My Michael

by Amos Oz

  After five days our new kitten went out and did not return. All evening my husband and my son searched for him in the street, in the neighborhood, and also round the wall of the Orthodox girls' school where Michael had first picked him up the previous week. Yair was of the opinion that we had offended Snowy. Michael, on the other hand, suggested that he had gone home to his mother. My conscience was clear. I mention this because I was suspected of having done away with the kitten. Could Michael really imagine that I was capable of poisoning a kitten?

  "I realize," he said, "that I did wrong in deciding to keep a cat without consulting you, as if I lived on my own. Please try to understand me: I only wanted to make the boy happy. And when I was a child I longed to have a cat, but my father wouldn't let me."

  "I never touched him, Michael. You've got to believe me. I won't even object if you bring another kitten home. I never touched him."

  "I suppose he just went up to heaven in a fiery chariot." Michael smiled a dry smile. "Let's not talk about it any more. I'm only sorry for the boy, though; he was very much attached to Snowy. But let's drop the subject. Must we quarrel over a little kitten?"

  "There's no quarrel," I said.

  "No quarrel, and no kitten." Again Michael smiled his dry smile.

  23

  ABOUT THIS TIME the flavor of our nights changed. By dint of prolonged and careful attention Michael had learned to make my body glad. His fingers were confident and experienced. They never gave up before I was forced to utter a low groan. Michael persevered with patience and sensitivity in extracting this groan from me. He learned to press his lips to a particular spot in my neck and dwell on it forcefully. To climb with his warm, firm hand right up my back to the nape of my neck, to the roots of my hair, and then return by a different route. By the meager light of the street lamp shining through the slatted shutter Michael saw on my face an expression resembling one of sharp pain. My eyes were always closed in a perpetual effort of concentration. I know Michael's eyes were not closed because he was concentrated and lucid. Lucid and responsible was his touch now. Every movement of his hand was calculated to give me pleasure. When I awoke towards morning I wanted him again. Wild visions came without my wanting them. A hermit wrapped in skins takes me in the Schneller Woods, bites my shoulder, and cries out. A mad workman from the new factory to the west of Mekor Baruch snatches me up and rushes off towards the hills, bearing me lightly in his grease-stained arms. And the dark ones: their hands are soft but firm, their legs hairy and bronzed. They do not laugh.

  Or else war has broken out in Jerusalem, and I dash out of my house in a flimsy nightdress and run crazed along a dark and narrow road. Strong flashlight beams suddenly light up the avenue of cypresses: my child is lost. Stern strangers search for him in the valleys. A tracker. Police officers. Weary volunteers from the surrounding villages. Their sympathy is obvious from their eyes, but how busy they are. Politely but firmly they urge me not to worry. The chances are good. After sunrise their efforts will be redoubled. I wandered in the dim alleyways behind the Street of the Abyssini-ans. I cried out "Yair, Yair" in a street full of dead cats rolling on the pavement. From one of the courtyards stepped the venerable professor who had taught me Hebrew literature. He was wearing a shabby suit. His smile was the smile of a very tired man. "You too are childless, young lady," he said politely, "and so you will permit me to invite you in." Who is that strange girl in green with her arms round my husband's waist further down the street, as if I were not here? I was invisible. My husband said, "A happy sentiment. A sad sentiment." He said, "They're going to build a very deep harbor at Ashdod."

  It was autumn. The trees were not properly joined to the earth. Swaying suspiciously. Obscenely. On a high balcony I saw Captain Nemo. His face was pale and his eyes glittered. His black beard was cropped short. I knew that it was my fault, my fault that they had delayed setting sail. Time is slipping away. I'm ashamed of myself, Captain. Don't look at me so silently.

