by Amos Oz
At eight o'clock, I decided to go to the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, to invade Professor Dushkin's office for a quarter of an hour and ask him again how my illness was developing and what he made of last week's tests. The piercing desert light had already engulfed Jerusalem. A dry wind was blowing among the hills. And in the dusty bus the students were joking, mimicking the German accents of their lecturers with a Polish twist of humor. Along the way, in the suburb of Sheikh Jarrah, there were wickerwork stools spilling over onto the sidewalk from a coffeehouse, and on one of them I saw a young, educated Arab in a pin-striped suit and horn-rimmed spectacles sitting in motionless contemplation, the tiny coffee cup seemingly frozen in his hand. He did not take the trouble to direct so much as a glance at the Jewish bus. In my mind I could not refrain from comparing his silence with the clamor of the students in the bus and the histrionic laughter of the girls. And I was filled with apprehension.
Professor Dushkin roared my name delightedly and immediately shooed out of his office a clucking, shriveled nurse who had been filling out index cards. He slammed the door after her, thumped me on the shoulder, and proclaimed in a Russian bellow:
"Out with it! Let's talk frankly, as usual."
I asked him four or five short questions concerning the results of last week's tests and received the expected replies.
"But look here, my dear Emanuel," he exclaimed rumbustiously, "you remember what happened in the summer of '44, with Rabbi Zweik, the mystic from Safed. Yes. We came to exactly the same conclusions with him, and yet his tumor dissolved and his condition was, how shall we say, arrested. And he's still alive and kicking. It's a fact."
I smiled. "So what are you suggesting, that I should settle down to study mysticism?"
Professor Dushkin poured out tea. He pressed me to accept a biscuit. Idiocy, he declared, was rampant on all sides. Even among his own faculty. Even in politics. The leaders of the Jewish Agency, he considered, were political infants, loudmouthed amateurs, small-town autodidacts, illiterates, ignoramuses, and these were the people who had to pit their wits now against the sophisticated experts of Whitehall. It was enough to drive you crazy. Another glass of tea? What's the matter with you, of course you will. I've poured it out already, what do you want, have you only come here to irritate me? Drink! In a word, Shertok and Berl Locker. What more need I say: political Svidrigailovs everywhere. In December we'll have you in for some more tests, and if there's been no change for the worse by then, we'll be entitled to take it as an encouraging sign. No, more than a sign, a turning point! That's right. Meanwhile, how shall I put it, keep your spirits up, my friend. One cannot help admiring your composure.
As he spoke, I suddenly noticed a film of tears in his eyes. He was a heavily built, muscular, compact-looking man. He invariably wept at the first onset of emotion; he was always flushing and boiling over. I had secretly nicknamed him "Samovar."
I rose to take my leave.
So, no new tests just yet. And no treatment. Just as I had expected.
"Thanks, Dushkin," I said. "Thank you very much."
"Thanks?" he cried out as if I had wounded him. "What's the matter? What's got into you? Are you crazy? What have you got to thank me for all of a sudden?"
"You've been frank with me. And you've hardly uttered a single superfluous word."
"You're exaggerating, Emanuel," he said with sadness and emotion in his voice. "For once you're exaggerating. But of course," he added in his former tones, "of course when idiocy is on the rampage, any meeting like ours today is almost an occasion. Svidrigailovs, I say: political Svidrigailovs, and medical Svidrigailovs as well. Even here in our department there are all sorts of Shertoks and Berl Lockers living it up. Well. The bus into town leaves in ten minutes. Number nine as usual. No—don't run! There's no hurry, it'll be late. I swear it'll be late. After all, it's Hammekasher, not the Royal Navy. If you notice any change, come and see me at once. At two o'clock in the morning, even. You can be sure of a hot glass of tea. How I love you, Emanuel, how my heart weeps for you. Na! Enough. Since we were talking about that grubby saint Rabbi Zweik, who broke all the rules in our book and literally rose from the dead, let me repeat a little saying of his. He used to tell us that the Almighty sometimes plays a trick on His worshipers and shows them that if He wills He can save a life even by means of doctors and medicine. Now, fare you well, my friend. Be brave."
His eyes glistened again. He opened the door for me furiously and suddenly roared out in a terrible voice:
"Svidrigailov! Shmendrik! Come here at once! Run and clear the X-ray room for me immediately! Use force if necessary! Throw a bomb in, I don't care! But on the way show Dr. Nussbaum here to the elevator. No, to the bus stop. You're turning this Jerusalem of ours into a veritable Bedlam! As you see, gentlemen, at times I can be a terrible man. A cannibal. A tartar. That's what I am. Na! Be seeing you, Emanuel. And don't worry about me. You know me. I'll get over it. And also ... Forget it. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye."
Despite all this, I missed the bus. But I bore no grudge against Samovar. I waited on the bench at the bus stop for close to an hour. The city and the mountains seemed amazingly quiet. Minarets and domes in the Old City, buildings overflowing down the slopes of gray hills in the new town, here and there tiled roofs, empty plots, olive trees, and apparently not a soul in Jerusalem. Only the dry wind in the woods behind me, and birds chattering calmly from the British military cemetery.
