A Dove of the East Read Online Free

dealing with the Devil himself. Anyway, this is beyond you, Yacov, because it calls for the strength of the past, the power of memory, the resolve of an old man’s history, and because you are stupid.
    â€œI have one advantage. I am not afraid. I must beat him down if only for the sake of the people of Ha Tikva. Even if I lose he may leave of his own will, but there is no guarantee. Now let me think about it, as if I were trying to find a way to move a large timber through a small door of a little house. Let me think for a while.”
    Najime walked every day to the seaside, and stayed there from noon to evening, smoking his pipe and staring at the white foam of the waves and their curling, like his smoke. He knew that an idea of victory could come either deliberately or on the air. But he knew also that ideas of victory which seem to travel on the air alight always on the shoulders of those who have been laboring in thought.
    So for a week he left every day, descending the stairs and walking across crowded boulevards, past great white ruins in the old part of the city, which was being leveled and cleared. But one morning as he and Yacov both were shaving in front of a copper bowl filled with boiling water, he clenched his fist around the razor, lifted his eyes, and said, “Aha! I did it once, and now I’ll do it again!” He began to dance around the room, singing, jumping, and prancing, because he had solved his problem.
    â€œWonderful!” said Yacov, “What are you going to do?”
    â€œShut up!”
    â€œWhy shut up? I’m your son. Tell me.”
    â€œShut up. I’ll tell you, assuming that I’m alive, by tomorrow night.”
    The next morning, Najime arose and put on his best clothes. It was the day before a holiday and many people were dressed for the occasion even then. He wore an old double-breasted pin stripe suit, the stripes hardly visible, the cloth rough, deep, and blue. On his head he carried a Greek straw hat with a chocolate brown band, and in his belt under the coat was the knife he had brought from Persia. The handle was of leather washers, unusual for such a good knife since it deserved an ornamental grip. But in commissioning it Najime had not wanted that. The finest quality leather had become smooth and black over the years from the oil of his hand. A heavy nickel guard, curved inward, made it seem like a small sword. The blade itself was about a foot long, double edged only a few inches back from the tip in a fluted curve. It was cast from the best Swedish steel, which the smith had purchased from a Russian. Najime had sharpened it over the years, and especially carefully the night before. He had spent a good deal of his life sharpening blades. The knife was so sharp that he feared for the scabbard.
    â€œGoodbye Yacov my son. I am going to the synagogue, and then to the barber.” He winked.
    Najime left and crossed the street, nodding and greeting as was his custom; alert as a young man hunting in the mountains he stood and prayed by the side of the road, since they were cleaning the synagogue. “Dear God, help me to know evil and to fight it. Help me to resist it, not that I would be evil myself, but that one of its principal parts is to appear as right and proper. And that is something I have wanted to discuss for a long time, but later. I am going, I believe, to do what you would have me do. Although I have not heard from you about this it seems the right thing to do.”
    He came to the street of the barber shop and walked toward it, adjusting his knife. Once inside he went directly to one of the old chairs and sat down, asking for a shave. The barber, a little Moroccan, began to lather Najime’s face, already as cleanly shaven as a man’s face could be. Najime had taken pains to do that just an hour before. The barbers manner was casual but somehow very mechanical and automatic, as if he were teaching young barbers. He then went to