by Amos Oz
Why did you two split up? What do you mean, “She decided to go back to her previous boyfriend and marry him”? What happened? Did you quarrel? Did you cheat on her? Did Yardena want the two of you to live together and you refused? Did she want to marry you? Or maybe you wanted to break it off and go back to your perpetual loneliness? Did she drop out of university too? Actually, what do I care what she did? What I care about is that you went back to your desert island. And if you have decided to ruin your academic career with your own hands, just when you were close to getting your MA, with distinction, and had already started working toward your doctorate—you could have gone back to Haifa, for instance, you could have found a suitable job, been near our parents, made new friends or revived old friendships. As Yardena did.
I remember, Mooly, when you were eleven and I was sixteen, how we once went on our own to spend a day in Tel Aviv. Mum gave me some money and said, Enjoy yourselves. At that time Dad had a decent income from the firm. He encouraged us too: Go, he said. Compared to Tel Aviv, our Haifa is just a sleepy village. You can get the last bus back tonight. Or don’t come back. Stay the night in Tel Aviv with your Auntie Edith. I’ll phone her. She’ll be happy to put you up.
I remember you following me onto the bus from Hadar to the station, in khaki shorts, with your usual pocketknife hanging from your belt, wearing sandals and a khaki hat that Mum made you wear because of the sun. I remember your short shadow falling on the walls, because you always walked close to the wall. Such a pale, silent, withdrawn child. When I asked you if you preferred to go to Tel Aviv by bus or by train, you said, What difference does it make? And then you said, Whatever you like. You were deep in your thoughts. Not thoughts, apparently, but one stubborn thought that you didn’t want to share with me. You didn’t want to share it with anyone.
I remember saying to you on the way (in the end we took the train) that you ought to be more enthusiastic: a day out in Tel Aviv, we had loads of money, we were rich, there were a thousand things we could do, what did you prefer? The zoo? The seaside? A boat trip on the River Yarkon? A visit to the port? To every suggestion I made, you replied, Yes. Lovely. When I pressed you to decide, at least to decide what we should do first, you said to me, It doesn’t matter. And suddenly you started lecturing me about the system of reserve duty in the Swiss army, a system that we had copied.
That sadness of yours. Even though at times you could talk and talk, tirelessly, make whole speeches, give lectures, with a sort of passionate joyfulness, but always lectures and speeches. Never a conversation. You never listened.
I’m different from you. I always have two or three girlfriends. In Haifa I had a boyfriend. And after him I had another one. Aharon. You remember him. The scout leader. And here in Rome I’ve got someone too. A boy who was born and raised in Milan, a literary translator from Spanish to Italian, Emilio, he’s not a boy actually but a divorced man of thirty-eight, so he’s seven or eight years older than me. He’s got a ten-year-old daughter, Sofia, but we call her Sonia, who is closer to me now than she is to her own mother. Her mother lives in Bologna and doesn’t have much of a relationship with her. Sonia calls me Mari instead of Miri. Only Emilio insists on calling me by my proper name, Miri. Cara Miri. He strokes my neck with one hand and Sonia’s with the other. As though making a link between us.
We only manage to meet on weekends because I have to study, and as I told you, I work at two jobs. Emilio works from home whenever it suits him, mostly early in the morning. He would be happy for us to see each other every day, and Sonia would love it if I went to live with them. But they live on the other side of Rome, a long way from the university, and a long way from the pharmacy and the telegraph office. And I am so busy with my classes and at the lab and with my two jobs. I only go to Emilio’s on Saturday evening, and I stay with him and little Sonia until Sunday evening. On Sundays I always get up at four o’clock in the morning and cook for the two of them for the whole week. Then the three of us go out to the park near his house or for a short boat trip on the river or, when the weather is good enough, we take a bus out of town and have a picnic in a pine forest, in the shade of some ancient ruin.
On Sunday evening Emilio and Sonia accompany me to my evening job at the pharmacy and we say goodbye to each other with a long hug. During the week we talk on the phone almost every evening. I haven’t got a phone in my room, but the pharmacist allows me to use his phone.
