My Michael

by Amos Oz

  Then Michael drew my attention to the sly, leering smile of the bronze statue of the Virgin on top of the building. Her arms were outstretched as if she were trying to embrace the whole city.

  I went downstairs to the library basement. In a narrow, gloomy passage, lined with dark, sealed boxes, I met the kindly librarian, a short man who wore a skullcap. I was in the habit of exchanging greetings and witticisms with him. He too, as if making a discovery, asked me:

  "What has come over you today, young lady? Good news? If you will permit me to say so, 'bright joy illumines Hannah in a most amazing manner.'"

  In the Mapu seminar the lecturer related a typical anecdote, a story about a fanatically orthodox Jewish sect who claimed that ever since Abraham Mapu had published Love of Zion there had been more benches in the houses of ill fame, Heaven forbid.

  What has got into everyone today? Have they been talking to each other?

  Mrs. Tarnopoler, my landlady, had bought a new stove. She beamed benignly at me.

  5

  THAT EVENING the sky brightened a little. Blue patches drifted eastward. The air was damp.

  Michael and I arranged to meet outside the Edison Cinema. Whichever of us arrived first would buy two tickets for the film, which starred Greta Garbo. The heroine of the film dies of unrequited love after sacrificing her body and her soul for a worthless man. Throughout the film I suppressed an overpowering desire to laugh. Her suffering and his worthlessness seemed like two terms in a simple mathematical equation, which I was not tempted to try to solve. I felt full to overflowing. I laid my head on Michael's shoulder and watched the screen sideways, until the pictures turned into a capering succession of different tones graded between black and white, but mainly various shades of light gray.

  As we came out Michael said:

  "When people are contented and have nothing to do, emotion spreads like a malignant tumor."

  "What a trite remark," I said.

  Michael said:

  "Look here, Hannah, art isn't my subject. I'm just a humble scientist, as they say."

  I refused to relent:

  "That's also trite."

  Michael smiled:

  "Well?"

  Whenever he cannot answer he smiles, just like a child who notices grownups doing something ridiculous—an embarrassed, embarrassing smile.

  We strolled down Isaiah Street toward Geula Street. Sharp stars glittered in the Jerusalem sky. Many of the street lamps of the British Mandate period were destroyed by shell-fire during the War of Independence. In 1950 most of them were still shattered. Shadowy hills showed in the distance at the ends of the streets.

  "This isn't a city," I said, "it's an illusion. We're crowded in on all sides by the hills—Castel, Mount Scopus, Augusta Victoria, Nebi Samwil, Miss Carey. All of a sudden the city seems very insubstantial."

  Michael said:

  "When it's been raining Jerusalem makes one feel sad. Actually, Jerusalem always makes one feel sad, but it's a different sadness at every moment of the day and at every time of the year."

  I felt Michael's arm round my shoulder. I buried my hands in the pockets of my warm corduroy trousers. Once I took one hand out and touched him under the chin. He was clean-shaven today, not like the first time we had met, in Terra Sancta. I said he must have shaved especially to please me.

  Michael was embarrassed. He just happened, he lied, to have bought a new razor that day. I laughed. He hesitated a moment, then decided to join in.

  In Geula Street we saw an Orthodox woman, wearing a white kerchief, open a second-floor window and squeeze half her body out as if she were about to throw herself down into the street. But she merely closed the heavy iron shutters. The hinges groaned as if with despair.

  When we passed the playground of Sarah Zeldin's kindergarten I told Michael that I worked there. Was I a strict teacher? He imagined I was. What made him think that? He didn't know what to answer. Just like a child, I said, starting to say something and not knowing how to finish. Expressing an opinion and not daring to defend it. A child.

  Michael smiled.

  From one of the yards, on the corner of Malachi Street, came the sound of cats screeching. It was a loud, hysterical shriek, followed by two strangled wails, and finally a low sob, faint and submissive, as if there were no sense, no hope.

