My Michael

by Amos Oz

  "All these years I have piously observed the commandments of our faith. And the fact is that now, since my poor wife Duba's calamity, I have been assailed by doubts. Serious doubts. I intend to broaden my knowledge, and to study the encyclopedia. I have already reached the article 'Atlas,' and I have discovered that in addition to denoting a book of maps, Atlas is also the name of a Greek giant who supports the whole world on his shoulders. I have made a great number of new discoveries recently, and whom do I have to thank? Why, whom else but the munificent Gonen family who have been so kind to me. I should like to repay kindness with kindness, and I do not know how else I can express my gratitude if you will not consent to accept this giant-size Animal Lotto which I have bought for your son Yair."

  We consented to accept it.

  ***

  These were the friends who were in the habit of visiting us:

  My best friend Hadassah and her husband, whose name was Abba. Abba was an up-and-coming civil servant in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Hadassah worked as a telephone operator in the same ministry. They intended to save up enough money to buy an apartment in Rehavia, and only then to bring a child into the world. From them Michael heard snippets of political information which were not published in the newspapers. Hadassah and I exchanged memories of our schooldays and the period of the British Mandate.

  Polite assistant lecturers from the Geology Department would come and joke for a while with Michael about how impossible it was to get on in the University unless one of the old men died. There ought to be rules established to ensure fair opportunities for junior academics.

  From time to time we had a visit from Liora from Kibbutz Tirat Yaar, either alone or with her husband and daughters. They had come up to Jerusalem to shop or lick an ice cream, and looked in to see if we were still alive. What pretty curtains, what a sparkling kitchen. Could they just peep into the bathroom? They were going to build a new housing project on their kibbutz, and they would like to get an idea and make comparisons. On behalf of the cultural committee they invited Michael to give a Friday evening lecture about the geological structure of the Judean Hills. They admired the life of the scholar. "Academic life is so free from tedious routine," Liora said. "I still remember Michael in the old days in the youth movement. He was an earnest, responsible fellow. Now it won't be long before he's the pride of our class. When he comes to Tirat Yaar to lecture," she added, "you must all come. It was a general invitation. What a lot of memories we have in common."

  Every ten days Mr. Avraham Kadishman came. He was from a long-established Jerusalem family, owned a well-known shoe firm, and was an old friend of Aunt Leah's. It was he who had investigated my family before our marriage and informed the aunts before they first met me that I came from a good family.

  When he arrived at our house he would take off his overcoat in the hall and smile at Michael as if he brought the breath of the great world into our home and as if we had been sitting waiting for this visit ever since the last one. His favorite beverage was cocoa. His conversations with Michael centered on the government. Mr. Kadishman was an active member of the Jerusalem branch of the right-wing National Party. There was a perpetually recurrent argument between him and Michael: the assassinated socialist leader Arlozoroff, the factions in the anti-British underground movements, the sinking by the government of the Altalena. I do not know what it was that Michael found in Mr. Kadishman's company. Perhaps it was a common addiction to pipe-smoking, or to chess, or an unwillingness on Michael's part to abandon a desperately lonely old man. Mr. Kadishman used to compose little rhymes about our son Yair, such as:

  Master Yair Gonen

  Will be a leader of men.

  May he live for many years

  And quell his nation's fears.

  or:

  Our fine Yair is now quite small;

  One day he'll free the Wailing Wall.

  I made tea, coffee, and cocoa. Pushed the trolley from the kitchen into the living room. The living room was hazy with tobacco smoke. Mr. Glick, my husband, and Mr. Kadishman sat round the table like children at a birthday party. Mr. Glick looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then blinked quickly, as if he suspected I was about to hurl some insult at him. The other two were bent over the chessboard. I cut a cake into slices, and put a slice on each plate. The visitors praise the housewife. On my face is a polite smile that I do not share in. The conversation goes something like this:

  "Once upon a time people used to say, 'When the British leave, the Messiah will come,'" Mr. Glick begins hesitantly. "Well, the British have left and still Redemption tarries."

