My Michael

by Amos Oz

At that moment Yair intervened. With his mouth crammed full of corn he exclaimed:

  "Regret—that's the British. In the War of Independence they were on the Arab side, and now they regret it already."

  Yoram said:

  "This is where I turn off, Mrs. Gonen. I take back everything I said just now and I beg your pardon."

  "Wait a moment, Yoram. There's something I'd like to ask you to do."

  "When we were in Holon, when Grandpa Zalman was alive, he told me the British are cold-blooded like snakes."

  "Yes, Mrs. Gonen. What can I do for you?"

  "Mummy, what does it mean that snakes are cold-blooded?"

  "It means that their blood isn't warm. What I wanted to ask you..."

  "But why isn't snakes' blood warm? And why do people have warm blood, except the British?"

  "Say you're not cross with me, Mrs. Gonen. Perhaps I said something silly."

  "In some animals the heart pumps the blood and warms it. I can't explain exactly. Don't torture yourself, Yoram. When I was your age I had a lot of strength to love. I'd like to have another chat with you. Today or tomorrow. Be quiet for a moment, Yair, stop nagging. How often has your father told you not to interrupt when people are talking? Today or tomorrow. That's what I wanted to ask you. I'd like to have a chat with you. I'd like to give you some advice."

  "I didn't interrupt. Maybe only after Yoram interrupted me when I was talking."

  "Meanwhile, don't torture yourself unnecessarily. Good-bye, Yoram. I'm not cross with you, and don't be cross with yourself. Yair, I've answered your question. That's the way it is. I can't explain everything in the world. How, why, where, when. 'If Grandma had wings and she could fly, she'd be an eagle in the sky.' When your father comes back he'll explain everything, because he's cleverer than I am and he knows everything."

  "Daddy doesn't know everything, but when Daddy doesn't know he says he doesn't know. He doesn't say he knows but he can't explain. That's impossible. If you know something then you can explain it. I've finished."

  "Thank goodness for that, Yair."

  Yair threw away his chewed corncob. Carefully wiped his hands on his handkerchief. He refrained from taking offense. He did not speak. Even when I asked him in a sudden panic if we had turned off the gas before we left the house, he didn't say a word. I hated his stubborn pride. When we got to the clinic I sat him down forcibly in the dentist's chair, even though he had made no attempt to resist. Ever since Michael had explained to him how rot attacks the roots of the teeth he had proved understanding and thoroughly cooperative. Dentists were always amazed at him. Moreover, the drill and the other dental instruments aroused in the child a lively curiosity which I found revolting: a child of five who was fascinated by tooth rot would grow up to be a disgusting person. I hated myself for the thought, but I could not dismiss it.

  While the dentist attended to Yair's teeth I sat on a low stool in the corridor and arranged in my mind the things I intended to say to Yoram Kamnitzer.

  First of all, I would extract the confession which was preying on him. I would easily succeed in this, I knew, and so I would revel once more in the powers which I had not lost entirely, even though time was attacking them, ravaging, rotting and wrecking them with pale, precise fingers.

  Then, when I had achieved the mastery I longed for, I meant to induce Yoram to choose a precipitous life. That is, encourage him to be, say, a poet instead of a Bible teacher. That is, hurl him to the opposite bank. That is, subjugate a last Michael Strogoff for the last time to the will, to the mission, of a deposed princess.

  I intended to offer him nothing more than a handful of friendly words couched in fairly general terms, because he was a gentle boy and I had not discovered in him the magical power of flexibility or the floods of deep-flowing energy.

  All my plans came to nothing. The boy did not keep his agonized promise to come and see me. I must have stirred up in him a panic which was stronger than he was.

  At the end of that month an obscure magazine published a love poem by Yoram. In contrast to his earlier poems, this time he dared to name parts of a woman's body. The woman was Potiphar's wife, exposing parts of her body to ensnare the righteous Joseph.

