Judas

by Amos Oz

  He stood up, undressed, and showered, but instead of getting into bed, he sat for another half hour on the cushion-strewn windowsill, wrapped in his quilt, staring into the stone-paved courtyard. The yard was frozen and desolate. Not so much as a cat stirred. Only the meager light of the streetlamp lit the iron lid of the cistern and the pots of geraniums. Shmuel told himself that it was time to sleep, and ten minutes later he got into bed in his underwear, but sleep did not come. Instead, he saw scenes from his childhood, which merged with thoughts about Yardena and Atalia. Both women made him feel anger and sadness, and a powerful throb of desire. He turned from side to side but could not sleep.

  24

  * * *

  SHMUEL RECEIVED A LETTER from his parents. Rainwater had seeped into Gershom Wald and Atalia Abravanel’s mailbox, and some lines of the letter were smudged. His father wrote:

  Dear Shmuel,

  I am sitting here mourning for your abandoned university studies. What a terrible waste of effort and talent! In the early years of your studies you brought us high marks and even a promise (though not a definitive one) from Professor Eisenschloss, who once said to you that if you persevered in your work and if you managed to make some new discoveries, there was a possibility that after you finished your MA you might be hired as a teaching assistant—that is to say, a first step toward an academic career. And now, with a wave of the hand, you have thrown away this chance. I know, my dear Shmuel, that it is all my fault. Had it not been for the failure of my firm (which was due to the dishonesty of my partner but also in small measure to my own stupidity and blindness), I would be continuing to pay for your studies and your maintenance, and I would do so as generously as I did from the moment you entered the university, just as I supported your sister’s studies in Italy. But is there any possibility that you could combine your present work with continuing your studies? Is there no way out . . . [Here came two or three lines that were illegible because of the damp.] . . . studies? Is there no way you can pay for your studies and your maintenance out of your wages? Miri is continuing her medical studies in Italy despite everything: she has not stopped studying even though we have been forced to stop supporting her. She is working in two jobs now, as an assistant in a pharmacy in the evenings and as a telegraphist in the central post office at night. She makes do, she wrote to us, with four or five hours of sleep, but she has not given up studying. She is clinging on tooth and nail. Could you not follow Miri’s example? You wrote to us that you are working five or six hours a day. You did not tell us how much you earn, but you did say that your board and lodging are covered by your employers. Maybe if you made an effort you could do a few more hours of work in another job, and then you will be in a position to finance the rest of your studies. It will not be easy for you, but since when has a stubborn ox like you recoiled from hardships? After all, you are a socialist ideologically, a proletarian, a working man! (By the way, you have not told us what the relationship is between Mr. Wald and Miss Abravanel. Are they a married couple? Or father and daughter? Everything you do is wrapped in mystery, as though you were working in a secret security installation.) Your only letter to date was very short on details. You only said that you sit and chat in the afternoons and evenings with the elderly invalid and sometimes read to him. This work seems to me, if you don’t mind my saying so, rather easy and not especially tiring. It would not be difficult for you in Jerusalem to find yourself some more paid work, and with the income . . . [Here again a few lines were illegible because the ink had run.] Let me add here with all due caution: it is possible that in a few months we shall also be able to contribute some modest sums. Although far from the extent of the support we gave you before the bankruptcy, yet it will be better than nothing. I beg you, my dear Shmuel, I even implore you: you have only missed a few weeks of the university year. You can, with an effort that you are definitely capable of, make up what you have missed and return to studying at full speed. The topic you have chosen for your master’s thesis, “Jewish Views of Jesus,” is remote from my own interests, and even seems rather strange to me. In the city where I was born, Riga, we Jews were in the habit of averting our gaze every time we passed a crucifix. You wrote to me once that in your view Jesus was our own flesh and blood. It is extremely difficult for me to accept this: how many evil decrees, how much persecution, how much suffering, how much innocent blood was shed by those who hated us in the name of That Man! And you, Shmuel, suddenly get up and cross the lines and take a stand for some reason on the other side of the barricades, on the side of That Man. But I respect your choice, even though I cannot understand it. Just as I respect your voluntary activity in some socialist group, even though I am far removed from socialism myself and consider it as a cruel attempt to impose equality on the human race. It seems to me that equality runs counter to human nature, because of the simple fact that human beings are not born equal but different from one another and actually quite alien from one another. You and I, for instance, were not born equal. You are a young man blessed with many talents, whereas I am a simple man. Think of the difference between you and your sister: she is quiet and self-contained, whereas you are boisterous and loud. But who am I to argue with you about politics etc.? It’s not from me that you inherited your enthusiasm and dedication. You will do as you please. You always have done. Please, my dear Shmuel, write to me soon to say that you are seeking or have found a second job so that you can go back to studying. Studying is what you are truly destined for. You must not betray it. I know full well that it is not easy to work, to keep yourself and to finance your studies all at the same time. But if our Miri can do it, so can you. You have stubbornness enough and to spare, a trait you have apparently inherited from me, not from your mother. I shall sign off here, with much love and deep worry,

  Your father

  P.S.: Please write to us more often and tell us more about your daily life in the house where you are living and working now.

