Authors: Amos Oz
Mr. Danon apologized, he couldn't take on, overwhelmed with work, etc., but finally, on the doorstep, to their mutual surprise, he suddenly heard himself utter the words Call me, we'll talk about it.
At six she woke from a heavy siesta. She took a shower
and washed her hair. Stopped in the doorway of his room,
wearing only a wet shirt that did not quite cover her underwear.
I slept like a log and I must rush to work (receptionist
in a hotel). Be a dear and lend me two hundred shekels
just till the end of the week, will you. There's some rice and chicken
in the fridge and tonight after the news there's a program
about Tibet. Will you watch and tell me about it tomorrow?
She combed her hair, dressed and stopped in his doorway again,
I'm off now, bye, and don't you dare wait up for me,
just you go to bed, don't worry, I promise not to take any sweets
from strangers. She blew him a kiss and left him
changing a light bulb in the hall, in deepening gloom.
And if she stays out all night what will he do all night, and if she gets back
at midnight and goes straight to bed what will he do while she sleeps?
Tomorrow he'll tell her that her money is safe, that from now on
she is free and he is of no further use. Around nine there was a power outage,
and like a solitary mountaineer on whom night falls in a deserted place
he groped and found a flashlight and shifted the blocks of shadow around.
When the shadows overwhelmed him he gave up and went
to Bettine's, which was also in darkness with only an emergency light
glowing palely by her bed. And as the lights did not come back on
and the emergency light was fading he found himself telling her how
a bedraggled bird had nested uninvited in his flat, and how today he
himself had made sure—why on earth had he done it—that she too
would soon fly away. Reading between the lines, Bettine picked up
his secret and found it partly ridiculous and partly moving and painful. She
took his hand in hers, and they listened to the tossing and turning
of the sea in the depths of the dark, and then came a reaching out, a shy
embrace with no clothing removed, partly for loneliness of the flesh
and partly for grace and favor. Bettine knew from her flesh that he
was imagining another in her but she forgave him: had it not been
for the other, this would never have happened.
Wisely, firmly, yet gently, he had rescued and retrieved
her lost cash. And what was the outcome? Simply
that in another day or two she would pluck her underwear
off the washing line, blow him a kiss, and vanish. The wrong
had been righted, but an invisible hand, not his own,
certainly not his right hand, possibly his left, had mockingly
frustrated him. Fear not. It was not in vain. With her going, the shade
of the dead one will surely return to be with you.
And hers too. The shades of two women. And Bettine as well.
A shadow harem under the shade of your roof.
Dad's sitting reading a paper. Dad's watching the news headlines.
His face is pained, like a disappointed teacher: reprimanding, chiding
the state of the world whose antics really go
too far. The time has come to take steps. He has
made up his mind to respond severely.
My father's severity is ineffectual. A poor mans severity. Weary fading
powerless. Instead there is a touch of sadness about him, an air of
resignation. He is not a young man. He's just a humble citizen.
What difference can he make
with his puny cane. And sometimes my father quotes the verse:
As the sparks fly upward, man is born unto labor. But what is he trying
to say to me? That I should fly upward? Or get a job? Not to fight
lost battles? My father's severity. His defeated shoulders.
Because of them I left. To them I shall return.
And there's another great text in Job that he quotes to me
so that I'll remember that properly and possessions are
not the most important thing: Naked came I forth from my mother's womb
and naked shall I return thither. So what is the point of the race to amass
and hoard so-called belongings. My father is blind
to the hidden secret of this verse: her womb
is waiting for me. I came forth. I shall return. The cross on the way
is less important.
He circles aimlessly around. And returns. Between one sleep and the next
he barely wakes. He travels from village to remote village. A day here a day
there. He meets Israelis, what's new back home, and falls asleep. He meets
women, exchanges a first signal and gives up. Like a tortoise.
On his travels he has crossed three or four maps. So what if he crosses
yet another, more valleys. Another climb. This view has run out.
His money too, almost. With a little luck he'll make it to Bangkok,
where the money his father sent is waiting. And then Sri Lanka. Or Rangoon.
In the autumn he'll go home. Or not. By a feeble light in a hostel, lying
neither sleeping nor waking, like an invalid waiting for it to become clear
one way or the other, seeing on the sooty ceiling stains of mountains
suspended between one shadow and the next. Not to climb but to find
a way in, or a way through, an opening, or a narrow crack, through which
Shortly before my death a bird on a branch enticed me.
