Judas

by Amos Oz

  “We shall not give in so quickly! Neither over Jesus, nor over the Jews, nor over you! We shall bring you back to your inner sense of duty!”

  In the corridor, after leaving Professor Eisenschloss’s office, Shmuel was smiling at the recollection of those student parties where he himself had starred in the role of Professor Gustav Yomtov Eisenschloss, popping out suddenly like a cuckoo from a clock, and always speaking so pedantically and pontificating in the first person plural, even to his wife in their bedroom.

  That evening Shmuel Ash typed out a notice offering for sale, cheaply, on account of “unexpected departure,” a small Philips radio (made of Bakelite), a Hermes Baby typewriter, and a record player with a couple of dozen records: classical music, jazz, and French chansons. He pinned the notice to the corkboard next to the stairs to the cafeteria in the basement of the Kaplun Building at the university. Because of the accumulation of announcements, advertisements, and posters, he had to put it up in such a way that it completely covered an earlier, smaller notice of five or six lines on blue paper, written—Shmuel managed to observe while he was burying it—in delicate, precise feminine handwriting.

  Then he cantered, with his disheveled ram’s head thrust forward as if trying to break free of the thick neck it sprouted from, toward the bus stops outside the campus gate. But he had taken only forty or fifty steps, and was passing the Henry Moore sculpture of a heavy, greenish bronze woman lying draped in a shroud of rough cloth, when suddenly he turned and rushed back to the Kaplun Building, to the notice board next to the stairs leading down to the cafeteria. His short, thick fingers hurriedly rolled up his own note so he could read and reread what he himself had hidden from his eyes just a couple of minutes earlier:

  COMPANION SOUGHT

  Offered to a single humanities student with conversational skills and an interest in history, free accommodation and a modest monthly sum in return for spending five hours per evening with a seventy-year-old invalid, an educated, widely cultured man. He is able to take care of himself and seeks company, not assistance. For initial interview, please present yourself Sunday to Thursday between 4 and 6 p.m. at 17 Rabbi Elbaz Lane, Sha’arei Hesed. (Please ask for Atalia.) Owing to special circumstances, the successful candidate will be required to commit himself in writing to complete confidentiality.

  4

  * * *

  RABBI ELBAZ LANE led down the slope of Sha’arei Hesed toward the Valley of the Cross. Number 17 was the last house at the bottom of the lane, at the spot where in those days the neighborhood and the city ended, and the boulder-strewn fields that extended to the ruins of the Arab village of Sheikh Badr began. Immediately after the last house the potholed roadway turned into a rocky path that slithered hesitantly toward the valley, veering this way and that as if it regretted continuing onto this wasteland and was attempting to turn back toward the inhabited regions. In the meantime, the rain had stopped. Above the western hills there was a whisper of twilight, a gentle gleam, beguiling as a scent. In the distance, among the rocks on the opposite hillside, a small flock of sheep appeared; their shepherd, wrapped in a dark cloak, sat upright between rain showers in the cloudy evening light, staring immobile from the desolate hillside toward these last houses on the western fringe of Jerusalem.

  The house itself seemed to Shmuel Ash basement-like, lower than street level, sunk almost to its windows in the heavy earth of the slope. At a glance, from the street it resembled a squat, broad-shouldered man wearing a dark hat who had gone down on his knees to search for something in the mud.

  Both the rusty iron gates had long ago buckled their hinges and sunk in the soil under their own weight, as if they had struck root. So the gates stood ajar, neither open nor closed. The space between was just wide enough to squeeze through without scraping one’s shoulders. Above was a rusted iron arch with a Star of David engraved at its top, and these words hammered out within it in square letters:

  AND A REDEEMER SHALL COME UNTO ZION

  MAY IT BE SPEEDILY REBUILT 5674

  From the gate, Shmuel went down six cracked, uneven stone steps into a small courtyard that enchanted him from the first glance and stirred a pang of yearning for somewhere that he could not recall. A vague, shadowy memory flitted through his mind, a hidden reflection of other inner courtyards, many years before, and he had no idea where they were or when he saw them, but he knew indistinctly that they were not wintry courtyards like this one but, on the contrary, flooded with summer light. This memory brought him a fleeting feeling between sadness and delight, like a single note played on a cello at night from the depth of the darkness.

