My Michael

by Amos Oz

  One night, after we had turned out the light in silence, Michael whispered to me that he had the feeling, sometimes, that I didn't love him any more. He said this calmly, as if reciting the name of some mineral.

  "I'm depressed," I said, "that's all."

  Michael was understanding. My condition. My poor health. Difficult circumstances. He may have used the words "psycho-physical," "psychosomatic." All the winter a wind stirs the tops of the pine trees in Jerusalem, and when it dies away it leaves not a trace on the pines. You are a stranger, Michael. You lie next to me at night, and you are a stranger.

  14

  OUR SON YAIR was born in March 1951.

  My late father's name, Yosef, had been given to my brother Emanuel's son. My son was given two names, Yair and Zalman, in memory of Michael's grandfather, Zalman Ganz.

  Yehezkel Gonen came up to Jerusalem on the day after the birth. Michael brought him to see me in the maternity ward of Shaare Zedek Hospital, a dark and depressing place built in the last century. The plaster on the wall opposite my bed was peeling, and as I stared at the wall I discovered weird shapes, a jagged mountain range or dark women frozen in hysterical convulsions.

  Yehezkel Gonen, too, was dark and depressing. He sat for a long time by my bedside, holding Michael's hand and tediously recounting his troubles: How he had come from Holon to Jerusalem, how from the bus station he had gone by mistake to Mea Shearim instead of Mekor Baruch. There were corners of Mea Shearim, among the twisted stairways and sagging washlines, which had reminded him of the poor areas of Radom in Poland. We couldn't possibly imagine, he said, how great was his pain, his longing, how deep his sadness. Well, he got to Mea Shearim, and he asked, and they told him, and he asked again, and they misdirected him again—he wouldn't have believed that Orthodox children were capable of such tricks, or perhaps there's a deceptive quality in the side streets of Jerusalem. Finally, tired and worn out, he had managed to find the house, and even that had been more by chance than anything else. "Still, all's well that ends well, as they say. That's not the point. The point is that I want to kiss your forehead—so—to give you my best wishes and also those of Michael's aunts, to hand over this envelope—there's a hundred and forty-seven pounds in it, the rest of my savings—flowers I'm sorry but I've forgotten to bring you, and I beg and implore you to call my grandson Zalman."

  When he had finished speaking, he fanned himself with his battered hat to refresh his weary face and sighed with relief at having finally rolled the great stone from the mouth of the well.

  "The reason for the name Zalman I should like to explain to you briefly, in a few words. I have a sentiment about it. Does all this talking tire you, my dear? Well then, I have a sentiment. Zal-man was the name of my father, our dear Michael's grandfather. Zalman Ganz was a remarkable man in his way. It is your duty to honor his memory, as good Jews should. Zalman Ganz was a teacher, and a very fine teacher indeed. One of the best. He taught natural sciences in the Hebrew teachers college in Grodno. It was from him that Michael received his aptitude for science. Well then, to come straight to the point. I am begging you. I have never asked you for anything before. By the way, when will they let me see the baby? So. I've never asked you for anything before. I have always given you everything I've had to offer. And now, my dear children, I am asking you for a favor, a very special favor. It means a great deal to me ... Please will you name my grandson Zalman."

  Yehezkel rose and left the room so that Michael and I could discuss the matter. He was a considerate old man. I didn't know whether to laugh or to scream. "Zalman"—what a name!

  Michael very cautiously put forward the suggestion that the birth certificate should carry the double name "Yair-Zalman." He suggested, but he did not insist. The final decision was mine. Until the child grew up, Michael proposed that we should keep his second name a secret, so as not to make our son's life a misery.

  How wise you are, my Michael. How very wise.

  My husband stroked my cheek. He asked what extra things I wanted him to buy on the way home. Then he said goodbye and went outside to announce the compromise to his father. I imagine that my husband praised me to his father for consenting readily to an arrangement which any other woman, and so on.