  Mr. and Mrs. Kamnitzer were immediately summoned to a conference with the headmaster of the Orthodox high school. They decided to avoid making a fuss, provided Yoram completed his final year in an educational institute on an Orthodox kibbutz in the south. I only found out the details later. It was only later, too, that I read the daring poem about the plight of the righteous Joseph. It was sent to me by mail, in a plain cover with my name printed in block capitals. It was a flowery, high-flown poem: an outcry of a tortured body through a veil of low spirits.

  I acknowledged my defeat. So Yoram would go to university. He would end up teaching Bible and Hebrew. He would not be a poet. He might manage to compose occasional pedantic verses, on the colored greeting card, for instance, which he would send us each New Year. We, the Gonen family, would respond with a New Year's card to Yoram and his young family. Time would be ever-present; a tall, freezing, transparent presence hostile to Yoram and hostile to me, boding no good.

  In fact, it had all been decided by Mrs. Glick, our hysterical neighbor, who had attacked Yoram in the yard shortly before she was committed. She had torn his shirt open, slapped his face, and called him lecher, voyeur, peeping Tom.

  But the defeat was mine. This was my last attempt. The menacing presence was stronger than I. From now on I would allow myself to float downstream, borne by the current, in passive repose.

  37

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, as I was bathing Yair and washing his hair, a gaunt, dusty figure stood framed in the doorway. Because of the running water and Yair's talking, I had not heard him come in. He stood in his stocking feet in the bathroom doorway. He might have been standing staring silently at me for several minutes before I noticed him and let out a low cry of shock and surprise. He had removed his shoes in the hall so as not to bring mud into the apartment.

  "Michael," I meant to say with a tender smile. But the name came hurtling out of my throat with a sob.

  "Yair. Hannah. Good evening to you both. It's good to see you looking well. I'm back."

  "Daddy, did you kill any Arabs?"

  "No, my boy. On the contrary. The Jewish army nearly killed me. I'll tell you all about it later. Hannah, you'd better dry the boy and dress him before he catches his death. The water's ice cold."

  The reserve battalion in which Michael was serving had not been demobilized yet, but they had released Michael early because they had inadvertently called up two radio operators too many, because his broken glasses rendered him all but useless at the radio, because in any case the whole battalion was due to be demobilized within a couple of days, and also because he was slightly ill.

  "You, ill." I raised my voice as if I were reprimanding him.

  "I said slightly. There's no need to shout, Hannah. You can see that I'm walking, talking, and breathing. Only slightly ill. Some sort of stomach poisoning, apparently."

  "It was just the shock, Michael. I'll stop at once. I've stopped. There. No tears. I've got over it. I've missed you. When you left I was ill and bad-tempered. I'm not ill now, and I'll try to be nicer to you. I want you. You get washed and meanwhile I'll put Yair to bed. I'll make you a supper fit for a king. With a white tablecloth. A bottle of wine. And that's just to begin with. There, how silly of me; I've spoiled the surprise."

  "I don't think I'm supposed to drink wine this evening," Michael said apologetically, and a calm smile spread over his face. "I'm not feeling too well."

  When he had washed up, Michael unpacked his rucksack, threw his dirty clothes in the laundry basket, put everything away in its place. He wrapped himself up in a thick blanket. His teeth were chattering. He asked me to forgive him for spoiling his first evening home with his troubles.

  His face looked strange. Without his glasses he had difficulty reading the newspaper. He switched off the li
ght and turned his face to the wall. Several times during the night I woke up, thinking I heard Michael groaning, or perhaps just belching. I asked him if he wanted me to make him a glass of tea. He thanked me and refused. I got up and made some tea. I told him to drink it. He obeyed and gulped it down. Again he let out a sound which was neither a groan nor a belch. He seemed to be suffering a serious attack of nausea.

  "Does it hurt, Michael?"

  "No, it doesn't hurt. Go to sleep, Hannah. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

  Next morning I sent Yair off to kindergarten and summoned Dr. Urbach. The doctor came in with china footsteps, smiled wistfully, and declared that we must go into the hospital for an urgent examination. He ended with his customary formula of reassurance:

  "Human beings do not die so easily as perhaps in an extreme moment we might imagine. I wish you better."

