But I meet his gaze, and return it, though I feel it burning, and keep quiet. I let the silence grow, until it must shatter under its own weight.

He awaits a gesture, a sign, the start of a reply, something that will let him explode without being silly, but I’m determined not to help him out in any way, and all his violence, all his fury, is vain, useless.

But S.T.H. does not lose the match. Anybody else in his situation would have, but not him. He shakes off a lingering frown, passes his hand over his head, steps towards me and, in a tone that is surprisingly melodious and friendly after his previous vehemence, says:

‘Won’t you join me at the pictures this evening?’

S.T. Haim, my good friend, how well we play our roles, and how sadly.

*

I took my leave of S.T.H. last night and at seven-thirty this morning he was knocking on my door (when did he sleep? when did he get up?) so that I’d see the message he’d slipped under it … Then I heard him stomping down the stairs.

I wish to disturb you. Your complacency horrifies me. Montaigne, of whom you spoke last night, is heresy. Stendhal, a frivolity. If that’s all it takes for you to sleep peacefully, all the worse for you. I wish you long, dark periods of insomnia.

‘I wish to disturb you.’ If he’s taken that from Gide, he’s ridiculous. If he came up with it himself, he’s doubly so.

S.T. Haim, charged by destiny to summon me to my duty! S.T. Haim, called to shake me up and to remind me of the tragedies I’ve run from, Montaigne under my arm!

The messianic impulse and psychological insight are incompatible. S.T.H. is a missionary with no notion of what is going on in the people around him.

He wishes to disturb me. And I’d like to find a stone on which to lay my head.

Had I a sense of mission like his, I would do my best to bring calm to the situations and consciences around me. And most of all to that of S.T.H., who is a weary lunatic, a child under the spell of illusions.

‘S.T. Haim,’ I would say to him, ‘you’re worn out. Stop, sit still for an hour. Look around. Touch this and observe that it’s a bit of stone. Hold this in your hand and know it’s a piece of wood. Look, a horse, a table, a hat.

‘Believe in these things, live with them, get used to regarding them normally, without looking for shimmering phantoms in them. Return to these sure, simple things, resign yourself to living with them, with their low horizons, in their modest families. And look around, entrust yourself to the seasons, to hunger, to thirst: life will get along fine with you, as it calmly does with a tree, or an animal.’

But who will say these same things to me? And who will teach me how to teach the others?

*

Let’s presume that the hostility of anti-Semites is, in the end, endurable. But how do we proceed with our own, internal, conflict?

One day – who knows – we may make peace with the anti-Semites. But when will we make peace with ourselves?

*

It’s not easy to spend days or weeks running from yourself, but it can be done. You get into mathematics and Marxism like S.T.H., become a Zionist like Winkler, read books as I do, chase women. Or play chess, or else beat your head against a wall.