  One day when I was six or seven I was sitting in my father's shop in Jaffa Road when the poet Saul Tchernichovsky came in to buy a table lamp. "Is this lovely girl for sale, too?" the poet asked my father with a laugh. Suddenly he lifted me in his strong arms and his silvery mustache tickled my cheek. A strong, warm odor rose from his body. His smile was mischievous, like that of a high-spirited boy who has managed to provoke the grownups. After he left my father was agitated and excited: "Our great poet spoke to us and behaved just like an ordinary customer. But surely the poet meant something," my father went on in a thoughtful tone, "when he lifted Hannah up in his arms and laughed that great laugh." I have not forgotten. In the early winter of 1954 I dreamt of the poet. And of the city of Danzig. And of a great procession.

  Michael had begun collecting stamps. His explanation was that he was collecting for the child's sake, but so far Yair had shown no interest whatever in stamps. One suppertime Michael showed me a rare stamp from Danzig. How had he come by it? That morning he had bought a second-hand foreign book in Solel Street. The book was called The Seismography of Deep-Water Lakes, and in among the pages he had found this scarce stamp from Danzig. Michael tried to explain to me about the high value attaching to the stamps of extinct states: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Free Danzig, Schleswig-Holstein, Bohemia and Moravia, Serbia, Croatia. I fell in love with the names as Michael uttered them.

  The rare stamp was not exciting to look at: dark colors, a stylized cross with a crown above, and, in Gothic script, "Freie Stadt." There was no scene at all depicted on the stamp. How could I guess what the city looked like? Broad avenues or high-walled buildings? Sloping steeply down to dip its feet in the water of the harbor, like Haifa, or extending flat over the surface of a marshy plain? A city of towers, surrounded by forests, or perhaps a city of banks and factories, all built on a square plan? The stamp gave no indication.

  I asked Michael what the city of Danzig looked like.

  Michael replied with a smile, as if the only reply I had expected from him was his smile.

  This time I repeated the question. And so, because I had asked twice, he was forced to admit that he was astonished by my question.

  "Why on earth do you want to know what Danzig looks like? And how do you expect me to know? After supper I'll look it up for you in the Encyclopaedia Hebraica—no, I can't do that, because they haven't got to D yet. By the way, if you're so keen on traveling abroad sometime I advise you to cut down on your spending, and not throw away your new dresses when you've only had them a few weeks. What happened to that gray skirt we bought together at Maayan Stub at Succot?"

  And so I could discover nothing from Michael about the city of Danzig. After supper, when we were drying the dishes, I spoke to him mockingly. I said he had only pretended to be collecting stamps for the child's sake, that in fact the child was just an excuse for his own infantile desire to play with stamps like a baby. I wanted to defeat my husband in one small argument.

  Michael denied me even this meager satisfaction. He is not easily offended. He did not interrupt my stream of provocations, because it is wrong to break in when someone is talking. He went on carefully drying the china plate he was holding. He stood on tiptoe to put the clean plate back in its place, in the cupboard over the sink. Then, without turning his head, he said that there was nothing new in what I had said. You didn't need to know much about psychology to know that even grownups like to play occasionally. He was collecting stamps for Yair in exactly the same way that I cut paper figures out of the magazines for him, even though they didn't interest the child in the least. So what point could I see in poking fun at his sentiment?

  After we had put away the plates Michael sat down in an armchair and listened to the news. I sat opposite him and kept silent. We peeled fruit. We passed the peeled fruit to each other. Michael said:

  "The electricity bill this month is enormous."

  I said:

  "Everything's getting more expensive. Milk's just gone up, too."

  That night I dreamed
of Danzig.

  I was a princess. From the tower of my castle I gazed out over the city. Crowds of subjects had gathered at the foot of the tower.

  I stretched out my arms to greet them. The gesture resembled the attitude of the bronze statue of the Virgin on top of the Terra Sancta Convent.

  I saw the dim masses of roofs. In the southeast the skies were darkening over the old parts of the city. Black clouds scudded from the north. There will be a storm. Down the hill I could make out the silhouettes of gigantic derricks in the port, black iron scaffolds. At the top of each derrick glimmered a red warning-light. The daylight turned gradually gray. I heard the siren of a ship leaving the harbor. To the south I could hear the roar of moving trains, but the trains themselves were not visible. I could see a park with leafy spinneys. In the middle of the park was an elongated lake. In the center of the lake was a small, long island. On it stood the statue of a princess. My statue.

