his father straight in the eyes. “I couldn’t remain there. You understand, Solomon?” The father began quietly. “It was not what I expected. I thought it altogether different, altogether different. But it was not what I expected.” The boy lifted his eyes, and looked at his father. His look made the doctor nervous. He forgot what he wanted to say to the boy regarding his return, and began talking in a shrill, nervous voice. “It is too hot there. Not our climate. I couldn’t acclimatize myself there. I’m too old. You--perhaps--you are young, you might do it.” The boy lifted his eyes again, and now it seemed to the doctor that he saw a vague smile on the pale, cracked lips of his son, as if an older, experienced man were looking at a boy. The doctor cried still more angrily. “What are you smiling at? Understand, I could not. Understand? I thought Palestine a Jewish kingdom. I would find there what I had when I was a child. A Sabbath. Holiday. In one word, a Jewish kingdom. With a great Jewish life. Perhaps one is growing there. But I’m too old to grow with it. I needed ripe fruit. Understand? Ripe fruit. And there is none there. Everything is green, poor. I felt like a stranger, a man from another climate. Understand? Another climate. You feel like a strange plant in another climate.” “Papa, it is not the climate that is to blame, but the plant.” “Perhaps the plant. Too old. But there is nothing to laugh at.” The boy pitied the man and said: “But papa, I’m not laughing. Who says I’m laughing?” “You aren’t laughing? Thanks. And I tell you that I gave up my ideal because it is too hot there. And if you want to, go ahead and laugh at it, laugh at a sixty-five-year-old jackass who is your father, who could not acclimatize himself in a strange climate because it was too warm. Laugh at it if you want to,” Dr. Lazarovitch yelled. Two large tears shone in the boy’s eyes, and swiftly, without a single word, he left the room. Since then both father and son avoid each other, and when they meet they are ashamed to look into each other’s eyes. --Translated by Jacob Robbins. A GAME ABRAHAM RAISIN Reaction, like a black vulture, had spread its wings over all that had lived and struggled. The best and bravest of the revolutionary spirits lost their courage and many were forced to wander forth, to escape to foreign lands, some with the hope of coming back in better and more tolerant times, others in doubt and despair.