by Amos Oz
At once he added politely:
"Good evening, Mrs. Kipnis. Pozhal'sta, why are you staring at me so cruelly, I was simply making a small joke with your husband. I shall never forgive myself if, heaven forbid, I have accidentally frightened you. Nikogda. I must beg your pardon right away; there, I've done it. How magnificent you look, Mrs. Kipnis, in your blue evening dress, if I may make so bold. How magnificent, too, is the springtime in our Jerusalem on the eve of the great destruction. And the hot tap in the bathroom is dripping and dripping and knows no rest. Surely we ought to do something without further delay. How much time do we have left? There, I've apologized and I've gone. Da. Good night. May the name of the wicked rot, and the innocent shall see it and be glad. Now good night once again to you all. Happy is he who waits His coming."
He nearly knocked the child over as he dashed back to his room, panting, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his fists clenched. But he did not slam his door; he closed it gently behind him as if taking great care not to hurt the door or the doorpost or the sudden silence he had left behind him.
Mother said:
"The High Commissioner could never understand how a boy like Mitya suffers. Even the King couldn't help. Or the Messiah himself, not that I believe in him."
She closed her eyes and continued in a different tone of voice:
"But I could. I could easily rescue him from the madness and death that are building up inside him. Yes, me. That's loneliness, Hans, that's real exile, despair, depression, persecution. I could come to him in the middle of the night in my nightgown, sweetly perfumed, and touch him; or at least I could bring him another woman in the night and happily stand by and watch. I could put out the rising fires and give him peace and quiet. So what if he smells. To the forests and the sea, every man and woman in the world stinks. Even you, Hans. And then to hear him moaning between my hands, shouting in disjointed Russian, singing, grunting like a felled ox. Then resting peacefully. I'd close his eyes with my fingers and lull him to sleep. Even the stars and mountains would love me for it. Now, stop looking at me like that. I want you to know once and for all how much I loathe, yes, loathe, your Wertheimers and Bubers and Shertoks. I wish your terrorists would blow them all sky high. And stop looking at me like that."
Father said:
"That will do, Ruth. The boy can hear you; he understands almost everything."
She drew the child violently toward her, pressed his head against her, and covered his face with rough kisses. Then she said quietly:
"Yes, you're quite right. You've already forgiven me, Hans. The red taxi will be here soon, and we'll go to the ball. Stand still, Hans, while I tie your silly bow tie for you. I've really got no complaint against Buber and the rest of them. There, now you've remembered how to smile. At last. Why are you smiling?" Father said nothing.
9
Mitya had left his kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley because of an ideological argument at the end of the week in which Hitler had captured Warsaw. At the same time, he had also suddenly inherited some jewelry from his only relation, a forgotten aunt who had died in Johannesburg.
He had hastily sold the jewelry to a crafty Armenian goldsmith in the Old City and decided to settle in Jerusalem to study, with the aim of proving once and for all that the natives of Palestine were descended from the ancient Hebrews. He tried to produce conclusive proof that all the Arabs, nomads and peasants alike, were simply Israelites who had been forcibly converted to Islam and whom it was our duty now to rescue. Their clothes, the shape of their skulls, the names of their villages, their eating habits, and their forms of worship all bore abundant witness, he claimed, to the truth that the Jewish Agency was trying to hush up. But they could not pull the wool over his eyes.
For a pioneer, he was a skinny lad, with drooping shoulders and abrupt gestures. He was an uncompromising vegetarian, who called meat eating "the source of all impurity." His hair was thin, fair, almost white. When Mitya stood by himself in the kitchen making tea in his glass with its ring of worn gold paint, Hillel would sometimes observe a lonely, fanatical glint in his eye. His birdlike profile looked as though he were forever suppressing a sneeze. And he would chew the points of his shirt collar with his rotten teeth.
On his arrival, he had paid Father two years' rent in advance, and was given permission to look over the headlines in the daily newspaper and to use the typewriter occasionally. Once he typed out with two fingers an "Epistle to Those Who Are at Ease in Zion," in which he voiced various complaints and sounded a prophecy of doom. But the newspapers all either rejected his letter or simply ignored it. And once he hinted to Father that since the Babylonian Beasts had murdered the heroic Abraham Stern, code-named "Yair," he himself had become the secret commander of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel. Father did not believe this any more than he believed Engineer Brzezinski, who said that Mitya was a dangerous Communist agent in disguise.
