by Amos Oz
How colorfully the ladies' ball gowns blossomed by the light of the lanterns and fireworks. How riotously the music flowed into the heart of the night. How joyfully, how frenziedly, the couples whirled, the ladies twined like young vines, the men whispering sweet words into their ears. The Sudanese servants, coal-black faces atop white tunics, stared in amazement.
The last days of Rome must have been like this, Father thought to himself. As the idea flashed through his mind, his optimistic blue eyes may have reflected a momentary sadness behind his round glasses.
Mother was immediately snatched up by Mr. Tsipkin, the Citrus King. Then she could be seen, blond and radiant, in the arms of the Swedish consul. Then again resting lightly against the shoulder of a dark giant sporting a pair of Latin mustachios. With hardly a pause to draw breath, she was swept up by a one-eyed, battle-scarred colonel with predatory yellow teeth.
Father looked away. He struck up a desultory conversation with his neighbor, Madame Josette al-Bishari. No doubt he was telling her all about the cattle he inspected, or perhaps preaching with ill-suppressed zeal about the benefits of drinking goats' milk.
The High Commissioner himself was wandering, lost in thought, among the guests. He paused for a moment at the table where Madame al-Bishari and Dr. Kipnis sat; abstractedly he picked up a cocktail biscuit, eyed it cautiously, and returned it to the dish. He smiled faintly at Madame Josette or Dr. Kipnis or perhaps toward the lights of Jerusalem behind their shoulders, and eventually he spoke:
"Well, well. I see you are both sitting it out. Why aren't you dancing? I expect you're secretly hatching some sort of intrigue; but I've caught you red-handed, in the name of the Crown. Just my little joke. Good evening to you both."
He turned and moved away, a slim, erect figure, to continue his tour of the tables.
Father said, in English with a heavy German accent:
"I know a man who superficially resembles Sir Alan but hates him bitterly."
Madame Josette answered at once, in fluent German, with a kind of strangled fervor:
"Anyway, there's no hope."
"I am unable to agree with you on that point, madame," Father said.
Madame Josette smiled patiently. "I shall try to explain myself by means of a small illustration. Take yourselves, for example. You have been leaving Europe for Palestine for forty years now. You will never arrive. At the same time, we are moving away from the desert toward Europe, and we shall never arrive, either. There is not even the ghost of a chance that we shall meet one another halfway. I suppose, sir, that you consider yourself a social democrat?"
Father expressed surprise. "Surely we are meeting at this very moment?"
To these words he received no reply.
The headmistress of the National High School for Girls slowly gathered up her belongings from the table, her silk handkerchief, her Virginia cigarettes, her fan with its picture of Notre Dame; she apologized in French, which Father could not understand, and a feminine slyness glimmered for an instant in her eyes. She moved slowly away from the table, an elegant yet unremarkable woman, thickening slightly around the hips, in a long Marlene Dietrich dress. Then she was gone.
He followed her with his eyes until she had vanished in the throng. Then he caught sight of his wife, thrown high above the lawn, with her mouth gaping open in a soundless exclamation of pleasure, then landing gently in the broad hands of the Hero of Malta. She was disheveled and excited, her lips parted, her blue dress lifted above her knees.
Admiral Sutherland laughed hoarsely and gave an exaggerated bow. He seized her hand and raised the palm to his lips, kissing, blowing, nuzzling. She touched his cheek quickly. Then the music changed, and they started dancing again, pressed tightly together, with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist.
The fireworks had finished. The music was dying away. Guests were already leaving, and still she whirled with the Hero of Malta on the dance floor on the lawn toward the wood, until the darkness and the trees hid them from Father's sight.
Meanwhile the High Commissioner had withdrawn. The Military Governor had left, in a convoy of armored cars and armed jeeps, for the King David Hotel. The last guests had taken their leave and disappeared toward the parking lot. Captain Chichester-Browne and even the Sudanese servants had deserted the lawns and vanished into the inner recesses of the palace.
