My Michael

by Amos Oz

  "Michael," I said, "I ought to try to clear up a misunderstanding. When I used the word 'dry' I was using it as a term of praise."

  "It makes me very happy to hear you say so, although I find it hard to believe that we both mean the same thing by the word 'dry.' We are two such very different people. If you can spare me a few hours someday, I shall be happy to show you around my laboratory, and you can attend one of my lectures. Then I'll be able to explain everything rather more simply, and perhaps a little less drily."

  "Tomorrow," I said. And as I said the word I tried to select one of my prettiest smiles.

  "I shall be delighted," said Michael.

  Next morning we sent Yair off to the kindergarten with a note of apology to Sarah Zeldin: for urgent personal reasons I had to take a day off from work.

  Michael and I traveled on two buses to the geological laboratories. When we arrived, Michael asked the charwoman to make two cups of coffee and bring them up to his room.

  "Two cups instead of one today," he said cheerfully, and hastily added: "Matilda, this is Mrs. Gonen. My wife."

  Then we went up to Michael's office on the third floor. This was a tiny cubicle at the lighted end of a long corridor, separated from it by a plywood partition. In this cubicle stood a desk which had made its way there from some office of the British administration; a pair of rush chairs; and an empty bookcase adorned with a large shellcase that served as a vase. Under the glass top of the desk was a picture of me on our wedding day, Yair in carnival costume, and a couple of white kittens cut out of a color magazine.

  Michael sat down with his back to the window, stretched out his legs, rested his elbows on the desk in front of him, and attempted to adopt an official-looking pose. "Take a seat, please, Madam," he said. "What can I do for you?"

  At that moment the door opened, and Matilda came in carrying a tray with two cups of coffee. She might have caught Michael's last words. In his embarrassment my husband repeated:

  "Matilda, this is Mrs. Gonen. My wife."

  Matilda left the room. Michael asked me to excuse him while he devoted a few minutes to his papers. I sipped my coffee and looked at him, because I guessed that he wanted me to. He noticed me looking at him, and beamed with quiet satisfaction. How little we need to do to make someone else happy.

  After a few moments Michael stood up. I stood too. He apologized for the slight delay. "I just had to put my papers in order, as they say. Let's go down to the lab now. I hope you'll find it interesting. I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have to ask."

  My husband was clear and polite as he showed me around the geological laboratories. I asked him questions so as to give him the chance to explain. He repeatedly inquired whether I was tired or bored. This time I was very careful in my choice of words.

  "No, Michael," I said, "I'm not tired or bored. I want to see lots more. I enjoy listening to your explanation. You have a flair for explaining complicated things in a very clear and precise way. I find everything you are saying utterly new and fascinating."

  When I said this, Michael took my hand between his own and held it there for a moment, just as he had done once when we came out of Cafe Atara into the rainy street.

  Like many students of the humanities, I had always imagined that every academic subject is a system of relating words and ideas. I now discovered that Michael and his colleagues did not deal with words alone but also searched for buried treasures in the bosom of the earth: water, oil, salts, minerals, raw materials for construction and industry, and even precious stones for women's jewelry.

  As we left the laboratory I said:

  "I wish I could convince you that when I used the word 'dry' at home I was using it in a favorable sense. If you invite me to come and hear you lecture, I'll sit at the back of the room and be very proud."

  That was not enough. I longed to go home with him so that I could stroke and stroke his hair. I racked my brain for some glowing compliment which would bring the reticent glimmer, the beam of satisfaction, back into his eyes.

  ***

  I found an empty seat in the last row but one. My husband stood leaning with his elbows on the lectern. His body was lean. His pose was relaxed. From time to time he turned and indicated with a pointer one of the diagrams he had drawn on the blackboard before the lecture. The lines which he had chalked on the board were precise and delicate. I thought of his body under his clothes. The first-year students sat hunched over their notebooks. Once a student raised his hand and asked a question. Michael gazed at the student for a moment as if trying to gauge his reason for making the question before he would answer it. And when he did answer, he spoke as if the point which the student had raised was the most crucial one of all. He was quiet and self-restrained. Even when he paused slightly between his sentences he seemed to me to be not so much at a loss as choosing his words carefully out of some inner sense of responsibility. I suddenly recalled the old geology lecturer in Terra Sancta that February five years before. He too had used a pointer to indicate the significant features of the educational film. His voice had been slow and resonant. My husband also had a pleasant voice. Early in the morning while he stood in the bathroom shaving, when he thought I was still asleep, he would hum to himself under his breath. Now, lecturing to his students, Michael would select one word in each sentence and dwell on it with a soft emphasis as if he were dropping a gentle hint for only the most intelligent of his pupils. The features, arm, and pointer of the old lecturer at Terra Sancta had reminded me, by the light of the magic lantern, of the woodcuts in the books I had loved as a child, Moby Dick or the stories of Jules Verne. I do not know how to forget. Where will I be, what will I be, on the day when Michael catches up with the shadow of the old lecturer from Terra Sancta?

