by Amos Oz
In my third memory I am locked in, alone, in a dark kennel.
When I was three and a half, nearly four, I was entrusted several times a week for a few hours to a middle-aged widowed neighbor who had no children of her own, a woman who smelled of damp wool and, less strongly, of washing soap and frying. Her name was Mrs. Gat, but we always called her Auntie Greta, except for my father, who occasionally put his arm around her shoulder and called her Gretchen, or Gret, and he would make up joky rhymes, as was his custom, in the manner of an old-world schoolboy: "Never let us forget that dear Gret is a pet!" (This was apparently his way of paying court to women.) Auntie Greta would blush, and because she was ashamed of blushing, she would immediately blush a deeper blood red, verging on purple.
Auntie Greta's blond hair was arranged in a thick plait that she coiled like a rope around her round head. The hair at her temples was turning gray, like thistles growing at the edge of a field of yellow. Her plump, soft arms were dotted with masses of pale brown freckles. Under the rustic cotton dresses she liked to wear she had heavy, very wide thighs that suggested a carthorse. An embarrassed, apologetic smile sometimes hung around her lips as though she had been caught doing something very naughty, or telling a fib, and she was frankly shocked at herself. She always had two of her fingers bandaged, or at least one, and occasionally three, either because she had cut herself while chopping vegetables or slammed her hand in the kitchen drawer or brought the lid of the piano down on her fingers; despite her constant misadventures with her fingers, she gave private piano lessons. She was also a private child sitter.
After breakfast my mother would stand me on a wooden stool in front of the basin in the bathroom, wipe the traces of porridge off my cheeks and chin with a damp towel, moisten my hair, and comb a sharp, straight side parting, then hand me a brown paper bag containing a banana, an apple, a piece of cheese, and some biscuits. And so, scrubbed, combed, and miserable, I was taken to the backyard of the fourth building to the right of ours. On the way there I had to promise to be good, to do whatever Auntie Greta said, not to make a nuisance of myself, and above all on no account to scratch the brown crust that had grown on the wound on my knee, because the crust, which is called a scab, is part of the healing process and it will soon fall off by itself, but if you touch it, heaven forbid, it might get infected and then there will be nothing for it, they'll have to give you another injection.
At her door my mother wished me and Auntie Greta a good time together and left. At once Auntie Greta took off my shoes and put me down in my socks to play nicely and quietly on a mat, in one corner of which I was awaited every morning by bricks, teaspoons, cushions, napkins, an agile felt tiger, and some dominoes, as well as a threadbare princess doll that smelled a little musty.
This inventory sufficed me for several hours of battles and of heroic deeds. The princess had been captured by a wicked wizard (the tiger), who had imprisoned her in a cave (under the piano). The teaspoons were a fleet of airplanes that were all flying in search of the princess over the sea (the mat) and beyond the mountains (cushions). The dominoes were the dreaded wolves that the wizard had scattered around the cave of the imprisoned princess.
Or the other way around: the dominoes were tanks, the napkins Arab tents, the soft doll was transformed into the English High Commissioner, the cushions were built into the walls of Jerusalem, while the teaspoons, under the command of the tiger, were promoted by me to become Hasmonean fighters or the guerrilla troops of Bar Kochba.
Halfway through the morning Auntie Greta would bring me thick, slimy raspberry juice in a heavy cup that was unlike any we had at home. Sometimes she carefully lifted the hem of her dress and sat down next to me on the mat. She made all sorts of chirruping sounds and other signs of affection that always ended in sticky, jammy kisses. Sometimes she allowed me to dabble—gently!—on the piano. If I finished up all the food Mummy had put in my paper bag, Auntie Greta would treat me to a couple of squares of chocolate or cubes of marzipan. The shutters in her apartment were always closed because of the sunlight. The windows were shut because of the flies. As for the flowery curtains, they were always kept drawn and firmly joined together, like a pair of chaste knees, for greater privacy.
