by Amos Oz
Dear Mina, I must record that yet another bad sign has joined all the others: for the first time I fell asleep fully dressed on the sofa. I woke up rumpled and disheveled at two o'clock and dragged myself to bed. So I shall have to hurry up.
"I went to the Tel Arza woods by myself after school," Uri said. "I've brought you a canful of that honey stuff that drips from pine trees when you break off a branch; hello, Dr. Nussbaum, I forgot to say it when I came in, and nobody followed me here because I was careful and made several detours on the way. This stuff smells a bit like turpentine, only different. My suggestion, which I thought of on the way back, is that we could try mixing it with a bit of gasoline and some acetone, then lighting it and seeing what the blast's like."
"Today, Uri, I suggest that we do something completely different. For a change. Let's close the windows, make ourselves comfortable, and listen to some classical music on the phonograph. Afterward, if you want to ask any questions, I may be able to explain some of the musical terms."
"Music," Uri said. "We get enough of that at home all day from my mother and her piano. Today you're not feeling well again, Dr. Emanuel, I can see, so maybe it's better if I come back tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning to work by myself all alone on the experiments that are written in your notebook on the desk in the lab, with the sodium nitrate like you said, or the other thing, what's its name, nitric acid and nitrobenzine, does it say? Sorry to hurry you, only you're always saying that we must hurry up."
"I said that, Uri, I don't deny that I said it. But that was just in the game."
"You only call it a game because of the secrecy. Don't try to say you didn't really mean it 'cause I could see that you did. But never mind. I'll come back some other time."
"But Uri..."
"If it's one of your attacks, God forbid, then I'll run and call Dr. Kipnis, and if not, I'm ready to wash all the test tubes from the experiments in ten minutes and especially to fill the spirit lamp. Or if you like I'll go home now, and I'll report for duty the minute I see a slanting chink in your bath room blinds like we arranged. Meanwhile, bye-bye, Dr. Emanuel, and be well, 'cause what'll I do if anything happens to you suddenly."
Do I have the strength, do I have the right, to try to influence his mind?
The education of children is totally outside my province.
Outside, in the yard, the Grill children ambush him and make fun of him. I can't hear the words, and even if I could I don't suppose I could understand them. I can hear their evil laughter. And Uri's heroic silence.
What can I do.
I sit at the table on the balcony, writing you an account that is incapable of yielding results or conclusions. Forgive me.
Meanwhile, it is almost dark outside. I have stretched the desk lamp out here again from my study so that I can write to you under this evening sky. Soon the first stars will appear. It is almost as if I could still expect some illumination. As if here in Jerusalem even a man like me could momentarily be chosen for the role of messenger.
Moths around the lamp. I have stopped writing for a moment to make myself some coffee by the most primitive method: boiling water poured on the black powder. No milk, no sugar. I had a biscuit, too. Then I had an attack of weakness and nausea; a sour taste rose in my throat. I took a pill and gave myself an injection. Forgive me, Mina, these physical complaints bore me and have nothing to do with the matter at hand.
But what does have to do with the matter at hand? What is the matter at hand?
That is the question.
Maybe this: that my neighbors' children have reduced Uri to despair outside, and he has climbed up the mulberry tree like a hounded cat. I ought to intervene to protect him, or call his parents. His parents are away. His aunt, then, that Natalia who has come from some kibbutz. Not now: late at night, when he is asleep, I should go and talk to her. Explain, warn, apologize.
How absurd. What can I say? And how can I, a total stranger, call on her late at night?
And I know nothing at all about the education of children.