Narimi its
feathery down touched me wrapped all of me
in a marine afterbirth.
Night after night, my widower weeps on his pillow, where has she gone
whom my soul loves. My orphan child is wandering far, conjuring omens.
Child bride you are their wife, you have my nightdress,
you have their love. My flesh is wasted. Set me as a seal.
He returns from Bettine's when the power is restored and sits for a while
on the veranda alone. It is still August but the night is almost chilly, the cool
of the sea is an advance payment on the autumn. Around one o'clock,
five already in Bhutan, he drinks some chilled fruit juice
and goes to bed. Who knows who she is out on the town with
at this moment, she must be shivering in her light clothes. He gets up
and spreads a blanket on her bed and then hesitates,
nods and lays out on her pillow a blue nightdress,
because she is bound in her sleep to kick off the blanket.
Now for a riddle: what if anything does the shabby film producer Dubi
Dombrov have in common with the fictional Narrator who is about to
bring him back to Albert for a second visit? Besides the fact that both of them
require the services of a tax adviser, we may note some other parallels. He and I
as children were both outsiders. And we were both orphaned
at a fairly tender age and in need of a guiding hand, which is, as
Dubi observed, both an unquenchable personal need and, shall we say, a
religious quest Both of us would like to create at least one work
that will turn out properly. And we are both on our way. True, he is a
clumsy, sloppy man, a thing of shreds and patches, which ostensibly
contrasts with the Narrator, who is well known to be a punctilious person
who always puts each thing away in its proper place. But that is only
on the outside. Inside him too there is an almighty mess.
And we are both always thirsty. Incidentally, a pig in a poke is an expression
that generally describes an incautious purchase but in our case connotes
not so much the impetuosity of the purchaser as the condition of the pig.
Sometimes we encounter a spider or a cockroach in the kitchen, which
we would never dream of hurting, but when the creature runs away from us
we take offence. And in general we are easily hurt:
we are constantly offended but contain ourselves, and continue to invite
further offence. With women he has a harder time of it the Narrator
is apparently helped by a certain glow, at least on the surface. Like
the producer, he feels not entirely worthy, like a con man obtaining favors
by deception: be my mother, my sister, etc. Not to mention the feet that both
characters are a bit like David, who always longed to adopt a gentle brother
and a tough-warm father, a grim father whose manner toward his son implies
a suppressed rebuke. And yet, adopting a father, as can be seen
in the case of David, generally ends up in a battle in which the father's role
is to fall, thus restoring to us the liberties of orphanhood. And,
it may be added, both the unsuccessful producer and this Narrator
know the summer will soon be over.
To sum up the story so far, this is actually a tale about five or six characters,
most of whom are alive most of the time, who often offer each other
a hot or cold drink, generally a cold one, because it is summer. Sometimes
they bring each other a tray with some cheese and olives, some wine, slices
of watermelon, occasionally they even make each other a light meal. Or else
you could see it as a number of intersecting triangles. Rico his father and
his mother. Dita and her two lovers (Giggy Ben-Gal doesn't count). Albert
between Bettine Carmel and his child bride who slips from room to room
wearing no more than the shirt on her back. And Bettine herself, between
Avram and Albert, her choice for a rainy day. While Dubi is stuck
between his desire for Nirit and the rebuke of her warm-hearted
representative on earth, to the love of women preferring the reproach
of the sensible father. Rico, between his father and his cross, mistakenly
searching in the mountains for his sea-tossed mother, in love with Dita
though not loving her enough. Dita who is still waiting. And all of them are
among shadows. Even the Narrator himself is somewhere between
the mystical and the mischievous. This fabric resembles
the pattern in the curtain at the Greek necromancer's, who died and
left in his place a crow-woman. She has no living soul and her fabric gives
a foretaste of the worm. And so a certain shadow falls over this story too.
Hadhramaut. On his map such a principality appears in southern
Arabia, east of Bab el-Mandeb. Maybe the peace process
will open it up to us. But what is there there) Shifting sands,
wilderness, the haunt of foxes. But what is there here, in this abandoned
temple? A solitary Buddhist monk, a skeletal figure, through a hatch
wordlessly handing you a bowl of cold rice
and disappearing. He will not open the gate: you are not worthy yet.