Sometimes Auntie Greta would put on my shoes, put on my head a little khaki cap with a stiff peak like an English policeman's or a Hamekasher bus driver's. Then she would scrutinize me with a quizzical look, rebutton my shirt, lick her finger and scrape off the encrusted remains of chocolate or marzipan around my mouth, and put on her round straw hat, which hid half her face but accentuated the roundness of her body. When all these preparations were concluded, the two of us would go out together for a couple of hours, "to see what's going on in the wide world."
30
FROM OUR suburb of Kerem Avraham you could reach the wide world by taking either the No. 3A bus, which stopped in Zephaniah Street, next to Mrs. Hasia's kindergarten, or the No. 3B bus, which stopped at the other end of Amos Street, on the corner of Geula Street at Malachi Street. The wide world itself extended along Jaffa Road, down King George V Avenue toward the Ratisbonne Convent and the Jewish Agency Buildings, in and around Ben Yehuda Street, in Hillel Street and Shammai Street, around the Studio Cinema and the Rex Cinema, which were down Princess Mary's Way, and also up Julian's Way, which led to the King David Hotel.
At the junction of Julian's Way, Mamilla Road, and Princess Mary's Way there was always a busy policeman in shorts and white armbands. He ruled firmly over a little concrete island sheltered by a round tin umbrella. From atop his island he directed the traffic, an all-powerful divinity armed with a piercing whistle; his left hand stopped the traffic and his right moved it on. From this junction the wide world branched out and continued toward the Jewish commercial center beneath the walls of the Old City, and sometimes its extensions reached as far as the Arab parts around the Damascus Gate, in Sultan Suleiman Road, and even into the bazaar inside the walls.
On every one of these expeditions Auntie Greta would drag me to three or four clothes shops, where she liked to try on, take off, and try on again, in the privacy of a changing cubicle, a number of beautiful dresses and a range of magnificent skirts, blouses, and nightgowns, and a mass of colorful housecoats that she termed "negligees." Once she even tried on a fur: the look in the tortured eyes of the slain fox terrified me. The fox's face stirred my soul because it looked both cunning and heartrendingly wretched.
Time and again Auntie Greta would plunge into the little cubicle, from which she emerged after what seemed like years. Time and again this broad-beamed Aphrodite was reborn from the foam, bursting from behind the curtain in a new and ever more glamorous incarnation. For my benefit and for that of the salesperson and the other shoppers she would turn on her heel a couple of times in front of the mirror. Despite her heavy thighs she enjoyed executing a coquettish pirouette, and inquired of us each in turn whether it suited her, whether it flattered her, whether it clashed with the color of her eyes, whether it hung well, didn't it make her look fat, wasn't it rather common, a bit brash? As she did so, her face reddened, and because she was embarrassed at blushing, she blushed again, that blood red verging on purple. Finally she promised the salesperson earnestly that she would almost certainly be back the same day, in fact very shortly, after lunch, by the end of the afternoon, when she'd had time just to look around some other shops, tomorrow at the very latest.
So far as I can recall, she never went back. On the contrary, she was always very careful not to visit the same shop twice until several months had elapsed.
And she never bought anything. At any rate, from all the excursions on which I accompanied her in the role of escort, arbiter elegantiarum, and confidant she returned empty-handed. Perhaps she did not have enough money. Perhaps the curtained changing cubicles in all the women's clothes shops in Jerusalem were for Auntie Greta what the wizard's castle I built from bricks at the edge of the mat was for the shabby princess doll.
Until one day, one windy
winter's day when throngs of rustling leaves eddied in the gray light, Auntie Greta and I, hand in hand, arrived at a splendid large clothes store, perhaps in one of the Christian Arab streets. As usual, Auntie Greta, laden with dressing gowns, nightgowns, and colorful dresses, disappeared into the fitting rooms, though not before giving me a sticky kiss and sitting me down to wait for her on a wooden stool in front of her solitary confinement cell, which was protected by a thick curtain. Promise me now you won't go anywhere, on any account, heaven forbid, just sit here and wait for me, and above all don't talk to any stranger until Auntie Greta comes out again even prettier than ever, and if you're a good boy, you'll get a little surprise from Auntie Greta, guess what it is!