  Mr. Kadishman:

  "That is because the country is led by little men. Your Alter-man says somewhere that Don Quixote fights bravely but it is always Sancho who wins."

  My husband:

  "There's no point in reducing everything to heroes and villains. There are objective factors and objective trends in politics."

  Mr. Glick:

  "Instead of being a light to the nations, we have become just one of the nations, and who can say whether it is for better or for worse?"

  Mr. Kadishman:

  "Because the Third Kingdom of Israel is run by petty party hacks. Instead of the King Messiah we have little kibbutz treasurers. Perhaps when the generation of our fine young friend Yair Gonen grows up, they will give our people self-respect."

  As for me, I move the sugar bowl towards one or other of the visitors and utter absent-mindedly some such remark as:

  "Where will all these fashionable ideas lead us?"

  Or sometimes:

  "One has to move with the times."

  Or:

  "There are two sides to every question."

  I say these things so as not to sit silent all evening and seem rude. The sudden pain: Why have I been exiled here? Nautilus. Dragon. Isles of the Archipelago. Come, O come, Rahamim Ra-hamimov, my handsome Bokharian taxi driver. Give a loud blast on your horn. Miss Yvonne Azulai is all ready for the journey. Ready and waiting. Doesn't even need to change. Absolutely ready to leave. Now.

  28

  THE DREARY SAMENESS of the days. I cannot forget a thing. I refuse to surrender a crumb to the fingers of cold time. I hate it. Like the sofa, the armchairs, and the curtains, so the days too are subtle variations on a single color theme. A pretty, clever girl in a blue coat, a scaly kindergarten teacher with varicose veins, and in between the two a pane of glass which grows progressively more opaque, despite the frantic polishing. Yvonne Azulai has been left behind. She has been led astray by a base deceiver. My best friend Hadassah told me once about what happened when our headmaster was told that he had cancer. When the doctor broke the news the man expostulated furiously: "I've always paid my medical premiums on time, and during the war I volunteered for the Medical Corps despite my age. And what about the exercises I've been doing all these years? And the dieting? I've never had a cigarette in my mouth all my life. And my book on the elements of Hebrew grammar!"

  Pathetic complaints. But the deception is both pathetic and ugly. I make no excessive demands. Only that the glass should stay transparent. That is all.

  Yair is growing. Next year we will send him to school. Yair is a child who never complains of boredom. Michael says he is entirely self-sufficient.

  In the sand-pit in the garden Yair and I play at digging tunnels. My hand burrows towards his tiny hand until we meet under the surface of the sand. Then he raises his intelligent head and softly says, "We've met."

  Once Yair asked me a question:

  "Mummy, suppose I was Aron and Aron was me. How would you know which boy to love?"

  Yair could play for an hour, two hours in his room without making a sound. So that suddenly I would be startled by the silence. I rush to his room in a panic. Disaster. Electricity. And he looks up at me calmly and full of cautious surprise: "What's the matter, Mummy?"

  A clean and careful child; a balanced child. Sometimes he comes home beaten and bruised. Refuses to explain. Bl
ack eyes. Finally he gives way to pleas and threats, and says:

  "There was a fight. They quarreled. Me too. I don't care, it doesn't hurt. Sometimes there are quarrels, and that's that."

  Outwardly my son resembles my brother Emanuel, with his strong shoulders, his massive head, and his torpid movements. But he has nothing of my brother's open, boisterous enthusiasm. Whenever I kiss him he flinches, as if he has disciplined himself to stand and suffer in silence. Whenever I try to say something that will make him laugh, he fixes me with a searching glance, sidelong, alert, knowing, serious. As if considering what it was that had made me choose that particular joke. He finds objects much more interesting than people or words. Springs, taps, screws, plugs, keys.

