A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

  But what were all the hopes? What sort of "pure and free" life did my parents expect to find here?

  Perhaps they vaguely thought they would find in the renewed Land of Israel something less petit-bourgeois and Jewish and more European and modern; something less crudely materialistic and more idealistic; something less feverish and voluble and more settled and reserved.

  My mother may have dreamed of living the life of a bookish, creative teacher in a village school in the Land of Israel, writing lyric poetry in her spare time, or perhaps sensitive, allusive stories. I think that she hoped to forge gentle relationships with subtle artists, relationships marked by baring one's breast and revealing one's true feelings, and so to break free at last of her mother's noisy, domineering hold on her, and to escape from the stifling puritanism, poor taste, and base materialism that were apparently rampant where she came from.

  My father, on the other hand, saw himself as destined to become an original scholar in Jerusalem, a bold pioneer of the renewal of the Hebrew spirit, a worthy heir to Professor Joseph Klausner, a gallant officer in the cultured army of the Sons of Light battling against the forces of darkness, a fitting successor to a long and glorious dynasty of scholars that began with the childless Uncle Joseph and continued with his devoted nephew who was as dear to him as a son. Like his famous uncle, and no doubt under his inspiration, my father could read scholarly works in sixteen or seventeen languages. He had studied in the universities of Vilna and Jerusalem (and even wrote a doctoral thesis later, in London). For years, neighbors and strangers had addressed him as "Herr Doktor," and then, at the age of fifty, he finally had a real doctorate. He had also studied, mostly on his own, ancient and modern history, the history of literature, Hebrew linguistics and general philology, biblical studies, Jewish thought, archaeology, medieval literature, philosophy, Slavonic studies, Renaissance history, and Romance studies: he was equipped and ready to become an assistant lecturer and to advance through the ranks to senior lecturer and eventually professor, to be a path-breaking scholar, and indeed to end up sitting at the head of the table every Saturday afternoon and delivering one monologue after another to his awestruck tea-time audience of admirers and devotees, just like his esteemed uncle.

  But nobody wanted him, or his learned accomplishments. So this Treplev had to eke out a wretched existence as a librarian in the newspaper department of the National Library, writing his books about the history of the novella and other subjects of literary history at night, with what remained of his strength, while his Seagull spent her days in a basement apartment, cooking, laundering, cleaning, baking, looking after a sickly child, and when she wasn't reading novels, she stood staring out of the window while her glass of tea grew cold in her hand. Whenever she could, she gave private lessons.

  I was an only child, and they both placed the full weight of their disappointments on my little shoulders. First of all, I had to eat well and sleep a lot and wash properly, so as to improve my chances of growing up to fulfill something of the promise of my parents when they were young. They expected me to learn to read and write even before I reached school age. They vied with each other to offer me blandishments and bribes to make me learn the letters (which was unnecessary, as letters fascinated me anyway and came to me of their own accord). And once I learned to read, at the age of five, they were both anxious to provide me with a tasty but also nutritious diet of reading, rich in cultural vitamins.

  They frequently conversed with me about topics that were certainly not considered suitable for young children in other homes. My mother liked telling me stories about wizards, elves, ghouls, enchanted cottages in the depths of the forest, but she also talked to me seriously about crimes, emotions, the lives and sufferings of brilliant artists, mental illness, and the inner lives of animals. ("If you just look carefully, you'll see that every person has some dominant characteristic that makes him resemble a particular animal, a cat or a bear or a fox or a pig. A person's physical features also point to the animal he most closely resembles") Father, meanwhile, introduced me to the mysteries of the solar system, the circulation of the blood, the British White Paper, evolution, Theodor Herzl and his astonishing life story, the adventures of Don Quixote, the history of writing and printing, and the principles of Zionism. ("In the Diaspora the Jews had a very hard life; here in the Land of Israel it's still not easy for us, but soon the Hebrew State will be established, and then everything will be made just and rejuvenated. The whole world will come and marvel at what the Jewish people is creating here.")

  My parents and grandparents, sentimental family friends, well-meaning neighbors, all sorts of gaudy aunties, with their bear hugs and greasy kisses, were constantly amazed at every word that came out of my mouth: the child is so marvelously intelligent, so original, so sensitive, so special, so precocious, he's so thoughtful, he understands everything, he has the vision of an artist.

  For my part, I was so amazed at their amazement that I inevitably ended up amazing myself. After all, they were grown-ups, in other words creatures who knew everything and were permanently right, and if they were always saying that I was so clever, then, of course, I must be. If they found me interesting, I was not unnaturally inclined to agree with them. And if they thought I was a sensitive, creative child and rather something and quite something else (both in some foreign language), and also so original, so advanced, so intelligent, so logical, so cute, etc., well...