While I was sitting waiting for her, sadly but obediently, all of a sudden a little girl tripped by, dressed up as though for a carnival, or else just dolled up. She was very young but older than me. For an instant I had the impression she was wearing lipstick, but how could she be? And they'd made her a sort of chest like a woman's with a cleft down the middle. The shape of her waist and hips was not like a child's, but violinlike. On her little legs I managed to see nylons with a seam at the back, ending in a pair of pointy red high-heeled shoes. I had never seen such a child-woman: too little to be a woman and too dressed up to be a child. So I stood up, fascinated and bewildered, and started to follow her to see what I had seen, or rather what I had almost not seen, because the girl had darted out from the rail of skirts behind me and walked past very fast. I wanted to see her close up. I wanted her to see me. I wanted to do or say something that would make her notice me: I already had a little repertoire that could draw cries of admiration from grown-ups, and one or two that worked quite well with children too, especially little girls.
The dressed-up little girl floated lightly between rows of shelves weighed down with bales of cloth and disappeared down a tunnel-like passage lined on either side with tall tree trunks festooned with dresses, branches almost broken under the weight of their colorful cloth foliage. Despite their weight, these trunks could be turned around with a light push.
It was a women's world, a dark, fragrant maze of warm paths, a deep, seductive silky, velvety labyrinth that ramified into ever more dress-lined paths. Smells of wool, mothballs, and flannel mingled with a vague hint of elusive scents that wafted through a dense thicket of frocks, sweaters, blouses, skirts, scarves, shawls, lingerie, dressing gowns, and all kinds of corsets and garter belts, petticoats and nightgowns, and assorted jackets and tops, coats and furs, while rustling silk stirred like a gentle sea breeze.
Here and there little dark cubicles draped in dark curtains gaped at me on my way. Here and there at the end of a winding tunnel a shadowy lightbulb winked faintly. Here and there mysterious secondary alleys opened up, alcoves, narrow winding jungle tracks, little niches, sealed fitting rooms, and all kinds of cupboards, shelves, and counters. And there were many corners hidden by thick screens or curtains.
The footsteps of the high-heeled infant were rapid and confident, ti-ta-tak ti-ta-tak (in my fever I heard "come to chat, come to chat," or, mockingly, "tiny tot, tiny tot!"), not at all those of a little girl, and yet I could see for myself that she was shorter than I was. My heart went out to her. I yearned with all my being, whatever the cost, to make her eyes open wide in admiration.
I quickened my pace. I was almost running after her. With a soul steeped in fairy tales about princesses that knights like me galloped to rescue from the teeth of dragons or the spells of wicked wizards, I just had to overtake her, to get a good look at the face of this wood nymph, perhaps rescue her a little, slay a dragon or two for her, earn her undying gratitude. I was afraid of losing her forever in the darkness of the labyrinth.
But I had no way of knowing whether the girl who was winding her way with such agility through the forest of clothes had noticed that a valiant knight was close on her heels, lengthening his little strides so as not to fall behind. If she had, why had she not given any sign: not once had she turned toward me or looked around.
All of a sudden the little fairy dived under a many-branched raincoat tree, stirred it this way and that, and in an instant vanished from my sight, swallowed up in its thick foliage.
Flooded by an uncharacteristic bravery, electrified by knightly daring, I plunged fearlessly into the thicket of cloth after her, and swimming against the tide, I fought my way through the mass of rustling garments. And so, finally, panting with excitement, I emerged—almost stumbled—into a sort of poorly lit clearing in the forest. Here I resolved to wait as long as I had to for the little wood nymph, whose sound and indeed whose scent I imagined I could perceive among the nearest branches. I would risk my life to take on bare-handed the wizard who had imprisoned her in his cellar. I would defeat the monster, smash the iron chains from her hands and feet, set her free, then stand at a distance, my head bowed in mute modesty, and wait for my reward, which would not be long in coming, and her tears of gratitude, after which I did not know what would follow, but I did know that it would surely come and that it would overwhelm me.