I shall go on watching. Now the boys who chased Uri have begun a sort of commando raid across the broken-down railings. Is it a hunt, from yard to yard, in the cellars, in the peeling entrance halls, and among the dusty shrubs that are dying here in the drought? They have Hebrew names that savor of the desert: Boaz, Joab, Gideon, Ehud, Jephthah. And because the darkness is still not complete, still touched by the last vestiges of light, I can manage from my balcony to make out the rules of the game: it is an air raid. They spread their arms wide, group themselves in spearhead formation, bend the top halves of their bodies forward, and stamp along pretending to be warplanes. Spread-eagle. Uttering sounds of explosions, drone of engines, and tattoo of machine guns. One of them happens to look up at my balcony, catches sight of me calmly writing by the light of the desk lamp, aims an invisible gun at me, and annihilates me with a single salvo. I accept it.
That is, I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender, and even spread a smile on my face, no doubt a Dutch uncle's smile, so as to reward him with a victorious thrill. But the dedicated warrior refuses to accept my surrender. He rejects it outright. He disregards my smile and my raised arms. The logic of war is pursued without favor or exception. I have been annihilated, and now I no longer exist. He goes on his way, surging forward to wipe out the last traces of the Jew-haters.
Friday night, and Jews in cheap suits are carrying prayer books under their arms as they go past my balcony on their way to the Faithful Remnant Synagogue to welcome the Sabbath. Probably they are secretly delighted at the sight of these child airplanes, muttering contentedly to themselves, "little pagans."
All through the summer the children have exposed their skin to the blazing rays of the sun. Needless to say, I have done my duty. I have warned my neighbors, their parents, time and again that excessive exposure is bad for the skin and can even harm their general development. In vain. The settlers here, Orthodox shopkeepers, municipal and Jewish Agency officials, refugees, thinkers and stamp collectors, former pioneers, teachers, and clerks—they all agree in elevating sunbathing almost to the level of a religion. Perhaps they imagine that Jewish children who take on a bronze color cease to be Jewish children and become Hebrews. A new, tough race, no longer timid and persecuted, no longer sparkling with gold and silver teeth, no longer with sweaty palms and eyes blinking through thick lenses. Total liberation from the fear of persecution by means of this colorful camouflage. But I must put in a word of reservation here: I am not at all well read in either zoology or anthropology, and hence the comparison between what is happening here and the mechanism of protective coloration that is found in a certain type of lizard whose name escapes me cannot be regarded as substantiated.
However, I shall record my own private observations.
Jerusalem, Kerem Avraham, mid-1940's: Bunem begat Zischa, and Zischa begat Myetek, and Myetek begat Giora. A new leaf.
Nevertheless, needless to say, I can see no benefit in this effort. At the close of a summer's day, Kerem Avraham exudes a smell of Eastern European immigrants. It is a sour smell. If I try to isolate its ingredients: Their sweat. Their fish. The cheap oil they use for frying. Nervous indigestion. Petty intrigues among neighbors motivated by repressed greed. Hopes and fears. Here and there a partially blocked drain. Their underwear, drying everywhere on clotheslines, especially the women's underwear, has a sanctimonious air. I am tempted to use the word "puritanical." And on every window sill here, cucumbers are pickling in old jam jars, cucumbers floating in liquid with garlic, dill, parsley, bay leaves. Is this also a place that in years to come someone will remember with longing? Can it be that when the time comes, someone will dream nostalgically of the rusting washtubs, the broken-down railings, the rough, cracked concrete, the peeling plaster, the coils of barbed wire, the thistles, the immigrant smells? Indeed, will we survive the war that is coming? What will happen, Mina—perhaps you have some suggestion, some consolation, to offer? No? This morning, on the short
-wave broadcast of the Underground radio, they played a stirring song: "We shall climb together to the mountains,/ Climb toward the light of breaking day:/ We have left our yesterdays behind us,/ But tomorrow is a long, long way away." Here are the mountains, Mina, and here we are among them. Jewish immigrants. Our last reserves of strength. The tomorrow in the song is not for me, I know that. But my love and fears are directed desperately—forgive me—toward the darling child you bore me and hid away in a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley. What lies in store for him? I imagine him lean and bronzed, barefoot, even his dreams filled with taps, screws, and cogwheels.
