My Michael

by Amos Oz

  Just as if I were only a figment of his imagination. How can anyone expect to be more than just a figment of someone else's imagination? I'm real, Michael. I'm not just a figment of your imagination.

  33

  HADASSAH'S SIMCHA is washing up in the kitchen. She hums Shoshana Damari songs to herself: I am a loving hind, a pleasant roe. A star shines in the sky, in the woods jackals cry, come back, Hephzibahs waiting for you.

  I lie in bed, holding a novel by John Steinbeck which my best friend Hadassah brought me when she came to visit me last night. I am not reading. My icy feet nestle against a hot-water bottle. I am calm and wide awake. Yair has gone to the kindergarten. From Michael there is no word, nor could there be any yet. The paraffin-seller goes down the street with his cart, ringing and ringing his handbell. Jerusalem is awake. A fly dashes itself against the win-dowpane. A fly, not a sign and not an omen. Just a fly. I am not thirsty. I notice that the book I am holding is well thumbed. Its cover is held together with scotch tape. The vase is standing in its usual place. Beneath it is a piece of paper on which Michael has written down his army number and the number of his unit. Nautilus is lying quietly deep down below the crust of ice in the Bering Straits. Mr. Glick is sitting in his shop reading a religious daily. A cold autumn wind is blowing through the city. Tranquillity.

  At nine o'clock the radio announced:

  Last night the Israel Defense Forces penetrated the Sinai Desert, captured Kuntilla and Ras en-Naqeb, and have occupied positions in the vicinity of Nahel, sixty kilometers east of the Suez Canal. A military commentator explains. While from the political point of view. Repeated provocations. Flagrant violation of freedom of navigation. The moral justification. Terrorism and sabotage. Defenseless women and children. Mounting tension. Innocent civilians. Enlightened public opinion at home and abroad. Essentially a defensive operation. Keep calm. Stay indoors. Blackout. No hoarding. Obey instructions. The public is requested. No panic. The whole country is the front. The whole nation is an army. On hearing the warning signal. So far events have proceeded according to plan.

  At a quarter past nine:

  The armistice agreement is dead and buried and will never be revived. Our forces are overrunning. Enemy opposition is giving ground.

  Till half past ten the radio played marching songs from my youth: From Dan to Beersheba we'll never forget. Believe me, the day will come.

  Why should I believe you? And if you don't forget, what of it?

  At half past ten:

  The Sinai Desert, historic cradle ofthe Israelite nation.

  As opposed to Jerusalem. I try my hardest to be proud and interested. I wonder if Michael has remembered to take his heartburn tablets. Always tidy, always neat. Well, he has danced his five years away; now he must "bid his pet dove farewell."

  A deserted alley in New Beit Yisrael, on the edge of Jerusalem, breathes a new air. The alley is paved with stones. The paving stones are cracked but highly polished. Heavy arches stand between the alley and the low clouds. The alley is a blind alley. Time condenses and collects in the hollows of the stones. A drowsy watchman, an elderly civilian called up for civil defense, stands propped against a wall. Shuttered houses. Muted chimes echo from a distant bell. Down from the hills comes the wind. It splits and eddies in the winding alley. As it swirls along the alley it touches the iron shutters and the iron doors secured with rusting bolts. An Orthodox boy stands at a window, his earlocks flowing down his pallid cheeks. There is an apple in his hand. He stares at the birds in the branches of the aspen in the yard. The boy stands motionless. The ancient watchman tries to catch his eye through the glass. In his deep loneliness he smiles at the boy. Nothing melts. The boy is mine. Blue-gray light is trapped in the curls of the aspen. The hills far off, and here deep quiet and drifting chimes. The stillness has settled on birds and alley cats. Large carriages will come will pass will travel far away. Would I were of stone. Hard and at rest. Cold and present.

  Perhaps the British High Commissioner was also wrong. In the High Commissioner's palace on the Hill of Evil Counsel to the southeast of Jerusalem a secret session is prolonged till sunrise. Pale day is dawning at the windows, but the lights still burn. Stenographers work in two-hour shifts. The guards are tired and restless.

