by Amos Oz
Judas Iscariot was therefore the author, the impresario, the stage manager, and the director of the spectacle of the crucifixion. In this his detractors and calumniators down the ages were right, perhaps more right than they imagined. Even when Jesus was dying in terrible torment on the cross, hanging hour after hour in the blazing sun, the blood flowing from all his wounds, and the flies swarming on them, even when they fed him vinegar, Judas’ faith did not waver for an instant: it was surely coming. The crucified God would arise and shake himself free of the nails and descend from the cross and say to all the people falling on their faces in astonishment: love one another.
And what of Jesus himself? Even in the moments when he was dying on the cross? At the ninth hour, when the crowd was mocking him with cries of “Save thyself if thou canst and come down from the cross,” the doubt still nagged: Am I really the man? And yet he may still have tried in his last moments to hold on to Judas’ promise. With the last of his strength he pulled on his hands, which were fixed with nails to the cross, and he pulled on his nailed feet, suffering torments as he pulled, crying out with pain, calling out to his Father in heaven as he pulled, and he died with the words of the psalm on his lips, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”—that is, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Such words could only have come from the lips of a dying man who had believed, or who half believed, that God would indeed help him to pull out the nails, to work the miracle, and to descend whole from the cross. And with these words he died from loss of blood like a man, like flesh and blood.
And Judas, the meaning and purpose of whose life were shattered before his horrified eyes; Judas, who realized that he had brought about with his own hands the death of the man he loved and adored, went away and hanged himself. So died, Shmuel wrote in his notebook, the first Christian. The last Christian. The only Christian.
33
* * *
SHMUEL SHOOK HIMSELF and glanced at his watch. Did Atalia say that he should be in the kitchen at three a.m.? Or knock at her door? Or maybe she meant that by three they should be on their way together to Mount Zion? It was twenty past three, and he frantically powdered his forehead, face, and beard with baby talc, quickly struggled into his shabby student coat, put his shapka on his head, wrapped a prickly old woolen scarf around his neck, decided against the stick with the fox-head handle, and rushed down the stairs without stopping to close his door behind him.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard Gershom Wald’s voice calling to him. He had almost forgotten that the old man was awake at night, sitting up in his library.
“Young man, step in here for a moment. Just for a moment.”
Atalia came out of her room wearing a winter overcoat and a black knitted scarf over her head which made her look like a middle-aged widow. Shmuel caressed with his eyes the deeply etched furrow that descended from her nose to the center of her upper lip. In his dreams he would gently caress this furrow with his tongue.
“Go to him. But don’t stay. We’re late.”
Wald was not sitting at his desk; he was lying on his wicker couch, his legs covered with the plaid rug. He was twisted, hunchbacked, his face ugly but striking, his chin jutting, his Einstein mustache covering a hint of an ironic smile half hovering on his lips, his glossy silver hair down to his shoulders. He was holding an open book with both hands and had another book lying face-down on his knees. At the sight of Shmuel in the doorway Gershom Wald said:
“By night on my bed I sought her whom my soul loveth.”
And he added:
“Listen. Don’t fall in love with her.”
And then he said:
“It’s too late.”
And he also said:
“Go. She’s waiting for you. I’m going to lose you too.”
It was after half past three when Shmuel and Atalia walked into the outer darkness. The sky was cloudless. Large stars sparkled in it, ringed with a halo of milky mist, looking just like van Gogh’s stars. The paving stones in the yard were damp from the rain that had fallen in the early evening. The black cypresses waved to and fro in silent devotion in the breeze blowing from the west, from the ruins of the Arab village of Sheikh Badr. The air was clear and cold; its sharpness seared the lungs and cast a lucid wakefulness over Shmuel.
He tried, as usual, to walk half a step behind Atalia so as to be able to watch her movement from the back. But she threaded her arm through his and hurried him on:
“Could you walk a little faster? You’re always rushing, and just when we need to hurry you choose to dawdle. Like a sleepwalker. Can’t you do anything briskly?”
“Yes. No. Sometimes,” Shmuel said.
And then he added:
“At one time I used to wander around the streets on my own at this time of night. Not long ago. When Yardena left me and went —”
“I know. Nesher Sharshevsky. The expert on rainwater capture.”
She did not say this mockingly but sadly, almost sympathetically. Shmuel squeezed her arm as a sign of gratitude.
There was no one in the streets. Here and there, a hungry cat ran across their path. Here and there, they saw dustbins that had been overturned by the wind, their contents scattered on the pavement. Jerusalem stood silent and attentive in the darkness of the small hours. As if at any moment something might happen. As if the buildings wrapped in shadow, the pine trees rustling in the gardens, the damp, low stone walls, the rows of parked cars, were all awake, standing and waiting. Within the deep silence some strange restlessness was seething. The city was only pretending to sleep; in reality it was fully alert, suppressing an inner trembling.
“The couple we are going to trail?” Shmuel began.
“Don’t talk now.”
