A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

  51

  I WAS A fiercely nationalistic child when I was in the fourth and fifth grades at Tachkemoni School. I wrote a historical novel in installments called The End of the Kingdom ofJudah, and several poems about conquest, and about national greatness, which resembled Grandpa Alexander's patriotic verses and aimed to imitate Vladimir Jabotinsky's nationalistic marching songs such as the Beitar Anthem: "...Spill your blood and offer up your soul! / Raise high the fire: / Repose is like mire; / We fight for a glorious goal!" I was also influenced by the song of the Jewish partisans in Poland and the ghetto rebels: "...What if our blood we spill? / Surely our spirit with heroic deeds shall thrive!" And poems by Saul Tchernikhowsky that Father used to read to me with wavering pathos in his voice: "...a tune of blood and fire! / So climb the hill and crush the vale, whate'er you see—acquire!" The poem that excited me most of all was "Nameless Soldiers," by Avraham Stern, alias Yair, the leader of the Stern Gang. I used to recite it with pathos but in a whisper in bed after lights out: "Nameless soldiers are we, we must fight to be free; / all around is the shadow of death. / We have signed up for life to do battle and strife—/ we must fight till we breathe our last breath.../ In the day that is red with our blood that is shed, / in the blackest despair of the night, / over village and town our flag shall be flown / for we fight to defend what is right!"

  Torrents of blood, soil, fire, and iron intoxicated me. Over and over again I imagined myself falling heroically on the battlefield, I imagined my parents' sorrow and pride, and at the same time, with no contradiction, after my heroic death, after tearfully enjoying the rousing funeral orations pronounced by Ben-Gurion, Begin, and Uri Zvi, after grieving over myself and seeing with emotion and a lump in my throat the marble statues and songs of praise in my memory, I always arose healthy and sound from my temporary death, soaked in self-admiration, appointed myself commander-in-chief of Israel's armed forces, and led my legions to liberate in blood and fire everything that the effeminate, Diaspora-bred worm of Jacob had not dared to wrest from the hand of the foe.

  Menachem Begin, the legendary underground commander, was my chief childhood idol at that time. Even earlier, in the last year of the British Mandate, the nameless commander of the underground had fired my imagination. In my mind I saw his form swathed in clouds of biblical glory. I imagined him in his secret headquarters in the wild ravines of the Judaean Desert, barefoot, with a leather girdle, flashing sparks like the prophet Elijah among the rocks of Mount Carmel, sending out orders from his remote cave with innocent-looking youths. Night after night his long arm reaches the heart of the British occupation force, dynamiting HQs and military installations, breaking through walls, blowing up ammunition dumps, pouring out its wrath on the strongholds of the enemy who was called, in the posters composed by my father, the "Anglo-Nazi foe," "Amalek," "Perfidious Albion." (My mother once said of the British: "Amalek or not, who knows if we won't miss them soon.")

  Once the state of Israel was established, the supreme commander of the Hebrew underground forces finally emerged from hiding, and his picture appeared one day in the paper above his name: not something heroic like Ari Ben-Shimshon or Ivriahu Ben-Kedumim, but Menachem Begin. I was shocked: the name Menachem Begin might have suited a Yiddish-speaking haberdasher from Zephaniah Street or a gold-toothed sheitel and corset maker from Geula Street. Moreover, to my disappointment, my childhood hero was revealed in the photograph in the paper as a frail, skinny man with large glasses perched on his pale face. Only his mustache attested to his secret powers; but after a few months the mustache disappeared. Mr. Begin's figure, voice, accent, and diction did not remind me of the biblical conquerors of Canaan or of Judah Mac-cabee, but of my feeble teachers at Tachkemoni, who were also men flowing with nationalist fervor and righteous wrath, but from behind their heroism a nervous self-righteousness and latent sourness occasionally burst through.

  And one day, thanks to Menachem Begin, I suddenly lost my desire to "spill my blood and offer up my son" and to "fight for a glorious goal." I abandoned the view that "repose is like mire"; after a while I came around to the opposite view.