  Michael Strogoff bearing a secret message committed to memory presses on determined and solitary through the night in the High Commissioner's service. Cold strong Michael Strogoff surrounded by brutish savages. The dazzling flash of daggers. A spurting laugh. Wordless. Like Aziz and Yehuda Gottlieb from Us-sishkin Street fighting on the empty building site. I am the umpire. I am the prize. Both their faces are contorted. Their eyes flooded with stagnant hatred. They aim at the belly because it is softest. They flail wildly. They kick. They bite. One of them turns and runs. In mid-flight he turns to pursue. Picks up a heavy stone, throws, and misses narrowly. His opponent spits with vehement fury. On a spiky coil of rusty barbed wire the two of them roll interlocked grinding their teeth. Scratching one another. Bleeding. Reaching out to grab at throat or privates. Cursing from between pressed lips. As one man they both suddenly collapse exhausted. For an instant the foes lie wrapped in each other's arms like a pair of lovers. Like a pair of panting lovers Aziz and Yehuda Gottlieb lie gasping for air. Next moment dark energy courses through them once again. Skull beats against skull. Hands claw at eyes. Fist against chin. Knee into groin. Their backs ripped by the spikes on the rusty wire. Lips tight-pressed. Soundless. No cry, no sigh is heard. Peaceful and quiet. But both are crying without a sound. Crying in unison. Their cheeks are wet. I am the umpire and I am the prize. I laugh maliciously. I thirst to see blood, to hear wild shrieks. In Emek Refaim a freight train will whistle. The storm and the fury will silently fuse. And the tears.

  Very late the rain will come. A rain not of words will lash the British armored cars. Down the alley at twilight terrorists steal, slipping past the arch in Mousrara. Slipping past pressing close to the stone wall in the darkness silencing the solitary street lamp fixing a fuse to the detonator and the detonator is still cold iron, an electric spark will jump and the volcano is hidden deep down under the surface of dust and slate and granite. It is cold.

  The rain will come.

  Gentle mists will wander in the wooded Valley of the Cross. On Mount Scopus a bird will cry. A stormy wind will lash the pine treetops into submission. The earth will not hold back, the earth will show no restraint. To the east is the desert. From the edge of Talpiot can be seen places which the rain cannot touch, the Mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea far below. Torrents of rain will pound Arnona opposite the gray village of Sur Baher. Fierce streams will assault the minarets. And in Bethlehem the players will shut themselves up in the coffeehouse, backgammon boards will be opened, and from every corner will come the wailing music of Radio Amman. Enclosed and silent are the men at play. Desert robes and bushy mustaches. Scalding coffee. Smoke. Twins in commando uniforms armed with submachine guns.

  After the rain, clear hail. Fine, sharp crystals. The old peddlers in Mahane Yehuda will crowd shivering under the shelter of overhanging balconies. In the hills of Abu Ghosh in Kiryat Yearim in Neve Ilan in Tirat Yaar thick woods intertwined pines shrouded in white fog. There fugitives from the law take refuge. Silently bitter deserters trudge along waterlogged paths, wandering on through the rain.

  Low lies the sky over the North Sea Dragon and Tigress patrol side by side among massive icebergs prowling and searching for the sea-monster Moby Dick or Nautilus on the radar screen. Ahoy, ahoy, a muffled seaman will shout from the masthead. Ahoy there Captain, unidentified object sighted in the fog six miles east four knots, two degrees to port of the northern lights, the radio operator will transmit metallically to Allied headquarters in a far-off underwater hideout. Palestine too will grow dark for there is rain and fog on the Hebron Hills up to Talpiot to Augusta Victoria to the desert's edge which the rain may never cross to the High Commissioner's palace.

