My Michael

by Amos Oz

  In a few months' time Yair will move on from kindergarten to school. Michael and I have decided to send him to Beit Hakerem School rather than to Tachkemoni Orthodox Boys' School, which is near where we live. Michael is determined that his son have a progressive education.

  Our upstairs neighbors, the Kamnitzers, treat me with polite hostility. They still condescend to return my greeting, but they have stopped sending their little daughter down to ask for the loan of the iron or a baking dish.

  Mr. Glick visits us regularly every five days. His reading in the Encyclopaedia Hebraica has progressed as far as the article on Belgium. His poor wife Duba's brother is a diamond merchant in Antwerp. Mrs. Glick herself is doing well. The doctors have promised to send her home in April or May. Our neighbor's gratitude knows no bounds. In addition to the weekend supplements of the religious daily Hatsofeh, he brings us presents of packets of pins, paper clips, stamp hinges, foreign stamps.

  Michael has finally managed to arouse in Yair an active interest in stamp-collecting. Every Saturday morning they devote themselves to the collection. Yair soaks the stamps in water, carefully peels them off the paper, lays them out to dry on a large sheet of blotting paper which Mr. Glick has given him as a present. Michael sorts the dry stamps and sticks them in the album. Meanwhile I put a record on the phonograph, curl up in an armchair with my tired feet tucked underneath me, knit, and listen to the music. Relax. Through the window I can watch the woman next door hanging the bedclothes out on the balcony railings to air. I don't think and I don't feel. Time is powerfully present. I ignore it deliberately so as to confound it. I treat it in exactly the same way as I used to respond in my youth to the cheeky glances of rude men: I don't avert my eyes or turn away. I fix a smile of cold disdain on my face. Avoid panicking or feeling embarrassed. As if I were saying:

  "So what?"

  I know, I admit: this is a pathetic defense. But then the deception, too, is pathetic and ugly. I don't make excessive demands: only that the glass should remain transparent. A clever, pretty girl in a blue coat. A shriveled kindergarten teacher with varicose veins spreading on her thighs. In between, Yvonne Azulai drifts on a sea which has no shores. That the glass should remain transparent. Nothing more.

  38

  JERUSALEM IN WINTER knows bright, sun-drenched Saturdays when the sky takes on a hue which is not sky-blue but a deep, dark, concentrated blue, as if the sea had come up and settled upside down over the city. It is a limpid, radiant purity, pricked out with choirs of carefree birds, steeped in light. Distant objects, hills, buildings, woods seem to shimmer ceaselessly. The phenomenon is caused by the evaporating moisture, so Michael explained to me.

  On Saturdays like this we generally have breakfast early and go out for a long walk. We leave the Orthodox neighborhoods behind us and wander as far afield as Talpiot, or Ein Kerem or Malcha, to Givat Shaul. At midday we sit down in one of the woods and eat a picnic lunch. We go home at nightfall on the first bus after the Sabbath. Such days are calm. At times I imagine that Jerusalem lies open before me with all its hidden places alight. I do not forget that the blue light is a fleeting vision. That the birds will fly away. But now I have learned to ignore it. To float along. Not to resist.

  On one of our Saturday expeditions we happened to meet the old professor under whom I had studied Hebrew literature when I was younger. With a touching effort the scholar managed to remember me and to fit my name to my face. He asked:

  "What secret surprise are you planning for us, dear lady? A volume of poems?"

  I denied the suggestion.

  The professor thought for a moment, then smiled kindly and proffered the remark:

  "What a wonderful city our Jerusalem is! It is not for nothing that it has been the object of the yearnings of countless generations in the gloomy depths of the Diaspora."

  I agreed. We parted with a handshake. Michael wished the old man well. The professor bowed slightly and waved his hat in the air. The meeting made me happy.

  We pick bunches of wild flowers: ranunculus, narcissus, cyclamen, anemones. On the way we cross abandoned building sites. Rest in the shade of a damp gray rock. Gaze into the distance to the coastal plain, the Hebron Hills, the Judean Desert. Sometimes we play hide-and-seek or catch. Slipping and laughing. Michael is gay and lighthearted. Once in a while he can express enthusiasm, saying, for instance:

  "Jerusalem is the biggest city in the world. As soon as you cross two or three streets you are in a different continent, a different generation, even a different climate."