  Every few weeks half of Jerusalem assembled at eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning to hear fiery speeches by Menachem Begin at gatherings of the Herut movement in the Edison Auditorium, which was the largest hall in the city. Its facade bore posters announcing the imminent appearance of the Israel Opera under the baton of Fordhaus Ben-Zisi. Grandpa used to dress himself up for the occasion in his magnificent black suit and a light blue satin tie. A triangle of white handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket like a snowflake in a heat wave. When we entered the auditorium, half an hour before the meeting was due to start, he raised his hat in all directions in greeting and even bowed to his friends. I marched beside my grandfather, solemn and well combed, in a white shirt and polished shoes, straight to the second or third row, where seats of honor were reserved for people like Grandpa Alexander, members of the Jerusalem committee of the "Herut Movement—founded by the Irgun, the National Military Organization." We would sit between Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin and Mr. Eliahu Meridor, or between Dr. Israel Sheib-Eldad and Mr. Hanoch Kalai, or next to Mr. Isak Remba, the editor of the newspaper Herut.

  The hall was always packed with supporters of the Irgun and admirers of the legendary Menachem Begin, almost all of them men, among them the fathers of many of my classmates at Tachkemoni. But there was a fine invisible dividing line between the front three or four rows, which were reserved for prominent members of the intelligentsia, veterans of the National Front campaigns, activists in the Revisionist movement, former commanders of the Irgun, who mostly came from Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, and Ukraine, and the throngs of Sephardim, Bukharians, Yemenites, Kurds, and Aleppo Jews who filled the rest of the hall. This excitable throng packed the galleries and aisles, pressed against the walls, and spilled out into the foyer and the square in front of the auditorium. In the front rows they talked nationalist, revolutionary talk with a taste for glorious victories and quoted Nietzsche and Mazzini, but there was a dominant petit-bourgeois air of good manners: hats, suits, and ties, etiquette and a certain flowery salon formality that even then, in the early 1950s, had a whiff of mold and mothballs.

  Behind this inner circle extended an ocean of fervent true believers, a loyal, devoted throng of tradesmen, shopkeepers, workmen, many of them sporting skullcaps, having come straight from synagogue to hear their hero, their leader Mr. Begin, shabbily dressed, hard-working Jews trembling with idealism, warmhearted, hot-tempered, excitable, and vocal.

  At the beginning of the meeting they sang Beitar songs and at the end they sang the anthem of the Movement and the National Anthem, Hatikva. The dais was decorated with masses of Israeli flags, a gigantic photograph of Vladimir Jabotinsky, two razor-sharp rows of Beitar Youth resplendent in their uniforms and black ties—how I longed to join them when I was older—and stirring slogans such as "Jotapata, Masada, Beitar!," "If I forget thee O Jerusalem may my right hand lose its cunning!," and "In blood and fire Judaea fell, in blood and fire Judaea will rise again!"

  After a couple of warm-up speeches by committee members of the Jerusalem branch, everyone suddenly left the stage. Even the Beitar Youth marched off. A deep, religious silence fell upon the Edison Auditorium like a quiet whirring of wings. All eyes were fixed on the empty stage, and all hearts were primed. This expectant silence lasted for a long moment, then something stirred at the back of the stage, the velvet curtains parted a crack, and a solitary small, thin man stepped daintily to the microphone and stood before the audience with his head humbly bowed, as though he was overwhelmed by his own shyness. Only after a few seconds of awestruck silence did a few hesitant claps rise from the audience, as if the crowd could hardly believe its eyes, as if they were stunned, every time, to discover that Begin was not a fire-breathing giant but a slightly built, almost frail-looking man. But at once they burst into applause, and at the back the applause quickly turned to roars of affection that acc
ompanied Begin's speech almost from beginning to end.

  For a couple of seconds the man stood motionless, with head bowed, shoulders drooping, as if to say: "I do not deserve this accolade," or "My soul is bowed down to the dust under the burden of your love" Then he stretched out his arms as if to bless the crowds, smiled shyly, silenced them, and began hesitantly, like a novice actor with stage fright:

  "Good Sabbath to you all, brothers and sisters. Fellow Jews. People of Jerusalem, our eternal holy city."

  And he stopped. Suddenly he said quietly, sadly, almost mournfully:

  "Brothers and sisters. These are difficult days for our beloved young state. Exceptionally difficult days. Awesome days for all of us."

