by Amos Oz
He would respond with one of his cold, practical smiles. And say nothing.
Worse still, he would suddenly abandon me and tease me mercilessly.
"Now, Uri, you just go on playing with your toys. I've got real work to do. Every detail has to be taken care of well in advance."
All night long, Ephraim would experiment with cosmic radio waves and frequencies, in an attempt to isolate the death ray. If I begged him to give me at least a hint of what the death ray was, he would burst out, with a desperate grin:
"Sting ray. Disarray. Hip-hip-hooray. Why don't you learn to keep your mouth shut and wait for orders like a proper soldier, or else go and play with marbles and tops and paper darts with the other kids. Go on. Scram. Why are you always following me around? What do you think I am, your nursemaid? Go on, now, piss off."
I withdrew from the workshop with my tail between my legs, like a field marshal stripped of his decorations and insignia and ignominiously discharged. I sat down on the cracked stone steps. I tickled myself behind the knees with pine needles. I tried in vain to hypnotize a stupid cat on the garden fence. And repented.
Ephraim and his father the poet ran their small workshop jointly. Mr. Nehamkin received the radios and electrical implements for repair and kept a record of them, collected overdue payments, exchanged views and surmises about the political situation with the customers, adducing evidence from Holy Writ, and entered details of income and expenditure in his copperplate hand in a large ledger. He was empowered to authorize a discount or even credit in certain cases.
Ephraim sometimes allowed his father and me to wind galvanized copper wire onto wooden spools. Once he took advantage of his father's hardness of hearing to promise me in an undertone:
"When he's dead, I'll take you on instead. You can be the poet and cashier then."
At once he changed his mind.
"No, we'll die first, and he'll pronounce flowery orations over our graves. They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. Surely each night they shall arise and continue to fight the great fight for their people. Someining like that. The war is going to be a tough and bloody one. Only the generations to come will enjoy rest."
When he was not away on his wanderings, Ephraim used to sit all morning daydreaming among the broken irons and phonographs and antiquated radios. Sometimes he would explode with rage and attack these useless gadgets with screwdriver and pliers. He dismantled them completely, combined parts from different sources, and succeeded in transforming a heap of worthless junk into a gleaming piece of modern equipment. His favorite word was "rejuvenation." His work, as he described it, was to rejuvenate antediluvian equipment whose owners had given it up as beyond repair. But when his fit of rage had passed, he lapsed once more into drowsiness. The gray summer dust settled everywhere. Flies buzzed busily, while a spider lay in wait for them in its thicket in the corner. Ephraim would yawn like a whining fox, stretch himself furiously, spit twice on the floor, and repair Mrs. Vishniak's iron almost as an afterthought. Then he would plunge back into his usual morning reverie.
At lunchtime, he would fry potatoes for us all and share some sausages with his father. Then he would strip off his overalls and collapse onto the sweaty mattress in his underwear, as if exhausted by a hard morning's work. He slept restlessly till the onset of twilight, while we guarded him from the girls.
But in the evenings, I saw Ephraim come to hidden life, and then I was truly his lieutenant. He shinned up the drainpipe like a shadowy cat, rigged up various antennas on the roof, and began experimenting with frequencies. My task was to sit in the dark workshop among the glowing receivers and write down what I heard. Until I was called home to bed, and he continued on his own to search relentlessly for the single elusive signal that he was trying to isolate from the stream of astral rays.
Once he condescended to favor me with a simplified explanation. Gravity is a form of radiation. Here, look: in my left hand a hammer, in my right a cigarette; they both hit the ground at exactly the same time, but not with the same impact. Nature always contrives to produce opposing pairs: life and death, fire and water, hope and despair. So there must be some contrary ray somewhere that counteracts the ray of gravity and once we've found it everything will be possible and now just you scram and forget everything you've heard.
I could not understand the scientific meaning of all this. But as a military man myself, I fully realized what fate lay in store for the British Empire once we had mastered this secret ray.
