My Michael

by Amos Oz

  Later on, a group of youngsters went past, on their way home from a religious youth club. As they passed our house, the boys sang

  Girls are all the brood of Satan;

  Apart from one I swear I hate 'em,

  and the girls let out shrill shrieks.

  Michael put down his paper. He asked whether he could interrupt me for a moment. He wanted to ask me something. "If we had the money we could buy a radio, and then we could listen to a concert at home. But we owe a small fortune in debts, and so we won't be able to afford a radio this year. Perhaps stingy old Sarah Zeldin will give you a raise next month. By the way, the plumber who mended the hot-water system was very pleasant and charming, but it's broken down again."

  Michael put out the light. His hand groped for mine in the dark. But his eyes had not yet adjusted to the meager light which filtered through the shutters, and his arm collided violently with my chin so that I let out a groan of pain. He begged my pardon. He stroked my hair. I felt tired and vacant. He put his cheek against mine. We'd had such a nice, long walk today, and that was why he hadn't managed to find time to shave. The bristles scratched my skin. There was a bad moment, I recall, when I suddenly reminded myself of a bride in a vulgar joke, an old-fashioned bride who completely misunderstood her husband's advances. Wasn't the double bed easily big enough for the two of us? It was a humiliating moment.

  That night I dreamed of Mrs. Tarnopoler. We were in a town on the plain, perhaps Holon, perhaps in my father-in-law's flat. Mrs. Tarnopoler made me a glass of mint tea. It tasted bitter and revolting. I was sick, and spoiled my white wedding dress. Mrs. Tarnopoler laughed coarsely. "I warned you," she boasted. "I warned you beforehand, but you would insist on ignoring all the hints." An evil bird pounced with sharp, hooked claws. Claws scratched at my eyelids. I woke in a panic and flung off Michael's arm. He stirred irritably, mumbling, "You're out of your mind. Leave me alone. I need to sleep. I've got a hard day ahead of me." I took a pill. An hour later I took another. Eventually I fell into a stunned sleep. Next morning I had a slight temperature. I did not go to work. At lunchtime I quarreled with Michael, and hurled abuse at him. Michael stifled his feelings and kept quiet. In the evening we made peace. Each of us blamed himself for starting the row. My friend Hadassah and her husband called. Hadassah's husband was an economist. The conversation turned to the austerity policy. According to Hadassah's husband, the government's action was based on ridiculous assumptions—as if the whole of Israel were one great youth movement. Hadassah said that the officials' only concern was for their own families, and she cited an appalling case of corruption which was going the rounds in Jerusalem. Michael thought for a while, then gave it as his opinion that it was a mistake to demand too much from life. I was not sure whether he was defending the government or agreeing with our guests. I asked him what he meant. Michael smiled at me as though the only reply I had expected of him was his smile. I went out to the kitchen to make tea and coffee and to put out some cakes. Through the open doors I could hear my friend Hadassah talking. She was praising me to my husband. She told him I was the best pupil in my class. Then the discussion turned to the Hebrew University. Such a young university, yet being guided along such conservative lines.

  12

  IN JUNE, three months after the wedding, I found I was pregnant.

  Michael was not at all pleased when I told him. Twice he asked me if I was certain. Once, before we were married, he had read in a medical handbook that it is very easy to make a mistake, especially the first time. Perhaps I had misinterpreted the symptoms.

  At that I got up and left the room. He stayed where he was, in front of the mirror, passing his razor over the sensitive skin between his lower lip and his chin. Perhaps I had chosen the wrong moment to talk to him, just when he was shaving.

  Next day Aunt Jenia, the pediatrician, arrived from Tel Aviv. Michael had telephoned her in the morning and she had dropped everything and come running.

  Aunt Jenia spoke sternly to me. She accused me of irresponsibility. I would ruin all Michael's efforts at getting on and achieving something in life. Didn't I realize that Michael's progress was my own destiny? And right before his final examinations, too!

  "Like a child," she said. "Just like a child."