  Shmuel’s mother had added below:

  My Mooly, I miss you so much. It’s been months since you last came to see us in Haifa and you hardly ever write. Why is that? What have we done wrong? . . . [Here again a few lines were unreadable because of the damp.] Your father’s failure nearly broke his heart. He has suddenly become an old man. He hardly talks to me. It was always hard for him to talk to me, even before what happened. You should try to stand by him now, at least by writing to him. Ever since you gave up studying he’s been feeling rather let down. Miri has written too to say that she hasn’t had a letter or any sign of life from you for many weeks. Is something the matter, heaven forbid? Tell us the whole truth.

  P.S.: I am sealing the envelope and putting in a hundred liras, without your father’s knowledge. It’s not a large sum, I know, but I haven’t got more at the moment. I join your father in asking you: please go back to university, otherwise you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.

  Love, Mummy

  25

  * * *

  “I AM VERY FAR REMOVED from the many and various types of world reformer,” Gershom Wald said, “though this man is actually not a world reformer but a great realist. He was the only one who noticed a tiny crack in history, and managed to get us through that crack at the right moment, while there was still time. Not on his own, definitely not. Had it not been for my son and his friends, we would all be dead.”

  “In the Sinai campaign,” Shmuel said, “your Ben-Gurion tied Israel to the coattails of the colonial powers that were doomed to degeneration and decline, France and Britain, and by so doing he only deepened Arab hatred of Israel and finally convinced the Arabs that Israel is a foreign implant in the region, a tool in the hands of global imperialism.”

  “Even before the Sinai campaign,” Wald replied, “your Arabs were not so enamored of Israel, and they even ​—”

  Shmuel interrupted him:

  “Why should they love us? Why do you think the Arabs are not entitled to resist strangers who come here suddenly as if from anothe
r planet and take away their land and their soil, fields, villages and towns, the graves of their ancestors, and their children’s inheritance? We tell ourselves that we only came to this land ‘to build and to be rebuilt,’ ‘to renew our days as of old,’ ‘to redeem our ancestral heritage,’ et cetera, but you tell me if there is any other people in this world who would welcome with open arms an incursion of hundreds of thousands of strangers, and then millions of strangers, landing from far away with the weird claim that their holy scriptures, which they brought with them also from far away, promise this whole land to them and to them alone.”

  “Would you be kind enough to pour me another glass of tea? And please help yourself to a glass as well. Neither you nor I will budge Ben-Gurion from his beliefs, whether we drink tea or not. Shealtiel Abravanel, Atalia’s father, tried in vain to persuade Ben-Gurion in ’48 that it was still possible to reach an agreement with the Arabs about the departure of the British and the creation of a single joint condominium of Jews and Arabs, if we only agreed to renounce the idea of a Jewish state. Yes, indeed. That is why he was banished from the Zionist Executive Committee and the Council of the Jewish Agency, which was de facto the unofficial Jewish government at the end of the British Mandate. Maybe one of these days the spirit will descend upon Atalia and she will tell you the whole story. I myself, I admit with no sense of shame, stood in that conflict foursquare on the side of Ben-Gurion’s ruthless realism and not on that of Abravanel’s lofty views.”

  “Ben-Gurion,” Shmuel said, on his way to the kitchen to set the kettle to boil, “may have been in his youth a workers’ leader, a sort of tribune of the plebs, if you like, but today he heads a self-righteous, chauvinistic state and he never stops spouting hollow biblical phrases about renewing our days as of old and realizing the vision of the prophets.”

  And from the kitchen, while he brewed the tea, he raised his voice and added:

  “If there is no peace, one day the Arabs will defeat us. It is only a question of time and patience. And the Arabs have endless time and boundless patience. They will not forget the disgrace of their defeat in ’48 or the plot we hatched against them with Britain and France three years ago.”

  Gershom Wald drank the tea that Shmuel handed him while it was still very hot, almost boiling, whereas Shmuel waited patiently for his to cool a little.

  “Once, a year or two ago,” said Shmuel, “I read an article entitled ‘The Limits of Power; or, The Eleventh Soldier.’ I’ve forgotten the name of the author. But I can still remember what it said. When Stalin invaded Finland in the late thirties, the Finnish commander in chief, Marshal Mannerheim, went to see the president of Finland, Kallio, and tried to reassure him: every Finnish soldier can beat ten Russian muzhiks. We are ten times as good as they are, ten times as clever, and ten times as motivated to defend our homeland which is under attack. President Kallio pondered for a while, shrugged his shoulders, and said—perhaps to himself rather than to the marshal—‘Well, who knows, maybe every one of our men is a match for ten Soviet peasants, that’s all well and good, but what do we do if Stalin happens to send against us not ten but eleven?’ And that, the article reasoned, is the unspoken quandary facing the State of Israel. For more than ten years now the Arabs have been beating their drums about wiping us out, but so far they have not invested even a tenth of their power in our destruction. In our War of Independence in 1948 fewer than 80,000 soldiers took part from all five Arab armies combined, compared to 120,000 conscripts out of a Jewish population of 600,000. What shall we do if someday the eleventh Arab soldier arrives? What shall we do if the Arabs send an army of half a million? Or a million? Or two million? Nasser is equipping himself right now with huge quantities of the best Soviet armaments and is talking openly about a second round of war. And what are we doing? We are drunk on victory. Drunk on our power. Drunk on biblical clichés.”

