— Yes, sir. I gathered all this information from the defendant himself, although I was able to corroborate it from other sources. I’m dreadfully sorry to be taking so much of your time, but I have my reasons… I assure you that I do…
— Thank you, sir. All this was nearly twenty years ago. But can there be any statute of limitations when we seek to trace, through the maze of their origins, the roots of treachery and espionage so as to keep them from spreading their rank weeds? The family was stunned by the disaster; their benefactor, the consul, was long dead; the lying-in hospital was dealt a mortal blow. For a while the Swedish midwife tried keeping it up, at first openly and then clandestinely, since the authorities revoked its license after Dr. Mani’s death; there were debts to be paid too, so that part of the equipment had to be sold and some of the rooms rented out to pilgrims; and gradually, the women of Jerusalem stopped coming to give birth there. That Christmas the city was flooded by Christian pilgrims who had come to mark the new century, and the faithful midwife suddenly regained her faith and returned with them to her native land. In December 1899 our defendant was twelve years old; he had always been an independent lad, even when his father was alive, and now he became even more so. If you try to picture him for a moment, sir, as I can, you’ll see a thin, black-haired boy with glasses and a dark complexion like his mother’s, a moody youngster who daydreamed and even talked to himself. In late December of that year the winter finally arrived; everywhere there were church bells and parades of Russian pilgrims through the streets; the two centuries, one coming and one going, were a source of universal excitement. And then one afternoon, so he told me, young Mani went down to the former hospital on the ground floor and was startled to find a young woman in travail lying on a bed, one of those Jewish adventuresses who had come to Palestine from Europe to live in the new Jewish farming villages, partly out of ideological conviction and partly to run away from home. She had reached Jerusalem on her last legs, with the address of the lying-in hospital, not knowing that it was defunct; had found no one there; and had lain down on a bed. It was afternoon; the boy’s mother, sister, and grandmother had gone to see the processions and had not come home yet; no one was there but him and the woman; and now she began screaming and sobbing, throwing off her blanket and howling for help while he stood there and stared at her, both straight-on and in the mirror. At first he was too paralyzed to move; and when at last he tried helping her undress, he couldn’t get her clothes off, no matter how she begged him, until he ran to fetch a knife and slashed them. Then he stood watching the birth canal heave open and listening to her moans; saw the baby’s head appear slowly in a pool of blood; witnessed it alclass="underline" the dreadful suffering, the screams; and was made to swear while standing helplessly in that cold room that he wouldn’t leave her or lay down his knife before cutting the umbilical cord. And throughout all this he never shut his eyes. He looked now at the woman and now at the mirror, watching the birth on both sides of him… which is how, so he says, his intense political consciousness was born, gripping the knife in that cold room…