  I was not present at the circumcision ceremony. The doctors discovered a slight complication in my condition, and confined me to my bed. In the afternoon I received a visit from Aunt Jenia, Dr. Jenia Ganz-Crispin. She swept through the ward like a hurricane and burst into the doctors' office. She bellowed in German and Polish. She threatened to carry me off in a private ambulance to the hospital in Tel Aviv where she held the post of first assistant in the pediatric department. She was severely critical of the doctor in charge of me. In the presence of the other doctors and the nurses she accused him of culpable negligence. "It's monstrous," she exclaimed. "Just like some Asiatic hospital, God forbid."

  I have no idea what the point at issue between Aunt Jenia and the doctor was, or why she was so furious. She only spent a moment at my bedside. She brushed my cheek with her lips and her downy mustache, and ordered me not to worry. "I'll do all the worrying. I won't hesitate to make a scene in the highest places, if necessary. If you ask me, our Micha lives in an ivory tower. Just like his father, der selber chuchem."

  While Aunt Jenia spoke, she placed her hand on my white blanket. I saw a short-fingered, masculine hand. Aunt Jenia's fingers were tense, as if she was fighting to hold back her sobs while her hand rested on my bed.

  Aunt Jenia had suffered a lot in her youth. Michael had told me part of her life story. Her first husband had been a gynecologist by the name of Lipa Freud. This Freud had left Aunt Jenia in 1934 and run off to Cairo after a Czech woman athlete. He had hanged himself in a bedroom in Shepheard's Hotel, then the foremost hotel in the Near East. During the Second World War Aunt Jenia had married an actor named Albert Crispin. This husband had had a nervous breakdown, and when he recovered had been stricken with a total and complete apathy. For the last ten years he had been kept in a boardinghouse in Nahariya, where he did nothing except sleep, eat, and stare. Aunt Jenia supported him at her own expense.

  I wonder why other people's sufferings sound to us like the plot of an operetta. Is it perhaps precisely because they are other people's? My father occasionally used to say that even the strongest people cannot choose what they want. As she left, Aunt Jenia said, "You'll see, Hannah; that doctor will rue the day he met me. What a villain. Wherever you turn these days you find scoundrels and imbeciles. Get well soon, Hannah."

  "You too, Aunt Jenia. I'm grateful to you. You haven't spared any effort, and all for my sake."

  "Nothing of the sort. Don't talk such nonsense, Hannah. People should be human beings, not wild beasts. Don't let them give you any medicines, apart from calcium tablets. Tell them I said so."

  15

  THAT NIGHT in the maternity ward an Oriental woman cried and cried forlornly. The night nurse and the doctor on duty spoke to her comfortingly and tried to quiet her. They begged her to tell them what was wrong so that they could help her. The Oriental woman cried rhythmically and monotonously, as if there were no words and no people in the world.

  The medical staff spoke to the woman as if they were interrogating a crafty criminal. Now they spoke harshly, now kindly. They alternately threatened her and assured her that all would be well.

  The Oriental did not react to what they were saying. Perhaps a stubborn pride prevented her. By the faint light of the night lamp I could see her face. There was no expression of weeping. Her face was smooth and free of wrinkles. But her voice was piercing and her tears trickled slowly down.

  At midnight the medical staff held a conference. The nurse brought the weeping woman her baby, although it was not strictly the permitted time. From under her blanket the woman drew out a hand like some small animal's paw. She touched the baby's head, then immediately withdrew her hand as if she had touched a redhot iron. They put the baby down in her bed. Still the woman cried. Even when
they took the baby away there was no change. Finally the nurse seized the thin arm and thrust a hypodermic needle into it. The woman slowly nodded her head up and down, bemused, as if mystified by these clever people who cared for her constantly. Didn't they realize that nothing in the world mattered any more?

  All night long she kept up her piercing wail. I gradually lost sight of the dingy ward and the faint night light. I saw an earthquake in Jerusalem.

