They started to look for all kinds of ways to get close to me, and thereby catch a glimpse inside my "holy of holies". To this end, they made friends my landlady’s daugher, an odinary working-class girl whom they had, until then, only known from a distance. They starting showing up at the house, supposedly to spend time with the daughter....and in the meantime, to catch a glimpse, to steal a peek, to perk up their ears...looking and listening for whatever sounds might come out from the other side of that door, from the locked room where I had my place of refuge. Seeing, however, that from the "other side" there came not even a peep, they would try with a romantic Russian song, a longing melody, to see if they could lure me from my solitude.

But all this time, the mysterious boy was sitting locked up in his room, spinning his magical words from his heart, by the light of a small lamp. He never suspected and never guessed, that on the other side of that thin wall, female eyes were lying in wait for him...

And so passed several evenings...until one, from among that group, one girl....a hot-blooded one, with long black hair, and a pair of big, playful eyes, worked up enough courage to do something. WIth soft, quiet steps, like a cat, she came up to my room, opened the door, crept up behind my back, an managed to blurt out in one breath:

"Excuse me please, what are you writing?"

Finally she broke the silence. She leaned closer to me, as though she had long been a good friend of mine. She lifted her eyes towards me, and with a gentle, confident voice, started to ask me, if I wouldn’t read to her from my writings, my essays....

And although I had long been waiting for someone to read my writings, even though I had been dying to hear the sound of own words, now that the moment was at hand, I felt as though I were standing before a judge who held my fate in his hands. I hesitated, struggling with the choice: to read, or not to read? But when my embarrassed glance met with her black, long-lashed eyes, I had no strength left to resist.

It wasn't long before I was known throughout the whole village of Rakov as "the young writer-poet", who would some day be world-famous....and furthermore, the whole village of Rakov would one day be proud, that on her soil the Muse had first appeared to this "great artist". For a while, I was the center of attention among the town intellectuals, the hero of the beautiful daughters of Rakov, as though to irritate my friend, the former Novordoker yeshiva-boy, who regarded himself as the leading "cavalier" in the village, and who considered me to be most backwards in the ways of romance.

 But my un-expected acquaintanceship with this dark-eyed enchantress all but ended in catastrophe for me. Like a dark-haired, magical Lilith, she wanted no less than to take the place of the heavenly daughter...my Muse. And it was clear that for her sake I should become God forbid not a writer, a poet, but instead I should be transformed into an ordinary, week-a-day merchant of grain, pigskin, flax, cloth, and such....just like her father and her older brothers.

But once again, I was rescued by the same capricious fate which had already saved me from more than one disaster. It grabbed me with two strong hands, and hurled me anew on unknown soil. In this way I was saved, in the nick of time, from falling into the love-trap, which that dark-eyed small-town Lilith had spread before my feet.....