  Gradually he overcame his sadness, gathered his strength, and continued, still quietly but with a controlled power, as though behind that veil of quietness there lurked a subdued but very serious warning:

  "Once again our enemies are grinding their teeth in the dark and plotting vengeance for the shameful defeat we inflicted on them on the battlefield. The Great Powers are devising evil once again. There is nothing new. In every generation men rise up against us to annihilate us. But we, my brothers and sisters, we shall stand up to them again. As we have stood up to them not once or twice but many times in the past. We shall stand up to them with courage and devotion. Holding our heads up high. Never, never shall they see this nation on its knees. Never! To the last generation!"

  At the words "Never, never" he raised his voice to a resounding cry from the heart, full of pained vibrations. This time the audience did not shout, it roared with rage and anguish.

  "The Eternal One of Israel," he said in a quiet, authoritative voice, as though he had just come from an operational meeting at the Eternal One of Israel's headquarters, "the Rock of Israel shall rise up again and frustrate and dash to pi-eces all the schemes of our enemies!"

  Now the crowd was flushed with gratitude and affection, which they expressed by a rhythmic chant of "Begin! Begin!" I too leaped to my feet and roared his name with all the power I could muster in my voice, which was breaking at the time.

  "On one condition," the speaker said solemnly, sternly, raising his hand, and then he paused as though pondering the nature of this condition and wondering whether it was proper for him to share it with the audience. A deathly hush spread through the hall. "One sole, crucial, vital, fateful condition." He paused again. His head drooped. As though bent under the terrible weight of the condition. The audience listened so intently that I could hear the hum of the fans on the high ceiling of the hall.

  "On condition that our leadership, brothers and sisters, is a national leadership and not a bunch of panic-stricken ghetto Jews who are scared of their own shadows! On condition that the feeble, enfeebling, defeated, defeatist, despicable Ben-Gurion government makes way at once for a proud, daring Hebrew government, an emergency government that knows how to make our foes quake with terror, just as the very name of our glorious army, the army of Israel, puts fear and trembling into the hearts of all the enemies of Israel wherever they may be!"

  At this the whole audience boiled over and seemed to burst its banks. The mention of the "despicable Ben-Gurion government" roused snorts of hatred and contempt on every side. From one of the galleries someone shouted hoarsely "Death to the traitors!," and from another corner of the hall came a wild chant of "Begin for PM, Ben-Gurion go home!"

  But the speaker silenced them and declared slowly, calmly, like a strict teacher rebuking his pupils:

  "No, brothers and sisters. That is not the way. Shouting and violence are not the right way, but peaceful, respectful, democratic elections. Not with the methods of those Reds, not with deception and hooliganism, but with the upright and dignified way that we have learned from our great mentor Vladimir Jabotinsky. We shall soon send them packing, not with hatred among brothers, not with violent upheaval, but with cold contempt. Yes, we shall send them all packing. Those who sell the soil of our Fatherland and those who have sold their souls to Stalin. Those bloated kibbutz hacks, and the arrogant, condescending tyrants of the Bolshevik Histadrut, all the petty Zhdanovs together with all the big thieves. Off with them! Aren't they always spouting to us smugly about manual labor and draining the swamps? Very well then. We shall send them off, ve-ery respectfully, to do some manual labor. They've long since forgotten what the word labor means. It'll be interesting to see if any of them can still hold a shovel! We, my brothers and sisters, shall do a great job of draining swamps—very soon, brothers and sisters, very soon, just be patient—we shall drain the swamp of this Labor government once and for all! Once and for all, my brothers and sisters! We shall drain it irreversibly, with no return! Now repeat after me, my people, as one man, loud and clear, this solemn vow: Once and for all! Once and for all!! Once and for all!!! No return! No return!! No return!!!"*

  The crowd went mad. So did I. As though we had all become cells in a single giant body, blazing with rage, boiling with indignation.