Mitya was ruthlessly clean and tidy.
Whenever he had finished in the lavatory, he would produce a small can inscribed in English, "Baby's Delight," and sprinkle the seat with perfumed talcum powder. When he had read the newspaper he would fold it neatly in four and place it carefully on the end of the bookshelf. If ever he met anyone as he came out of the bathroom or the lavatory (which he called "the throne room"), he would turn pale and mutter an embarrassed apology. He cleaned and scrubbed his own room twice a day.
Despite all this, a faint yet repulsive smell, like that of old cooking fat, always accompanied him in the corridor and escaped from under his door; it even clung to his glass with the worn gold ring.
No one was allowed into his room.
He had fitted a double Yale lock onto his door, and he always locked it even when he only went to wash. Sometimes he would cry out in his sleep in the early hours of the morning. In Russian.
***
During the summer months, Mitya would set off on foot in the direction of Mount Scopus, crossing hills and valleys with his disjointed gait, spurning roads and paths, advancing in a line straight as an arrow in flight. He would traverse the suburb of Sanhedriya like a hurricane, skirting the police training school, with his birdlike head thrust forward, a distant look in his eye, and finally, panting but undeterred, he would emerge into the district of Sheikh Jarrah, where he would always break his journey to drink his morning coffee among mustached, kaffiyeh-wrapped Arabs, with whom he attempted persistently to enter into conversation, but without success, since he could speak only classical Arabic, and that with a heavy Russian accent. The Arab coffee-drinkers nicknamed him al-Hudhud, "the hoopoe," perhaps because of his crest of thinning hair.
He would spend whole days on end in the basement of the national library on Mount Scopus, endlessly covering little cards with feverish notes. When he came home in the evening, he would sometimes bare his rotting teeth in a grin and pronounce some cryptic prophecy:
"I promise you that tonight a mighty explosion shall resound. The mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt."
Because those were eventful days, his prophecies sometimes came true in a way. Then Mitya would smile modestly, like a humble artist who has won a prize with one of his works.
During the last year of the World War, Hillel peeped through the keyhole and discovered that Mitya had huge maps hanging on all the walls of his room, from the ceiling almost to the floor. He had other maps spread out on his desk, on his bed, and on the straw matting. These maps were covered with thick black and red arrows, flags, buttons, and matchsticks.
"Daddy, is Uncle Mitya a spy?"
"That sort of foolishness is beneath your dignity, Hillel."
"Then why is he like that? Why has he got maps in his room, and arrows?"
"You're the spy, Hillel. You spied on Uncle Mitya. That's not a nice thing to do, and you'll promise me right now that you won't do it again."
"I promise, but..."
"You've promised. Now that's the end of it. It's wrong to talk about people behind
their backs."
One day in 1944, Mitya proposed to Father that the British fleet should storm up the Bosporus and through the Dardanelles "like a rod of anger," gain mastery over the Black Sea, ravage half of the Crimea with fire, land "myriads of armies" all along the Slavic coasts, knock the heads of the two tyrants together, "and grind to dust the dragon and the crocodile of Egypt." Father considered this utterance in silence, proffered a mild, sympathetic smile, and remarked that the Russians were now on the side of the Allies.
"You are the generation of the wilderness. You are the seed of slaves," Mitya replied vehemently. "You have all been stricken with blindness. Chamberlains. Arlosoroffs. Gandhis. Plebeians. Eunuchs. I don't mean you personally, Dr. Kipnis, heaven forbid! I was speaking in the plural; you in general. I can see from your wife's eyes that she agrees with me deep in her heart, but because she is wise and sensitive she prefers to remain silent, and of course she is quite right. Surely no remnant shall remain of all the eunuchs. When they cry with upraised voice and outstretched throat 'eternal people,' 'forever and ever,' 'Jerusalem, the eternal city,' surely every stone of Jerusalem bursts out laughing. Now I must beg your pardon and bid you good night. I'm sorry; good night."