But on the other side lay the desert. It was literally at my feet.
A neglected, rock-strewn terrain dotted with pieces of newspaper, thistles, and rusting iron, a wasteland of limestone or chalk. In other words, from the scenic point of view Mount Scopus is the threshold of the desert. I have a horror of this propinquity between myself and the desert. Over there are forsaken valleys, rocks baking in the sun, shrubs sculpted by the wind, and there are scorpions in the crevices of the rocks, strange stone huts, minarets on bald hilltops, the last villages. On the opposite slopes and in the Jordan valley are traces of ruined biblical towns, Sumieh, which my English pilgrim identifies with Beth-jesimoth, Abel-shittim, Beth-haran, Nimrin, which may be the ancient Beth-nimrah. And scattered among these ruins are camps of Bedouin tribes, goatskin tents, and dark shepherds armed with daggers. Justice through bloodshed. The simple law of the desert: love, honor, and death. And there is a venomous biblical snake called the asp. How I shudder, Mina, at this closeness to the desert.
Yes. Forgive me. You have already heard the gist of all this from me, in Haifa, at the Lev Ha-Carmel Café, over strawberry ice-cream sundaes. You remember. And you dismissed it all as "Viennese angst." I won't deny it: it is indeed angst. And perhaps even Viennese angst.
Did I ever tell you this as well?
From my window as a child, I could see the canal. There were barges. Sometimes at night a noisy holiday cruiser went past, a riot of multicolored lights. The water was spanned by two bridges, one arched and the other modern. Perhaps in your student days you chanced to pass by these places. Perhaps we passed each other in the street unawares. Night after night I could see the consumptive sidewalk artist smoking and choking, smoking as though he reveled in the agony of coughing, vomiting in the gutter, and smoking again. I have not forgotten. The row of street lamps along the quay. The shivering reflections in the water. The smell of that gray water. The streetwalker on the corner of the old bridge. The boardinghouse whose ground floor was a tavern called the Weary Heart, where I could always see art students, all sorts of women; one of them stood there once and cried without a sound and stamped her foot. On warm evenings, gentlemen wandered around as if searching for inspiration, their faces either lost in thought or bereft of hope. The souvenir vendor wandered from shop to shop. "Like trying to sell ice to Eskimos," my father would jest. Every hour we could hear the bell of the local church, over whose door was inscribed the legend THERE IS A WAY BACK in four languages, Latin, German, Greek, and Hebrew (only the Hebrew was written in curious characters, and there w
as a slight spelling mistake). Next to the church was the antique shop run by two Jewish partners, the fakers Gips and Gutzi, whom I told you about when we went to Degania together on the valley train. Do you remember, Mina? You laughed. You accused me of "poetic license." And you forgave me.
But you were wrong. Gips existed, and so did Gutzi. I am putting this down in writing now because I have come to the point where I feel obliged to insist, even if it means contradicting you: the truth comes first. As I wrote the word "truth," I paused for a moment. Yes, a slight hesitation. For what is the truth, Mina? Perhaps this: I did not give up Vienna for Jerusalem; I was driven out, more or less, and even though at the time I thought of this expulsion almost as the destruction of the rest of my life, in fact it gained me eight or nine years of life, and it has enabled me to see Jerusalem and to meet you. All the way from there to Malachi Street. To Mount Scopus. Almost to the edge of the desert. If I were not afraid of making you lose your temper I would use the word "absurd." You and Jerusalem. Jerusalem and I. We and the heirs of prophets, kings, and heroes. We turn over a new leaf only to smudge it with ancient neuroses. My child, my neighbors' child, Uri, sometimes shows me his private poems. He trusts me, because I do not laugh at him, and because he thinks of me as a secret inventor who is lying low because of a conspiracy while perfecting wonderful secret weapons for the Hebrew state. He writes poems about the ten lost tribes, Hebrew cavalrymen, great conquests, and acts of vengeance. Doubtless some little teacher, some messianic madman, has captured the child's imagination with the usual Jerusalemite blend of apocalyptic visions and romantic fantasies of Polish or Cossack cavalrymen. Sometimes I try my hand at writing my own educational stories, about Albert Schweitzer in Africa, the life of Louis Pasteur, Edison, that wonderful man Janusz Korczak. All in vain.
In the laundry on the roof of his house, Uri has a rocket made from bits of an old icebox and parts from an abandoned bicycle. The rocket is aimed at the Houses of Parliament in London. And I alone am responsible for the delay, because it is up to me, Dr. Einstein, Dr. Faust, Dr. Gog-and-Magog, to develop in my laboratory the formula for the secret fuel and the Hebrew atomic bomb.