  After the lecture we had lunch together in the University canteen.

  "I'd like you to meet my wife," Michael said proudly to some of his acquaintances who happened to be passing. My husband was like a schoolboy introducing his famous father to his headmaster.

  We had coffee. Michael ordered me a Turkish coffee. He himself preferred coffee light.

  Afterwards Michael lit his pipe. "I can't believe for a moment," he said, "that you found anything interesting in my lecture. I felt quite excited, though, even though none of the students was aware of my wife's presence. I felt so excited, in fact, that twice I nearly lost the thread of what I was saying, because I was thinking of you and looking at you. I only regretted that I wasn't lecturing on a literary subject. I should very much have liked to have kept your interest, instead of boring you with such a dry topic."

  Michael had just begun writing his doctoral thesis. He looked forward, he said, to the day when his old father could address his weekly letter to "Dr. and Mrs. M. Gonen." Of course, this was a simple sentiment, but surely everyone cherishes some simple sentiments. On the other hand, could one hurry a doctoral thesis? He had to deal with a very complicated subject.

  As my husband said the words "complicated subject" a sudden spasm passed across his face, and for an instant I could see just how the tiny lines which had recently appeared around the corners of his mouth would spread in the future.

  25

  IN THE SUMMER of 1955 we took our son for a week's holiday to Holon, to relax and swim in the sea.

  Next to us in the coach sat a frightening man, a war victim perhaps, or a refugee from Europe. His face was battered and one of his eye sockets was empty. His most terrifying feature was his mouth: he had no lips, and so his teeth were completely exposed, as if he were grinning from ear to ear or as if he were an empty skull. When our unfortunate fellow traveler looked at our son, Yair buried his face in my bosom, but every now and again, as if trying to whet his terror, he would peep out at those shattered features. The child's shoulders shook, and his face was white with fear.

  The stranger thoroughly enjoyed this game. He did not turn his face away, nor did he take his single eye off our son. As if trying to draw every note of terror out of the bo
y, he now began to contort his face and bare his teeth until even I was horrified. Slavering, he lay in wait for each sneaking glance from the child, and tried to make a face each time Yair raised his eyes. Yair entered into the grisly game. He would sit up and stare at the stranger for a while, patiently waiting for him to make a new face; then he would burrow his shoulders in my bosom once more and tremble violently. His whole body shook. The game was played without a sound; Yair sobbed with his muscles, with his lungs, but not with his voice.

  There was nothing we could do; there were no spare seats in the coach. The man and the boy would not even allow Michael to interpose his body between them, as he tried to do. They peeped and peered at each other behind his back or under his arms.

  When we got off the coach at the central station in Tel Aviv, the stranger came up to us and offered Yair a dry cake. His hand was gloved, even though it was summer. Yair accepted the cake and silently slipped it into his pocket.

  The man touched the child's face with his finger and said, "What a lovely child. What a sweet little boy." Yair shivered feverishly, but said not a word.

  When we were on the bus to Holon the toddler pulled the dry cake out of his pocket, held it in front of him in dismay, and uttered one sentence:

  "Someone who wants to die can eat this."

  "You shouldn't take presents from strangers," I replied.

  Yair fell silent. He started to say something, changed his mind, finally declared firmly, "That man was very bad. Not a Jew at all."

  Michael felt obliged to take issue with him. "He was probably very badly wounded in the war. Perhaps he was a hero."

  Yair repeated stubbornly, "Not a hero. Not a Jew at all. Bad man."

  "Stop prattling, Yair," Michael cut in sharply.

  The child raised the dry cake towards his mouth, and again he trembled all over. "I going to die you," he mumbled. "I going to eat this."

  I was about to reply "You shall never die," echoing a beautiful passage I had once read in Gershom Shoffman, but Michael, "before whom there is no merriment and no lightheartedness," anticipated me and pronounced a considered sentence:

  "You will die when you are a hundred and twenty. Now kindly stop talking nonsense. I've finished."

  Yair obeyed. For a while he kept his lips pressed firmly together. Finally he spoke hesitantly, as if he had just completed some complicated mental process:

  "When we come to Grandpa Yehezkel, I not going to eat nothing there. Nothing."

  We stayed at Grandpa Yehezkel's for six days. In the mornings we took our son to the beach at Bat Yam. The days were calm.

  Yehezkel Gonen had left his job at the municipal water department. Since the beginning of the year he had been living on a modest pension. He did not, however, neglect his duties at the local branch of the Workers' Party. He still went to the club every evening with his bunch of keys in his pocket. He made notes in a little memo book, to send the curtains to the cleaners, to buy a bottle of fruit juice for the speaker, to collect the receipts and file them in order of date.