  The sameness of the days. Michael goes out to work and comes home at three o'clock. Aunt Jenia has bought him a new briefcase, because the one his father gave him as a wedding present has fallen apart. Wrinkles are spreading over the lower part of his face. They suggest an expression of cool, bitter irony which is not in Michael. His doctoral thesis is progressing slowly but surely. Every evening Michael devotes the two hours between the nine o'clock and eleven o'clock news bulletins to his thesis. If we have no visitors and there is nothing interesting on the radio, I ask Michael to read me a few pages of his work. The peacefulness of his even voice. His desk lamp. His glasses. The relaxed pose of his body in the armchair as he talks about volcanic eruptions, about the cooling of the crystalline crust. Those words have come out of the dreams I dream, and into those dreams they shall return. My husband is level and self-restrained. Sometimes I remember a little, grayish-white kitten we called Snowy. The kitten's faltering leaps to catch a moth on the ceiling.

  We both begin to suffer from various minor ailments. Michael has never had a day's illness since he was fourteen, and I have not suffered from anything more serious than a slight cold. But now Michael is often troubled by heartburn, and Dr. Urbach has forbidden him to eat fried foods. I suffer from painful constrictions of the throat. Several times I have lost my voice for a few hours.

  Occasionally a small row flares up between us. There follows a still calm. For a short while we accuse each other, then suddenly accuse ourselves. Smile like two strangers who have met by chance on an ill-lit staircase; embarrassed but very polite.

  We have bought a gas cooker. Next summer we shall have a washing machine. We have already signed the contract and paid the first installment. Thanks to Mr. Kadishman, we shall have the benefit of a considerable discount. We have painted Yair's room blue. Michael has installed more bookshelves in his study, the converted balcony. At the same time we put up two shelves of books in Yair's room.

  Aunt Jenia came to spend New Year with us. We entertained her for four days, because the holiday was followed immediately by the Sabbath. She had grown older and harder. An expression like an ugly sob had set on her face. She smoked heavily, despite severe pains around her heart. A doctor's lot is a hard one in a hot and restless country.

  Michael and I went walking with Aunt Jenia on Mount Herzl and Mount Zion. We also visited the hill where the new University campus was to be built. Aunt Jenia had brought with her from Tel Aviv a Polish novel with a brown cover, which she read in bed all night.

  "Why don't you go to sleep, Aunt Jenia? You ought to make the most of your holiday and get some good, sound sleep."

  "You're not asleep either, Hanka. At my time of life it's permissible. At yours it's not."

  "I could make you some mint tea. It'll relax you and help you to sleep."

  "But I don't get any relaxation from sleep, Hanka. Thank you all the same."

  At the end of the holiday Aunt Jenia asked us:

  "If you've made up your minds not to move from this disgusting apartment, why don't you have another child?"

  Michael reflected for a moment, then smiled:

  "We thought perhaps, when I've finished writing my thesis..."

  I said:

  "No. We haven't given up the idea of moving. We're going to have a lovely new apartment. And we're going to travel abroad, too."

  And Aunt Jenia, in an outburst of embittered sadness:

  "Well, time flies, you know, time flies. You two live your lives as if time will stand still and wait for you. Let me tell you that time doesn't stand still. Time waits for no man."

  A fortnight later, during Succot-week, I had my twenty-fifth birthday. I am four years younger than my husband. When Michael is seventy I shall be sixty-six. My husband bought me a phonograph for my birthday, and three classical records—Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. It was a first step towards a record library. It would do me good, Michael said, to collect records. He had read somewhere that music is relaxing. And collecting is relaxing in itself. He too, after all, collected pipes, and also stamps for Yair. Was he also in need of relaxation, I wanted to ask. I did not want his smile. So I did not ask.

  Yoram Kamnitzer heard from Yair that it was my birthday. He came in to borrow the ironing board for his mother. Suddenly he stretched out his hand clumsily and handed me a packet wrapped in brown paper. I opened it: a book of poems by Jacob Fichmann. Before the words of thanks were out of my mouth Yoram had started off upstairs. The ironing board was returned next day by his younger sister.