  Or:

  "How beautiful it is, Hannah, and how beautiful you are here, my sad Jerusalemite."

  Yair is particularly interested in two subjects: the battles in the War of Independence and the network of public bus services.

  On the former subject Michael is a mine of information. He points with his hand, identifies features in the landscape, draws plans in the dust, demonstrates with the help of twigs and stones: The Arabs were here, we were here. They were trying to break through here. We came round behind them there.

  Michael also considers it right to explain to the boy about miscalculations, errors of strategy, failures. I, too, listen and learn. How little I knew about the battle for Jerusalem. The villa which belonged to Rashid Shahada, the twins' father, was handed over to the Health Organization, which turned it into a pre- and postnatal clinic. A housing project was built on the empty site. The Germans and the Greeks abandoned the German and Greek Colonies. New people moved in to take their places. New men, women, and children moved into Jerusalem. That would not be the last battle for Jerusalem. So I have heard our friend Mr. Kadishman say. I too can sense secret forces restlessly scheming, swelling and surging and bursting out through the surface.

  I am amazed by Michael's ability to explain complicated things to Yair in very simple language, using hardly any adjectives. I am also amazed by the serious, intelligent questions which Yair occasionally asks.

  Yair imagines war as an extraordinarily complex game, which displays a whole fascinating world of system and logic. My husband and my son both see time as a succession of equal squares on a sheet of graph paper, which provide a structure to support the lines and shapes.

  There was never any need to explain to Yair the conflicting motives in the war. They were self-evident: conquest and domination. The boy's questions turned solely on the order of events: Arabs, Jews, hill, valley, ruins, trenches, armor, movement, surprise.

  The bus company's network also fascinated our son, because of the complex interrelations of the lines joining different destinations. The filigree of routes afforded him cold-blooded pleasure: the distances between the stops, the overlapping of the various routes, the convergence on the city center, the dispersal outwards.

  On this subject Yair could enlighten us both. Michael foretold a future for him as a route-controller for the bus company. He hastened to stress that he was only joking, naturally.

  Yair knew the makes of the buses operating on each route by heart. He enjoyed explaining the reasons for the use of the different makes: Here a steep hill, there a sharp bend or a poor road surface. The child's style of explanation closely resembled his father's. Both of them made frequent use of such words as "thus," "whereas," "in conclusion," and also "remote possibility."

  I made an effort to listen to both of them quietly and attentively.

  An image:

  My son and my husband poring over a huge map spread out on a large desk. Various markers scattered over the map. Colored pins stuck in according to a plan concerted between the two of them, which seems to me like total chaos. They are arguing politely in German. They are both wearing gray suits, and sober ties secured with silver clips. I am there, clad in a flimsy, shabby nightdress. They are completely absorbed in their task. Bathed in white light but casting no shadow. Their attitudes suggest concentration and cautious responsibility. I cut in with some remark or request. They are both sympathetic and affable, not irritated at my interruption. They a
re at my service. Delighted to be of assistance. Could I possibly wait just five minutes?

  There are also rather different Saturday expeditions.

  We walk through the most fashionable parts of the city, Rehavia or Beit Hakerem. We pick out a house for ourselves. Inspect half-finished buildings. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of apartment. Distribute the rooms among ourselves. Decide where to put everything: Yair's toys will go here. This will be the study. The sofa here. The bookshelves. The armchairs. The rug.

  Michael says:

  "We ought to start saving, Hannah. We can't go on living from hand to mouth forever."

  Yair suggests:

  "We could get some money for the phonograph and the records. The radio makes enough music. And besides I'm sick of hearing it."

  Myself:

  "I'd like to travel in Europe. Have a telephone. Buy a small car so we could go to the seaside on weekends. When I was a child we had an Arab neighbor called Rashid Shahada. He was a very rich Arab. I expect they live in a refugee camp now. They had a house in Katamon. It was a villa built round a courtyard. The courtyard was completely enclosed by the house. You could sit outside and be shut off and private. I'd like to have a house just like that. In a district of rocks and pine trees. Wait a minute, Michael, I haven't finished making my list. I'd like to have a daily maid, too. And a big garden."

  "And a liveried chauffeur." Michael smiled.

  "And a private submarine." Yair plodded along behind him with short, loyal steps.

  "And a prince-poet-boxer-pilot husband," Michael added.

  Yair's brow wrinkled like his father's when he was thinking out complicated thoughts. He paused for a moment or two, then exclaimed:

  "And I want a little brother. Aron is the same age as me exactly, and he's already got two brothers. I deserve to have a brother."

  Michael said:

  "An apartment here in Rehavia or in Beit Hakerem costs a small fortune these days. But if we started saving systematically, we could borrow a little from Aunt Jenia, a little from the University Assistance Fund, a little from Mr. Kadishman. It's not entirely a castle in the air."

  "No," I said, "it's not entirely that. But what about us?"

  "What about us?"

  "In the air, Michael. Not just me. You too. You're not just in the air, you're in outer space. All except Yair, our little realist."

  "Hannah, you're a pessimist."

  "I'm tired, Michael. Let's go home. I've just remembered the ironing. I've got piles of it waiting to be done. And tomorrow the decorators are coming."

  "Daddy, what's a realist?"

  "It's a word with a lot of meanings, my boy. Mummy meant someone who always behaves reasonably and doesn't live in a world of dreams."

  "But I have dreams at night, too."

  I asked with a faint laugh:

  "What sort of dreams do you have, Yair?"

  "Dreams."

  "What sort?"

  "All sorts."

  "Such as?"

  "Just dreams."

  That night I did the ironing. Next day the whole apartment was whitewashed. My best friend Hadassah lent me her maid, Simcha, again for a couple of days. The winter rain started again in the middle of the week. The drainpipes grumbled. Their music was sad and angry. There were frequent, prolonged power failures. The street was muddy.

  After the whitewashing and the cleaning-up, I took forty-five pounds from Michael's wallet. I went into town in a lull between two cloudbursts. I bought chandeliers for all the lights. Now I would have glittering cut glass in my living room. Crystal. I liked the word "crystal." And I liked the crystal.

  39

  THERE IS a sameness in the days and a sameness in me. There is something which is not the same. I do not know its name.

  My husband and I are like two strangers who happen to meet coming out of a clinic where they have received treatment involving some physical unpleasantness. Both embarrassed, reading each other's minds, conscious of an uneasy, embarrassing intimacy, wearily groping for the right tone in which to address each other now.

  Michael's doctoral dissertation was approaching its final chapters. Next year he had a distinct hope of advancement on the academic scale. In the early summer of 1957 he spent ten days in the Negev, carrying out certain observations and experiments which were essential for his research. He brought us back a bottle filled with different-colored sands.

  From one of Michael's colleagues I learned that after submitting his dissertation my husband intended to compete for a fellowship which would allow him a lengthy period of advanced study in theoretical geology at an American university. Michael himself had chosen not to tell me of this intention, because he knew my weaknesses. He did not want to cause me fresh dreams. Dreams may be shattered. Disappointment might ensue.

  Gradual changes had made themselves felt over the years in Mekor Baruch. New apartment blocks had been built to the west. Roads were paved. Top stories in a modern style were added to buildings of the Turkish period. The municipality put up green benches and trash cans in the side streets. A small public garden was opened. Workshops and printing presses sprang up on vacant sites previously overgrown with weeds.

  The older inhabitants gradually left the district. The civil servants and Agency employees moved to Rehavia or Kiryat Shmuel. The clerks and cashiers bought cheap apartments in the government housing developments in the south of the city. The dealers in textiles and fashion accessories moved to Romema. We were left behind to keep watch over dying streets. It was a continuous, insensible decay. Shutters and iron railings gradually rusted away. An Orthodox contractor dug foundations opposite our home, unloaded heaps of sand and gravel, then suddenly abandoned his project. Perhaps he had changed his mind, perhaps he had died. The Kamnitzer family left our house and Jerusalem, and went to live in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Yoram came home on special leave from his army unit to help with the packing. He waved to me from a distance. He looked bronzed and fit in his uniform. I could not talk to him because his father was standing sternly by. And what had I left to say to Yoram—now?

  Orthodox families moved into the numerous vacant apartments in the neighborhood. Recent immigrants, too, who had begun to get established, mainly from Iraq and Romania. It was a gradual process. More and more washlines came to be strung across the street from balcony to balcony. At night I could hear shouts in a guttural language. Our Persian greengrocer, Mr. Elijah Mossiah, sold his store to a pair of perpetually bad-tempered brothers. Even the children at Tachkemoni Orthodox Boys' School seemed to me to be wilder and more violent than in the old days.

  At the end of May our friend Mr. Kadishman died of a kidney disease. He bequeathed a small sum to the Jerusalem branch of the National Party. To Michael and me he left all his books: the works of Herzl, Nordau, Jabotinsky, and Klausner. His lawyer was requested in the will to call on us and thank us for the warm atmosphere in which we had received the deceased. Mr. Kadish-man had been a lonely man.

  That same summer of 1957 the old kindergarten teacher Sarah Zeldin also died, after being hit by an army truck in Malachi Street. The kindergarten was closed down. I found a part-time job as a filing clerk in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. It was Abba, my best friend Hadassah's husband, who secured me the job. And in the autumn three Jerusalemites who had been close friends of my parents when I was a child also died. I have not mentioned them before because forgetfulness managed to pierce my defenses. The greatest effort cannot withstand it. I meant to write down everything. It is impossible to write everything. Most things slip away to perish in silence.

  In September our son Yair started at Beit Hakerem Elementary School. Michael bought him a brown satchel. I bought him a pencil case, pencil sharpener, pencils, and a ruler. Aunt Leah sent a huge box of water colors. From Nof Harim came D'Amicis' The Heart, beautifully bound.

  In October our neighbor, Mrs. Glick, was sent home from the institution. She displayed a silent resignation, seeming quieter and more
peaceful now. She had also aged and put on a great deal of weight. She had lost that rich, ripe beauty with which she had been compensated for not having had children. We never heard again those hysterical outbursts and cries of despair. Mrs. Glick came back from her prolonged treatment apathetic and submissive. She sat for hours on end on the low wall by our front gate, looking out into the street. Looking and soundlessly laughing, as if our street had become a happy, amusing place.

  Michael compared Mrs. Glick to the actor Albert Crispin, Aunt Jenia's second husband. Like her he had had a nervous breakdown, and when he recovered he succumbed to total apathy. He had been kept for sixteen years in a boardinghouse in Nahariya where he did nothing all day but sleep, eat, and stare into space. Aunt Jenia was still supporting him at her own expense.

  Aunt Jenia left her job in the children's department of the general hospital after a serious quarrel. After several attempts she managed to find another job, as a doctor in a private institution in Ramat Gan for old people with chronic complaints.

  When she came to stay with us for the Feast of Succot, Aunt Jenia terrified me. Heavy smoking had made her voice coarser and deeper. Each time she lit a cigarette she cursed herself in Polish. When she coughed badly she muttered to herself through pursed lips: "Shut up, idiot. Cholera." Her hair had become thin and gray. Her face was like the face of a bad-tempered old man. She was often at a loss for a Hebrew word. She would light a fresh cigarette with a frantic gesture, spit out rather than blow out the match, mutter in Yiddish, curse herself in sibilant Polish. She accused me of dressing in clothes which did not become Michael's position in life. Charged Michael with giving in to me in everything, less like a man than a rag doll. Yair, in her view, was rude, insolent, and stupid. I dreamed of her after she left, and her image merged with the figures of those ancient Jerusalem ghosts, the itinerant craftsmen and peddlers, musty with age. I was afraid of her. I was afraid of dying young and afraid of dying old.