Darkness fell on the Hill of Evil Counsel. The paper lanterns went out one by one. Only the searchlights continued to claw the gentle slope and the bushes that were gradually sinking into ever-deeper shadows. A dry coldness rose from the Judean Desert, which bounded the palace on the east. And groups of palace guards armed with Bren guns began to patrol the grounds.
Father stood alone beside the deserted fountain, which was still pouring out jets of light and water. Now he spotted a single goldfish in the marble pool. He was cold, and desperately tired. His mother and sisters had probably been murdered in Silesia or somewhere else. The cattle farm in Galilee would never exist, the monograph or poem would never be written. Hillel would have to be sent to a boarding school in one of the kibbutzim. He will hate me for it all his life. Dr. Ruppin is dead. Buber and Agnon will also die. If a Hebrew state is ever established, I shall not be running its veterinary service. If only the Underground would come this very minute and blow the whole place sky high. But that's not a nice thought. And I—
In his borrowed dress suit, with a white handkerchief peeping out of his top pocket, with the strange bow tie and his comical glasses, Hans Kipnis looked like a pathetic suitor in a silent film.
He closed his eyes. He suddenly remembered the wandering Bavarian ornithologist with whom he had cut a virgin path many years before to the remote sources of the Jordan in the farthest corner of the country. He recalled the coldness of the water and the snowy peaks of Mount Hermon. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Lady Bromley. She appeared like a wizened ghost from among the bushy oleanders, old, spoiled, seething with venomous zeal, in a dark shawl, doubled up with malicious glee.
"What you have lost tonight, sir, you will never find again. If you like, you can leave a message with me for the head gardener. But even he cannot save you, because he is a drunken Greek and a pathetic queer. Go home, my dear doctor. The party's over. Life nowadays is just like a stupid party. A little light, a little music, a little dancing, and then darkness. Look. The lights have been turned out. The leftovers have been thrown to the dogs. Go home, my dear doctor. Or must I wake up poor Lieutenant Grady and tell him to drive you?"
"I am waiting for my wife," said Father.
Lady Bromley let out a loud, ribald guffaw. "I have had four husbands, and none of them, I repeat, none of them ever said anything as fantastic as that. In all my life I've never heard a man talk like that, except perhaps in vulgar farces."
"I should be deeply grateful, madam, if you could give me some assistance, or direct me to someone who can help me. My wife has been dancing all evening, and she may have had a drop too much to drink. She must be around somewhere. Perhaps she has dozed off."
Lady Bromley's eyes suddenly flashed, and she growled wickedly:
"You are the native doctor who poked his fingers into my corset ten days ago. How rotten and charming. Come here and let me give you a big kiss. Come. Don't be afraid of me."
Father rallied his last resources. "Please, madam, please help me. I can't go home without her."
"That's rich," gloated Lady Bromley. "Listen to that. That's wonderful. He can't go home without his wife. He needs to have his wife next to him every night. And these, ladies and gentlemen, are the Jews. The People of the Book. The spiritual people. Huh! How much?"
"How much what?" Father asked, stunned.
"Really! How much will that rotten drunkard Kenneth have to pay you to calm down and keep your mouth shut? Huh! You may not believe it, but in the twelve months since the end of the war, that stupid young hothead has already sold three woods, two farms, and an autograph manuscript of Dickens, all for cas
h to silence the poor husbands. What a life. How rotten and charming. And to think that his poor father was once a gentleman in waiting to Queen Victoria!"
"I don't understand," said Father.
Lady Bromley gave a piercing, high-pitched laugh like a rusty saw and said, "Good night, my sweet doctor. I am really and truly grateful to you for your devoted attention. Jewish fingers inside my corset. That's rich! And how enchanting the nights are here in Palestine in springtime. Look around you: what nights! By the way, our beloved Alan also used to have a thriving sideline in other men's wives when he was a cadet. But that leech Trish soon sucked him dry. Poor Trish. Poor Alan. Poor Palestine. Poor doctor. Good night to you, my poor dear Othello. Good night to me, too. By the way, who was the raving lunatic who had the nerve to call this stinking hole Jerusalem? It's a travesty. Au revoir, doctor."