In other words, the peace process is slow and painful. You will have
to make one or two further concessions. Only what is truly
a matter of life and death should not be negotiable.
At Giggy Ben-Gal's, in Melchett Street She is sleeping with him again
because she feels sorry for herself While he saws away, she is thinking of
dear, good Albert, who worked so hard to find her
a one-room flat in Mazeh Street, the unfashionable side. On the
one hand it's good news, but on the other she really doesn't want
to move out. She enjoys living with him, he makes such a fuss of her
and his devotion is touching, not to mention his hungry look. All
the sweeter for being forbidden. This Giggy is a big brute. He fucks
as though he's hammering in nails or scoring points. One way
or another, in the end everyone is alone. In this heat
the best thing to be is a Buddhist nun in Tibet.
In fact they were distantly related, both born in Sarajevo, Albert Danon from Bat Yam and my carpenter Elimelech who made this desk for me and died nine years ago. The great love of his life, apart from his wife and daughters, was opera: he had a stereo at home, another in his workshop, and a third in the car, hundreds of records and cassettes, dozens of performances. You could tell from two streets away if the workshop was open, not from the buzzing of the electric saw or the smell of sawdust and wood glue, but from the music: La Traviata, Don Giovanni, Rigoletto, the man was a total addict. We called him Shalyapin, because while he was planing away he would be roaring and booming, shamelessly out of tune, plunging so low as to put the deepest bass to shame. His voice was like the voice of the dead: a profundo
de profundis.
And yet this thunderous bass sound burst forth from a chest of modest dimensions, in fact Elimelech the carpenter was actually a slightly built man; his face was wrinkled with irony, one eyebrow was raised, and his glance contradicted itself: partly asking forgiveness and partly impish or sarcastic, as if tb say, Who or what am I, but then you too, sir, excuse me for mentioning it, began as a drop of moisture and will end up as a broken vessel. The desk he made me, on which I am writing these words, turned out heavy. Massive. With no frills. A desk with the legs of a rhinoceros and sides like the shoulders of a market porter. A bass table. A proletarian object, thickset as a wrestler. Unlike Elimelech the carpenter, a man who loved to joke and tease but at the same time was being secretly, relentlessly eaten away by a ruthless canker, until one day he upped and hanged himself. He left no note, and no one could explain it. Least of all his wife and daughters. When I went to the hanged man's house to offer my condolences, I had the impression that grief had been displaced by surprise: as if all those years it had never occurred to them that here in their home an alien being was living among them in disguise, a maharajah masquerading as a woodworker, and one day he had been summoned home, and at once, without a word, had shed his familiar disguise and set off for the place where he belonged. The last man, literally the
last
man in the world, to go and hang himself. For the life of us we wouldn't have dreamed that he had it in him. And there was no reason either: all things considered, life treated him very well, he had a family, friends, made a decent living, and he was the kind of man who was, as they say, content with what he had and always made the most of things. For instance, he loved eating, he loved to sit in his armchair every evening and fall asleep with the paper, and he especially loved those operas of his; he used to listen to them and sing along from morning to night and, well, we did think it was a bit much at times but we kept our mouths shut, why shouldn't he have a bit of pleasure? There are some husbands, after all, who squander half their pay on the lottery and suchlike, or who are crazy about football, and with him it was his operas. You must agree, sir, that it's a refined hobby. And also, he loved to make people laugh, he was a champion joker, he was the king of practical jokes, you may not believe this but just the morning of the day it happened, barely three hours before, he was making omelettes for the girls and he pretended to swallow the hot oil straight from the frying pan. What a fright we had before we started to laugh. What else can I say to you, sir, people are a riddle, even the ones you think you know best. You sleep in the same bed together for thirty-five years, you know every hair on their head, their illnesses, their secrets, their problems, their most personal things, and then suddenly it turns out that It's as if there was two Elimelechs, one for foreign affairs and one for internal affairs. It was nice of you to come. Thank you. We'll do our best. The girls are just wonderful, look how they take after him. They take everything as it comes. When you next see Albert say a big thank you to
him
for taking the trouble to come to the funeral. He's not a youngster any more, and it's a long way from Bat Yam, after all.