by Amos Oz
What is the business at hand, Mina, my dear?
Perhaps you know?
Pitch-black outside. Crickets. Stars. Wind. I shall stop now.
Early hours of Wednesday morning
September 10
Dear Mina,
I shall not use the word "blame." You are not to blame for what you do to me in my dreams. But perhaps you are responsible, up to a point.
With a hint of a gray mustache, a smell of cigarette smoke emanating even from your hair, wearing army trousers and a large man's shirt with several pockets, you stand beside my bed. Antoine is feeling my Adam's apple; he is clasping my chin in both hands, to keep me from wriggling during the operation. His polite face is so close to mine that I can see a yellow boil with a pink rim on his nose. A slight asymmetry between the two wings of his mustache. He is chubby and well mannered, and he smells of eau de cologne as he smiles at me. "There, there," he says in English; "let's both try together," he says. Two strong young men are holding my legs above the knees, but apparently their minds are not on the operation, because they are whispering to each other and chuckling. You are holding out a scalpel, or perhaps it is not a scalpel but a kitchen knife, a bread knife. Samovar thanks you in his usual way, with a slight bow, and takes it from you. "Slowly," you tell him. "With him there's no need for you to hurry." "There." "Now there." "And here." He does exactly what you say. He is wearing rubber gloves. He is a bright crimson. And he cuts amazingly gently. I must try to say something, at once, before my head is severed from my neck. Perhaps I shall remind Antoine how he came to see me late one night last winter, and begged me to cure him of a dose of gonorrhea that he had apparently contracted on his last trip to Beirut. And how I put him up here in my apartment for four days and gave him injections. But I promised Antoine to carry his secret with me to the grave. 1 shall remain silent. How strange is the deepening cut in my throat: no blood, no pain. On the contrary, Relief. "That is all, Dr. Oswald," says Ben-Gurion, as if he cannot believe his eyes. "It is a very simple operation, after all." And I indicate with a movement of the lips that the meeting is now over.
I am awakened by heavy rain. The light refuses to come on: it would seem that there is a power failure in Jerusalem. I strike a match. Look at my watch. One o'clock. I must get up. Wind and rain at the window. This time it is the autumn rain at last. The insects that have been dancing around the balcony light in the evenings have been swept away. The pine trees and the stone are what has endured, washed clean of dust, purified by wind and water.
I must get dressed. I must go at once. Go where, Mina. The dead praise not the Lord. In New York, you have said, a neo-Viennese school is reassembling. You must be there to report on the collective recovery that is taking place in the hills of Galilee and the Jezreel Valley. On the beginning of the eclipse of centuries-old ethnic neuroses. There is a way, ladies and gentlemen, you will proclaim to those scholarly refugees, there is a way, and it lies open.
Will you tell them about me, too? Will you be able to use me at least as an example, a curiosity, a detail that sheds a certain light or casts a shadow on the new pioneering reality among those ancient hills?
I must go. Tonight. At once. Perhaps to Katamon, to knock on Antoine's door and implore him by everything that's holy. To plead with him. To plead for the lives of our children, his and mine. Or perhaps not to Katamon but to Haifa and the kibbutzim in the valley. Is it already too late? Are the wind and rain meant for me this time? The Schneller bell rings once, twice, and is silent. I am sitting writing to you by the light of a kerosense lamp, in my gray flannel dressing gown. I ought to get dressed and go. There is a way and it lies open. Happy is he who waits, says Mr. Nehamkin; he will surely reach his goal. He who waits will never reach his goal, my dear fellow: only those who travel ever reach their goal. What is that goal. There is a way and I must get up and go. Which is the way, Mina, that is what I do not know, but we have a son and he will be able to travel it. The man who is writing to you is tired and ill. He must give himself an injection, take his pills, and go quietly back to bed. Enough. The inscription on the parish church was in four languages in the Vienna of my childhood; in four languages it promised every man and woman that there is a way back. It is a lie, I tell you, a bald-faced lie.
I must go. Not tonight, tomorrow morning. I must go to Mount Scopus and tell Dushkin, as I promised I would, that my condition has taken a turn for the worse. It is not for me to work a minor miracle in Jerusalem, to win over Dr. Mahdi or to make a discovery that may turn the military situation on its head. "Dew underfoot and the stars up above,/ The Valley of Je2reel sparkles with love." So runs the song they are playing this early morning on the Hagganah short-wave broadcast. But here on Malachi Street, the trees are showing pale in the half-light of a murky dawn, and the rain has not stopped. As I wrote earlier, there is not much time left. You found me, used me, and set me aside. One of these days, you will come back to Jerusalem, a famous woman, a professor, the pioneer of a new discipline. You will bring fresh methods to the young Hebrew state. My death may even contribute to your fame. In the course of time they may mistakenly number me among the victims, and behind your back they will say that Professor Oswald lost her young fiancé in the war, an original scholar from Vienna. Jerusalem will overflow its boundaries and become a big city. Old men and old women shall dwell in her streets and rejoice therein, and no foe shall menace her gates. Just as my neighbor the poet promises us. There will be wide boulevards. There will be streetcars to link the various neighborhoods. Castles and towers will spring up. Perhaps they will make a river here and span it with bridges. It will be a beautiful, tranquil city. I shall close now, yours affectionately, and go back to bed. I have finished with recording time and place. This witness may stand down. He hopes that in due course, time, place, and witness will all be granted a kind of pardon. In Uri's longing, perhaps. Good night. Everything will be all right.
1975
About the Author
Born in Jerusalem in 1939, AMOS OZ is the author of numerous works of fiction and essays. His international awards include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, and the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and his books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Israel.