Once, when Father was out working in the villages and Mother was at the hairdresser's, Mitya trapped Hillel at the dark end of the corridor and addressed his fevered utterances to him:
"We who have returned to Zion, and especially your generation, whose souls have not been perverted by exile, have an obligation to make children by force by the women of the fellahin. We must give them children who look like you.
Masses of fair-haired children. Strong and fair and fearless. It's a matter of life and death. A new breed, thoroughbred, lusty steppe-wolves instead of namby-pamby scholars. The old eunuchs will die off. Blessed are you, for you shall inherit the earth. Then a flame shall issue forth from Judah and consume Perfidious Albion. What could be easier. We know how they go out alone at night to gather firewood. They wear long dark dresses down to their ankles, but underneath their dresses they have nothing on at all. They must be conquered and mounted by main force. With holy zeal. They have women who are dark and hairy as goats, and we have rods of fire. We must spill fresh blood, dark, warm blood. Your parents may call you Hillel, but I shall call you Ithamar. Listen to me, young Ithamar. You are a new recruit: I order you to learn to ride a horse, to use a dagger, to toughen yourself up. Here, take a biscuit: you can't refuse, I'm your commanding officer. This'll all be a closely guarded secret between the two of us: the Underground has no pity on traitors and informers. Who is this that cometh from Seir, with dyed garments from Edom? It is you and the rest of your generation. Nimrods, Gideons, Jephthahs, all of them skilled men of war. You shall see and behold with your own eyes, O new recruit Ithamar, the whole British Empire brought down into the dust like a rag doll. The Inheritor shall come marching from the east. He shall ascend the mountain and discomfit the plain with an iron hand until those lascivious, black hairy she-goats of the fellahin scream at us in terror and delight. Lascivious she-goats! Now, take this shilling and run and buy yourself a mountain of chewing gum. It's yours. Yes. From me. Never disobey orders. Now, scram!"
Suddenly his blazing eyes fell on Mother's apron hanging on a peg beside the mirror in the corridor. He bared his teeth and hissed:
"Painted Jezebel, mother of whoredoms!"
And he shuffled furiously back to his room.
Hillel ran out into the garden. He climbed up into his hide-away among the boughs of the fig tree, the sweaty shilling tightly clasped in his hand. He was tormented by ugly yet persistent images. Jezebel. Fellahin women. Lascivious she-goats. Long dresses with nothing on underneath. Thoroughbreds. And the sweaty word "mounted." His free hand felt for the fly of his trousers, but there were tears in his eyes. He knew that the asthma would start mercilessly as soon as he dared to touch his taut organ. Iron hand. Ithamar. Rag doll. Marching from the east.
If the old days of the Bible suddenly came back, I could be a judge in Israel. Or a king. Mitya could be a prophet in a hair mantle, and the bears would eat him like the wicked Turkish soldier. Daddy would pasture the royal flocks in the fields of Bethlehem. And Mommy wouldn't be a Jezebel.
Among the flower beds, Dr. Kipnis appeared. His hair was still wet from the shower, his khaki shorts came down almost to his knees, and between his shorts and his sandals his legs showed brown, thin, and smooth. He was wearing nothing over his vest. His eyes, behind his glasses, looked like blue lakes in a snowy landscape.
Father carefully connected the rubber hose to the garden tap. He made sure it was well attached, and he regulated the flow of water precisely. He stood alone, quietly watering his garden in the early-afternoon sunshine, humming to himself the song "Between the Euphrates and the Tigris."
The water carved out branching and interlacing furrows. From time to time, Father bent down to block its path and direct it where it was needed.
Hillel suddenly felt an ecstatic, overwhelming love for his father. He scrambled out of his hideaway in the fig tree, ran up the path through the summer bird song through the breeze laden with the scent of the distant sea through the streaming afternoon sunlight, flung his arms around his father's waist, and hugged him with all his might.
Hans Kipnis passed the hose from his right to his left hand, stroked his son's head tenderly, and said, "Hillel."
The boy did not reply.