  Alone at the darkening window frail and tall sta
nds the British High Commissioner, a gaunt man his hands joined behind his back a pipe between his teeth his eyes blue and clouded. Into two goblets he will pour a clear sharp potion one glass for himself and the other for short thickset Michael Strogoff sent to fight his way in the darkness through enemy territory blockaded by barbaric armies to the coast then over the main to the Mysterious Island where scanning the sea horizon with eagle eyes waits engineer Cyrus Smith gripping a powerful spyglass and never knowing despair. We had thought we were all alone here on the desert island. Surely our senses deluded us. We are not alone on the island. Someone sinister lurks in the depths of the mountain. We have searched the whole island most thoroughly and systematically and have not discovered who it is who is watching us out of the darkness with pale laughter on his face a silent presence watching unsensed behind our backs only his footprints appearing on the spongy pathway at dawn. Lurking and lying in wait in the murky shadow in the fog in the rain in the storm in the dark forest lurking beneath the surface of the earth lying hidden in wait behind convent walls in the village of Ein Kerem a strange man lurking relentlessly lying in wait. Let him come live and snarling hurl me to the ground and thrust into my body he will growl and I shriek in reply in a rapture of horror and magic of horror and thrill I will scream burn and suck like a vampire a madly whirling drunken ship in the night will I be when he comes at me, singing and seething and floating I will be flooded I will be a foam-flecked mare gliding through the night in the rain the torrents will rush down to flood Jerusalem the sky will come low clouds touching the earth and the wild wind will ravage the city.

  34

  "GOOD MORNING, Mrs. Gonen."

  "Good morning, Dr. Urbach."

  "Are we still feeling distressed, Mrs. Gonen?"

  "The fever has gone, Doctor. I hope in a couple of days I shall be back to normal."

  "'Normal,' Mrs. Gonen, is a relative expression, so to say. Is Mr. Gonen not at home?"

  "My husband has been called up, Doctor. My husband is apparently in the Sinai Desert. I have not had any news as yet from my husband."

  "These are important days, Mrs. Gonen, fateful days. At times such as these it is difficult to refrain from scriptural thoughts. Is our throat still inflamed? Let us look inside and find out. It was bad, very bad, dear lady, what you did when you poured on yourself cold water in the middle of winter, as if it is possible to bring peace to the mind by bringing afflictions to the body. If you excuse me, please, what is the chosen subject of Dr. Gonen? Biology? Ah, geology. Excuse me, please. We were mistaken. Well, today the news from the war is optimistic. The English and the French also will fight together with us against the Moslems. The radio this morning spoke even of 'the allies.' Almost like in Europe. Nonetheless, Mrs. Gonen, there is also something from Faust in this war. Closer, you see, than anybody to the truth was little Gretchen. And how faithful was Gretchen, and not at all naïve, as she is usually depicted. Please, Mrs. Gonen, give me now your arm, I must measure your blood pressure. A simple test. Not painful in the slightest. There is a serious defect of the intellect in some Jews; we are not able to hate those who hate us. Some mental disorder. Well, yesterday the Israel army climbed up Mount Sinai with tanks. Almost apocalyptic, I would say, but only almost. Now I must beg very much your pardon but I must ask you a rather intimate question. Have you noticed any irregularity recently in your monthly cycle, Mrs. Gonen? No? That is a good sign. A very good sign. It is a sign that the body has not begun also to participate in the drama. So your husband is a geologist, not an anthropologist. We were somewhat mistaken. Now, we must continue to rest still for some days more. And to rest thoroughly. Not to tire ourselves out with thinking. Sleep is the best remedy. Sleep, in a sense, is the most natural condition for a human being. And the headache must not frighten us. Against the migraine we will arm ourselves with aspirin. Migraine is not an independent disease. And by the way, human beings do not die so easily as perhaps in an extreme moment we might imagine. I wish you better."

  Dr. Urbach left and Simcha, Hadassah's maid, arrived. She took off her coat and stood warming her hands at the fire. She asked, how are you today, ma'am. I asked, what's the news in my friend Hadassah's house. Simcha had read in the paper that morning that the Arabs had lost and we were victorious. Well, she said, they certainly deserved it; one can only endure so much in silence.

  Simcha went into the kitchen. She warmed me some milk. Then she opened a window in the study to air the room. Biting cold air came streaming in. Simcha polished the windows with old newspaper. She dusted the furniture. She went out to shop. When she came back she had news to tell of an Arab warship burning alive in the sea off Haifa. Should she make a start on the ironing?