  She refused to stay the night. She had dropped everything and come rushing to Jerusalem like a fool. She regretted having come. She regretted a lot of things. "The whole thing is just a simple matter of a twenty-minute operation, no worse than having your tonsils out. But there are some complicated women who won't understand the simplest things. As for you, Micha, you sit there like a dummy as if it's none of your business. Sometimes I think there's no point in the older generation sacrificing itself for the sake of the young. I'd better shut up now and not say everything I've got on my mind. Good day to you both."

  Aunt Jenia snatched up her brown hat and stormed out. Michael sat speechless with his mouth half-open, like a child who has just been told a frightening story. I went into the kitchen, locked the door, and cried. I stood by the dresser, grated a carrot, sprinkled sugar on it, added some lemon juice and cried. If my husband knocked on the door, I did not answer. But I am almost certain now that he did not knock.

  Our son Yair was born at the end of the first year of our marriage, in March 1951, after a difficult pregnancy.

  In the summer, early on in my pregnancy, I lost two ration books in the street. Michael's and my own. Without them it was impossible to buy essential foodstuffs. For weeks I showed signs of vitamin deficiency. Michael refused to buy so much as a grain of salt on the black market. He had inherited this principle from his father, a fierce, proud loyalty to the laws of our state.

  Even when we got new ration books I continued to suffer from various troubles. Once I had a dizzy spell and collapsed in the playground of Sarah Zeldin's kindergarten. The doctor forbade me to go on working. This was a difficult decision for us because our financial position was critical. The doctor also prescribed injections of liver extract and calcium tablets. I had a permanent headache. I felt as if I were being stabbed in the right temple with a splinter of ice-cold metal. My dreams became tormented. I would wake up screaming. Michael wrote to his family telling them that I had had to stop working and also mentioning my mental condition. Thanks to the help of my best friend Hadassah's husband, Michael succeeded in getting a modest loan from the Students' Assistance Fund.

  At the end of August a registered letter arrived from Aunt Jenia. She had not seen fit to write us a single line, but in the envelope we found a folded check for three hundred pounds.

  Michael said that if my pride compelled me to return the money he was willing to give up studying and look for a job, and that I was free to send back Aunt Jenia's money. I said I didn't like the word "pride," and that I accepted the money gratefully. In that case, Michael asked me always to remember that he had been willing to give up his studies and look for a job.

  "I shall remember, Michael. You know me. I don't know how to forget."

  I stopped attending lectures at the university. I would never study Hebrew literature again. I recorded in my exercise book that a quality of desolation pervades the works of the poets of the Hebrew renaissance. Where this quality of desolation came from, what it consists in, I would never know.

  The housework, too, was neglected. I would sit for most of the morning alone on our little balcony, which overlooked a deserted backyard. I would rest on the deck-chair, throwing crumbs of bread to the cats. I enjoyed watching the neighbors' children playing in the yard. My father occasionally used to use the phrase "silently stand and stare." I stand and stare silently, but far from the silence, far from the staring to which my father probably referred. What point do the children in the yard see in their eager, panting competition? The game is tiring and the victory is hollow. What does victory hold in store? Night will fall. Winter will return. Rains will fall and eradicate all. Strong winds will blow again in Jerusalem. There may be a war. The game of hide-and-seek is
absurdly futile. From my balcony I can see them all. Can anyone really hide? Who tries? What a strange thing excitement is. Relax, tired children. Winter is still far off, but already he is gathering his forces. And the distance is deceptive.

  After lunch I would collapse onto my bed, exhausted. I could not even read the newspaper.

  Michael left at eight o'clock in the morning and came home at six in the evening. It was summer. I could not breathe on the window and draw shapes on the glass. To make things easier for me, Michael resumed his old routine and lunched with his student friends in the student canteen at the end of Mamillah Road.

  December was the sixth month of my pregnancy. Michael took the examinations for his first degree. He got an upper second. I was unmoved by his success. Let him celebrate by himself and leave me alone. My husband had already started studying for his second degree in October. In the evening, when he came home tired, he would volunteer to go out to the grocer, the greengrocer, the druggist. On one occasion he absented himself on my account from an important experiment, because I had asked him to go to the clinic for me and collect the result of a test.