"Here, Hillel. Take it. If you want to water the garden for a bit, take the hose, and I'll go and clip the hedge. You can. Only be very careful not to aim the water at the plants themselves."
"Daddy, what does 'Perfidious Albion' mean?"
"It's what the fanatics call England when they want to be rude about it."
"What does 'fanatics' mean?"
"They're people who are always sure that they know best what's right and what's wrong and what ought to be done, and try their hardest to make everybody else think and act the same way."
"Is Uncle Mitya a fanatic?"
"Uncle Mitya is a sensitive man who reads a lot of books and spends a lot of time studying the Bible. Because he worries a great deal about our plight, and also perhaps because of his personal sufferings, he sometimes uses words that are not quite the words I myself would choose to use."
"What about Mommy?"
"She's having a rest."
"No, I mean, is she also a fanatic."
"Mommy grew up surrounded by wealth and luxury. Sometimes it's hard for her to get used to conditions here; you were born here, and perhaps you are sometimes surprised by her moods. But you're a clever boy, and I'm sure you're not angry with Mommy when she's sad or when she longs to be somewhere completely different."
"Daddy, I've got something to tell you."
"What is it, son?"
"I've got a shilling that I don't want at all. And I don't want you to start asking me who gave it to me, 'cause I won't say. I just want you to take it."
"All right. I'll look after your shilling for you, and I won't ask any questions. Only mind you don't get your new sandals wet when you're watering the grapes. Now I'm going to fetch the shears. Bye-bye. You ought to be wearing a hat in this heat."
10
Toward sunset, when the mountains were shrouded and the wind swept knowingly through the woods and the valleys and the bell of the Schneller Barracks resounded forlornly, the preparations were complete.
All that remained was to wait for the taxi, say good-bye, and go. Nothing had been overlooked. Hans Kipnis, in his borrowed dress suit and impeccably polished black shoes, with his hair neatly parted and smoothed down with water, with his round glasses, looked like a mild, good-natured Evangelical minister setting out with a pounding heart for his wedding.
"My own Dr. Zichel," Mother said with a laugh, and bent over to straighten the white handkerchief in his top pocket.
She was a little taller than he, and her scent was the scent of autumn. She was wearing her blue evening dress with its d
aring neckline. The light shone in her drop earrings. Ruth was erect and sensuous as she walked with a slow, rounded motion, like a large cat, to wait outside on the veranda. She turned her bare back on the house and looked out into the desolate twilight. Her blond plait had settled on the arch of her left shoulder. Her hip rubbed slowly, with a dreamy rhythm, against the cool stone parapet.
And how the bells had rung throughout Warsaw at the national festival. How all the marble horsemen had reared up in every square. How her warm voice had carried over the playground of the school as she had read the searing lines of the Polish national poet:
Slain cavalrymen never die,
They fly high through the air like the wind,
Their horses' hoofs no longer touching the ground.
At night in the storm in the snow you can hear them flying past,
Foam-flecked winged steeds and valiant horsemen,
Forever flying over forests and meadows and plains,
Ghost warriors eternally riding into battle.
At night in the storm in the snow they wing their way high over Poland.
Cavalrymen never die, they become transparent and powerful as tears....
Ruth's voice conveyed a melancholy echo of violins, the tempestuous thunder of war drums, the roar and sigh of the organ. How they had all loved her. The handsome Tadeusz had stood stiffly at attention half a pace behind her on the platform, holding aloft the blazing Torch of Liberty. Elderly teachers who had themselves fought as cavalry officers in the great war for the liberation of Poland, and who still relived it in their dreams on happy nights, wept to hear her reciting. They stood with their eyes closed and strained toward her with all the force of their longing. She received their love and desire in her heart, and her heart was ready to bestow love on all good men.
She had never throughout her school days encountered bad men until both her parents died within a month of each other, and her sister, Nyuta, suddenly married the widowed gynecologist and left with him for New York. She believed that if bad men really existed outside fairy stories, they must lurk in dark corners. They could never come near her, with her gleaming white tennis dress and her expensive racket. Hence she was inclined to feel a certain sympathy even for them, if they existed. Their lot must be a sad one. What a terrible thing it must be, to be a bad man.