Or Uri.
Look, just like Dushkin, I have a tear In my eye. Suddenly I, too, am a Samovar. It is not sadness at my death, you know that, it's sadness for the people and their children and for the mountains all around. What will happen? What have we done, and what shall we do now? Yes. Angst. Don't smile like that.
Friday night. In every kitchen now they are cooking chicken necks stuffed with groats, stuffed intestines, stuffed peppers. The poor people have cheap sausage with mustard. For me, of course, only raw vegetables and fresh fruit. Even the quarrels, the insults hurled every now and again from balcony to balcony, are in Yiddish: Bist du a wilde chayye, Mister Menachem, du herst mich, bist du a meshuggener?
That is how it is in Jerusalem.
They say that in Galilee, in the valley, in Sharon, and in the remote parts of the Negev a kind of mutation in taking place: A new race of peasants is emerging. Laconic. Sarcastic. Single-minded. Dedicated.
I don't know.
You're the one who knows.
For two and a half years now, you have been wandering among the kibbutzim, dashing from place to place in their dusty trucks, making notes, interviewing, drawing comparisons, in khaki trousers and a man's shirt with large breast pockets, compiling statistics, sleeping in pioneer huts, sharing their frugal fare. Perhaps you can even speak to them in their own language. Perhaps you even love them.
A tough, spartan woman, uncompromising, strolling around those camps without the least embarrassment, collecting material for an original piece of social-psychological research. Stubbing out your cigarette as if you were pressing a pushpin into the table. Lighting up again at once, not blowing the match out but waving it almost violently to and fro. Entering the details of the dreams of the first native-born generation on little cards. "Patterns of Behavior and Normative Ideas Among the Products of a Collective Education." Mina, I am prepared to give my wholehearted admiration to those children, and to their pioneering parents, the enthusiasm, the silent heroism, the iron will, and the graceful manners.
And to you.
Mina, I take my hat off to you.
That is to say—forget it. A Viennese gesture. There, I've already regretted it.
As for me—what am I?
A weak Jew. Consumed by hesitations. Dedicated but apprehensive. And now, in addition to everything else, seriously ill. My modest contribution: here, in Jerusalem, in a neighborhood of lower-middle-class immigrants from Russia and Poland, I have put up a fight, as long as my strength lasted, without counting the hours, even working at night sometimes, against the dangers of diphtheria and dysentery.
Moreover, there are my chemical interests. Homemade explosives. It is possible that Uri can already see what I refuse to see. Perhaps a formula is really taking shape in my mind for the large-scale production of homemade explosives. Or at least I may be able to suggest a starting point to the Hagganah. In this area, at any rate. In the early hours of this morning, I devoted some thought to the salts we possess in relative abundance, such as potassium chlorate and barium nitrate. Any porous substance, such as chalk or charcoal, can be saturated with liquid oxygen. I must stop recording details like these. My heart is heavy because I do not want to devise formulas for explosives or to contribute to wars, but Uri is right, and so I am obliged to do so. But the sadness, Mina, how great it is. And the humiliation.
I have tried to resist this obligation. I have even taken certain steps. I refer to the poignant conversations I had at the beginning of the summer with an Arab friend, a colleague, a doctor from Katamon, Dr. Mahdi. Need I go into details? The abyss that divides two doctors of moderate views, who both abhor bloodshed. My pleas. His pleas. The historical argument. On the one hand and on the other. The moral argument. On the one hand and on the other. The practical argument. On the one hand and on the other. His certainty. My hesitations. I must try again. I must appeal to him at this late hour and ask him to arrange for me to meet the members of the Jerusalem Arab Committee and make them think again. I still have an argument or two left.
Only the heart says: It's all in vain. You must hurry up. Uri is right, and so is the Underground broadcast on the short waves: "To die—or to conquer the mountain."
I will not deny it, Mina: as usual I am very frightened.
