The retrospective narrator in the early novella העין (Likeכאישון the Pupil of the Eye) (1975) reveals to us the nature of this lack of correlation between "real time" and "illusory time". This novella, which is Appelfeld's first long Austro-Hungarian 10 story, begins thus: "Let us extol, let us raise aloft, let us glorify", the ancient words rustled, fluttered, and descended. And the ensuing silence descended over the people and bound them like a dusky icicle. In the windows, the day's darkness vaporized […] Snowflakes slowly fell and covered the face of the earth in a grey white cloak. A storm was already rising on the horizon, and the trees, whose leaves had fallen, stood shaking, their skins turning blue. My mother's mother had passed away. Since this morning, people had assembled, huddled, in the yard. In the last weeks, she spoke of death with a kind of practical simplicity. The illness was not noticeable in her, but she never stopped talking about that wonderful world to which she was departing. Her highbrow wore purity. On the last day of her life she still had time to taste the new vishniac, to check the dairy cellar. And when the day expired, her life expired. Death found her sitting in the straw chair on the glazed veranda. Outside, heavy masses of fog rose. Grandfather wore the old winter coat and mother the brown jacket of her youth. We stood, surrounded by a crowd of strangers who murmured, whispered, beckoning each other with their hands. The ancient words returned and were elevated, and an old man with a majestic appearance led the voices. And we stood like shadows in her fading world. 11
