My Michael

by Amos Oz

  Dr. Urbach expressed anxiety about my vocal cords. I repeatedly lost my voice for a few hours at a time. The doctor instructed me to undergo a lengthy course of treatment, certain features of which caused me physical humiliation.

  I would still wake before dawn, wide open to the evil voices and the recurrent nightmare which took on progressive, inexhaustible nuances. Sometimes a war. Sometimes a flood. A railway disaster. Being lost. Always I was rescued by powerful men, who saved me only to betray and abuse me.

  I would wake my husband from his sleep. Burrow under his blanket. Cling to his body with all my might. Wring from his body the self-control I craved. Our nights became wilder than ever before. I made Michael amazed at my body and his own. Initiated him into colorful byways I had read of in novels. Tortuous paths half-learned in the cinema. Everything I had heard whispered in my adolescence by giggling schoolgirls. Everything I knew and guessed of a man's wildest and most tortured dreams. Everything my own dreams had taught me. Flashes of quivering ecstasy. Floods of blazing spasms in the depths of an icy pool. Deliciously gentle collapse.

  And yet I evaded him. I made contact only with his body: muscles, limbs, hair. In my heart I knew that I deceived him again and again. With his own body. It was a blind plunge into the depths of a warm abyss. No other opening was left me. Soon even this would be blocked.

  Michael could not take this feverish, stormy abundance lavished on him before dawn. He generally yielded and collapsed with my first stirrings. Could Michael feel beyond the flood of wild sensations the humiliation I inflicted on him? Once he dared to ask in a whisper whether I had fallen in love with him again. He asked with such evident apprehension that both of us knew there was nothing more to be said.

  In the morning Michael gave no sign. There was his restrained sympathy, as usual. Less like a man who has been humiliated in the night than a tender youth courting for the first time a haughty, experienced girl. Will we die, Michael, you and I, without touching each other so much as once? Touching. Merging. You don't understand. Losing ourselves in each other. Melting. Fusing. Growing into one another. Helplessly coalescing. I can't explain. Even words are against me. What a deception, Michael. What a despicable snare. I'm worn out. Oh, to sleep and sleep.

  Once I proposed playing a game: each of us was to tell everything about his first love.

  Michael refused to understand: I was his first and last love.

  I tried to explain: You must have been a child once. A young man. You read novels. There were girls in your class. Talk. Tell me. Have you lost your memory and all your feelings? Speak. Say something. You never say anything. Stop keeping quiet, stop ticking on from day to day like an alarm clock, and stop driving me mad.

  Finally a forced understanding dawned in Michael's eyes.

  He started describing in carefully chosen words, without using adjectives, a long-forgotten summer camp at Kibbutz Ein Harod. His friend Liora who now lived in Kibbutz Tirat Yaar. A mock trial in which he was the prosecutor and Liora the defendant. A veiled insult. An old gym teacher called Yehiam Peled who called Michael "Goofy Ganz" because of his slow reflexes. A letter. A personal explanation to the youth leader. Liora again. An apology. And so on.

  It was a dismal story. If I had to lecture even on geology, I wouldn't get so confused. Like most optimists, Michael regarded the present as a soft, shapeless substance from which one has to mold the future by dint of responsible hard work. He viewed the past with suspicion. An incubus. Somehow unnecessary. The past appeared to Michael like a pile of orange peels which must be disposed of, not by scattering them along the way, because they would make a mess; they must be collected up and destroyed. To be free and unburdened. To be responsible only for the plans which have been set before him for the future.

  "Tell me something, Michael," I said, not troubling to hide my disgust. "What on earth do you think you're living for?"

  Michael did not answer immediately. He considered the question. Meanwhile he collected some crumbs on the table and piled them into a heap in front of him. Finally he declared:

  "Your question is meaningless. People don't live for anything. They live, period."

  "Micha Ganz, you will die as you were born, an utter nonentity. Period."

  "Everybody has strong and weak points. You would probably call that a trite remark. You'd be right. But trite isn't the opposite of true. 'Two times two is four' is a trite remark, but nevertheless..."

  "Nevertheless, Michael, trite is the opposite of true, and one of these days I shall go mad just like Duba Glick and it'll be your fault, Doctor Goofy Ganz."

  "Calm down, Hannah," Michael said.

  In the evening we made up. Each of us blamed himself for the quarrel. We both said we were sorry, and went out together to visit Abba and Hadassah in their new apartment in Rehavia.

  I must also record the following:

  Michael and myself going down into the yard to shake out the bedspread. We manage after a bit to coordinate our movements so as to shake it together. The dust rises.

  Then we fold the bedspread: Michael comes towards me with arms outstretched, as if he has suddenly decided to embrace me. He holds out his two corners. He walks back, takes hold of the new corners. Stretches out his arms. Comes towards me. Holds out. Walks back. Takes hold. Comes towards me. Holds out.

  "That's enough, Michael. We've finished."

  "Yes, Hannah."

  "Thank you, Michael."

  "There's no need to thank me, Hannah. The bedspread belongs to both of us."