  My whole body felt good today. I was ill. I needn't concentrate. Burning alive at sea—all this had happened before in the distant past. This wasn't the first time.

  "Your face is very pale today, ma'am," Simcha remarked anxiously. "The Master said before he went away not to talk to Madam a lot because of Madam's health."

  "You talk to me, Simcha," I begged her. "Tell me about yourself. Keep talking. Don't stop."

  "I'm not married yet, ma'am, but I'm engaged. When my man Bechor comes back from the army we're going to buy one of those new apartments in Beit Mazmil. We're going to have the wedding in the spring. My man Bechor has plenty of money put by. He works as a taxi driver for Kesher Taxis. He's a bit shy, but he's educated. I've noticed something, that most of my girl friends, they marry men like their pas. Bechor he's like my pa too. It's a rule, I read it once explained in Woman magazine: the husband is always like the father. I suppose if you love someone you want him to be at least a bit like someone you already loved to start with. That's funny, I was waiting and waiting for the iron to warm up, and I clean forgot the power's been cut off in Jerusalem."

  I thought to myself.

  A young man in a story by Somerset Maugham or Stefan Zweig has come from a small town to play roulette in an international casino. Since the beginning of the evening he has lost two-thirds of his money. The sum he finds himself left with after a careful calculation will just suffice to pay his hotel bill and to buy him a railway ticket so that he can leave town decently. It is two o'clock in the morning. Can the young man get up and leave now? The brightly lit wheel is still spinning and the chandeliers are sparkling. Perhaps the decisive win is waiting for him at the end of the very next spin? The Sheikh's son from the Hadhramaut sitting opposite has just collected a cool ten thousand in one go. No, he cannot get up and leave now. Especially since the elderly English lady who has been peering owl-eyed all evening at him through her pince-nez will be bound to flash him a look of cold irony. And outside in the dark, snow is falling as far as the eye can see. And the dim sound of the roaring sea, outside. No, the young man cannot get up and leave. He buys chips with the last of his money. Presses his eyes tight shut, then opens them. Opens them, and immediately blinks as if the light is blinding them. And outside in the dark is the muffled roar of the sea and the silently falling snow.

  We have been married now for more than six years. If your work takes you to Tel Aviv, you always come back the same evening. We have never been apart for more than two nights since the day we were married. For six years we have been married and living in this apartment, and I have still not learned how to open and close the balcony shutters, because that is your job. Now that you have been called up, the shutters stand open day and night. I have been thinking about you. You knew in advance that you were being called up for a war, not for maneuvers. That the war would be in Egypt and not in the east. That the war would be a short one. All this you deduced with the aid of a well-balanced inner mechanism by means of which you continually produce thoroughly reasoned ideas. I have to present you with an equation on whose solution I depend in the way that a man standing on the edge of a precipice depends on the strength of the railing.

  This morning I sat in the armchair and altered the buttons on the cuffs of your dark suit to make them more
fashionable. As I sewed I asked myself, what is this impenetrable glass dome which has fallen on us to separate our lives from objects, places, people, opinions? Of course, Michael, there are friends, visitors, colleagues, neighbors, relatives. But when they are sitting in our living room talking to us their words are always indistinct because of the glass, which is not even transparent. It is only from their expressions that I manage to guess something of their meaning. Sometimes their shapes dissolve: vague masses without outlines. Objects, places, people, opinions, I need them and I can't keep going without them. What about you, Michael, are you contented or not? How can I find out? Sometimes you seem sad. Are you contented or not? What if I were to die? What if you were to die? I am merely groping my way through an introduction, a preliminary, still learning and rehearsing a complicated role which I shall have to act out in days yet to come. Packing. Preparing. Practicing. When will the journey begin, Michael? I have grown tired of waiting and waiting. You are resting your arms on the steering wheel. Are you dozing or thinking? I cannot tell; you are always so calm and controlled. Start up, Michael, start off; I have been ready and waiting for years.