of Yehoshua Kenaz (The Giuntina)
"You can see the picture?" He opened the lock, and holding it up. This time the portrait was drawn with a few a light stroke. She was thrown on a chair, his arms dropped. His head was bent over his shoulder, his face was hidden. Under the mass of hair could only be identified in the folds of his chin, lips parted, the tip of the nose and one nostril, the wrinkles of the cheeks. Hands hanging on both sides of the chair, with delicate fingers slightly bent. Between the two edges of the robe that was open you could see a big knee, as a capital on a column whose base was the slipper. The other foot was away, peeping from under her robe. In this woman there was no sign of life. She said nothing, and he asked: "What do you say?". "It is not life," said Mrs. Moscowitz. Kagan laughed: "I call this the 'La Jolanda dormant'." "He is not sleeping, she's dead. A dead person is not." He did not answer, but looked at his picture and smiled.
Born in 1937, the Israeli writer Yehoshua Kenaz present in these pages the novel loves restoring old, is considered among the greatest in his country. He graduated from the Sorbonne, has translated the classics of French literature, is editor of the newspaper Haaretz and author of books translated worldwide .
Large master in portraying the details of the most disturbing and sometimes gory, of the human soul in this magnificent novel, yearning for its intense realism, he paints the picturesque and melancholy world has arisen within a nursing home in Tel Aviv, geographic location, which, however, loses its importance, overwhelmed by the pace hospice and its inhabitants, each one in its own way, to win a corner and living, albeit fleeting, pleasure.
hospitalized for different cases, some hopeless, guests experience a nostalgic and grotesque their size, detached from reality and constructed of re-enactments and regret, but also for the girls talk of rivalry, envy, jealousy, rebellion, by a strange madness the most unexpected colors, and the darkness, intermittent appearance of death.
protagonist of the story, Yolanda Moscowitz, one of the few destined to return home, does not take its natural condition of aging, but try to hide the signs rigged flashy and vulgar manner, provoking criticism and ambiguous reactions. His brief encounter, and vaguely disturbing misunderstanding with Lazar Kagan, a noted artist hospitalized after an accident, will end in an abyss of anguish and sadness.
The polished sarcasm Jolanda sometimes clashes with the roommate and the hospice staff, and his nostalgia for a lost freedom now encourages the efforts of those who, even in a place where death looms did not scruple to draw income. She and other guests are the real and gloomy picture of old age meant as loneliness, distress and anxious waiting for the end, the elements that make people vulnerable and easily affordable by those who can benefit from it.
The world portrayed by Yehoshua Kenaz, sharp and scary, describes with great clarity the lives of human beings destroyed by the passage of years, but at the same time accusing the indifference of society towards them, which assists without reacting to their decline and leaves they become the prey of those, and there are many, hiding behind a false solidarity and ostentatious, prove totally devoid of moral law.
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