  As darkness falls on the yard. Evening. The first stars. A vague, distant howl—a woman screaming or a tune on the radio. It is cold.

  40

  MY NEW WORK in the Ministry of Trade and Industry suits me much better than my previous job in Sarah Zeldin's kindergarten. I sit from nine to one in the building which used to house the Palace Hotel. My room used to be the chambermaids' dressing room. Reports arrive on my desk from various projects up and down the country. My job is to extract certain information from these reports, compare it with other information contained in files on a shelf by my side, record the results of the comparison, copy out the remarks in the margin of the reports on a special form, and then send my work on to another department.

  I enjoy the work, and particularly because of the endless fascination of such terms as "experimental engineering project," "chemical conglomerate," "shipyards," "heavy-metal workshops," "steel construction consortium."

  These terms bear witness to me of the existence of a certain solid reality. I do not know and I do not wish to know these far-off enterprises. I am satisfied with the concrete certainty of the fact of their existence somewhere far away. They exist. They function. Undergo changes. Calculations. Raw materials. Profitability. Planning. A powerful stream of objects, places, people, opinions.

  Very far away, I know. But not beyond the rainbow. Not lost in a dream world.

  In January 1958 we had a telephone installed in our apartment. Michael received priority as an academic. Our connection with Abba was also useful. Abba gave us important help, too, in the matter of moving to a new apartment. He arranged for us to be put high up on the waiting list for one of the government housing developments. We were to live in a new suburb which was about to be built on a hill behind Bayit Vagan, with a view of the Bethlehem hills and the edge of Emek Refaim. We put down a deposit, and contracted to pay the remainder in installments. Under the terms of the agreement we were to receive the keys of our new apartment in 1961.

  That evening Michael produced a bottle of red wine. He also gave me a large bunch of chrysanthemums to mark the occasion. He poured two glasses half-full of wine, and said:

  "To us, Hannah. I am sure the new neighborhood will have a calming effect on you. Mekor Baruch is a gloomy place."

  "Yes, Michael," I said.

  "All these years we've dreamed of moving to a new apartment. We'll have three whole rooms, plus a small study. I expected you to be happy this evening."

 
; "I am happy, Michael," I said. "We're going to have a new apartment with three whole rooms. We've always dreamed of moving. Mekor Baruch is a gloomy place."

  "But that's what I've just said," Michael exclaimed in amazement.

  "That's what you've just said." I smiled. "After eight years of married life people are bound to think alike."

  "Time and hard work will bring us everything, Hannah. You'll see. In time we may be able to travel to Europe, or even further. In time we may be able to afford a small car. In time you'll feel better."

  "In time and with hard work everything will be better, Michael. Did you notice just now that it was your father speaking, not you?"

  "No," Michael said, "actually I didn't. But it's not impossible. In fact it's only natural. After all, I am my father's son."

  "Absolutely. Not impossible. Only natural. You are his son. It's horrible, Michael. Horrible."

  "What's horrible about it, Hannah?" Michael asked sadly. "It's not right for you to make fun of my father. He was a pure soul. It was wrong of you to speak like that. You shouldn't have done it."

  "You misunderstand me, Michael. It's not the fact that you're your father's son that's horrible, it's that you've started talking like your father. And your Grandfather Zalman. And my grandfather. And my father. And my mother. And after us Yair. All of us. As if one human being after another after another is nothing but a reject. One fresh draft is made after another, and each in turn is rejected and crumpled up and thrown in the wastebasket, to be replaced by a new, slightly improved version. How futile it all seems. How dull. What a pointless joke."

  Michael accorded this thought a moment's silent reflection.

  Absent-mindedly he took a paper napkin out of the holder. Folded it meticulously into a little boat, examined it intently, and set it down very gently on the table. Finally he remarked that I had a rather imaginative view of life. His father had once made the comment that Hannah seemed to him to be a poetess, even though she did not write poetry.

  Then Michael showed me the plan of the new apartment, which he had been given that morning when we signed the agreement. He explained it in his usual clear, factual manner. I asked him to elaborate on a detail. Michael repeated his explanation. For a moment I was gripped by that powerful sensation that this was by no means the first time. I had already known this moment and this place long before. All the words had already been spoken in the distant past. Even the paper boat was not new. Even the tobacco smoke, reaching up towards the light bulb. The hum of the refrigerator. Michael. Myself. Everything. It was all far away and yet clear as crystal.

  In the spring of 1958 we took on a daily maid. From now on, another woman would run my kitchen. There would be no need now to come home tired from the office and frantically set to work opening cans and grating vegetables, relying on Michael's and Yair's good nature not to grumble at the monotony of the meals.

  Every morning I gave Fortuna a written list of instructions. She crossed each one off as she finished. I found her satisfactory: hard-working, honest, unintelligent.

  But once or twice I noticed on my husband's face a new expression, which I had never observed before in all the years we had been married. When Michael looked at the girl's figure his face expressed a kind of embarrassed tension. His mouth hung slightly open, his head inclined at an angle, his knife and fork froze for an instant in his hands. His expression was one of complete stupidity, of utter inanity, like a child who thinks he has been caught cheating in an examination. As a result I stopped letting Fortuna eat her lunch with us. I would give her some ironing to do, or dusting, or tell her to fold the linen. She would have her lunch alone, when we had finished.