  The water in the harbor was smeared with black oil from the ships. The street lights came on, and cast strips of cold light on my city. The cool glow beat against the roof of fog, cloud, and smoke. It gathered like a murky halo in the sky above the outlying areas.

  A tumultuous hubbub rose from the square. I, the princess of the city, stood at the top of the castle, and it was my duty to speak to the people waiting in the square. I had to say that I loved them, that I forgave them, but that I had been seriously ill for a long time. I could not speak. I was still ill. The poet Saul, whom I had appointed Chamberlain, came and stood at my right hand. He spoke to the people, using soothing words in a language I could not understand. The crowd cheered him. Suddenly I seemed to hear beyond the cheers a vague, angry murmur. The poet uttered four rhyming words, a slogan or catch phrase in another language, and the crowd burst into infectious laughter. A woman started shouting. A child climbed a column and grimaced. A man in a cloak shot out a venomous phrase. The loud cheering swept everything else away. Then the poet slipped a warm coat round my shoulders. I touched his fine, silvery hair with my fingertips. The gesture caused a fervid commotion in the crowd, a swelling din which turned to tumult. An outpouring of love or of rage.

  An airplane flew over the city. I ordered it to flash green and red. For an instant it seemed as if the plane were flying among the stars and trailing the weaker ones along behind it. Then an army unit thronged through Zion Square. The men were singing a spirited anthem in honor of the princess. I was borne through the streets in a carriage drawn by four gray horses. With a weary hand I scattered kisses to my people. My subjects thronged in their thousands into Geula Street, in Mahane Yehuda, in Ussishkin Street and Keren Kayemet Street. Every hand held a flag or a flower. It was a procession. I leaned on the arms of my two bodyguards. They were self-restrained, dark, and graceful. I was tired. My subjects threw chrysanthemum wreaths. Chrysanthemums are my favorite flower. It was a feast day. By the Terra Sancta Convent Michael held out his arm and helped me down from the carriage. As usual, he was calm and collected. The princess knew that this was a decisive moment. She felt that she must be regal. A short librarian appeared, wearing a black skullcap. His movements were submissive. It was Yehezkel, Michael's father. "Your Highness." The Master of Ceremonies bowed submissively. "With Your High-ness's gracious permission." Behind the submissiveness I seemed to sense a vague sneer. I have never liked old Sarah Zeldin's dry laugh. She has no right to stand there on the landing and laugh at me. I was in the basement of the library. In the half-light I could make out the forms of thin women. The thin women lay on the floor with their legs lewdly spread out, in the narrow passage between the bookcases. The floor was slimy. The thin women all looked alike, with their hair dyed and their breasts obscenely exposed. Not one of them smiled or accorded me respect. Suffering showed frozen on their faces. They were coarse. Those women who hated me touched me yet did not touch me. Their fingers were pointed and menacing. They were loose women from the docks. They mocked out loud. They belched. They were drunk. A rank smell rose from their bodies. "I am the Princess of Danzig," I tried to shout, but my voice was taken from me. I was one of those women. The thought occurred to me, "They are all princesses of Danzig." I remembered that I was due to receive an urgent deputation of citizens and merchants about privileges. I don't know what privileges are. I am tired. I am one of these hard women. Out of the fog, from the distant shipyards, came the lowing of a ship, as from a scene of slaughter. I was a prisoner in the library basement. I was handed over to a mob of repulsive women on the slimy floor. I did not forget that there was a British destroyer named Dragon, which knew me, which would be able to single me out from among all the others, which would come and save my life. But the sea would not return to the Free City until the new Ice Age. Until then Dragon was far, far away, patrolling night and day off the coast of Mozambique. No ship could reach the city, which had long been abolished. I was lost.