Shmuel stopped talking at once. They crossed Keren Hakayemet Street, passed the semicircular Jewish Agency building, went a little way down the slope of King George Street, turned into George Washington Street, passed behind the YMCA building, and crossed again toward the King David Hotel, where a tall uniformed doorman stood outside the revolving door stamping his feet to keep warm. From there they walked downhill toward the Montefiore Windmill and the buildings of Mishkenot Sha’ananim. As they went down the flight of steps in Yemin Moshe they were joined by a stray mongrel that sniffed at the hem of Atalia’s dress and let out a whimper. Shmuel paused for a moment, bent down, and quickly stroked the dog twice. It licked his hand and gave another low whimper, submissive and imploring. It started to follow them, with lowered head, wagging its tail and pleading for another demonstration of affection.
In the late fifties and early sixties, Yemin Moshe was still a slum with rows of stone houses, some with tiled roofs, others with flat roofs. In the little courtyards there were rainwater cisterns from the Ottoman era, each with an iron cover. Here and there in rusty tins grew geraniums, edible greens, and culinary herbs. All the houses stood dark and shuttered. No light shone in any of the barred windows. Only a pale streetlamp shed flakes of meager yellow light on the steps. Apart from the dog that had joined them and walked some way behind with its tail tucked between its legs, there was not a living soul to be seen. Shmuel and Atalia went down to the main road that wound its way along the Valley of Hinnom, and Shmuel whispered:
“This is Gehenna. We’re in hell!”
“We’re used to that, aren’t we?” Atalia replied.
They walked along the rusty barbed wire that blocked the continuation of the road at the foot of the walls of the Old City and that marked the border of the mine-strewn no man’s land that divided Israeli from Jordanian Jerusalem. Now they began to climb the winding path that snaked its way up to the summit of Mount Zion. The mount itself was a sort of finger of Israeli territory surrounded on three sides by Jordanian territory. Here the dog stopped, barked forlornly, beat the pavement with its front paws, decided that it was doomed to failure, then turned back with flattened ears, its mouth open in a soundless wail, belly almost scraping the ground. The cold penetrated Shmuel’s
duffel coat and dug sharp talons into his back and shoulders. He was shivering. Atalia, in her sensible shoes, was striding briskly ahead, and he was being dragged along on the narrow path, trying hard not to lag behind. But Atalia was more energetic than he and a widening gap opened between them, so that Shmuel was terrified of losing her, of losing his way in these forsaken places that abutted no man’s land, exposed to the enemy gun posts. A solitary cricket sawed away in the darkness, and a chorus of frogs answered it from a pool amid the clefts of the rock. A night bird disturbed from its roost, perhaps a barn owl, suddenly passed low over their heads, beat its wings three or four times, and vanished. The dark shadow of the walls of the Old City stretched menacingly on their left all along the way. From the deserted Hinnom Valley burst a long, heartrending jackal’s howl, answered immediately from all sides by a chorus of jackals whose voices rent the silence of the night. Dogs started to bark, and other dogs replied from far away, from the direction of Abu Tor. Shmuel was about to say something but thought better of it. Tiredness descended on him and he was short of breath from the winding climb. He feared an impending attack of asthma. The coarse woolen scarf pricked his neck. But the attack did not materialize.
When they reached the summit, at the entrance to the structure known as David’s Tomb—there was an ancient coffin there, draped in a pall, where the faithful believed the bones of King David lay—a reservist stood before them, a man in his mid-forties, heavyset and short, wearing a coarse military greatcoat with its collar turned up and a stocking cap rolled down to protect his ears from the cold. The soldier stood with his legs apart, leaning on an old Czech rifle. He was smoking the dog end of a cigarette, and when he saw Shmuel and Atalia he spoke without removing it:
“Closed. No entry.”
“Why?” Atalia laughed. The soldier raised the cap slightly from one ear and replied:
“Closed by order, lady. No entry.”
“But we had no intention of going inside,” Atalia said, pulling Shmuel by the arm.
Shmuel lingered and asked the soldier:
“When does your watch finish?”
“Another half hour,” the soldier said, the cigarette almost burning his lips. And he added inconsequentially:
“Nobody understands anything.”
Atalia turned and, without a word, took a few steps forward, to the iron railing that looked eastward from the summit of the mount toward no man’s land. Shmuel lingered by the soldier as the fire touched his lips. The man spat the cigarette butt in a wide arc—a firefly soared to the height of his head, curved, fell to the ground, and went on glowing, refusing to die. Shmuel turned away and followed Atalia. She inspected the place as though sniffing the air, moved away to a corner of the structure, and hid among the deep shadows under the stone arch that concealed the starry sky and the swath of fine mist now enfolding the whole mount. Shmuel came and stood close to her, hesitated for a moment, then placed his arm around her shoulders. She did not push him away. Finally she broke her silence.
“We’ve got between half an hour and an hour,” she said.
Then she whispered:
“Now, if you really must, you can talk. But only in a whisper.”
“You see. Atalia. It’s like this.”
“Like what?”
“You and I have been living under the same roof for more than two months, nearly.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“And we’ve been out together twice. Three times, if you count tonight.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m asking.”
“The answer is: not yet. Perhaps with time. Perhaps never.”
And she added:
“Sometimes you’re quite touching, sometimes you’re a bore.”