Once in a while, one of the girls would slip through our defenses and manage to reach Ephraim and spend the night with him. But even on these nights, Ephraim did not switch off the receivers that brought him the astral signals. Lovemaking must have taken place inside his room to the accompaniment of piercing bleeps and whistles from outer space. Or perhaps not love, but some other kind of union that was not ugly, not sweaty, something I would have given my life to share and once I even crept up behind the shuttered window in the dark and hid like an owl in the sticky pepper tree and strained with all my might to hear and I shivered at the sounds I heard in the darkness because I did not know if they were sobs or muffled laughs or radio signals from the stars, and suddenly I panicked and the pepper tree smeared me with a bitter stickiness and I thought that everything was about to shatter to smithereens and that Ephraim and the girl would die and Mr. Nehamkin and Mommy and Daddy would die and I would be left all alone in the ashes of Jerusalem and the smell of the pepper tree would give me away and bloodthirsty gangs would swoop down on Jerusalem out of the mountains and I would be all alone. So I slipped down from the tree and crept around the house in the dark. I was startled by a startled cat. I stood at the window of the old poet's room, pressed my face against the wire mesh, and shouted in a whisper:
"Mr. Nehamkin! Please! Mr. Nehamkin!"
But he did not hear me. He could not possibly hear me. He was sitting, as usual, building a model of the Temple out of used matchsticks, following the descriptions in Scripture and in other sources. It was a project that had been going on for years, and its completion was receding further and further into the distance, because, as he explained to me, the evidence of the various sources was inconsistent, and he was constantly obliged to dismantle and rebuild it, now according to one plan and now according to another.
With his large, pale fingers, he dipped matchstick after matchstick into a bowl of flour-and-water paste. He had a piece of twine gripped between his teeth, and all the time he hummed to himself:
Our Father, our King,
Have mercy upon us and answer us
Although we deserve it not.
Afterward, lying in bed, scratched and smelling of pepper, I could hear the fervent worshipers in the Faithful Remnant Synagogue, gathered for the Midnight Vigil. The summer would soon be over, and the Days of Awe would be upon us.
And outside, in the warm darkness, something was enraging or terrifying the dogs of the neighborhood and making them hesitate between barking and howling.
4
Ephraim was a sharp-witted but impatient chess player. Father sometimes managed to beat him because he refused to take risks and always conducted a cautious defensive campaign.
"Slow but sure," Ephraim would say condescendingly when Father occasionally succeeded in capturing a defenseless pawn on the outskirts of the field of combat.
Father was not offended. He merely urged:
"Concentrate, Ephraim. Don't give up yet. I shouldn't mind changing places with you, even with your present setup."
Ephraim dismissed this offer with a single contemptuous word: "Today!" He suggested they quit chattering and get on with the real business:
"You're just trying to confuse me with your speechifying, Kolodny. But any moment now, you'll find yourself in a spot, and then you won't feel much like making speeches."
"We'll soon see," Father replied mildly. "Meanwhile I'm besieging your castle, and I've made a good meal of your pawn."
"Make
the most of it," Ephraim said angrily. "Nibble the bait to your heart's content; I'm ready with my rod and line."
"We'll see," Father repeated affectionately.
They sat facing each other across the heavy brown living-room table: Ephraim short and dark, his head held forward as if ready to charge, his shirt deliberately unbuttoned to show off his curly-haired chest; Father in a vest and a pair of khaki shorts that were a bit too large for him, his cheeks pink and close-shaven, the corners of his eyes wrinkled in a smile that I secretly called his "schoolmasterly smile."
The chessboard lay on the table between them, surrounded by nuts, biscuits, apples, and pale-blue paper napkins printed with pictures of white-sailed fishing boats. There was also a china ashtray in the form of a woman's cupped hand. Among the various delicacies stood a yogurt pot containing some wilting white roses. From time to time, a yellowing petal landed gently on the oilcloth that covered the table, and found a rejuvenating echo in the vividly colored roses that were printed all over it. Father would instantly seize the dead petal, fix it with a concentrated stare, and fold it skillfully into ever-smaller squares.