  “And what does Your Honor suggest?” Wald asked. “That we turn the other cheek?”

  “Ben-Gurion was wrong to abandon the policy of nonalignment and tie Israel by bonds of serfdom and slavery to the Western powers, and not even to the strongest of them but to those on the way out—France and Britain. This morning’s paper talked about dozens more killed and injured in Algiers. It turns out that the French army stationed there stoutly refuses to open fire on the rebellious French settlers. France is sinking into civil war while at the very same time Britain is shamefacedly folding up the remains of its empire. Ben-Gurion has embroiled us in an alliance with declining powers. Maybe instead of another glass of tea you’d like me to pour us both a thimbleful of brandy? In honor of Ben-Gurion? No? Or would you like your evening porridge now? Not yet? Tell me when you want it and I’ll warm it up for you.”

  “Thank you,” Gershom Wald said. “I like what you were saying about the eleventh soldier. If he suddenly turns up on the battlefield, we’ll simply have to repulse him, too. Otherwise we shall not be here anymore.”

  Shmuel stood and began to pace up and down between the bookcases.

  “Up to a certain point it’s possible to understand a people that for thousands of years has known well the power of books, the power of prayers, the power of the commandments, the power of scholarship, the power of religious devotion, the power of trade, and the power of being an intermediary, but that only knew the power of power itself in the form of blows on its back. And now it finds itself holding a heavy cudgel. Tanks, cannons, jet planes. It’s only natural that such a people gets drunk on power and tends to believe that it can do whatever it likes by the power of power. And what is it, in your opinion, that power cannot achieve?”

  “How much power?”

  “All the power in the world. Take the combined power of the Soviet Union and the United States and France and Britain. What can you not achieve with such power, by any manner or means?”

  “I think that with such power you could conquer whatever you felt like. From sea to sea.”

  “That’s what you think. That’s what the Jews in Israel think, because they have no notion of the limits of power. The fact is that all the power in the world cannot transform someone who hates you into someone who likes you. It can turn a foe into a slave, but not into a friend. All the power in the world cannot transform a fanatic into an enlightened man. All the power in the world cannot transform someone thirsting for vengeance into a lover. And yet these are precisely the real existential challenges facing the State of Israel: how to turn a hater into a lover, a fanatic into a moderate, an avenger into a friend. Am I saying that we do not need military might? Heaven forbid! Such a foolish thought would never enter my head. I know as well as you that it is power, military power, that stands, at any given moment, even at this very moment while you and I are arguing here, between us and extinction. Power has the power to prevent our annihilation for the time being. On condition that we always remember, at every moment, that in a situation like ours power can only prevent. It can’t settle anything and it can’t solve anything. It can only stave off disaster for a while.”

  “So I lost my only son simply to delay a catastrophe that in your opinion there is no way to prevent?” Gershom Wald said.

  Shmuel had the urge to get up and clasp the rough-hewn head of the man sitting opposite him to his breast with both arms, and perhaps mouth some words of comfort. But there is no comfort in this world. He chose to say nothing, so as not to cause more pain. Instead, he fed the goldfish. Then he went to the kitchen. Rather than the usual porridge, Sarah de Toledo had brought a potato salad with mayonnaise and sliced vegetables. Gershom Wald ate in silence, as if he had exhausted his stock of quotations and allusions for this evening. He remained silent until nearly eleven o’clock, when Shmuel poured them both a little glass of brandy without waiting for the old man’s agreement. Then he took his leave, ate the leftover potato salad, washed the dishes, and climbed up to the attic. The father stayed at his desk, jotting something down on a piece of paper, crumpling it up, tossing it into the wastepaper basket, then starting
again. A deep silence now descended upon the house. Atalia had gone out. Or maybe she had not gone out. Maybe she was sitting in total silence in her room, where Shmuel had never set foot.

  26

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING at half past eleven, Shmuel put on his battered duffel coat, covered his unruly curls with the shapka (which looked like a kind of peaked coachman’s cap), picked up the walking stick with its predatory fox-head handle, and went for a walk in Jerusalem. There was no rain, just a few gray tatters of clouds crossing the sky on their way from the sea to the desert. The morning light that touched the stone walls of Jerusalem was reflected back soft and sweet, honeyed light, the light that caresses Jerusalem on clear winter days between one rainstorm and the next.

  Shmuel walked up Rabbi Elbaz Lane and turned onto Ussishkin Street, passed the Cultural Center, whose walls were faced in a smooth stone that looked like marble, and continued toward the town center. His head was thrust forward as if he were butting the air or forcing his way through obstacles, his body bent forward and his legs hurrying so as not to be left behind. His walk, as ever, looked more like a slow run. There was something amusing about this, as if he were hurrying to go someplace where people had been waiting for him for a long time but would not wait forever, and if he was late, it would be too late.