  Michael remarked:

  "I'm sorry to see, Hannah, that you treat Fortuna in the way that ladies used to treat their maids. Fortuna isn't a servant. She doesn't belong to us. She's a workingwoman. Just like you."

  I made fun of him:

  "Aye aye, sir, Comrade Ganz."

  Michael said:

  "Now you're being unreasonable."

  I said:

  "Fortuna isn't a servant and she doesn't belong to us. She's a workingwoman. It's unreasonable of you to sit there in front of me and the child feasting your popping calf's-eyes on her body. It's unreasonable, and it's downright idiotic."

  Michael was taken aback. He blanched. Started to say something. Thought better of it. Kept quiet. He opened a bottle of mineral water and carefully poured out three glasses.

  ***

  One day, as I was coming home from the clinic I was going to for a lengthy course of treatment for my throat and vocal cords, Michael came out of the house and advanced towards me. We met outside the store which used to belong to Mr. Elijah Mossiah and was now run by the two bad-tempered brothers. There was bad news on his face. He had suffered a minor disaster, he said.

  "Disaster, Michael?"

  "A minor disaster."

  Apparently he had just seen the latest issue of the official journal of the Royal Geological Society of Great Britain, which contained an article by a well-known professor from Cambridge, propounding a new and rather startling theory about erosion. Certain assumptions which were fundamental to Michael's thesis had been brilliantly disproved.

  "That's marvelous," I said. "Now's your chance, Michael Gonen. You show this Englishman what's what. Pulverize him. Don't give in."

  "I can't," Michael said sheepishly. "It's out of the question. He's right. I'm convinced."

  Like most humanities students, I had always imagined that all facts are susceptible of different interpretations, and that a sharp-witted and determined interpreter could always adapt them and shape them to his will. Provided he was forceful and aggressive enough. I said:

  "So you're giving in without a struggle, Michael. I should have liked to see you struggle and win. I'd have been very proud of you."

  Michael smiled. He did not reply. If I had been Yair, he would have taken the trouble to answer me. I was offended, and made fun of him:

  "Poor old Michael. Now you'll have to tear up all your work and start again from scratch."

  "As a matter of fact, that's a slight exaggeration. The situation is not as desperate as you make out. I had a chat with my professor this morning. I shall have to rewrite the opening chapters and make some changes in three places in the body of the work. The final section isn't finished yet anyway, and I'll be able to take the new theory into account when I write it. The descriptive chapters are unaffected, and they'll stand as they are. I'll need an extra year, possibly even less. My professor agreed immediately to grant me an extension."

  I thought to myself: When Strogoff was captured by the cruel Tartars they planned to put out his eyes with red-hot irons. Strogoff was a hard man, but he also had abounding love. Because of his love his eyes filled with tears. These tears of love saved him, because they cooled the red-hot irons. Willpower and cunning enabled him to pose as a blind man until he had completed the difficult mission entrusted to him by the Czar in St. Petersburg. The mission and the agent alike were saved by love and strength.

  And perhaps in the distance he could hear the faint echo of a long-drawn-out melody. The vague sounds could only be detected with an effort of concentration. A far-off band played and played beyond the woods beyond the hills beyond the meadow. Young people marching and chanting. Powerful policemen on strong, disciplined horses. A military band in white uniforms with gold braid. A princess. A ceremony. Far away.

  In May I went to Beit Hakerem School to meet Yair's teacher. She was young, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and attractive, like a princess in a children's picture book. She was a student. Jerusalem was suddenly full of lovely girls. Of course I had known some pretty girls when I'd been a student ten years before. I'd been one of them. But this new generation possessed something different, a floating quality, a light, effortless beauty. I disliked them. And I disliked the childish clothes they chose to wear.

  From Yair's teacher I learned that young Gonen was gifted with a sharp
and systematic mind and strong powers of memory and concentration, but that he lacked sensitivity. For instance, they had discussed the Exodus from Egypt and the Ten Plagues in class. The other children had been rather upset by the cruelty of the Egyptians and the sufferings of the Hebrews. Gonen, on the other hand, had questioned the Biblical account of the division of the Red Sea. He had given a rational explanation of the rise and fall of the tides. As if he was not interested in the Egyptians or the Hebrews.

  The young teacher shed a fresh, light gaiety on everything around her. As she described little Zalman she smiled. And as she smiled, her face lit up as though there was no part of it which did not share in her smile. I hated with a sudden disgust the brown dress I was wearing.

  Later, in the street, two girls walked past me. They were students. They were laughing gaily and both of them exuded a heady, overpowering beauty. They were wearing skirts with a deep slit up the side and carried straw handbags. I found their billowing laughter vulgar. As if they owned the whole of Jerusalem. As they went past me, one said:

  "They're wild. They drive me crazy."

  Her friend gave a laugh:

  "It's a free country. They can please themselves. As far as I'm concerned, they can go jump in the lake."