At three o'clock in the morning, Father left the palace on foot and headed in the direction of the German Colony. Outside the railway station, he was given a lift by two pale-faced rabbis in a hearse. They were on their way, they explained, from a big wedding in the suburb of Mekor Hayim to their work at the burial society in Sanhedriya. Hans Kipnis arrived home shortly before four, in the misty morning twilight. At the same time, the admiral, his lady friend, his driver, and his bodyguard crossed a sleeping Jericho with blazing headlights and with an armed jeep for escort, and turned off toward the Kaliah Hotel on the shore of the Dead Sea. A day or two later, the black-and-silver Rolls Royce set out eastward, racing deep into the desert, across mountains and valleys, and onward, to Baghdad, Bombay, Calcutta. All along the way, Mother soulfully recited poems by Mickiewicz in Polish. The admiral, belching high-spiritedly like a big, good-natured sheepdog, ripped open her blue dress and inserted a red, affectionate hand. She felt nothing, and never for an instant interrupted her gazelle song. Only her black eyes shone with joy and tears. And when the admiral forced his fingers between her knees, she turned to him and told him that slain cavalrymen never die, they become transparent and powerful as tears.
13
The following day, a heat wave hit Jerusalem. Dust rose from the desert and hung over the mountains. The sky turned deep gray, a grotesque autumnal disguise. Jerusalem barred its shutters and closed in on itself. And the white boulders blazed spitefully on every hillside.
All the neighborhood was gathered excitedly in the garden. Father stood, in khaki shorts and a vest, staring tiredly and blankly up into the fig tree. His face looked innocent and helpless without his round glasses.
Mrs. Vishniak clapped her hands together and muttered in Yiddish, "Gott in Himmel." Madame Yabrova and her niece tried angry words and gentle ones. They held out the threat of the British police, the promise of marzipan, the final threat of the kibbutz.
Engineer Brzezinski, red-faced and panting, tried unsuccessfully to join two ladders together. And Mitya the lodger took advantage of the general confusion to trample the flower beds, one after another, uprooting saplings and tearing out plants and throwing them over his shoulder, chewing his shirt collar and hissing continuously through his rotting teeth, "Lies, falsehood, untruth, it's all lies."
Father attempted one last plea. "Come down, Hillel. Please, son, get down. Mommy will come back and it'll all be like before. Those branches aren't very strong. Get down, there's a good boy. We won't punish you. Just come down now and everything will be exactly the same as before."
But the boy would not hear. His eyes groped at the murky gray sky, and he went on climbing up, up to the top of the tree, as the scaly fingers of the leaves caressed him from all sides, up to where the branches became twigs and buds, and still on, up to the very summit, up into the gentle trembling, to the fine delicate heights where the branches became a high-pitched melody into the depths of the sky. Night is reigning in the skies, time for you to close your eyes. Every bird is in its nest, all Jerusalem's at rest. He saw nothing, no frantic people in the garden, no Daddy, no house and no mountains, no distant towers, no stone huts scattered among the boulders, no sun, no moon, no stars. Nothing at all. All Jerusalem's at rest. Only a dull-gray blaze. Overcome with pleasure and astonishment, the child said to himself, "There's nothing." Then he gathered himself and leaped on up to the last leaf, to the shore of the sky.
At that point the firemen arrived. But Engineer Brzezinski drove them away, roaring: "Go away! There's no fire here! Lunatics! Go to Taganrog! Go to Kherson, degenerates! That's where the fire is! In the Crimea! At Sebastopol! There's a great fire raging there! Get out of here! And in Odessa, too! Get out of here, the lot of you!"
And Mitya put his arms carefully around Father's shaking shoulders and led him slowly indoors, whispering gently and with great compassion, "Jerusalem, which slayeth its prophets, shall burn the new Hellenizers in hellfire."
In due course, the elderly Professor Julius Wertheimer, together with his cats, also moved into the little stone house in Tel Arza. An international commission of inquiry arrived in Jerusalem. There were predictions and hopes. One evening Mitya suddenly opened up his room and invited his friends in. The room was spotlessly clean, except for the slight persistent smell. The three scholars would spend hours on end here, drinking tea and contemplating an enormous military map, guessing wildly at the future borders of the emerging Hebrew state, marking with arrows ambitious campaigns of conquest all over the Middle East. Mitya began to address Father by his first name, Hanan. Only the famous geographer Hans Walter Landauer looked down on them with a look of skepticism and mild surprise from his picture.