  His mornings he spent studying the basic elements of geology on his own, by means of a correspondence course run by the Institute of Public Education, so that he could conduct a simple scientific conversation with his son. "I find I have free time now in abundance," he said. "A man should never say, 'I have grown too old to derive profit from study.'"

  "Please treat this apartment precisely as if it were your own," he said to us. "Ignore my existence. To be forever thinking of me would ruin your holiday. If you wish to rearrange the furniture or leave your beds unmade, you are on no account to feel constrained by considerations of politeness. I want you to have a complete rest.

  "You both seem very young to me, my dears; so young that were I not so delighted to see you I should be plunged in self-pity."

  Yehezkel repeated this last sentence on several occasions. There was a certain ponderous formality in everything he said, either because he tended to enunciate his words as though he were addressing a small gathering or else because he was inclined to use expressions which are normally employed only on solemn occasions. I was reminded of the remark Michael had made during our conversation in Cafe Atara, that his father used Hebrew phrases in the way that people handle fragile pieces of china. I now realized that Michael had succeeded, quite by chance, in making a very accurate observation.

  From the first day a close friendship grew up between grandfather and grandson. They would both get up at six in the morning, taking care not to wake Michael and me, dress and eat a light breakfast, and then go out together to stroll in the deserted streets. Yehezkel took pleasure in initiating his grandson into the mysteries of the municipal services: the ramifications of the electricity lines from the central transformer, the circuit of the water supply, the headquarters of the fire brigade, and the alarms and hydrants disposed at various points around the town, the sanitation department's garbage disposal arrangements, and the network of bus routes. It was a whole new world, with a fascinating logic of its own. Another amusing novelty was the name Grandpa called the child.

  "Your parents may call you Yair, but I shall call you Zalman, for Zalman is your real name."

  The child did not reject the new name, but in accordance with a code of fair play known only to himself, he began calling the old man by the very same name, Zalman. At half past eight they would return from their walk, and Yair would announce:

  "Zalman and Zalman have come back."

  I laughed till my eyes filled. Even Michael could not suppress his smiles.

  When Michael and I got up we would find breakfast ready for us on the kitchen table—salad, coffee, and white bread already sliced and buttered.

  "Zalman prepared your breakfast with his own hands, clever boy that he is," Yehezkel would declare proudly. Then, so as not to distort the facts, he would add, "I merely offered him a few words of advice."

  Afterwards Yehezkel would accompany the three of us to the bus stop, warning us about the currents or about sunburn. Once he ventured to remark, "I would have joined you, but I should not wish to be a burden."

  At midday, when we returned from the beach, Yehezkel would make us a vegetarian lunch: fried eggs, vegetables, toast, and fruit. Meat never appeared on his table, out of some principle which he refrained from explaining, for fear of boring us. During the meal he was at pains to entertain us with anecdotes of Michael's childhood, such as something Michael had once said to the Zionist leader Moshe Shertok, who was visiting his primary school, and how Moshe Shertok had suggested publishing Michael's remark in a children's newspaper.

  At mealtimes Yehezkel would tell his grandson stories about bad Arabs and good Arabs, Jewish watchmen and armed Arab gangs, heroic Jewish children and British officers maltreating children of illegal immigrants.

  Yair turned out to be an attentive and devoted pupil. He did not miss a word or forget the slightest detail. It was as if he combined Michael's thirst for knowledge with my depressing aptitude for remembering everything. The child could be tested on everything he had learned from "Grandpa Zalman": The electricity lines are linked to Reading Station; Hassan Salame's gang was firing into Holon from the hill of Tel Arish; the water supply comes from the spring at Rosh Haayin. Bevin was a bad Englishman, but Wingate was a good one.

  Grandpa bought us all little presents. Five ties in a box for Michael, for me Professor Shirman's Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence, for his grandson he bought a red clockwork fire engine with a siren that really worked.

  The days were calm.

  Outside, on the grounds of the workers' housing project, ornamental trees were planted around neat, square lawns. Birds sang all day. The town was bright and sun-drenched. Towards evening a breeze blew in off the sea, and Yehezkel would throw the shutters and the kitchen door wide open.

  "There's a refreshing wind," he would say. "The sea air is the breath of life."

  At ten o'clock, when he came home from the club, the old man would lean over the bed and kiss h
is sleeping grandson. Then he would join us on the balcony, and we would sit together on the fraying deck-chairs. He refrained from talking to us about the Party, on the grounds that we would probably not be interested in the things which interested him. He mustn't bore us during our short holiday. He steered the conversation instead to topics which he thought would be nearer to our hearts. He spoke about Yosef Hayyim Brenner, who had been killed not far away thirty-four years previously. Brenner, in his opinion, had been a great writer and a great socialist, even though he was looked down on by the professors in Jerusalem as having been too much involved in politics and too little interested in literature for its own sake. "You mark my words," he said, "sooner or later Brenner's greatness will be recognized again even in Jerusalem."