Authors: Amos Oz
It will come like a cat before evening. Soft and quick it will come.
Drowsy-cruel, sharp and light, it will come, silently,
on hovering paws, bow-taut back, furry, silky, evil,
crouching to spring it will come like a knife. Honing it will come. Its pupils
tiger-yellow, it is stealthy, arched, fawning, it will come like a cat
on a wall, lying in wait, patiently, coiled like a spring. It has seen a moth.
It wont give up.
It will come; it wont give up. Until it comes come back to me, don't
disappear, at least in the nights come back to me desire of women:
when I was a skinny pimply youth, day and night dreaming poems
dreaming women day and night you didn't leave me: with me
when I lay down, with me when I rose up, burning coals of my night
and shame of my day in my bed, at my school, in the street, in the fields,
scorched by desire for a woman but without a woman: a unicorn
in the morning in the daytime in the evening in my dreams, a brassière
hanging on a washing line, a pair of girls' sandals in the hall, a pencil
turning in the sharpener, a plump thick-braided girl soldier putting
a spoon full of sticky plum jam to her mouth, my blood thickened
to warm honey. Or in the evening, behind a curtain, the silhouette
of a woman combing another woman's hair, any rounded movement,
stirring, kneading, any sound descending to a whisper, a girl sewing
a button on her dress, the feel of face cream or soap, a rude joke,
a dirty word, a whiff of perfume mingled with a secret hint
of woman's sweat, fountained up scalding geyser,
surrounded with a vapour of shame. Even the word "woman" printed
or the curves of "breast" in cursive writing, or the sight of some
furniture on its back with its legs in the air made the stew
of my lust boil over and my body clench like a fist. Now an old male,
a unicorn of memories on his bed pleads with you to come back
to come back, desire of women, to come back to him at night,
give him back at least in a dream that trembling give back the scorch
of glowing coals, lest he forget you, lest he forget come what may come,
on hovering silken paws, soft, furry, yellow-eyed, comes sharp,
light and silent with sharp panthers fangs and a woman's curves.
Every weekend they bring the grandchildren to see me: the girl is a lamb
and the boy is a bear, she calls me Ranny Tee and he
pulls my hair. On Friday night they stay with me
and snuggle in my bed. I protect them
from the nightmares and the cold, and they protect me
from loneliness and death.
The apple never falls far from the tree. The tree stands
at the apples bedside. The tree turns yellow and the apple turns brown
the tree sheds damp leaves. The leaves shroud
the apple. The cold wind leafs through them.
Winter comes autumn is over the tree is eaten the apple
rots. Very soon it will come. It will come it will hurt.
Dear Dad and Dita, on the other side you can see three trees and a stone.
The stone is the grave of a girl called Irene, the daughter of Major Geoffrey
and Daphne Homer. Who were these Homers? Why did they come here?
What were they looking for? Nobody in the village can remember. Nobody
can explain either why they made a postcard out of it. Were they living here
or just passing through? I scraped the moss off the stone with my knife
and discovered that she died of malaria, at the age of twenty, in the summer
of 1896: more than a hundred years ago. Did her parents, that evening,
six hours before her death, still lie to her and say that she was getting better,
that in a couple of days she would be frilly recovered? And what did she feel
when, between bouts of hallucination, she had a moment of lucidity, like a
hunted antelope, when she intercepted an exchange of glances and suddenly
realized that this was her death, that they had given up hope for her,
her parents and the doctor, that they were lying to her out of pity
and saying that the fever was abating and that by tomorrow
she would be better? Did she whisper That's enough, stop
pretending? Or did she feel sufficiently sorry for them to pretend right to
the end that she believed the lie that was tacitly contradicted by her mother's
weeping? And as she died convulsed by the light of a hurricane lamp
in the tent at four in the morning, who wiped the last beads of sweat from
her forehead? Who went outside first and who stayed with her a little longer
in the half-darkness of the tent? When morning came did Major Homer
force himself to shave? And did someone hand her mother a handkerchief
soaked in valerian? Because of the heat did they bury her that very morning
or did they wait till evening? And where and how did they travel on
from here? Did they leave at once? Or the next day? And how did the jungle
stand around the grave the first night after they left? A hundred years
have passed, so the pain has been stilled. Who is there to grieve? I wonder
whether somewhere in the world there is still an old comb or nail file
or mother-of-pearl brooch that belonged to that Irene. Perhaps in some
drawer in an unused walnut dressing table, or a mouldy attic somewhere
in Wiltshire? And who will want to keep her things, if any have survived?