Ephraim would pick up a knight or a bishop, tap it impatiently on the boards as if calling Father to order, and say:
"Why ponder, Kolodny? You've got no choice."
Father:
"Yes. You're right, I'm just trying to decide which is the lesser of two evils."
Mother, from her perch on the piano stool, said:
"Calm down, you two. It's not worth getting worked up over a game."
This remark seemed to me to be uncalled for: it was not Father and Ephraim who were getting worked up.
The living room was simply and cheerfully furnished. The curtains were bright and airy, the ceiling was painted pale-blue, and the walls were patterned with tiny flowers, as if the decorator had fancied himself a gardener, rather than a painter. Behind the sliding glass doors of the sideboard, the dinner service was neatly displayed in serried ranks, like troops ready to be reviewed by a high-ranking officer. There was a chandelier with four intertwining branches, each surmounted by a bud-shaped light bulb.
On the other side of the room hung a bookshelf containing a Bible with a modern commentary, the Gazetteer of Palestine, a history of the Jews and a concise world history, the complete poems of Bialik, selected poems of Chernikhovsky, and Gur's Hebrew Dictionary. A volume entitled Gems of Literature lay on its side on top of the other books, because there was no room for it on the shelf. Above the sideboard hung a picture of a pioneer pushing a plow through a field in the Jezreel Valley, oblivious of the black crows hovering over Mount Gilboa in the top corner of the picture. On top of Mother's piano stood a plaster bust of Chopin, which I secretly called Mr. Szczupak because it reminded me a little of the proprietor of Riviera Fashions on King George Street. The bust bore a legend in Polish that Mother translated for me as "With all the warmth of my heart and until my dying breath." Next to my window sill, the Jewish National Fund collection box hung from a thick nail. It was adorned with a map of the country, with the areas we had already won back filled in in brown. I could not restrain myself: I took my box of paints and drew one arrow from Jerusalem northward through Gilead and the Golan toward Mount Lebanon, and another southeastward to the borders of Moab on the shores of the Dead Sea. As a result of this pincer movement, it became possible to paint the whole map brown, and so to gain possession of the whole country. At first Father was angry, and insisted that I carefully wash and dry the box and remove every trace of this piece of cleverness. Then he changed his mind, his face broadened into one of his schoolmasterly smiles, and he said:
"All right. Leave it as it is. You were carried away by a flight of fancy. So be it."
Mother said:
"Every Friday we put two mils in the box, and yet it never fills up. Perhaps even money evaporates in this heat. Instead of talking, Kolodny, maybe you wouldn't mind going out and buying a quarter-block of ice for the icebox. Or else send your son. I don't mind which of you goes, only get cracking, before all the vegetables perish."
If Ephraim won the game of chess, Father would take it in good part and remark cheerfully:
"After all, it's only a game."
But if Ephraim's concentration was distracted by Mother's presence or by some ideological brainstorm, so that he made one crass mistake after another and lost the game, Father's face would be covered with shame and confusion: "Look, Ephraim," he would whisper anxiously, "look what a spot you've got yourself into. What shall we do now?"
Ephraim would respond with a short burst of silent fury. He would pick up a nut and crush it between his teeth, glance at Mother's shoulders or beyond, at the hillside, which was visible through the window, and hiss through pursed lips:
"So, Kolodny, so you've won. So what? Now let's play seriously, for once."
As if the game that had just finished had merely been for practice. As if his losing had merely been a small gesture to my ungrateful father, and now the time had come for the real game in which no quarter would be given.
Mother would generally prevent the outbreak of this real game by interrupting her playing, coming over to the table, laying one hand on Father's shoulder and the other on the back of Ephraim's chair, and saying:
"That's enough. Stop it, the pair of you. Now let's all have a nice glass of tea."
At once Father and his guest would exclaim in unison:
"No, really! There's no need. Honestly! Don't take the trouble!"
Mother would ignore their protests and turn to me.
"Will you give me a hand, Uri?"