  In the taxi on the way to Shaare Zedek Hospital, Michael tried to dispel my anxiety with a joke:

  "I feel like a war hero in a Soviet film. Almost."

  Then, after a pause, he asked me to ring his Aunt Jenia in Tel Aviv if he got any worse and to tell her he was ill.

  I still remember. When I was thirteen my father, Yosef Green-baum, came down with his last illness. He died of a malignant growth. During the weeks preceding his death his features progressively decayed. His skin grew shriveled and sallow, his cheeks sank, his hair fell out in handfuls, his teeth rotted; he seemed to be shrinking hour by hour. The most frightening thing was the inward sinking of his mouth, giving the impression of a perpetual cunning smile. As if his illness were a practical joke which had come off. In fact, my father clung in his last days to a kind of forced jocularity. He told us that the problem of survival after death was one which had always exercised his curiosity ever since he was a young man in Cracow. Once he had even written a letter in German to Professor Martin Buber inquiring about the question. And once he had had a reply on the subject published in the correspondence column of a leading newspaper. And now in a few days he would have access to a reliable and authoritative solution to the mystery of life after death. Father had in his possession a reply written in German in Professor Buber's own handwriting, in which he said that we live on in our children and our works.

  "I can't lay claim to any works," his sunken mouth grinned, "but I do have children. Hannah, do you feel like a continuation of my soul or my body?"

  And at once he added:

  "I was only joking. Your personal feelings are your own personal feelings. It was of questions such as these that the ancients long ago said that they have no answer."

  Father died at home. The doctors did not think it right to move him to the hospital, because there was no hope left, and he knew, and they knew that he knew. The doctors gave him medicines to relieve the pain, and expressed amazement at the composure he displayed in his last days. Father had been preparing all his life for the day of his death. He spent his last morning sitting in an armchair in his brown dressing gown, doing the prize crossword in the English-language newspaper, the Palestine Post. At noon he went out to the mailbox to send off his completed solution. When he came back he retired to his room and closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked. He turned his back on the room, leaned on the window sill, and passed away. It was his intention to spare his loved ones the unpleasant sight. At that time my brother Emanuel was already a member of an underground group in a kibbutz a long way from Jerusalem. Mother and I were out at the hairdresser's. Unconfirmed reports had arrived that morning from the front of a dramatic change in the course of the war, at the Battle of Stalingrad. In his will Father left me three thousand pounds for my wedding day. I was to give half the sum to Emanuel in the event of his giving up kibbutz life. Father had been a thrifty man. He also left a file containing a dozen or so letters from eminent men who had deigned to answer his inquiries on a number of theoretical topics. Two or three of them were in the actual handwriting of world-famous personalities. Father also left behind a notebook filled with jottings. At first, I supposed he had been in the habit of secretly noting down his thoughts and observations. Later I realized that these were in fact remarks he had heard over the years from important men. Once, for example, he had conversed with the famous Menahem Ussishkin, with whom he was sharing a compartment in a train going from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and had heard him say: "Although in every action it is necessary to exercise doubt, yet one should also act as if doubt did not exist." I found these words recorded in Father's notebook, with the source, date, and other circumstances added in brackets. Father was an attentive man, always on the alert for hints and omens. He did not regard it as beneath his dignity to spend his whole life kowtowing to powerful forces whose nature remained hidden from him. I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone else in the world.

  Michael spent three days in Shaare Zedek Hospital. He showed the early symptoms of a stomach disease. Thanks to Dr. Urbach's alertness, the disease was diagnosed in its early stages. From now on certain foods would be forbidden him. Within a week he would be able to go back to work as usual.

  On one of our visits to the hospital Michael managed to keep his promise to tell Yair about the war. He told of patrols, ambushes, and alarms. No, he could not answer questions about the fighting itself: "Unfortunately, Daddy didn't capture the Egyptian destroyer in Haifa Bay or visit Gaza. He wasn't parachuted near the Suez Canal, either. Daddy isn't a pilot or a paratrooper."

