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any.’
Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her
tears. ‘Why, how could you have sinned against all men,
more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but
what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself
more guilty than all?’
‘Mother, little heart of mine,’ he said (he had begun using
such strange caressing words at that time), ‘little heart of
mine, my joy, believe me, everyone is really responsible to
all men for all men and for everything. I don’t know how to
explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how
is it we went on then living, getting angry and not know-
ing?’
So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and
joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German
called Eisenschmidt, came:
‘Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?’ he would
ask, joking.
‘You’ll live many days yet,’ the doctor would answer, ‘and
months and years too.’
‘Months and years!’ he would exclaim. ‘Why reckon the
days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness.
My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other
and keep grudges against each other? Let’s go straight into
the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss
each other, and glorify life.’
‘Your son cannot last long,’ the doctor told my mother,
as she accompanied him the door. ‘The disease is affecting
his brain.’