  An old man was walking down Zephaniah Street. He was heavy and grim, and he was carrying a large sack. The man stopped on the corner of Amos Street. He started shouting, "Pri-mus stoves, pri-mus." The streets were deserted. There was no breeze. The birds had disappeared. Then stiff-tailed cats emerged from the courtyards. They were lean, arched, elusive. They sprang to the trunks of the trees planted along the pavement and clambered among the highest leaves. From here they peeped down, bristling and hissing spitefully, as though an evil dog was passing through the district of Kerem Avraham. The old man put his sack down in the middle of the road. There was nothing moving in the streets, because the British army had imposed a complete curfew. The man scratched his neck, and the gesture suggested rage. In his hand he held a rusty nail, which he dug into the asphalt. He made a little crack. The crack quickly widened and spread like a railway network in an educational film, where processes are shown speeded up. I bit my fist so as not to let out a terrified scream. There was a slight rattle of gravel down Zephaniah Street toward the Bokharian Quarter. The gravel as it touched me caused me no pain. Like tiny balls of wool. But there was a nervous quiver in the air, like the quivering and bristling of a cat before it pounces. Slowly the huge boulder slid down from Mount Scopus, cut through the district of Beit Yisrael as if the houses were built of dominoes, and rolled up Prophet Ezekiel Street. I felt that a huge boulder had no right to roll uphill, that it ought to head down the slope—otherwise it wouldn't be fair. I was afraid that my new necklace would be torn off my neck and be lost, and that I would be punished. I turned to run, but the old man spread his sack across the road and stood on it and I could not move the sack because the man was heavy. I pressed myself against a fence although I knew I would dirty my favorite dress and then the huge boulder covered me and the huge boulder was also like wool and not at all hard. Buildings tottered and crumbled row on row, turned slowly and collapsed like fine heroes in an opera, splendidly slain. The debris did not hurt. It covered me like a warm eiderdown, like a pile of feathers. It was a gentle, halfhearted embrace. Tattered women rose among the ruins. One of them was Mrs. Tarnopoler. They wailed an Oriental melody like the hired mourners I had seen at my father's funeral outside the mortuary at Bikur Holim Hospital. Hundreds and thousands of boys, Orthodox boys, thin boys with sidecurls and black gabardines, poured in streams silently from Achva, Geula, Sanhedriya, Beit Yisrael, Mea Shearim, Tel Arza. They settled on the ruins, scrabbled, scrabbled insidiously, teeming and fervid. It was hard to look at them and not be one of them. I was one of them. One boy dressed up as a policeman hovered high on a crumbling balcony at the top of a free-standing façade. The boy laughed out loud for joy to see me lying as I was in the road. He was a vulgar boy. Collapsed in the road I saw an olive-green British armored car moving slowly on. Over the loudspeaker on its turret a Hebrew voice spoke. The voice was calm and masculine and it sent a pleasant shudder down to the soles of my feet. It announced the regulations for the curfew. Anyone found out of doors would be shot without warning. Doctors stood around me because I had collapsed in the road and could not get up. The doctors spoke Polish. "Risk of an outbreak of plague," they said. The Polish was Hebrew but not our Hebrew. The Scottish redcaps waited for blood-red-capped reinforcements from the two British destroyers Dragon and Tigress. Suddenly the boy in policeman's clothes sailed down head first from the balcony, sailed down slowly toward the pavement as if the High Commissioner for Palestine General Cunningham had suspended every law of gravity, sailed down slowly toward the ruined pavement, sailed down and I could not scream.

  Shortly before two o'clock the night nurse woke me. On a squeaking trolley they brought me my son to be fed. The nightmare was still with me and I cried and cried, even more than the Oriental woman who was still sobbing. Through my tears I begged the nurse to explain to me how it was that the baby was still alive, how my baby had survived the disaster.