  Yair showed understanding:

  "You weren't too fit. That's why they left you behind."

  "Who do you think is fit for war, Yair?"

  "Me."

  "You?"

  "When I grow up. I'm going to be a big strong soldier. I'm stronger than lots of bigger boys in the playground. It's no good to be weak. Just like in our playground. I've finished speaking."

  Michael said:

  "You need to be sensible, Yair."

  Yair pondered this statement silently. Compared, contrasted, connected. He was serious. Thoughtful. Finally he pronounced sentence:

  "Sensible isn't the opposite of strong."

  I said:

  "Strong, sensible men are my favorite people. I'd like to meet a strong, sensible man some day."

  Michael replied, of course, with a smile. And silence.

  Our friends spared no effort. We had frequent visitors. Mr. Glick. Mr. Kadishman. The geologists. My best friend Hadassah and her husband, Abba. And finally, Yardena, Michael's blonde friend. She arrived with an officer of the United Nations Emergency Force. He was a Canadian giant, and I could not keep my eyes off him, even though Yardena caught me looking at him and smiled at me twice. She bent over the bed, kissed Michael's lean hand as though he were dying, and said:

  "Snap out of it, Micha. It doesn't suit you, all this illness. I'm surprised at you. Believe it or not, I've already handed in my paper and I've even registered for the final exams. Slow but sure, that's me. You'll be an angel, won't you, Micha, and give me a hand with the work for the exams?"

  "Sure," Michael replied, laughing. "Of course I will. I'm delighted for you, Yardena."

  Yardena said:

  "Micha, you're great. I've never met anybody as clever or sweet as you. Get better now, there's a good boy."

  Michael recovered and went back to work. He also went back, after a long break, to working on his thesis. Once more his silhouette moving about at night beyond the frosted glass which divides his study from the room where I sleep. At ten o'clock I make him a glass of tea, without lemon. At eleven he takes a few moments off to listen to the final news broadcast. After that, shadows dancing and writhing on the wall with every movement of his in the night: Opening a drawer. Turning a page. Resting his head on his arms. Reaching out for a book.

  Michael's glasses came back from being mended. His Aunt Leah sent him a new pipe. My brother Emanuel sent a crate of apples from Nof Harim. My mother knitted me a red muffler. And our Persian greengrocer, Mr. Elijah Mossiah, came back from the army.

  Finally, halfw
ay through November, the long-awaited rain arrived. Because of the war it was late that year. It fell with violence and fury. The city was shuttered. There was soft soaking all around. The gloomy gurgling of drainpipes. Our backyard was wet and abandoned. Fierce winds shook the shutters by night. The ancient fig tree stood bleak and bare outside our kitchen balcony. But the pines turned rich and verdant. They whispered sensuously. Never left me alone. Every car that passed in the street drew a long-drawn-out swish from the sodden asphalt.

  Twice a week I attend advanced English classes arranged by the Working Mothers' Association. In the interlude between showers Yair floats battleships and destroyers in the puddle outside our house. He has a strange yearning for the sea now. When we are shut up indoors by the rain, the rug and armchair serve as ocean and harbor. The dominoes are his fleet. Great sea battles are fought out in our living room. An Egyptian destroyer blazes at sea. Guns spit fire. A captain makes a decision.

  Sometimes, if I finish preparing supper early, I too join in the game. My powder compact is a submarine. I am an enemy. Once I suddenly clasped Yair in an affectionate embrace. I showered his head with rough kisses because for a moment Yair seemed to me like a real sea captain. As a result I was promptly banished from the game and the room. My son displayed once more his sullen pride: I could take part in his game only so long as I remained aloof and unemotional.

  Perhaps I was wrong. Yair is showing signs of a cold authority. He does not get it from Michael. Or from me, either. His powers of memory repeatedly cause me amazement. He still remembers Hassan Salame's gang and its assault on Holon from Tel Arish, which he heard about from his grandfather a year and a half ago, when Yehezkel was still alive.