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126 Jozef Niewiadomski one. Job is surrounded by a mob, by a turba. He is as much alone in the crowd as the adulteress is among those who chase her. Who else is with him? Is his wife? She mocks him, and gives him a look filled with disgust that hits Job like a stone. “When will you finally croak so that I can at long last have my peace and my own life, too?” Are his three proven friends with him? They have now arrived; they sit and remain silent for a week. What kind of thoughts cross their minds during that time? Boy, oh boy, he’s really been hit. If I were in such bad shape, I would make an end of it. Boy, am I happy that he is now so covered with boils, that he stinks so bad that I don’t even have to shake his hand. That goes without saying, in the face of so much misery. And this expression on his face. Like a dog begging for sympathy. But how am I to show him sympathy? He knew very well what he was getting himself into. It’s his own fault. For one thing is certain: he is not suffering without a cause. I would be curious to know, however, what offence he has committed. Enough of this silence routine! Well, then. The situation is slowly becoming unbearable. “Well now, aren’t you lying to us? What have you done? Now that there is nothing left for you to lose, confess! Maybe that would help us protect ourselves from a similar fate. Speak!” But he does not wish to speak, and he is barely able to. His tongue sticks to his palate; his throat is dry. No one makes an effort to get him something to drink. Now, at this very moment, when all they are interested in is his guilt, now they are coming together, closer, taking away the air he needs to breathe. And they grow more and more numerous. The younger they are, the smarter they feel they are. They talk and talk, speaking faster and faster, and with more pathos. I cannot stand their talk, their arguments and the continual babble of sin and punishment. I can no longer endure it. “No!” Job is himself taken aback by his sudden outcry and the fact that they have suddenly fallen silent. “No, I am not guilty!” The cynical looks of his friends hit him like stones. “Are you joking?” “Please do not get me wrong. I have done nothing different from what all of you have done. I have never claimed to be a saint. I was neither an ascetic, nor a secret criminal. I have done nothing that would warrant my current state, my sickness, and, most of all, your attitude toward me.” The Architect of My Spiritual Home 127 No sooner have these words left Job’s mouth than the verbal stoning begins. And there is not a single person who will not share in it. The friends, that is to say, the well-respected citizens in the region, are simply the ringleaders . Others now have come from everywhere. There are also those who are eager to settle old accounts. Job has not given them and their fathers jobs. Job had been snobbish toward them, and this has always bothered them, has been a cause of envy. But those are not the only ones taking part in the verbal stoning. Even the scum of society is there. Those who themselves are outcasts of society, thieves, stupid underlings, a nameless rabble, bums, people living in holes, all those who are beaten down daily, all these individuals jump on this singular opportunity to take part, to mock one who has fallen a step lower than themselves. As if through a breach, the masses are pouring in and they are laughing and laughing and mocking. At this moment, when the very scum of society has joined his enemies, his friends, and his wife, then, at the very last, Job too knows what the adulteress knows, that there is no escape for him. Just like the adulteress, he can now, shuddering with terror, discern this age-old wisdom in the eyes of those chasing him, which is to say that God has now become his cruel enemy, and is leading him nowhere but to death. Whether it happens through stones, or words, or the stares of a silent mob, what is...

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