  And it was at this point that it happened. The fall. The expulsion from Paradise. Mr. Begin went on to speak about the imminent war and the arms race that was in progress all over the Middle East. However, Mr. Begin spoke the Hebrew of his generation, and was evidently not aware that usage had changed. A dividing line separated those under the age of twenty-five or so, who were brought up in Israel, from those above that age or who had learned their Hebrew from books. The word that for Mr. Begin, as for others of his generation, of all parties, meant "weapon" or "arm," for the rest of us signified the male sexual organ and nothing else. And his verb "to arm" for us signified the corresponding action.

  Mr. Begin took a couple of sips of water, scrutinized the audience, nodded his head a few times, as though agreeing with himself, or lamenting, and in a harsh, accusing voice, like a prosecutor sternly enumerating a series of unanswerable charges, launched into his tirade:

  "President Eisenhower is arming the Nasser regime!

  "Bulganin is arming Nasser!

  "Guy Mollet and Anthony Eden are arming Nasser!!

  "The whole world is arming our Arab enemies day and night!!!"

  Pause. His voice filled with loathing and contempt:

  "But who will arm the government of Ben-Gurion?"

  A stunned silence fell on the hall. But Mr. Begin did not notice. He raised his voice and crowed triumphantly:

  *Begin's speech is reconstructed from memory and experience.

  "If only I were the prime minister today—everyone, everyone would be arming us!! Ev-ery-one!!!"

  A few faint claps rose from the elderly Ashkenazim in the front rows. But the rest of the vast crowd hesitated, apparently unable to believe their ears, or perhaps they were shocked. In that moment of embarrassed silence there was just one nationalistic child, one twelve-year-old child who was politically committed to the roots of his hair, a devoted Beginite in a white shirt and highly polished shoes, who could not contain himself and burst out laughing.

  This child tried with all his might and main to restrain his laughter, he wanted to die of shame on the spot, but his contorted, hysterical laughter was irrepressible: it was a choked, almost tearful laugh, a hoarse laugh with strident hoots, a laugh that resembled sobbing and also suffocation.

  Looks of horror and alarm fixed on the child from every direction. On every side hundreds of fingers were laid on hundreds of lips, as he was hushed and shushed. Shame! Disgrace! All around important persons fumed reproachfully at a horror-smitten Grandpa Alexander. The child had the impression that far away at the back of the hall an unruly laugh echoed his, followed by another. But those laughs, if they occurred, had broken out in the outer suburbs of the nation, while his own outburst had struck in the middle of the third row, which was full of veterans of Beitar and dignitaries of Herut, all well-known and respectable figures.

  And now the speaker had noticed him and interrupted his speech; he waited patiently, with an indulgent, tactful smile, while Grandpa Alexander, blushing, shocked, and
seething like someone whose world had collapsed around him, seized the child's ear, lifted him furiously to his feet, and dragged him out by his ear, in front of the whole third row, in front of the massed lovers of the Fatherland in Jerusalem, bellowing desperately as he tugged and pulled. (It must have been rather like this that Grandpa himself was dragged by the ear to the rabbi in New York by the formidable Grandma Shlomit when, having been engaged to her, he suddenly fell in love with another lady on the boat to America.)

  And once the three of them were outside the Edison Auditorium, the one who was doing the dragging, seething with rage, the one who was being dragged, choking and weeping with laughter, and the poor ear that was by now as red as a beet, Grandpa raised his right hand and administered the grandfather of a slap on my right cheek, then he raised his left hand and slapped my other cheek with all the force of his hatred for the Left, and because he was such a Rightist, he did not want to let the left have the last word, so he gave me another slap on the right, not a feeble, obsequious Diaspora slap in the spirit of the worm of Jacob, but a bold, hawkish, patriotic slap, proud, magnificent, and furious.

  Jotapata, Masada, and besieged Beitar had lost: they might indeed rise again in glory and might, but without me. As for the Herut movement and the Likkud Party, they lost someone that morning who might have become in time a little heir, a fiery orator, perhaps an articulate member of the Knesset, or even a deputy minister without portfolio.

  I have never again blended happily into an ecstatic crowd, or been a blind molecule in a gigantic superhuman body. On the contrary, I have developed a morbid fear of crowds. The line "Repose is like mire" seems to me now to attest to a widespread, dangerous illness. In the phrase "blood and fire" I can taste blood and smell burning human flesh. As on the plains of northern Sinai during the Six Day War and among the blazing tanks on the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War.