  The courtyard was surrounded by a stone wall about the height of a man and was paved with stone slabs polished by the years to a brilliant red with gray veins. Here and there, spots of light flashed. An old fig tree and an arbor of vines shaded the courtyard. So dense and intertwined were their branches that even now, their leaves shed, only a handful of capering gold coins managed to filter through the canopy and flicker on the flagstones. It seemed not so much a stone courtyard as a secret pool, its surface ruffled by myriad rippling wavelets.

  All along the wall and the front of the house and on the windowsills blazed little beacons of geraniums in red, white, pink, and purple. The geranium plants sprouted from a mass of rusty pots and disused pans, paraffin stoves, buckets, basins, tin cans, and even a cracked lavatory bowl, all filled with soil and promoted to the rank of flowerpot. The windows were protected with iron grilles and shaded with green metal shutters. The walls of the house were made of Jerusalem stone that turned its untamed, undressed face toward you. And beyond the house and the wall of the courtyard was a dense screen of cypresses, their color in this evening light closer to black than green.

  Over all this lay the silence of a cold winter’s evening. Not the kind of limpid silence that invites you in, but rather an indifferent, age-old silence that turns its back on you.

  The roof of the house was tiled, and in the middle of the façade there was a small attic gable, a triangular structure that reminded Shmuel of a truncated tent. The gable, too, was roofed with faded tiles. He suddenly wanted very much to live in that attic, to curl up inside it with a pile of books, a bottle of red wine, a stove, a quilt, a record player and some records, and not go outside for lectures, debates, or love affairs. To stay there and never leave, at least while it was cold outside.

  The front of the house was covered with a tangle of passionflower that clung to the roughness of the stone with fierce tendrils. Shmuel crossed the courtyard, paused to take in the dots of light trembling on the paving stones and the network of gray veins on the reddish stone. Then he was standing in front of a double iron door painted green, adorned with a knocker in the form of a blind lion’s head. The lion’s teeth were fastened on a large iron ring. In the center of the right-hand leaf of the door was the following legend:

  RESIDENCE OF JEHOIACHIN ABRAVANEL WHOM G-D PROTECT, TO SHEW THAT THE LORD IS UPRIGHT

  Beneath this inscription there was a small, practical note stuck to the door with two delicate strips of sticky paper, on which Shmuel recognized the same handwriting he had seen on the notice in the Kaplun Building, a meticulous and pleasing feminine hand. There was no “and” between the two names, which were separated by a large space:

  ATALIA ABRAVANEL GERSHOM WALD

  CAUTION—BROKEN STEP IMMEDIATELY

  BEHIND THE DOOR

  5

  * * *

  “KINDLY WALK STRAIGHT AHEAD. Then turn to your right. Please advance toward the source of light. Then you will find me,” said the voice of an elderly man from the depths of the house. It was a low, slightly amused voice, as if the man had been expecting this guest and none other, at this time and no other, and was now celebrating his foresight and taking pleasure in having his expectations realized. The front door was unlocked.

  Shmuel Ash stumbled as he entered the house, because he expected a step up, not a step down. And in fact it was not even a real step, but
a makeshift, low, rickety wooden bench. The moment a visitor trod on one edge, the other end rose up like a lever and almost overturned whoever had put his weight on it. It was Shmuel’s haste that saved him from a bad fall—while the bench was tipping up and rising into the air, he had already reached the stone floor with a big leap, his curly head surging forward, drawing him along into the passage, which was almost completely dark.

  The farther Shmuel penetrated into the house, his forehead forcing its way like the head of a fetus advancing along the neck of the womb, the stronger grew the feeling that the floor of the passage was not level, but sloped downhill, as if it were a riverbed rather than a dark corridor. Meanwhile, his nostrils caught a pleasant smell, a smell of fresh laundry, of cleanness, of starch and ironing.

