Shmuel Ash and Gershom Wald’s relationship

Shmuel Ash and Gershom Wald’s relationship grows from a modest job into a demanding intellectual and emotional companionship. Shmuel arrives at Wald’s house in Jerusalem after his studies and research have stalled and his former beloved has married someone else; Wald, a disabled old man who spends his nights talking and arguing, becomes both his employer and the person with whom he tests his ideas. Their bond is shaped by routine care, disputation, and the grief that neither can easily console.

An arrangement built around conversation

Shmuel accepts work at the house after his parents lose their savings, his university career is interrupted, his research stops progressing, and his beloved marries her former boyfriend. The position offers a modest salary, lodging, and several hours a day in Wald’s company. Two days after accepting it, Shmuel moves into the house with five cardboard boxes, an old duffel bag, books, a typewriter, a record player, and posters depicting Christ in his mother’s arms and the heroes of the Cuban popular revolution. This is not simply a new address: it places him inside a household whose rhythms and arguments will structure his days.

Atalia explains the job’s schedule and its domestic details. Shmuel is to prepare the stove at four-thirty, feed the aquarium fish, talk with Wald from five until ten or eleven, warm his porridge at seven, remind him to take his medication, and leave a thermos of hot tea on the desk before going upstairs. The routine combines companionship with practical assistance, while preserving Wald’s independence where possible: he can reach the bathroom with crutches, and Shmuel is told not to force food on him if he refuses it. Atalia also warns that Wald talks because he cannot bear silence, welcomes disagreement, and may raise his voice, argue on the telephone, or cry alone at night. The job therefore asks Shmuel not merely to keep watch but to be present without intruding.

Wald’s first encounter with Shmuel establishes the teasing, testing quality of their exchanges. Wrapped in a blanket and speaking on the telephone, he studies the newcomer and jokes that he may be a messenger or a craftsman he never summoned. After introducing himself with an emphatic repetition of his surname, he asks whether Shmuel is a pioneer from a kibbutz, whether he has come down from the Galilee mountains or up from the Negev. Shmuel answers that he is from Jerusalem—or Haifa—and corrects himself about his interrupted studies. Wald’s irony makes the young man’s uncertainty part of their opening conversation rather than a matter to be politely ignored.

A household of care, argument, and silence

Wald’s disability is present in the physical circumstances of their encounters, not just in their conversation. He moves from his desk to a cushioned wicker divan by pushing his body along with his arms, laboriously shifting his points of support. He describes his degenerative illness with mordant humor: the degeneration continues, he says, but he no longer walks. He then invites Shmuel to sit and wait for Atalia, repeatedly urging him to take a seat even though Shmuel has not moved. The episode turns practical vulnerability into part of Wald’s comic, conversational manner without removing the effort involved in his movement.

The care Shmuel provides is woven into the pair’s discussions. He serves tea, feeds Wald’s two goldfish, brings his medication, and handles meals and dishes. Their recurring domestic actions give their talk a setting and a rhythm: an argument may be followed by a tray, a glass of water, or the fish in their bowl. They do not need to agree for the arrangement to work. Atalia specifically tells Shmuel that Wald revives when someone contradicts him, and the older man’s questioning and provocation make disagreement a form of company.

Shmuel’s abandoned research on Jesus in Jewish eyes becomes one subject of that company. When he brings pages to the library and reads Wald an anti-Christian poem by the poet Yannai, Wald covers his eyes with his broad hand and angrily stops him. He objects that Shmuel was asked to explain how Jesus appeared to Jews, not to repeat the insults of foolish people. In the same breath he complains that the tea is weak, too sweet, and lukewarm, declines a replacement, asks for tap water, and proposes sitting in silence before listening to the news. The scene reveals both the sharpness and the range of their companionship: Wald can dismiss Shmuel’s material, criticize his tea, and still keep him beside him in quiet.

Their talk also moves from the historical to the immediately personal. After a discussion of events in Jerusalem and reports of attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe, Wald asks about Shmuel’s sister, who has gone to Italy to study medicine, and whether she knows about his situation. The question turns their conversation toward the private facts Shmuel has disclosed and toward his precarious circumstances. Wald is not only a captive audience for Shmuel’s research; he listens closely enough to return to the young man’s life and press him on it.

Advice, attachment, and the limits of consolation

Wald notices that Shmuel’s feelings for Atalia are becoming entangled with his need for a place to remain. When Shmuel recognizes that Wald is proposing he stay, Wald asks whether he no longer loves her. Shmuel answers that perhaps he loves only her shadow, not her; Wald replies that Shmuel lives among shadows, like a slave longing for one. The exchange makes Shmuel’s attraction part of a larger uncertainty about what he is pursuing: Atalia herself, an imagined version of her, or refuge from the disappointments that have brought him to the house.

Wald later makes his concern more explicit, asking Shmuel not to fall in love with Atalia because it is pointless, then conceding that it may already be too late. His warning is neither an impersonal rule nor a simple prohibition. It comes from someone who observes Shmuel’s growing attachment within the house and understands that the relationship threatens to complicate the arrangement that brought him there. Shmuel asks why Wald is concerned about him, leaving the emotional basis of Wald’s intervention open rather than resolving it in a declaration.

Their intimacy is also marked by what Shmuel does not do. In a later political discussion, Wald asks whether he lost his only son merely to delay a disaster that Shmuel believes may be impossible to prevent. Shmuel longs to bring the old man’s rough, unfinished-looking head against his chest and comfort him, but recognizes that no comfort is available. He keeps silent rather than add to Wald’s pain, feeds the goldfish, and goes to the kitchen. Wald eats his meal quietly. The routine continues, but the silence now carries the knowledge of Wald’s bereavement and the limits of Shmuel’s ability to answer it.

Political disagreement and shared loss

Wald and Shmuel’s arguments connect their household companionship to questions of history and political force. Wald says that a certain man was a great realist, the only one to recognize a small opening in history in time and lead people through it; he adds that the achievement was not that man’s alone, since without Wald’s son and his companions everyone would have been dead. The remark frames survival as an achievement made possible by both political timing and the actions of those who fought.

That account does not settle the moral question of what survival can accomplish. Wald distinguishes the temporary capacity of force to prevent annihilation from any power to repair or resolve the underlying conflict. In response, he asks whether he lost his only son merely to postpone the disaster Shmuel thinks cannot be avoided. The exchange exposes a painful difference in emphasis: Shmuel’s argument concerns the limits of force, while Wald’s question demands that this abstract conclusion confront the cost paid by his family. Their discussion does not end in agreement or consolation; its consequence is a silence in which Shmuel chooses care over another argument.

After serving Wald his food, Shmuel pours a small glass of cognac for each of them without waiting for permission, then leaves to eat the leftover potato salad and wash the dishes. Wald remains at his desk, writes something on a scrap of paper, crumples it angrily into the wastebasket, and begins writing again. The scene returns the relationship to the household’s ordinary acts, but gives them a changed weight: Shmuel can offer food, drink, and company, while Wald remains alone with the words he cannot yet keep. Their bond is therefore neither a cure for Wald’s grief nor merely a debate between opposing opinions. It is sustained by the repeated choice to remain in the room, attend to one another’s needs, and let difficult questions stand unresolved.