  That evening Michael broke his mental vow of silence. He tried to explain to me that his life was not so easy these days, either. I shouldn't imagine that he was living in a bed of roses, as it were.

  "I didn't imagine you were, Michael."

  Then why did I make him feel guilty?

  Did I make him feel guilty? He must realize that I couldn't be romantic at a time like this. I didn't even have a maternity dress. Every day I wore my ordinary clothes, which didn't fit and weren't comfortable. So how could I look pretty and attractive?

  No, that wasn't what he wanted of me. It wasn't my beauty which he missed. What he did ask, what he implored, was that I should stop being so stiff and so hysterical.

  Indeed, during this time there was a kind of uneasy compromise between us. We were like two travelers consigned by fate to adjacent seats on a long railway journey. Bound to show consideration for each other, to observe the conventions of politeness, not to impose and not to intrude on each other, not to presume on their acquaintance. To be courteous and considerate. To entertain each other, perhaps, from time to time with pleasant, superficial chatter. Making no demands. Even displaying restrained sympathy at times.

  But outside the carriage window there stretches a flat and gloomy landscape. A parched plain. Low scrub.

  If I ask him to close a window, he is delighted to be of service.

  It was a kind of wintry balance. Cautious and laborious, like going down a flight of steps slippery from the rain. Oh, to be able to rest and rest.

  I admit it: It was often I who upset the balance. Without Michael's firm grasp I should have slipped and fallen. I deliberately sat for whole evenings in silence as if I were alone in the house. If Michael asked how I felt I would answer:

  "What do you care?"

  If he took offense and did not ask how I felt next morning, I would snarl that he didn't ask because he didn't care.

  Once or twice, early in the winter, I embarrassed my husband by my tears. I called him a brute. I accused him of insensitivity and indifference. Michael rebutted both charges mildly. He spoke calmly and patiently, as if it were he who had given offense and I was to be placated. I resisted like a rebellious child. I hated him till a lump rose in my throat. I wanted to shake him out of his calm.

  Coolly and thoroughly Michael washed the floor, wrung out the cloth, and dried the floor twice. Then he asked me if I felt better. He warmed me some milk and removed the skin, which I hated. He apologized for making me angry, in my special condition. He asked me to explain what exactly he had done to make me angry, so that he could avoid making the same mistake again. Then he went out to fetch a can of paraffin.

  In the last months of my pregnancy I felt ugly. I did not dare look in the mirror; my face was disfigured with dark blotches. I had to wear elastic stockings because of my varicose veins. Perhaps now I looked like Mrs. Tarnopoler or old Sarah Zeldin.

  "Do you find me ugly, Michael?"

  "You're very precious to me, Hannah."

  "If you don't find me ugly, why don't you hold me?"

  "Because if I do you'll burst into tears and say that I'm just pretending. You've already forgotten what you said to me this morning. You told me not to touch you. And so I haven't."

  When Michael was out of the house I experienced a return of my old childhood yearning, to be very ill.

  13

  MICHAEL'S FATHER composed a letter in verse congratulating his son on his examination success. He rhymed "resounding success" with "my joy to express" and "Hannah's great happiness." Michael read the letter out loud to me and then admitted that he had hoped to receive some small token from me too, such as a new pipe, to mark his success in his first final examination. He said this with an embarrassed, embarrassing smile. I was angry with him for what he had said, and his smile also made me angry. Hadn't I told him a thousand times that my head ached as if it were being stabbed with ice-cold steel? Why did he always think of himself and never of me?

  Three times Michael declined on my account to go on important geological expeditions in which all his fellow students took part. One was to Mount Manara, where iron ore deposits had been discovered, another to the Negev, and the third to the potash works at Sodom. Even his married friends went on these expeditions. I did not thank Michael for his sacrifice. But one evening there happened to run through my head two half-forgotten lines from a well-known nursery rhyme about a boy called Michael:

  Little Michael danced five years, but then he heard the bell;

  He went to school, and tearfully bid his pet dove farewell.