She was tiny, chicklike, her frame fragile as a matchstick, almost a baby, and she had cascading brown curls. And red high-heeled shoes. And a woman's dress with a low neckline that revealed a woman's breast with a real woman's cleavage. And she had wide, slightly parted lips, painted a garish red.
When I finally found the courage to look up at her face, a wicked, mocking crack suddenly opened between her lips, a kind of twisted, poisonous smile that disclosed sharp little teeth among which a single gold incisor glinted. A thick layer of powder mottled with islands of rouge covered her forehead and whitened her terrifying cheeks, which were slightly hollow, sunken like those of a wicked witch, as though she had suddenly put on the face of the killed fox fur, that face that had seemed both malicious and heartrendingly sad.
That elusive infant, the fleet-footed fairy, the enchanted nymph that I had pursued as though bewitched through the length and breadth of the forest, was not a child at all. She was neither fairy nor wood nymph but a sardonic-looking, almost elderly woman. A midget. A little hunchbacked. From close up her face had something of the look of a crooked-beaked, beady-eyed raven. To me she was frightening, dwarfish, shrunken, with a wrinkled old neck and hands that she suddenly opened wide and extended toward me, with a terrifying low laugh, like a witch who must be trying to touch me so as to trap me, with bony, wrinkled fingers like the claws of a bird of prey.
Instantly I turned and fled, breathless, terrified, sobbing, I ran, too petrified to shout aloud, I ran, screaming a choked scream inside me, help, help me, I ran crazily among the rustling tunnels in the dark, losing my way, becoming more and more lost in that labyrinth. Never before or since have I experienced such terror. I had discovered the terrible secret that she was not a child, that she was a witch disguised as a child, and now she would never let me escape alive from her dark forest.
As I ran I suddenly fell into a small entrance, with a wooden door that was neither open nor shut; in fact it was not a full-sized door but just a low opening like that of a dog kennel. I dragged myself inside with my last breath and there I hid from the witch, cursing myself, why hadn't I closed the door of my hiding place behind me? But I was paralyzed by horror, too frightened to emerge even for a moment from my shelter, too petrified even to reach out and close the door behind me.
And so I curled up in a corner of this kennel, which may have been no more than a storeroom, a kind of enclosed triangular space under a staircase. There, among some vague twisting metal pipes and crumbling cases and piles of moldy cloth, shrunk and curled up fetus-like, my hand covering my head, my head burrowing between my knees, trying to blot out my very existence, to withdraw inside my own womb, I lay trembling, perspiring, afraid to breathe, careful not to let out so much as a squeak, frozen with panic because of the bellows-like breathing that would soon give me away since it must surely be audible out there.
Over and over again I fancied I heard the tapping of her
heels, "traitor die, traitor die, traitor die," getting closer, she was chasing me with her killed fox's face, here she was now right on top of me, any moment now she would catch me, drag me out, touch me with fingers that felt like a frog's, groping at me, hurting me, and suddenly she would stoop over me laughing with her sharp teeth and inject some terrifying magic spell into my blood to make me too turn suddenly into a killed fox. Or into stone.
After seven years somebody went past. Someone who worked in the shop? I stopped breathing and clenched my trembling fists. But the man did not hear my pounding heart. He hurried past my kennel and on the way he closed the door and inadvertently shut me in. Now I was locked in. Forever. In total darkness. At the bottom of a quiet ocean.
I have never been in such darkness and quiet either before or since. It was not the darkness of night, which is usually a dark blue darkness where you can generally make out various glimmers of light, with stars and glow-worms, lanterns of distant wayfarers, the window of a house here and there, and everything that punctuates night darkness, where you can always navigate from one block of darkness to the next by means of the various glimmers and shimmers and flickers, and you can always try to grope in the darkness at some shadows that are a little darker than the night itself.
Not here: I was at the bottom of a sea of ink.
Nor was the silence that of the night, where there is always some faraway pump pounding away, and you can hear the crickets and a chorus of frogs, dogs barking, dimly rumbling motors, the whine of a mosquito, and from time to time the wail of a jackal goes right through you.