He spends hours on end immersed in my huge German atlas. He is quiet, polite, clean, and tidy. He listens respectfully to what I say but rebukes me for my slowness. He pins little flags in the atlas to trace the course of the advance (with my permission, naturally). He plans a mock landing of Hebrew paratroops on the Suez Canal and along the Red Sea coast. He captures the British fleet off Crete and Malta. Occasionally I am invited to join in this game that is more than a game, in the role of Perfidious Albion, hatching dark plots, conducting desperate rear-guard actions on land and sea, in the Dardanelles, Gibraltar, the Red Sea approaches. Eventually I am forced to capitulate graciously, to cede the whole of the East to the forces of the Hebrew Kingdom, to enter into negotiations, to pencil in lightly the limits of spheres of influence, and to admit sportingly that I have lost the diplomatic war of minds just as I have already been conclusively routed on the battlefield. Only then will the ground be prepared for a military alliance, and the two of us together, Kingdom of Israel and British Empire, will be able to operate against the desert tribesmen. We would advance eastward in a carefully coordinated pincer movement until we encountered a forward patrol of the forces of the ten lost tribes, right at the edge of the map. I have permitted Uri to sketch in in blue pencil a large but Godforsaken Israelite kingdom in Central Asia, somewhere among the Himalayan Mountains.
The game is not entirely to my taste, but I join in nonetheless, and at times I even experience a certain secret thrill: A child. A strange child. My child.
"Dr. Nussbaum," Uri says, "please, if you don't feel well again, I can give you your supper. And I can go to the greengrocer's for you and to Ziegel's and buy whatever you need. Just tell me what."
"Thank you, Uri. There's no need. On the contrary; there's some chocolate in the kitchen cupboard—help yourself, and you may find some almonds, too. And then you must go home, so they don't worry about you."
"They won't worry. I can even stay overnight and keep an eye on the laboratory so you can get some sleep. Mommy and Daddy have gone away to a sanatorium. There's no one at home except Auntie Natalia, and she won't make any trouble for us—she's too busy with her own business. I can even stay out of doors all night if I want to. Or just stay quietly here with you."
"What about your homework?"
"It's done. Dr. Emanuel—"
"Yes, Uri."
"Nothing. Only you..."
"What did you want to ask me, Uri? Don't be shy. Ask."
"Nothing. Are you always ... alone?"
"Recently, yes."
"Haven't you got any brothers or sisters? Haven't you thought about ... getting married?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"No reason. Only I haven't, either."
"Haven't what?"
"Nothing. I haven't got any brothers or sisters. And I ... I don't need anybody."
"It's not the same, Uri."
"Yes, it is. And you don't call me a crazy child. Am I a crazy child?"
"No, Uri, you're not."
"Just the opposite. I'm your assistant. And that's a secret between you and me."
"Naturally," I say without a smile. "Now you must go. Tomorrow, if you like, we'll spend some time in the lab. I'll show you how to reduce certain substances to their elements. It will be a chemistry lesson, and you tell them that at home, please, if they ask you about your visits to me."
"Sure. You can count on me not to talk. I'll say it was chemistry lessons like you said. Don't worry, Dr. Emanuel. Bye."
"Wait a minute, Uri." I hesitate. "Just a minute."
"Yes?"
"Here, your sweater. Good night."
He leaves the house. Slips away down the back stairs. From my balcony I can watch his furtive passage among the shrubs. Suddenly I feel a surge of regret. What have I done. Have I gone mad. I mustn't. Then again: he's the neighbors' child, not mine. And naturally my illness is not catching. But all this will end badly. I'm sorry, Mina. You will certainly view this strange relationship in a totally negative light. And you will be right, as usual. I'm very sorry.
September 5
Evening again
Dear Mina,
I should have told Professor Dushkin there and then on Mount Scopus that I could on no account accept his harsh words about Moshe Shcrtok and Berl Locker. After all, these poor delegates of a tiny, isolated community are almost empty-handed. And I should have told the engineer from the Jewish Agency that it would be better for them to give up their useless fantasies about mysterious weapons and start making clear-sighted preparations for the departure of the British army and the impending war. And I should have tried to put up a fight—forgive me for using such a hyperbolic expression—to put up a fight for the soul of my child, my neighbors' child, to put a firm stop to his games of conquest, to get him out of my laboratory, to produce sensible arguments to counteract the romantic dreams with which his Cossack Bible teacher has apparently filled the boy's head.
But I cannot deny that these romantic dreams sometimes take hold of me, too, at night, in between the attacks of pain. Last night I helped Dr. Weizmann, disguised as a Catholic priest, to make his way secretly in the dark to one of the bridges over the Danube and empty phials of plague bacillus into the water. After all, we are already infected, Dr. Weizmann said; there's no hope for either of us, he said; if only we live long enough to see that our death does not go unavenged. I tried to remonstrate, I reminded him that we had both always despised such language, but he turned a tortured, eyeless face toward me and called me "Svidriga'ilov."
Early in the morning, I went out onto the balcony again. I found the light on in my neighbors' window across the yard. Zevulun Grill, who is a driver in the Hammekasher bus cooperative and a member of our local civil-defense committee, was standing in his kitchen slicing a sausage. He was probably making his sandwiches. I, too, put the kettl
e on for my shaving water and my morning coffee, and a strange, irrelevant phrase kept grating in my mind like a trashy popular tune that refuses to go away: a thorn in the flesh. I am a thorn in her flesh. We are a thorn in their flesh.