  Another corridor branched off from the end of this passage. It was shorter, and from its end came the light that the voice had promised him. The light brought Shmuel Ash to a warm, high-ceilinged library. Its iron shutters were tightly closed and a paraffin heater burned with a pleasant blue glow. The single electric light was a gooseneck desk lamp that stooped over a heap of books and papers, focusing on them to the exclusion of the rest of the library.

  Beyond this ring of warm light, between two metal trolleys laden with books, files, folders, and notebooks, an elderly man sat talking on the telephone. A plaid was draped around his shoulders like a prayer shawl. He was an ugly man, broad, crooked, and hunchbacked. His nose was as sharp as the beak of a thirsty bird, and the curve of his chin suggested a sickle. His fine, almost feminine gray hair cascaded down the back of his head and covered the nape of his neck. His eyes were deep-set beneath thick, craggy white eyebrows that looked like woolly frost. His bushy Einstein mustache was a mound of snow. Without interrupting his telephone call, he eyed his visitor with a penetrating, quizzical glance. His sharp chin tilted toward his left shoulder. His left eye squinted while the right one was open wide, round, blue, and unnaturally large. The man’s face wore a sly, amused expression, as if he were winking or making a sarcastic denunciation: he seemed instantly to have understood the young man before him, as if reading his mind and understanding what he was after. A moment later he switched off the searchlight beam of his gaze, acknowledged the visitor’s presence with a nod of his head, and looked away, continuing his telephonic debate all the while:

  “Someone who is always suspicious, someone who always assumes that everyone is lying to him, someone whose whole life is nothing but an unending procession of traps to be avoided—excuse me a moment, an emissary has suddenly appeared, or maybe it’s a workman I never sent for.” At this, he covered the mouthpiece with one hand, its pink fingers looking almost transparent, ghostly, in the light of the desk lamp. His gnarled features, which resembled the trunk of an olive tree, lit up in a fleeting mischievous smile under his bushy white mustache, as if he had succeeded in trapping his visitor before the victim even realized what had happened.

  “Sit. There. Wait.”

  He removed his hand from the mouthpiece and continued, his head still tilted toward his left shoulder:

  “A persecuted man, whether he is persecuted because he himself has turned everyone into persecutors or whether he is persecuted because his wretched imagination swarms with throngs of scheming enemies, one way or another such a man has, besides his wretchedness, a moral flaw: surely there is a fundamental dishonesty in the enjoyment of persecution as such. Incidentally, such a man is dogged by suffering, loneliness, accidents, and ill health more than others—that is, more than the rest of us. By his nature, the suspicious person is destined for disaster. Suspicion, like an acid, corrodes the vessel in which it is put and eats away at the suspicious man himself: guarding oneself day and night from the entire human race, constantly devising ways of avoiding evil schemes and conspiracies, and sniffing out snares laid for you—these are what the Talmud calls ‘primary categories of damages.’ And these are the things that, as the rabbis say, take a man out of the world. Please excuse me for one moment ​—”

  Again he covered the mouthpiece with his corpse-like fingers and addressed Shmuel Ash in a soft, ironic, almost charred voice:

  “Kindly wait for a few more minutes. Meanwhile, feel free to listen to what I am saying. Though a young man like you no doubt inhabits a totally different planet.”

  Without waiting for a response, the old man removed his hand from the telephone and resumed his homily:

  “. . . Although, fundamentally, suspicion, enjoyment of persecution, and even hatred of the entire human race are all much less lethal than a love of humanity, which reeks of ancient rivers of blood. In my view, gratuitous hatred is less bad than gratuitous love: those who love mankind, the world-reforming knights-errant, those who rise up against us in each generation to save us, with none to rescue us from their power, surely, in fact, they—all right. All right. You are right. Let us not embark on that subject now. While you and I are elucidating all kinds of salvations and consolations, a corpulent young man with a caveman beard has appeared before me, in a military greatcoat and probably military boots. Maybe he has come to enlist me in the army? So let us pause at this point. We shall speak more of this subject, you and I, tomorrow and the day after. Yes, my friend, we shall definitely speak more. Inevitably. What should men like us do if not speak? Hunt whales? Seduce the Queen of Sheba? And by the way, apropos the Queen of Sheba, I have my own personal, anti-romantic, rather transgressive, in fact, interpretation of the verse ‘Love covereth all sins.’ Whereas the verse ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it’ always puts me in mind of the ominous wailing of a fire engine’s siren. Please give my regards to dear Zhenia, embrace and kiss her for me, embrace and kiss her in my fashion, not in your bureaucratic way. Tell her I miss her radiant face very much. No, not your radiant face, my heart’s desire—your face is ‘as the face of the generation.’ Like a dog’s. Yes. I look forward to seeing you one of these days. I do not know when Atalia will return. She minds her own business and she minds mine as well. Yes. Goodbye. Thank you. Amen, just as you say, so be it.”

  And with that he turned to Shmuel, who had seated himself in the meantime, after some hesitation, very cautiously, on a frail-looking wicker chair that seemed to rock under the weight of his body. Suddenly the man roared:

  “Wald!”

  “What?”

  “Wald! Wald! My name is Wald! And what are you? A pioneer? From a kibbutz? Have you favored us with a visit from the heights of Galilee? Or on the contrary, have you come up from the plains of the Negev?”

  “I’m from here. From Jerusalem. That is, I’m from Haifa, but I’m studying here. Or rather, I’ve been studying here.”

  “Now, now, my young friend, let’s get this straight. Are you studying or aren’t you? Are you from Haifa or Jerusalem? Out of the barnfloor or out of the winepress?”

  “I’m sorry. I can explain.”

  “And what is more, I assume you are a positive character? An enlightened, progressive person? A world reformer? A proponent of morality and justice? What I call an ideophile, an idealist like the rest of you? Am I right? Speak up and let us hear what you have to say for yourself.”

  Having said which, he waited meekly for an answer, his head tilted toward his left shoulder, one eye closed and the other open wide, like someone waiting patiently for the curtain to rise on a performance of which he has no high expectations and all he can do is resign himself to whatever the characters may be about to do to one another: how they will plunge each other into the depths of misery, if such a place exists, and by what means they will all arrive at their own disastrous self-inflicted destinies.

  And so Shmuel began again, this time with great care: he announced his first name and his surname, no, to the best of his knowledge he was not related to the well-known writer Sholem Asch, his family were functionaries and land surveyors, from Haifa, he studied, or rather he used to study, here in Jerusalem, history and religion, though he himself was not at all religious, d
efinitely not, quite the contrary in fact, one might say, but somehow the figure of Jesus of Nazareth . . . and Judas Iscariot . . . and the spiritual world of the Chief Priests and Pharisees who rejected Jesus, and how quickly the Nazarene, in Jewish eyes, went from being a persecuted figure to a symbol of persecution and oppression . . . and how this was somehow connected in his view with the fate of social reformers in modern times . . . well, it was rather a long story, he hoped he was not intruding here, he had come in response to the notice, the one about a companion, that he discovered by accident on the notice board in the Kaplun Building. At the entrance to the student cafeteria . . .

  At this, the invalid stiffened, letting his tartan plaid fall to the ground, raised his long, distorted frame from the chair, twisted the upper part of his body in a series of complicated movements, gripped the arms of the chair with both hands, and stood up at a strange angle, though it was clear that it was not his legs but his strong arms grasping the chair frame that bore his weight. He chose not to touch the crutches that leaned against the edge of his desk. He was strong and bent, hunchbacked, yet so tall that his head nearly hit the low light fixture that hung from the ceiling, and when he stood he seemed twisted like the trunk of an old olive tree. He was big-boned and stiff, with large ears, and yet almost regal with that gray mane flowing down the back of his head, the snowy mounds of those eyebrows, and the striking whiteness of that thick mustache. When Shmuel’s eyes met the old man’s, he was surprised to observe that, in contrast to his amused and ironic tone, the blue eyes were clouded and mournful.