Then the British left. A picture of the High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, appeared in the newspaper Davar, a slim, erect figure in a full general's uniform, saluting the last British flag to be run down, in the port of Haifa.
A Hebrew government was finally set up in Jerusalem. The road in Tel Arza was paved, and the suburb was joined to the city. The saplings grew. The trees looked very old. The creepers climbed over the roof of the house and all over the fence. Masses of flowers made a blaze of blue. Madame Yabrova was killed by a stray shell fired on Tel Arza from the battery of the Transjordanian Legion near Nabi Samwil. Lyubov Binyamina Even-Hen, disillusioned with the Hebrew state, sailed from Haifa aboard the Moledet to join her sister in New York. There she was run over by a train, or she may have thrown herself underneath it. Professor Buber also died, at a ripe old age. In due course Father and Mitya were appointed to teaching posts at the Hebrew University, each in his own subject. Every morning they packed rolls and hard-boiled eggs and a Thermos of tea and set off together by bus for the Ratisbone and Terra Sancta buildings, where some of the departments of the university were housed temporarily until the road to Mount Scopus could be reopened. The elderly Professor Julius Wertheimer, however, finally retired and devoted himself single-mindedly to keeping house for them. The whole house gleamed. He even discovered the secret of perfect ironing. Once a month Hanan and Mitya went to see the child at school in the kibbutz. He had grown lean and bronzed. They took him chocolate and chewing gum from Jerusalem. On the hills all around Jerusalem, the enemy set up concrete pillboxes, bunkers, gun sites.
And waited.
1974
Mr. Levi
1
Once upon a time, many years ago, there lived in Jerusalem an old poet by the name of Nehamkin. He had come from Vilna and settled in a low stone house with a tiled roof in a narrow alley off Zephaniah Street. Here he wrote his poems, and here every summer he sat in a deck chair in the garden counting the hours and the days.
This quarter of the city had been built in a large orchard on a hillside, with a view of the mountains that surround Jerusalem. Every passing breeze caused a shiver. Fig trees and mulberry trees, pomegranates and grapevines, were forever rustling and whispering as though asking us to be quiet. The poet Nehamkin was already slightly deaf, but he tried to capture the rustling of the trees in his poems, interpreting it in his own way. The whisper of the leaves in the breeze, the scent of the blossoms, the smell of dry thistles in the
late summer, all seemed to him to be hinting at an important event that was imminent. His poems were always full of surmises.
One by one, simple stone-built houses sprang up among the trees of the orchard. They had balconies with rusty iron railings, low fences, and gates adorned with a Star of David or the word ZION.
Little by little the settlers neglected the trees. Shady pines gradually overwhelmed the vines and pomegranates. Occasional bursts of pomegranate blossom were snuffed out by the children before they ever bore fruit. Among the untended trees and the outcrops of rock, there were attempts at planting oleanders, violets, and geraniums. But the flower beds were quickly forgotten, trampled underfoot, filled with thorns and broken glass, and these plants, too, if they did not wither and die, grew wild. In the backyards of the houses, ramshackle sheds proliferated, built out of the packing cases in which the settlers had transported their belongings from Russia and Poland. Some of them nailed empty olive cans to wooden poles, called them dovecotes, and waited for the doves to come. In the meantime, the only birds to nest in the area were crows and swallows. Somewhere there lurked a persistent cuckoo.
The residents longed to leave Jerusalem and settle somewhere less extreme. Some of them fixed their sights on other suburbs, such as Beit ha-Kerem, Talpiyot, or Rehavia. They believed almost without exception that the hard times would soon be over, the Hebrew state would be set up, and everything would change for the better. Surely they had completed in full their term of suffering. Meanwhile, the first children were born and grew up in the neighborhood, and it was almost impossible to explain to them why and from where their parents had come here, and what it was they were waiting for.
