Café Atara is the setting for Atalia’s attempt to confront the poet Hiram Nehoshtan over an old debt, with Shmuel present as a witness. In its crowded, smoke-laden upstairs gallery, the café becomes more than a place to meet: it is where private financial claims are made before others and the prospect of legal action is raised.

Setting and Meeting

Atalia asks Shmuel to accompany her to Café Atara, on Ben Yehuda Street, for a three o’clock appointment with Hiram, whom she describes as unstable and often drunk by midday. She tells Shmuel that he need not join the conversation; his presence is enough. When they arrive, she explains that she invited him because she wanted a witness. They agree to wait five minutes for Ester Levi, another witness, and then get to the point if she does not appear. The pair sit upstairs, in the café’s more discreet gallery. It has no windows, and the air is dense with tobacco smoke. The room’s mingled smells—coffee, pastries, wet wool coats, and the bodies of people dressed for winter—place the confrontation amid ordinary café traffic rather than in a private office or courtroom. Nearby are a history professor who fails to recognize Shmuel, a government-party member of parliament, and a journalist from Davar.

The Dispute Over the Loan

When Hiram asks why they have gathered, Atalia names Iliya Schvartzbaum. Hiram reacts with surprise and then laughter that draws looks from the neighboring tables. He denies ever asking Schvartzbaum for money or owing him anything, calls him a repulsive intermediary, and claims instead that he has come to seek a new loan of five thousand pounds, to be repaid in three months with interest. His attempt to recast the meeting as a request for fresh money does not resolve the earlier claim. Atalia returns the conversation to the previous loan. She says Ester Levi was present in the café two years earlier when Schvartzbaum handed Hiram the money, and warns that Levi will testify against him if the dispute goes to court. Atalia states that they will take him to court. The scene thus gives the café a remembered evidentiary role: it is both the place where the loan was allegedly handed over and the place where its repayment is now contested.

Witnesses and Public Exposure

Hiram turns to Shmuel and challenges his presence, asking whether he is to be a second witness against him. He also invokes Shmuel’s former socialism and presses him to explain what justice could mean when a poor poet is expected to repay a wealthy lender. Shmuel had earlier stumbled over how to describe his relation to Atalia, calling himself her friend, then correcting himself to acquaintance or neighbor. Atalia’s clear explanation—that he is there as a witness—makes his role in the meeting more definite than his own hesitant introduction. The café’s surrounding customers sharpen the contrast between Hiram’s theatrical outburst and Atalia’s practical purpose. A waiter brings Hiram cognac and serves black coffee to Atalia and Shmuel, then offers apple cake with cream, chocolate cake, or sweet crumb cake. The routine service continues beside a dispute that may proceed to court; the scene leaves the café as a public, everyday setting where a debt, its witnesses, and the possibility of legal redress are brought into the open.