  24

  MY HUSBAND, Michael Gonen, dedicated his first article in a scientific journal to me. The title was "Processes of Erosion in the Ravines of the Wilderness of Paran." This was also the subject he had been allotted for his doctoral thesis. The dedication was printed underneath the title in italics:

  To Hannah, his understanding wife, the author wishes to dedicate this work.

  I read the article and congratulated Michael on it: I liked the way he avoided the use of adjectives and adverbs and concentrated instead on nouns and verbs. I also liked his avoidance of long clauses. He had expressed himself throughout in short, concise sentences. I admired his dry and factual style.

  Michael seized on the word "dry." Like most people who have no interest in language and who use words in the same way that they use air or water, Michael supposed that I had used the term in an adverse sense. He was sorry, he said, that he wasn't a poet, that he couldn't dedicate a poem to me instead of a dry piece of research. Everyone does what he is capable of. "I know—what a trite sentiment."

  "Michael, do you imagine that I'm not grateful to you for the dedication, or that I don't appreciate the article?"

  "Well, I don't blame you. The article is intended for specialists in geology and the related subjects. Geology isn't history. It's possible to be perfectly well educated and cultured without knowing the basic rudiments of geology."

  Michael's voice pained me, because I had been trying to find a way of sharing in his joy, and unintentionally I had offended him.

  "Can you possibly explain to me in simple words what geo-morphology is all about?"

  Michael reached out thoughtfully, picked up his glasses from the table, and contemplated them with one of his secret smiles. Then he put them down again.

  "Yes, I'm willing to explain it to you, provided you really want to know, and aren't asking just to please me.

  "No, don't put down your knitting. I enjoy sitting opposite you talking while you knit. I like to see you relaxed. You needn't look at me; I know I have your attention. We're not interrogating each other. Geomorphology is a subject on the border between geology and geography. It deals with the processes by means of which the features on the earth's surface are formed. Most people are of the mistaken opinion that the earth was formed and created once and for all many millions of years ago. In fact, the earth's surface is perpetually coming into being. If we may employ the popular concept of 'creation,' we can say that the earth is continuously being created. Even while we are sitting here talking. Different and even opposed factors cooperate in forming and changing both the visible contours and also the underground features which we cannot perceive. Some of the factors are geological, deriving from the action of the molten nucleus at the earth's center, from its gradual, uneven cooling. Other factors are atmospheric, such as wind, floods, and contrasts of heat and cold succeeding one another in accordance with a set cyclical pattern. Certain physical factors, too, have an effect on geomorphological processes. Incidentally, this simple fact is often overlooked by scientists, perhaps because of its very simplicity; the physical factors are so obvious that ev
en some of the most eminent experts sometimes tend to ignore them. The forces of gravity, for example, and the action of the sun. Several complicated and elaborate explanations have been suggested for phenomena which owe their origin to the simplest natural laws.

  "Besides geological, atmospheric, and physical factors, one must also take into account certain concepts from the field of chemistry. Melting, for instance, and fusion. We may conclude by saying that geomorphology is the meeting point of various scientific disciplines. Incidentally, this approach was anticipated by ancient Greek mythology, which seems to ascribe the formation of the world to a perpetual conflict. This principle is accepted by modern science, which makes no attempt, however, to explain the origins of the various factors. In a sense we limit ourselves to a much narrower question than that considered by ancient mythology. Not 'why' but 'how'—that is the only question with which we are concerned. But some modern scientists are occasionally unable to resist the temptation to attempt an over-all explanation. The Soviet school, in particular, so far as one can follow their publications, sometimes makes use of concepts borrowed from the field of the humanities. There is a great temptation for any scientist to be carried away by metaphors and to succumb to the popular illusion that a metaphor can take the place of a scientific explanation. I myself conscientiously avoid using the striking phrases current in certain schools. I am referring to such vague expressions as 'attraction,' 'repulsion,' 'rhythm,' and the like. There is a very slender dividing line between a scientific description and a fairy tale. Far more slender than is usually believed. I make every effort to avoid crossing this line. Perhaps that is why my article creates a rather dry impression."