You Mustn't Show Weakness

You mustn't show weakness and you've got to have a tan. But sometimes I feel like the thin veils of Jewish women who faint at weddings and on Yom Kippur. You mustn't show weakness and you've got to make a list of all the things you can load in a baby carriage without a baby. This is the way things stand now: if I pull out the stopper after pampering myself in the bath, I'm afraid that all of Jerusalem, and with it the whole world, will drain out into the huge darkness. In the daytime I lay traps for my memories and at night I work in the Balaam Mills, turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse. And don't ever show weakness. Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself without anyone noticing. I'm like an ambulance on two legs, hauling the patient inside me to Last Aid with the wailing of cry of a siren, and people think it's ordinary speech.