Emilio knows that I don’t have any money and that I work beyond my strength. He also knows why the parents stopped paying for me to study. He knows well that I have to live from hand to mouth. And though he doesn’t earn much from translating, he’s offered several times to help me with a small financial contribution. I refused and refused again and got a little annoyed with him. Why I said no I don’t understand. Why I was annoyed I understand even less. He was offended that I refused, apparently, but he didn’t express it in words. Just like you. I love his generosity. I always think that generosity is the most attractive quality in a man, the most manly quality. And how about you, Mooly, couldn’t you get some translating work instead, like Emilio, or give private lessons? Mum, Dad, and I are all bitterly disappointed that you’ve dropped out of university. I’ve always imagined you as a student, an academic, a researcher, a scholar, a lecturer, maybe someday a famous professor. Why did you give all that up? What made you suddenly turn your back on it? Was it really just because of Dad’s bankruptcy?
If only I had some money, I’d take a short break right now and come to Israel for two or three weeks, come and see you in Jerusalem, drag you out of that grave you’ve dug for yourself, shake you with all my strength, find you a job, and force you to go back to university. After all, you’ve only missed one semester. There’s still time to catch up. On that trip to Tel Aviv, when you were eleven and I was sixteen, we wandered the streets all day, past shop windows that we barely looked at, dripping with sweat from the heat and humidity, drank soda pop twice, ate ice cream twice, went to the cinema in the middle of a black-and-white French film, and returned to Haifa long before the last bus. We didn’t stay with Auntie Edith. I remember asking you what you really wanted, Mooly, and you said you wanted to know what the point was. That was our only conversation that day. We may have talked about other things, like the soda pop and the ice cream, for instance, but I can only remember that sentence of yours: I want to discover what the point is. Maybe the time has finally come, Mooly, for you to stop looking for the truth which doesn’t exist and start living your life.
Is there something inside you that wants to be punished? But what exactly are you punishing yourself for? Write to me. Don’t just write five or six lines: “I’m fine everything’s fine it’s winter in Jerusalem I’m doing easy work for a few hours a day and I spend the rest of the time reading and wandering around the town.” That’s more or less all you said to me in your last letter. Write me a real letter. Write to me soon.
Miri
35
* * *
ON THE MORNING of a spring-like winter’s day in Jerusalem, a day drenched in blue and soaked in smells of pine resin and damp earth, a day wrapped in birdsong, Shmuel Ash got up early, soon after nine o’clock, showered, sprinkled baby talc on his beard and forehead, went down to the kitchen to drink some coffee and eat four slices of bread with strawberry jam, put on his coat, left behind his cap and the stick with the fox-head handle, and took two buses to the State Archives. He climbed the steps impatiently, at an angle, his disheveled, overgrown head thrust energetically forward, preceding his trunk and legs, hurried across the entrance hall, and looked for signs of life. At the information desk he found a young, fair-haired woman, wearing bold red lipstick and with her blouse generously unbuttoned. She looked up at him, recoiled a little at his caveman appearance, and inquired how she might help him. Shmuel, panting from the exertion of running up the steps, began by reminding her that today was definitely the loveliest day of the year. Then he said that it was a sin to sit in an office on a da
y like this. One should get out of town, go to the hills, the valleys, the woods. When she said he was right, he suggested shyly that they should go out together. Right away. Then he asked whether, and if so where, he could sit for a few hours and look through the minutes of the Zionist Executive Committee and the Council of the Jewish Agency from the middle of 1947 to the end of the winter of 1948.
Since she thought he looked thirsty, the receptionist asked if he would like a glass of water. Shmuel thanked her and said “Yes,” then changed his mind and said “No, thank you. It’s a pity to waste the time.” She gave him a surprised, kindhearted smile and said:
“Here we never hurry. Here time stands still.”
Then she sent him to Mr. Sheindelevich’s office in the basement.
Mr. Sheindelevich, a small, vigorous man with a tanned, freckled bald head fringed with an amphitheater of shiny white hair, was sitting at his desk in front of a cumbersome, ancient typewriter, typing slowly with one finger, seeming to weigh each letter separately. The room was windowless, underground, lit by the feeble light cast by two bare bulbs. The man’s shadow, like Shmuel’s, fell on two different walls. On Shmuel’s wall hung photographs of Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion, while on the wall behind Mr. Sheindelevich hung a large colored map of the State of Israel, on which the 1949 armistice lines were shown with a thick green line that bisected the city of Jerusalem.
Shmuel repeated his request. Mr. Sheindelevich looked at him for a long moment and then a tolerant, paternal smile slowly spread across his face, as if he were amazed at the strange request but was suppressing his amazement, and pardoned the ignorance of the person making it. He cleared his throat, paused, typed another two slow letters on his antique typewriter, looked up at Shmuel, and replied with a question:
“Are you a researcher, sir?”
“Yes. No. In fact, yes. I’m interested in the discussions that preceded the decision to set up the state.”
“And for whom are you conducting this research?”
Shmuel, who had not expected this question, was confused for a moment and then replied hesitantly:
“For myself.”
And he added with a surge of courage:
“Surely every citizen should have the right to look at the documents and study the history of the state?”
“And which minutes do you wish to look at, sir?”
“The Zionist Executive Committee. The Council of the Jewish Agency. From the middle of 1947 to the spring of 1948.”
And he added without being asked:
“I am interested in the fundamental argument that preceded the decision to set up the state. If, indeed, there was such an argument.”
Mr. Sheindelevich leaned forward, stunned, as if he had been asked to reveal his intimate bedroom habits:
“But that’s not possible, sir. It is totally impossible.”
“And why?” Shmuel asked gently.
“You have formulated two different requests at once, and you would receive two answers at once.”
A Middle Eastern woman in her fifties, in a long black dress, a thin woman with drooping shoulders, silently entered the room bearing a tray with steaming glasses of tea. She set a glass before Mr. Sheindelevich. He thanked her politely and asked his guest:
“Will you have a glass of tea, at least? So as not to leave here entirely empty-handed.”
“Thank you,” Shmuel said.
“Yes thank you? No thank you?”
“No thank you. Not this time.”
The woman picked up her tray, apologized, and left the room. Mr. Sheindelevich took up where he had left off, in a soft voice, as though sharing a secret:
“The records of the Zionist Executive Committee are not here, sir. They are in the Zionist Archives. But you will find nothing there except transcripts of speeches, because their meetings were open to the public. As for the minutes of the Council of the Jewish Agency, the minutes of the secret discussions, that material is strictly classified. And it will remain strictly classified for another forty years, in accordance with the Archives Law and the State Secrets Order. If you so wish,” the man added without a smile, “you are hereby invited to come and see me forty years from now; maybe by that time you will have changed your mind and will drink a glass of tea with me. I hope Comrade Fortuna’s tea will not have cooled by then.”
He stood up, extended his hand, and added in a sad voice that barely concealed a certain cheerfulness and faint glee at the other’s misfortune:
“I am so sorry you troubled yourself to come here. I could have just as well refused you on the telephone. Please, make a note of our telephone number so that you can ring us in forty years’ time and spare yourself a fruitless journey.”
Shmuel shook the hand that was offered him and turned to go. As he reached the door, he was arrested by Mr. Sheindelevich’s soft voice:
“What is it that you wish to know, precisely? After all, they all wanted as one man to set up a state, and they all knew as one man that we would have to defend ourselves by force.”
“Even Shealtiel Abravanel?”
“But he,” the man said, and stopped. He typed another single letter and concluded dryly:
“He was a traitor.”
36
* * *
AT TEN O’CLOCK one morning, in the kitchen, Atalia said:
“He’s been ill since the middle of the night. I’ve been nursing him most of the night. I’ve got to go out now, and you will have to go to his bedroom shortly. You’ve never been there. You’ll have to change his pajamas every few hours because he’s drenched with sweat. You must give him tea with honey and lemon from a teaspoon. You can add a little brandy. If he can’t get out of bed, you have to slip a bedpan under him, then empty it in the toilet and wash it. This time you’ll have to touch his body. He’s an old man and you may find this uncomfortable or unpleasant. We brought you here to talk to him, and to look after him if necessary, not to be comfortable. And remember to wash your hands and change the damp flannel on his forehead. And on no account allow him to talk and talk today. On the contrary. You do the talking. Lecture him. Recite. His throat is inflamed.”
It was a bad winter flu. The old man’s temperature was high, his throat was on fire, his eyes were runny, his lungs full of fluid, and from time to time he had a fit of dry coughing. His ears, which Atalia had plugged with cotton wool, hurt, particularly the left one. At first he tried to joke: “The Eskimos are right, of course, to abandon their old folk in the snow.” Then, citing various biblical and Talmudic verses, he referred to himself as a broken implement, a shattered vessel, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. When his temperature reached close to 104 degrees, the humor left him. He sank into melancholy, switched off his gaze, and wrapped himself in gloomy silence.
The doctor came and left. He listened to the patient’s bare back and chest, injected him with penicillin, and told him to lie in bed with the upper part of his body supported by several pillows so that he would not develop pneumonia. He prescribed APC tablets to be taken several times a day, as well as cough syrup and eardrops, and told him to drink a lot of hot tea with honey and lemon, and yes, certainly, you could add a little brandy. And he instructed Shmuel to keep the bedroom warm.
“In the case of a man who is not so young, a man whose health is not fantastic even when he seems well, we must beware of complications,” said the doctor with a slight stammer. He came originally from a small town near Frankfurt, and he had a small, square paunch, a triangle of white handkerchief showing from the breast pocket of his jacket, two pairs of glasses, both hanging from cords, and tiny hands as delicate as a little girl’s.
So it came about that Shmuel Ash was allowed into Mr. Wald’s bedroom. He had been living in the attic for more than two months and had not yet entered his employer’s bedroom, or that of Atalia, or the other bedroom, whose door was always locked, farther along the passage opposite the door to the library. Shmuel imagined that this room had belonged to th
e late Shealtiel Abravanel. Up to now these three rooms had been out of bounds. Shmuel had access only to the library, which was his workplace, the kitchen, which he shared with Atalia, and his attic. The house on Rabbi Elbaz Lane was carefully compartmentalized.
This morning, for the first time, because Mr. Wald was ill, Shmuel was permitted to penetrate the old man’s private room, to sit for a few hours by his bedside and read him a few chapters from the book of Jeremiah until he dozed off. From time to time, he woke and broke into a wet fit of coughing. Shmuel supported his back and fed him hot tea with honey and lemon, laced with brandy, from a teaspoon. It was the first time he had touched Mr. Wald. At first he had to force himself to touch the old man, because he guessed that the crooked, gnarled body would repel or disgust him. But when he made himself touch him, he discovered, to his surprise, that the bulky body was warm and very solid to the touch, as though, despite or because of his disability, he had strong back muscles and tough shoulder bones. Shmuel enjoyed this warmth and hardness so much that when he changed the old man’s pajama top he rested his hands on the bare shoulders, and he may have let his fingertips linger on the rough skin a little longer than he should have.
When the old man dozed off, Shmuel got up and wandered around the room. The bedroom was rather small, much smaller than the library but bigger than Shmuel’s attic. Here, as in the library, there were close-packed bookshelves which covered two of the walls and stretched from floor to ceiling. While the books in the library were scholarly tomes in Hebrew and Arabic and three or four other languages, about social studies, Jewish studies, the Middle East, history, mathematics, philosophy, as well as some books on mysticism and astronomy, here in the bedroom the shelves were packed with novels and poetry, mostly in German, Polish, and English, mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century, ranging from Michael Kohlhaas to Ulysses; from Heine to Hermann Hesse and Hermann Broch; from Cervantes in German to Kierkegaard, Musil, and Kafka, also in German; from Adam Mickiewicz and Julian Tuwim to Marcel Proust.