And what for? Only I, who have no photograph and no image of her, felt sad
yesterday for that Irene. Just for a moment. Then it passed. I ate a grilled
fish with some rice and fell asleep. Today everything is fine. Don't worry.
Haven't I told you a thousand times Nadia I beg you stop filling his head with such nonsense once and for all, he's still young and easily frightened, don't stuff him full of wolves and witches and snow, ghosts in the cellar and goblins in the forest. There aren't any forests or goblins here. We came to this country to put all that behind us, to live on yoghurt and salad with an omelette, to settle down, to change, to defend ourselves when we have no alternative, to banish the old troubles, to be cured of the ancient horror, to sit under the vine in the garden, to recover gradually from everything that happened before, and to begin to distinguish here at last between what is possible and what is sheer lunacy. Haven't I told you a thousand times that my son has to grow up to be a useful member of society, a decent, sensible man with no nonsense in his head in the clouds but with both feet planted firmly on the ground in this land where there are no cottages in the forest but only warm sand and housing schemes. That is what we have, I told you, and what we haven't got we must simply learn to do without. To draw a line. Now look what's happened because of you. You've filled his head with fairies and fog and you yourself have grown feathers and a beak and flown off into the cold. You've left me all these lace doilies and embroidered place mats, who needs them? We could have had a grandson by now. Or a granddaughter.
Toward evening the boy, who still called him Yourr Honorr, would whistle to drag him out of the dungeon of sweaty sleep, and the two of them would climb the hill to catch crickets, or go to the seashore to pick up seashells to sell. They saw
Superman
together twice at the Globe Cinema and when they came out they wrestled panting on the grass. He went to the store run by the man from Taiwan and from his meager savings he bought the child a pair of khaki shorts, some vests, sandals with soles made from tires, he ended up looking like a young scamp from Israel in the old days. Each evening he bought him a Coke, some dates, bubble gum, occasionally a sticky brown sweet made locally from coconut and honey. He taught him to play a game of marbles from Tel Aviv, and they also made a kite. At night, on duty, you used to grill him a fish over the fire and talk, and the boy would listen, and sometimes a sly look flickered across his face which showed for an instant that he was not always as angelic as he looked. In the mornings, for instance, when you were asleep would he curl up in a heap of rags in the disused refrigeration unit, or on a battered mattress in some shed, or would he go off somewhere else to collect what was due to him? One day you bought him a bubble pipe from the Taiwanese, and that is how you were seen, an angular, tousled young man in jeans and a T-shirt with a Hebrew slogan ("Let the animals live"), with a dark-skinned, rather feminine little boy, in a pair of new sandals and a kibbutz-style vest which had once been white, the two of you blowing bubbles. So what if some people were beginning to gossip, at the hostel, at the refrigeration plant. The philandering Austrian engineer slapped you in various places and leered, neighing
Ach so!
At the kiosk, when you had finished blowing bubbles, the boy learned from you the latest Tel Aviv slang. Then you bought two sticks of chewing gum and you sat chewing together on the stone opposite the petrol pump. Perhaps you should ask some passing tourist to take a Polaroid photo. And send it In a letter. So they'd know. This child, listen, looks at you like a little abandoned monkey, not exactly looking you in the eye, more in the mouth, as though through your mouth he can see what's inside you. Besides which, he taught me a trick with a coin, the Devil only knows who taught it to him and what other things he knows without anyone knowing. He's like one of those lizards where if you pull off their tail they grow a new one, or more precisely like a well where you throw a stone in and wait to hear but you don't hear anything.