  16

  TIME AND MEMORY favor trivial words. They treat them with particular kindness. They surround them with the tender glow of twilight.

  I cling to memory and to words as one clings to a railing in a high place.

  For example, the words of an old nursery rhyme to which my memory clings relentlessly:

  Little clown, little clown, will you dance with me?

  Pretty little clown will dance with everyone.

  I should like to observe the following: There is a reply in the second half of this rhyme to the question posed in the first, but the reply is a disappointing one.

  Ten days after the birth the doctors allowed me to leave the hospital, but I had to stay in bed and avoid any form of strain. Michael was patient and indefatigable.

  When I arrived home with my baby in a taxi, a bitter quarrel broke out between my mother and Aunt Jenia. Aunt Jenia had taken another day off from her work in the hospital to come to Jerusalem and give Michael and me her instructions. She wanted to persuade me to behave rationally.

  Aunt Jenia instructed Michael to place the baby's cradle against the south wall of the room, so that the shutters could be opened without the sun striking the baby. My mother instructed Michael to put the cradle by my bedside. She wouldn't dispute medicine with doctors, certainly not. But people have souls as well as bodies, said my mother, and only a mother can understand a mother's soul. A mother and her baby need to be close together. To feel each other. A home is not a hospital. This was a question of feeling, not of medicine. My mother spoke these words in rather broken Hebrew. Aunt Jenia did not look at her. She looked toward Michael and said, "One can understand Mrs. Greenbaum's feelings, but at least you and I are rational people."

  There ensued a venomous but amazingly polite conflict, in which both women withdrew their objections and insisted that the matter was not worth quarreling about, but each refused to accept the other's surrender.

  Michael stood silent in his gray suit. The baby was asleep in his arms. Michael's eyes pleaded with the women to take the baby from him. He had the look of a man who is desperately struggling to hold back a sneeze. I smiled at him.

  The two women took hold of each other's arms and pushed each other gently, addressing each other as "Pani Greenbaum" and "Pani Doktor." The argument lapsed into gabbled Polish.

  Michael stammered, "There's no point, there's no point," but he did not specify which of the two opinions he considered pointless.

  Finally Aunt Jenia, as if hit by a brainstorm, suggested letting the parents choose for themselves.

  Michael said, "Hannah?"

  I was tired. I accepted Aunt Jenia's suggestion, because that morning when she arrived in Jerusalem she had bought me a blue flannel housecoat. I could not hurt her feelings when I was wearing the pretty housecoat she had bought me.

  Aunt Jenia was all smiles. She patted Michael's shoulder like a fine lady congratulating a young jockey who had just ridden her horse to victory. My mother said, in a sickly voice, "Gut, gut. Azoy wie Hannele will. Yo."

  But that evening, shortly after Aunt Jenia's departure, my mother, too, decided to leave next day for Nof Harim. There was nothing she could do here. She didn't want to be in the way. And she was badly needed up there. It would all be all right. When Han-nele was a baby it had been even worse. It would all be all right.

  After the two women had left our house I realized that my husband had learned how to warm milk in a bottle inside a saucepan of boiling water, to feed his child, and to lift him up from time to time to make him burp so that the wind should not be trapped inside him.

  The doctor had forbidden me to breastfeed the baby becau
se a new complication had arisen. The new complication was not particularly serious; it caused me occasional pain and a certain discomfort.

  Between periods of sleep the baby would open his eyelids and display islands of pure blue. I felt that this was his inner color, that the peepholes of his eyes revealed mere droplets of the radiant blue which filled the baby's body underneath his skin. When my son looked at me I remembered that he could not see yet. The thought frightened me. I did not trust nature to repeat successfully the established sequence of events. I knew nothing of the natural bodily processes. Michael could not offer much help. "Broadly speaking," he said, "the physical world is governed by constant rules. I am not a biologist, but as a natural scientist I can't see any point in your persistent questions about the nature of causality. The term 'causality' always produces difficulties and misunderstandings."