  Michael said:

  "They're crying out in love. Did you know, Hannah, that cats are most in heat in winter, on the coldest days? When I'm married I shall keep a cat. I always wanted to have one but my father wouldn't let me. I'm an only child. Cats cry out in love because they're not bound by any constraint or convention. I imagine that a cat in heat feels as if it's been grabbed hold of by a stranger and is being squeezed to death. The pain is physical. Burning. No, I didn't learn that in geology. I was afraid you'd make fun of me talking like this. Let's go."

  I said:

  "You must have been a very spoiled child."

  "I was the hope of the family," Michael said. "I still am. My father and his four sisters, they all bet on me as if I was their racehorse and as if my university education was a steeplechase. What do you do in the morning in your kindergarten, Hannah?"

  "What a funny question. I do exactly what any other kindergarten teacher does. Last month, at Hanukah, I glued together paper tops and cut out cardboard Maccabees. Sometimes I sweep the dead leaves from the paths in the yard. Sometimes I tinkle on the piano. And I often tell the children stories, from memory, about Indians, islands, travels, submarines. When I was a child I adored the books my brother had by Jules Verne and Fenimore Cooper. I thought that if I wrestled and climbed trees and read boys' books I'd grow up to be a boy. I hated being a girl. I regarded grown-up women with loathing and disgust. Even now I sometimes long to meet a man like Michael Strogoff. Big and strong, but at the same time quiet and reserved. He must be silent, loyal, subdued, but only controlling the spate of his inner energies with an effort. What do you mean? Of course I'm not comparing you to Michael Strogoff. Why on earth should I? Of course not."

  Michael said:

  "If we had met as children you would have sent me sprawling. I used to get knocked down by the stronger girls when I was in the lower grades. I was what you'd call a good boy: a bit lethargic, but hard-working, responsible, clean, and very honest. Nowadays I'm not at all lethargic, though."

  I told Michael about the twins. I used to wrestle with them furiously. Later on, when I was twelve, I was in love with both of them. I called them Halziz—Halil and Aziz. They were beautiful boys. A pair of strong, obedient seamen from Captain Nemo's crew. They hardly ever spoke. They either kept quiet, or else emitted guttural sounds. They didn't like words. A pair of gray-brown wolves. Alert and white-fanged. Wild and dark. Pirates. What can you know about it, little Michael?

  Then Michael told me about his mother:

  "My mother died when I was three. I remember her white hands, but I can't remember her face. There are a few photographs, but it's hard to make them out. I was brought up by my father. My father brought me up as a little Jewish socialist, with stories about Hasmonean children, shtetl children, children of illegal immigrants, children on kibbutzim. Stories about starving children in India, in the October Revolution in Russia. D'Amicis' The Heart. Wounded children saving their towns. Children sharing their last crust. Exploited children, fighting children. My four aunts, my father's sisters, were quite different. A little boy should be clean, work hard, study hard, and get on in the world. A young doctor, helping his country and making a name for himself. A young lawyer, valiantly pleading before British judges, being reported in all the newspapers. On the day that independence was declared, my father changed his name from Ganz to Gonen. I am Michael Ganz. My friends in Holon still call me Ganz. But don't you call me Ganz, Hannah. You must go on calling me Michael."

  We passed the wall of Schneller Barracks. Many years ago there was a Syrian orphanage here. The name reminded me of some ancient sadness, the reason for which I could not recall. A distant
bell kept ringing from the east. I tried not to count its strokes. Michael and I had our arms round each other. My hand was frozen, Michael's was warm. Michael said jokingly:

  "Cold hands, warm heart."

  I said:

  "My father had warm hands and a warm heart. He had a radio and electrical business, but he was a bad businessman. I remember him standing doing the washing-up with my mother's apron round him. Dusting. Beating bedspreads. Expertly making omelettes. Absently blessing the Hanukah lights. Treasuring the remarks of every good-for-nothing. Always trying to please. As if everyone was judging him, and he, exhausted, was forever being forced to do well in some endless examination, to atone for some forgotten shortcoming."

  Michael said:

  "The man you marry will have to be a very strong man."

  A light drizzle began to fall, and there was a thick gray fog. The buildings looked weightless. In the district of Mekor Baruch a motorcycle went past us, scattering showers of droplets. Michael was sunk in thought. Outside the gate of my house I stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He smoothed and dried my forehead. Timidly his lips touched my skin. He called me a cold, beautiful Jerusalemite. I told him I liked him. If I were his wife I would not let him be so thin. In the darkness he seemed frail. Michael smiled. If I were his wife, I said, I would teach him to answer when he was spoken to, instead of just smiling and smiling as if words didn't exist. Michael choked back his resentment, stared at the handrail of the crumbling steps and said:

  "I want to marry you. Please don't answer immediately."

  Drops of freezing rain began to fall again. I shivered. For an instant I was glad I did not know how old Michael was. Still, it was his fault I was shivering now. I could not invite him up to my room, of course, but why couldn't he suggest we go to his place? Twice after we had come out of the cinema Michael had tried to say something, and I had cut him short, saying, "That's trite." What it was that Michael had been trying to say I could not remember. Of course I would let him keep a cat. How peaceful he makes me feel. Why will the man I marry have to be very strong?

  6

  A WEEK LATER we went on a visit together to Kibbutz Tirat Yaar in the Jerusalem hills.

  Michael had a school friend in Tirat Yaar, a girl from his class who had married a boy from the kibbutz. He begged me to go with him. It meant a lot to him, he said, to introduce me to his old friend.

  Michael's friend was tall and lean and acid. With her gray hair and her pursed lips she looked like a wise old man. Two children of uncertain ages huddled in a corner of the room. Something in my face or in my dress made them collapse periodically into bursts of muffled laughter. I felt confused. For two hours Michael engaged in animated conversation with his friend and her husband. I was forgotten after the first three or four polite phrases. I was entertained with lukewarm tea and dry biscuits. For two hours I sat and glowered, fastening and unfastening the catch of Michael's briefcase. What had he brought me here for? Why had I allowed myself to be talked into coming? What sort of a man had I landed myself with? Hard-working, responsible, honest, neat—and utterly boring. And his pathetic jokes. Such a dull man shouldn't be forever trying to be amusing. But Michael did everything he could to be witty and gay. They exchanged boring stories about boring schoolteachers. The private life of a gym teacher called Yehiam Peled reduced Michael and his friend to howls of vicious schoolboy laughter. There then followed an angry argument about a meeting between King Abdullah of Transjordan and Golda Meir on the eve of the War of Independence. Michael's friend's husband thumped on the table, and even Michael raised his voice. When he shouted his voice was frail and tremulous. It was the first time I had seen him in the company of other people. I had been wrong about him.

  Afterwards we walked in the dark to the main road. Tirat Yaar was connected to the main Jerusalem road by a lane lined with cypresses. A cruel wind nipped me all over. In the afterglow of sunset the Jerusalem hills seemed to be plotting some mischief. Michael walked beside me, silent. He could not think of a single thing to say to me. We were strangers to each other, he and I. For one strange moment, I remember, I was overcome by a sharp feeling that I was not awake, or that the time was not the present. I'd been through all this before. Or else someone, years before, had warned me against walking in the dark along this black lane next to an evil man. Time was no longer a smooth, even flow. It had become a series of abrupt rushes. It may have been when I was a child. Or in a dream, or a frightening story. All of a sudden I was terrified of the dim figure walking silently beside me. His coat collar was turned up to hide the lower part of his face. His body was thin as a wraith. The rest of his features were hidden by a black leather student's hat pulled down over his eyes. Who is he? What do you know about him? He's not your brother, no relation at all, not even an old friend, but a strange shadow, far from human habitation, in the dark, late at night. Maybe he's planning to assault you. Maybe he's ill. You have heard nothing about him from anyone responsible. Why doesn't he talk to me? Why is he all wrapped up in his own thoughts? Why has he brought me here? What is he up to? It's night. In the country. I'm alone. He's alone. What if everything he has told me was a deliberate lie. He isn't a student. His name isn't Michael Gonen. He has escaped from an institution. He's dangerous. When did all this happen to me before? Somebody warned me, a long time ago, that this was how it would happen. What are those long-drawn-out sounds in the dark fields? You can't even see the light of the stars through the curtain of cypresses. There is a presence in the orchard. If I scream and scream, who will hear me? A stranger, walking with fast, clumsy steps, heedless of my pace. I fall back a little, deliberately. He doesn't notice. My teeth are chattering with cold and fear; the winter wind howls and bites. That silhouette doesn't belong to me; it's distant, wrapped up in itself, as if I were just a figment of its thoughts, with no reality of my own. I'm real, Michael. I'm cold. He didn't hear me. Maybe I wasn't speaking aloud.

  "I'm cold, and I can't run this fast," I shouted as loud as I could.

  Like a man distracted from his thoughts Michael hurled back his reply:

  "Not long to go now. We're almost at the bus stop. Be patient."

  As soon as he had spoken, he vanished once more into the depths of his great overcoat. A lump rose in my throat, and my eyes filled. I felt insulted. Humiliated. Frightened. I wanted to hold his hand. I only knew his hand. I didn't know him. At all.

  The cold wind spoke to the cypresses in a hushed, hostile tongue. There was no happiness in the world. Not in the crumbling pathway, not in the darkling hills around.

  "Michael," I said, despairing. "Michael, last week you said you liked the word 'ankle.' Tell me this, for heaven's sake: Do you realize that my shoes are full of water and my ankles hurt as if I were walking barefoot through a field of thorns? Tell me, who's to blame?"

  Michael turned round sharply, frighteningly. He glared at me in confusion. Then he put his wet cheek against my face, and pressed his warm lips to my neck like a suckling child. I could feel every bristle on his cheek against the skin of my neck. I enjoyed the feel of the rough cloth of his coat. The cloth was a warm, quiet sigh. He unbuttoned his coat and drew me inside. We were together. I breathed in his smell. He felt very real. So did I. I was not a figment of his thoughts, he was not a fear inside me. We were real. I took in his pent-up panic. I reveled in it. "You're mine," I whispered. "Don't ever be distant," I whispered. My lips touched his forehead and his fingers found the nape of my neck. His touch was cautious and sensitive. Suddenly I was reminded of the spoon in the cafeteria in Terra Sancta, and how it had enjoyed being held in his fingers. If Michael had been an evil man, then surely his fingers, too, would have been evil.

  7

  A FORTNIGHT or so before the wedding Michael and I went to see his father and his aunts in Holon, and my mother and my brother's family at Kibbutz Nof Harim.

  Michael's father lived in a cramped and gloomy two-room flat in a "Workers' Dwelling" housing project. Our visit coincided with a power failur
e. Yehezkel Gonen introduced himself to me by the light of a sooty paraffin lamp. He had a cold, and refused to kiss me out of fear I might catch it from him just before my wedding. He was clad in a warm dressing gown, and his face was sallow. He told me he was entrusting a precious burden to my care—his Michael. Then he was embarrassed and regretted what he had said. He tried to pass it off as a joke. Anxiously, shyly, the old man enumerated all the illnesses Michael had had as a child. He lingered only on a very bad fever which had nearly proved fatal to Michael when he was ten. He stressed, finally, that Michael had not been ill since he was fourteen. Despite everything, our Michael, though not one of the strongest, was a decidedly healthy young man.

  I recalled that when my father was selling a second-hand radio he used to talk to the customer in the same tones: frankness, fairness, a reserved familiarity, a quiet eagerness to please.

  While Yehezkel Gonen addressed me in this tone of courteous helpfulness, with his son he barely exchanged two words. He merely said that he had been amazed to receive his letter, with the news it contained. He regretted that he could not make us some tea or coffee, as the electricity was cut off and he did not have a paraffin stove or even a gas ring. When Tova, God rest her, was alive—Tova was Michael's mother ... if only she could have been with us on this occasion, everything would have been more festive. Tova had been a remarkable woman. He wouldn't talk about her now because he didn't want to mingle sorrow with gladness. One day he would tell me a very sad story.

  "What can I offer you instead? Ah, a chocolate."

  So, feverishly, as if he had been accused of neglecting his duty, he rummaged in his chest of drawers and produced an ancient box of chocolates, still in its original gift wrapping. "Here you are, my dears, help yourselves. Please.