Question in a dream: and what was the fate of that well-mannered man, the draper who always knew what to say and what to pass over in silence? The man who was Nadia Danon's first husband? A scrubbed and scented, cheerful man, inclined to fixed habits, who sang Sabbath songs delightfully in a rich, resonant tenor voice. He may be living to this day in a suburb of Marseilles or Nice, pink-cheeked, flourishing, surrounded by charming widows. Or perhaps he is here in Israel, living in Kiryat Ono, a widower and pensioner, the treasurer of the House Committee, still hoping that one day his only daughter Rachel, a twice-divorced doctor of forty, will return from San Antonio or Toronto, marry a moderately observant Jew, open her own private clinic, and invite him to live with them, let's say in a modest little cabin at the end of their garden. To his question in a dream he receives a negative answer. She is there and you are here, totally on your own since the day Rex was run over. You have to get over your grief, put on a jacket and tie, pick up your carved cane, and go to the Animal Protection Society to choose yourself a new puppy despite everything, and start all over again. But it will be difficult to relate to a new puppy now: if you call him Rex he will remind you every day that Rex no longer exists, and if you call him Chief he won't help you forget anything. Better to give up dream questions and get on at last with finding a replacement for that refrigerator that rumbles like a heavy smoker and interrupts your sleep.
It's cold tonight. And rainy.
His hands are so thin.
He's not really old
and I'm not in his arms.
His hands are so tender
clasped in my palms,
I'm changing a baby
born to me from his son.
He's really not old. Restless,
the sea outside in the dark
exhales. Thrashes. Gropes
the sandy beach with its waves.
As though changing his grandson
my hands encircle his.
For a moment he was a baby,
but now he's a father again.
A small surprise party: the people who work at the Property Tax Board are
saying goodbye tonight to an old colleague who has reached retirement age.
So from eight to midnight Albert has offered to look after Bettine's
grandchildren who are sleeping in her bed. On a shelf in her bedroom is
a photo of her husband Avram, a distant relation of Nadia's, with a precisely
trimmed grey moustache, and a beret on his head. A smell of talc and
shampoo enfolds Bettine's habitual faint perfume. The little girl is fast asleep,
clutching a sheep with a missing ear, from time to time in her sleep she takes
a single deep breath. The boy is tossing and turning, he's worried, he fears
the worst, he thinks there's a bear lurking in the corridor. In vain Albert
carries him outside to see for himself that there's nothing there. He is
frightened. He wants his mummy. He wants Granny 'Tine. He wants
the light on. He asks Albert to turn off the dark, quick. In vain Albert sings
a Serbian lullaby from his childhood in Sarajevo and another haunting song
in Bulgarian with which Nadia used to lull Rico and herself to sleep. In vain.
A faint light comes from the kitchen and a glimmer from a street lamp enters through the window, trembling slightly because of
the sea breeze stirring in the chinaberry tree. Albert goes to the kitchen
to warm a bottle that Nadia has prepared before she went out. Bettine,
he corrects himself. But Nadia won't let go. He returns to the bedroom
and finds the boy asleep. Now he goes down on his knees on the matting
to pick up the animals, bricks, books, a xylophone missing two of its bars,
stoops to lay a teddy bear by the boy's shoulder, covers both children with
a blanket, sits down in Bettine's armchair, and closes his eyes to keep watch.
—till one evening he does not come to whistle, Wake up Yourr Honorr, let's
go get a Coke, and then let's go shrimping in the shallow rock pools in
the bay. First you scan the sky for the dragon kite you made him. Not there.
That night he does not pop out as usual from the shadows behind the pipes
and the smell of grilled fish.
Nor the next day.
He has disappeared.
In vain you go looking for him at the plant, in the cellars, on the shore, in
his disused refrigerator, to no avail you quiz the soft-drink seller
in the square or the Taiwanese storekeeper: vest khaki shorts a pair of
suspenders like an H? Always lugging a bag full of snails and Coca-Cola tops?
No use. So many children are abandoned here, cocksuckers, beggars,
pickpockets, who can tell them apart? The fishermen you question
this morning snicker, wink, what's the problem, find another one instead,
there's no shortage of his sort here. Has he been kidnapped? Got lost?
Drowned? Or found another uncle on the side? Only yesterday you washed
his hair; the boy bit, struggled, but came back in the evening with a gift for
you: a live jellyfish in a can of seawater. And the grief like a creeping stone:
the boy isn't here. He's gone. The boy who was here has gone. The boy
has gone. Lost. With his blue bag of snails and his sandals made from tires,
tied with a frayed string. A dustboy, so velvety, he found you rather odd,
what's the matter with you, a corrupt angel's smile, innocently seductive, pure
and smart, but suddenly a startled little monkey would cling and cuddle
in your arms, huddling and burrowing with a take-good-care-of-me.