Close to six o’clock, the first glow appeared over the Mountains of Moab to the east. The outlines of the mountains became clearer, the sky paled, and the stars began to fade. The couple were probably not coming to watch the sunrise. Or perhaps there never was a couple. Perhaps Atalia had invented them. The middle-aged soldier who had been standing smoking at the entrance to King David’s Tomb had vanished. No doubt he had finished his watch, smoked a last cigarette, and gone off to sleep fully dressed in his greatcoat and woolen cap in a basement somewhere. A piercing cold easterly wind blew, stopped, then blew again. Atalia let Shmuel wait with her for a few more minutes. Then she told him to go home.
“What about you?”
“I’m staying here for a bit. After that, I’m going to work,” she said. Then she took his freezing fingers in her hand, put two of them into her mouth, and kept them there for a short while. Suddenly she said:
“We’ll see.” With that, she parted from him.
It was half past seven when Shmuel arrived, hungry, thirsty, and frozen, at the house on Rabbi Elbaz Lane. He made for the kitchen and ate four thick slices of bread spread with cream cheese, drank two glasses of hot tea, went up to his room, poured himself a little vodka, drained the glass in one, undressed, fell asleep, and slept till midday. Then he got up, showered, and went to his Hungarian restaurant. This time he took the splendid walking stick with the carved fox’s head showing its predatory teeth as if to threaten all of Jerusalem.
At the Hungarian restaurant he found that his usual table was taken. A middle-aged couple, both wearing glasses and overcoats, were sitting eating, not goulash soup but sausages, fried eggs, and potatoes. A glass of red wine stood before each of them, and Shmuel had the impression that they were in a good mood. What was the matter? What had happened? Why were they so cheerful? Had little Yossi Siton, who had been run over chasing his ball on the Gaza Road a few days earlier, suddenly come back to life?
He hesitated for a moment or two in the doorway, wondering whether to leave, but his hunger got the better of him and he sat down at another table, as far as possible from the intrusive couple. The proprietor of the restaurant, its only waiter, was wearing a white apron which was none too clean, and was badly shaved. He came up to Shmuel after ten minutes or so and, without comment, placed before him on the table the goulash soup with several slices of white bread. For dessert he brought a bowl of apple compote. And since Shmuel had not slept all night, he remained slumped where he was at the end of the meal for half an hour, dozing. The sight of the sunrise from the top of Mount Zion seemed like a dream to him now. In fact, not only the sight of the sunrise but all the previous weeks seemed to him like a dream where you dream that you are awake, then wake up and find that you were right.
34
* * *
My dear brother,
This evening there was a light fall of snow here in Rome, but it melted before it could reach the pavements and statues. Pity. I’ve still never seen Rome under the snow. Not that I wander round the city. I’ve been here for three and a half years and I’ve still seen nothing. All day long I study or spend time at the lab, in the evenings I work as an assistant at a pharmacy, and at night—four hours at the telegraph office. The money I get from these two jobs is scarcely enough to pay for my course fees, the room I share with a neurotic student from Belgium, and a simple meal twice a day, of bread, milk, vegetables, spaghetti or rice, and a cup of black coffee.
I know your life hasn’t been easy since our dad lost his case against that scoundrel and the firm went into liquidation. I know this even though you hardly ever write to me. In the past couple of months you’ve sent me just two short letters—all you said was that you’ve given up studying at university and that you’ve found employment and lodgings in an old Jerusalem house. You also wrote me a couple of lines about Yardena’s marriage. The word “loneliness” never appears in your letters, but every word you write has a smell of loneliness about it. Even as a child you were always a child apart: immersed in your stamp collection or spending hours up on the roof, sitting and dreaming. For years I’ve been trying to talk to you about yourself, but you always change the subject and talk about Ben-Gur
ion or the Crusades. No, you don’t talk: you lecture. I was hoping that Yardena would get you to come out of your shell. But the shell is part of you.
I imagine your life in the basement of some dark, dilapidated Jerusalem house, with your cripple, who’s probably a sickly, capricious fusspot, a confused old man who sends you off all day long on all sorts of errands, to buy stamps or a newspaper or tobacco for his pipe, and you wait on him most of the day (from morning till evening? Or at night too?), and he or his family pay you a pittance because they’ve been good enough to let you live in their house. I hope at least you’re warm enough in the Jerusalem winter?
Until a few weeks ago I was hoping you would marry Yardena, though to be perfectly honest I found her rather frightening. Once, two years ago, when Dad could still afford to pay for me to come home for a holiday, I came to visit you in Jerusalem—remember?—and it was there, in your room in Tel Arza, that I met her. She seemed to me as different from you as two people can be. Not necessarily in a bad way. You are as you are, and she was as she is: vivacious, loud, and almost childlike. You would sit there studying and she would sit opposite you, playing on a mouth organ that she actually had no idea how to play. You, as usual, were tired by nine o’clock and wanted to go to bed, and she would drag you, practically by force, to go out into town, to the cinema, to cafés, to visit friends. Despite everything I thought you suited each other quite well. I thought she might gradually draw another Mooly out of you, someone less inhibited, more lively, even hedonistic. Perhaps.