  I burst out laughing.

  Michael stared at me in subdued amazement. It wasn't often, he said, that he saw me happy. He would very much like to know what it was that had suddenly made me laugh.

  I looked at his startled eyes, and laughed louder still.

  Michael was sunk deep in thought for a few moments. Then he started to tell me a political joke he had heard that day in the student canteen.

  My mother arrived from Kibbutz Nof Harim in Upper Galilee to stay with us till the birth and to look after the housework. Since my mother had moved to Nof Harim after my father's death in 1943 she had never had a chance to manage a household. She was disastrously enthusiastic and efficient. After the first lunch, which she cooked as soon as she arrived, she said to Michael that she knew he didn't like eggplant, but that he had just eaten three dishes made with eggplant without realizing it. It was wonderful, the miracles you could work in the kitchen. Had he really not noticed the taste of the eggplant? Not even a bit?

  Michael answered politely. No, he hadn't noticed it at all. Yes, it was wonderful what miracles you could do in the kitchen.

  My mother sent Michael on one errand after another. She made his life miserable with her vigorous insistence on strict hygiene. He must always wash his hands. Never put money on the table when people were eating. Take the mesh screens out of the window frames to clean them properly. "What do you think you're doing? Not there on the balcony, if you don't mind—the dust will all come flying back into the room. Not on the balcony; downstairs, outside in the yard. Yes, that's right, that's better."

  She knew that Michael had been brought up an orphan, without a mother, and that was why she didn't get angry with him. But still, she couldn't understand him: educated, enlightened, a university man—didn't he realize the world was full of germs?

  Michael submitted obediently like a well brought-up child. What can I do to help? Allow me. Am I in your way? No, I'll go and get it. Of course I'll ask the greengrocer. All right, I'll try to come home early. I'll take the shopping basket with me. No, I won't forget; look, I've already made a list. He agreed to give up his idea of buying the first volumes of the new Encyclopaedia Hebraica. It was not essential. He knew now that we must both save as much as we possibly could.

  In the evenings Michael worked at a par
t-time job, helping the librarian of the departmental library, which brought in a little money. "Nowadays I don't have the honor of Your Excellency's presence in the evenings either," I grumbled. Michael even gave up smoking his pipe in the house because my mother could not bear the smell of tobacco and was also convinced that the smoke would harm the baby.

  When he found it hard to contain himself my husband would go down into the street and stand smoking for a quarter of an hour under a lamppost like a poet in search of inspiration. Once I stood at the window and watched him for a while. By the light of the street lamp I could see the close-cropped hair on the back of his head. Rings of smoke curled around him, as if he were a spirit called up from the dead. I remembered some words Michael had spoken long before: Cats are never wrong about people. He always liked the word "ankle." I was a cold, beautiful Jerusalemite. He was an ordinary young man, in his opinion. He had never had a regular girlfriend before he met me. In the rain the stone lion on the Generali Building laughs under his breath. Emotion becomes a malignant tumor when people are contented and have nothing to do. Jerusalem makes one feel sad, but it is a different sadness at every moment of the day, at every time of the year. That was all a long time ago. Michael must have forgotten it all by now. Only I refused to abandon so much as a crumb to the icy claws of time. I wonder, what is the magical change which time works on trivial words? There is a kind of alchemy in things, which is the inner melody of my life. The youth leader who told the girl we saw by Aqua Bella that love in our modern age should be as simple as drinking a glass of water was wrong. Michael was quite right when he told me that night in Geula Street that my husband would have to be a very strong man. At that moment I felt that, although he had to stand there smoking under a lamppost like a child in disgrace, yet he had no right to blame me for his suffering, because I should soon be dead, and so I need show no consideration for him. Michael knocked out his pipe and started walking back. I hurriedly lay down on the bed and turned my face to the wall. My mother asked him to open a can for her. Michael replied that he would be delighted. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance.