在我们那个基布兹①,耶克哈特基布兹,住着一个人叫兹维·普罗维佐尔,他身材矮小,五十五岁了还是孑然一身,他有眨眼睛的习惯。他喜欢传播坏消息:地震啦、飞机失事啦、大楼坍塌,砸死了住在楼里的人啦、失火啦,洪灾啦。他早上早早地就看报纸,听所有的新闻广播,这样一来,他一到食堂门口,就能给我们讲:在中国,二百五十个矿工被陷在矿井里,生还无望;在加勒比海,一艘驳船遇暴风雨倾覆,六百名乘客被淹死。他讲这些事情把我们说得一愣一愣的。他还会背诵讣告。要是哪个名人死了,他比谁都先知道,他就会告诉整个基布兹的人。有一天上午,他在诊所旁边的小径上拦住了我。“听说过一个名叫维斯拉夫斯基的作家吗?” In our kibbutz, Jekhart Kibbutz, living with a man called Zivy Provovor, who is short and fifty-five, has the habit of blinking. He likes to spread the bad news: the earthquake, the plane crashed, the building collapsed, and the people who lived in the building were killed. He read the newspaper early in the morning and listened to all news broadcasts so that when he reached the canteen, he would tell us that in China, two hundred and fifty miners were trapped in mines and were hopeless. In the Caribbean Sea, a barge overturned in a storm, 600 passengers drowned. He said these things to us for a moment. He will also recite the obituary. If any celebrity dies, he knows more than anyone else, and he tells the entire kibbutz. One morning he stopped me on the trail beside the clinic. “Have you heard of a writer named Wislafki?”