And I am also ashamed of my fear. Let us not be halted by the corpses of the weak, as Bialik says, they died in servitude, may their dream be sweet to them, onions and garlic in plenty, bountiful fleshpots. I am quoting from memory. My copy of Bialik's poems is in the bookcase some five or six paces away, but I don't have the strength to get up. And anyway, I strenuously reject the line about the dream of onions and garlic. Insofar as it concerns me, you know full well what is in my dreams. Wild, even rough women—yes. Murderers and shepherdesses from the Bedouin—also. And my father's face with his lawyer, and sometimes longing for river and forest. But no onions and no garlic. There our national poet was mistaken, or perhaps he merely exaggerated so as to rouse the people's spirit. Forgive me. Once more I have trespassed on a domain in which I am no expert.
And you are in my dreams, too. You in New York, in a youthful dress, in some paved square that reminds me of Moshavot Square in Tel Aviv. There is a jetty there, and you are at the wheel of a dusty jeep, smoking, supervising Arab porters who are carrying cases of arms for the beleaguered Hebrew community. You are on duty. You are on a secret mission. You are throbbing with efficiency or moral indignation. "Shame on you," you reproach me. "How could you, and at a time like this? Disgusting." I admit it, fall silent, recoil, and retreat to the far end of the jetty. Reflected like a corpse in the water, I hear distant shots and suddenly agree with you in my heart. Yes, you are right. How could 1.1 must go at once, just as I am, without a suitcase, without an overcoat, this very minute.
The shame is more than I can bear. I wake up in pain and take three pills. I lie down again, wide awake and alarmed, and hear outside, just beyond the shutters, on a branch, at a distance of perhaps two feet from me, a night bird. It is uttering a bitter, piercing shriek, in a kind of frenzy of wounded self-righteousness, repeating its protest over and over again: Ahoo. Ahoohoo. Ahoo. Ahoooo.
Jerusalem
Saturday evening
September 6, 1947
Dear Mina,
It will not be easy for me to wean myself from this child.
He spent the whole morning here, painstakingly copying facts out of the gazetteer and sketching a military plan for the capture of the mountain ranges that command Jerusalem from the north. Then he marked on his map the crossroads and the strategic points. On a separate sheet of paper, he allocated storm troops to each of the key buildings in Jerusalem, such as the central post office, the David Building, the radio station, the Russian Compound, the Schneller Barracks, the YMCA tower, and the railway station. And all the while he did not disturb me as I lay resting on the sofa. He is a thin, fair-haired child; his movements are abrupt, embarrassment and aspirations shine in his green eyes, but his manners are impeccable. Twice he interrupted his game and made me some coffee. He straightened my blanket and replaced the sweat-drenched pillow under my head with a fresh one. It was almost noon before he apologetically asked me my opinion of his work. Despite all my principles I praised it.
Uri said:
"I've got to go home soon and have my lunch. Please rest so you'll be strong enough to do the experiment tonight. I'm leaving a Ma
tosian cigarette pack here, Dr. Emanuel; inside there are four live bullets we can take the gunpowder out of. And in my sock I've got the pin from a hand grenade. It's a bit rusty, but it's all there. I found it, and I've brought it for you. From our roof I counted nine British tanks in a shed in Schneller. Cromwells. Is it true, Dr. Emanuel, that a tank is finished if you put some sugar in the engine?"
Again the excited glint flickers in his eyes and dies down. He still trusts me, but his patience is beginning to wear thin: "How much more time will you need for the experiments? A fortnight? More? By about December the Irgun and the Stern Group will have started to blow up enemy districts in the city, because the English are already moving troops to Haifa."
I smile:
"There may still be an agreement, Uri. I read in the paper that America may yet agree to govern the country until the storm dies down and the Arabs start getting used to the idea of a He-brew state. There is still some such possibility. Why must you be so enthusiastic for wars? I have already explained to you more than once that a war is a terrible thing, even if you win it. Perhaps we shall still manage to prevent it."