I would immediately abandon the corks and silver foil, impose a cease-fire on all fronts, and follow Mother to the kitchen. I loved to arrange everything carefully on the black glass-topped trolley and wheel it into the living room: five tall glasses with glass saucers; five dessert plates; five pastry forks with one broad prong and two narrow ones; five long teaspoons; sugar; milk, lemon; reinforcements of nuts and biscuits. Soon the kettle would come to a boil, and Mother would pour the tea. Meanwhile my job was to go down the steps and across the lane and wake the old poet from his midsummer afternoon's dream. Approaching his deck chair in the corner of the untended garden among the parched oleanders and the beds of thistles, I would address him politely:
"Mr. Nehamkin! Please! Mr. Nehamkin! We're having tea, and they'd like to know if you would care to join us."
At first the old man would not move. He would simply open his blue eyes and stare at me in surprise. Then a tired, hopeless smile would spread on his tortoiselike face, and his hand would point gently toward the pepper tree, where unseen birds were shrilling ecstatically.
"What's the matter, child, what's happened? Is there a fire, heaven forbid?"
At once he would add:
"Young Uriel. Yes? Speak up and let's hear what you have to say for yourself."
"They're drinking tea, Mr. Nehamkin, and chatting, and they'd like you to join them."
"What. Oh. One might have thought there was a fire, heaven forbid. But I see there's nothing burning. I shall certainly come. Indeed I shall. Come, let us go together, as one man: the poet and the youth. We shall go forth and come again with rejoicing, and surely we shall not return empty."
As we proceeded across the lane, through the garden and up the steps, the old man would already have embarked on his gentle homily, his velvet voice kissing the rare, carefully chosen words and caressing the ends of his sentences, as if it were all one to him whether his audience consisted of all the people or of me alone, or if there were no one at all to hear him. He spoke about the shamefulness of ignoring the misery of others, the completion of the full term of suffering, the ironies of fate, and the need to withstand the test. He was still speaking when we arrived, and Ephraim and Father rose to greet him and take the walking stick with its carved tiger's head handle and seat him at the table between Mother and the window. While they were seating him at the table, Mother poured the tea, and still he did
not interrupt his homily; nor did he see fit to recommence it, but he continued to unburden himself of the ideas that, as he put it, had been gathering in his heart during his lengthy meditations:
"... There is no shepherd for the flock and no pillar of fire. Only the pillar of smoke that obscures all eyes. All eyes are darkened. Surely a thousand years are as a day. O, that a heavenly voice might sound, or a consuming fire flash forth. O, that something might happen at long last to put an end to the lamentation of Zion. We can continue no longer. We are almost doomed. No, ladies and gentlemen, no, I shall not drink a second glass of tea. No power in the world will make me drink any more, lest I be in your eyes as a glutton and a drunkard. I am well satisfied with a single glass. On the other hand, how can I refuse you, dear lady? I shall gladly drink a second glass with you, provided it is no trouble. And after that, with your permission, I shall recite one or two humble verses, then take my leave of you and go on my weary way. My thanks and blessings be upon you: very pleasant have you been unto me."
A short silence followed this speech.
Ephraim looked at Mother, and Father looked at Ephraim.
I took advantage of the opportunity to slip away from the table and return to my battlefield, to the cigarette packs and pushpins, some of which represented Panzer divisions and others, bands of Maccabees lying in ambush in the pass of Beth Heron, the few against the many.
Through the window I could see the parade ground inside the Schneller Barracks. Antlike soldiers were sweeping the parade ground, whitewashing the trunks of the pines and eucalyptus trees, marking off areas with rope, piling up roof tiles. In the evening light they seemed pitifully tiny and lost, these soldiers needlessly risking their lives.
The whole city was surrounded by mountains, and as night fell they tightened their grip on us. They could discern no difference between man and man, man and woman, woman and child. Perhaps they had already discovered the death ray and were preparing to surge up and merge with the sunset clouds. Or silently waiting for the stars to come out. A distant melody seemed to charge the sky each evening. Who was singing, and who but me could hear?