  The day before the holiday I went to the hairdresser's and had my hair cropped very short, like a boy's. Michael said:

  "What's got into you, Hannah? I can't understand what's got into you."

  My mother sent a parcel from Nof Harim for my birthday. It contained a pair of green tablecloths, each embroidered with mauve cyclamens by my mother. The embroidery was very delicate.

  There was a visit during Succot to the Biblical Zoo.

  The Biblical Zoo was only ten minutes' walk from our house, yet it seemed like another continent. The zoo stands in a wood on the slope of a rocky hill. At the foot of the slope is a wasteland. Rough wadis meandering at random. The wind rustled the tops of the pines. I saw dark birds soaring into a wilderness of blue. I followed them with my eyes. For an instant I lost my bearings. I imagined that instead of the birds soaring it was I who was falling and falling. An elderly attendant touched my shoulder anxiously: This way, Madam, this way.

  Michael explained to his son about the habits of nocturnal animals. He used simple words, and avoided adjectives. Yair asked a question. Michael answered. I missed the words but I didn't miss the sounds, the sound of the wind and the screeching of the monkeys in their cages. In the dazzling daylight the monkeys were absorbed in their lascivious games. I could not remain indifferent to the sight. It aroused an indecent joy in me like the feeling I sometimes experience when strangers abuse me in my dreams. An old man in a gray coat with the collar turned up stood facing the monkeys' cages. His bony hands rested on a carved walking stick. Young and erect in my summer frock, I pass deliberately between him and the cages. The man stares and stares as if I am transparent and the monkeys' mating continues through my flesh. What are you staring at, sir? Why do you ask, young lady? You offend me, sir. You are too sensitive, young lady. Are you leaving, sir? I am going home, young lady. Where is home, sir? Why do you ask? You have no right to ask. I have my place, you have yours. Is something the matter? What do you take me for? Forgive me, sir, I wrongly suspected your motives. My dear, tired young lady, you seem to be talking to yourself. I cannot understand what you are saying. You appear to be unwell. I hear distant music, sir; is it a band playing far away? What is beyond the trees, young lady, I cannot say; it is hard to trust a strange young lady who is unwell. I hear a melody, sir. It is a delusion, my child; it is only the rapturous shrieking of the monkeys, indecent sounds. No, sir, I refuse to believe you. You are deceiving me. A procession is passing beyond the wood and the buildings, in the Street of the Kings of Israel. There our youth march and chant, there are burly policemen on prancing horses, a military band in gleaming white uniforms with gold braid. You are deceiving me, sir. You mean to isolate me until I am empty. I do not belong yet and already I am not the same. I shal
l not allow you, my good sir, to seduce me with soft words. And if lean, gray wolves stream round and round their cages, lightly padding on gentle paws, their jaws gaping and their noses moist, their fur matted with mud and saliva, then surely it is us they menace, we are the object of their full fury, now, yes, now.

  29

  THE DREARY SAMENESS of the days. Autumn will come. In the afternoon the sun beats through the west-facing window, engraving patterns of light on the rug and on the covers of the armchairs. With every rustle of the treetops outside the patterns of light break into a gentle swaying. The movement is restless and complex. The topmost branches of the fig tree burst into flame afresh each evening. The voices of the children playing outside suggest a distant wilderness. Autumn will come. I remember my father saying once when I was a child that in autumn people seem quieter and wiser.

  To be quiet and wise: how dull.

  One evening Yardena, Michael's friend from his student days, came to our house. With her she brought an overpowering cheerfulness. She and Michael had begun studying at the same time, and now hard-working Michael had got so far, and here was she, she blushed to tell, still struggling with some wretched paper.

  Yardena was heavy-hipped and tall, and she wore a short, tight skirt. Her eyes, too, were green, and her hair was blond and rich. She had come to ask Michael's help: she was having difficulty with her paper. She had always known how clever Michael was, from the first day she had met him. He must rescue her.