  Being conformist and respectful as I was of the grown-up world and its prevailing values, and having no brothers or sisters or friends to counterbalance the personality cult that surrounded me, I had no alternative but to concur, humbly but thoroughly, with the grown-ups' opinion of me.

  And so, unconsciously, by the age of four or five I had become a little show-off whose parents together with the rest of the adult world had invested a considerable fortune in me and offered generous fuel to my arrogance.

  Sometimes on winter evenings the three of us would sit and chat around the kitchen table after supper. We spoke softly because the kitchen was so small and cramped, and we never interrupted each other. (Father considered this a precondition of any conversation.) We would talk, for instance, about what a blind man or a creature from another planet would make of our world. Perhaps fundamentally we were all rather like some blind alien? We talked about children in China and India, children of Bedouin and Arab peasants, children of the ghetto, children of the illegal immigrants, and children in the kibbutzim who did not belong to their parents but by my age were already living independent communal lives that they were themselves responsible for, cleaning their own rooms by rotation and deciding by vote what time they would turn the lights out and go to sleep.

  The pale-yellow electric light lit the shabby little kitchen even in the daytime. Outside in the street, which was already empty by eight in the evening, whether because of the British curfew or simply out of habit, a hungry wind whistled on winter nights. It rattled the garbage can lids outside the houses, terrified the cypresses and the stray dogs, and with its dark fingers tested the washtubs suspended on balcony railings. Sometimes a distant echo of gunfire or a muffled explosion reached us from the heart of darkness.

  After supper the three of us stood in line, as though on parade, first Father then Mother then me, facing the wall that was stained black from the Primus stove and the paraffin cooker, with our backs to the room. Father bent over the sink, washed and rinsed each plate and glass in turn, and placed each one on the draining board, from where mother picked them up and dried them and put them away. I was responsible for drying the forks and spoons, and I also sorted them out and put them away in the drawer. From the time I was six, I was allowed to dry the table knives, but I was absolutely forbidden to handle the bread knife or the kitchen knives.

  For them it was not enough for me to be intelligent, rational, good, sensitive, creative, and thoughtful with the dreamy vision of an artist. In addition, I also had to be a seer and a fortune-teller, a kind of family oracl
e. After all, everyone knew that children were closer to nature, to the magical bosom of creation, not having been corrupted yet by lies or poisoned by selfish considerations.

  And so I had to play the role of the Delphic oracle or the holy fool. As I climbed the consumptive pomegranate tree in the yard, or ran from wall to wall without treading on the lines between the paving stones, they called out to me to give them and their guests some spontaneous sign from heaven to help them to settle a dispute, whether or not to go and visit their friends in Kibbutz Kiriat Anavim, whether or not to buy (in installments) a round brown table with four chairs, whether or not to endanger the lives of the survivors by smuggling them into the country on decrepit boats, or whether or not to invite the Rudnickis to supper on Friday night.

  My task was to utter some vague, ambiguous thought, beyond my years, some obscure sentence based on fragments of ideas that I had heard from the grown-ups and shaken up and stirred well, something that could be taken either way, something that was open to all sorts of interpretations. If possible, it should include some vague simile, or feature the phrase "in life." For example: "Every journey is like opening a drawer." "In life there is morning and evening, summer and winter." "Making small concessions is like avoiding treading on little creatures."

  Such enigmatic sentences, "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," made my parents overflow with emotion; their eyes sparkled, they turned my words this way and that, discovering in them an oracular expression of the pure, unconscious wisdom of nature itself.

  Mother would clasp me warmly to her breast on hearing such beautiful sayings, which I always had to repeat or reproduce in the presence of astonished relatives or friends. I soon learned how to mass-produce such utterances to order, at the request of my excited public. I succeeded in extracting not one but three separate pleasures from each prophecy. First, the sight of my audience fixing their hungry eyes on my lips, waiting excitedly for what would come out, and then plunging into a mass of contradictory interpretations. Second, the dizzying experience of sitting in judgment like Solomon between these grown-ups ("Didn't you hear what he said to us about small concessions? So why do you keep insisting we shouldn't go to Kiriat Anavim tomorrow?"). The third pleasure was the most secret and delicious of all: my generosity. There was nothing I enjoyed more in the world than the delight of giving. They were thirsty, they needed me, and I gave them what they wanted. How fortunate that they had me! What would they do without me?

  34

  I WAS ACTUALLY a very easy child, obedient, hard-working, unknowingly supporting the established social order (Mother and I were subject to Father, who sat at the feet of Uncle Joseph, who in turn—despite his critical opposition—obeyed Ben-Gurion and the "authorized institutions"). Apart from which I was tireless in my quest for words of praise from grown-ups, my parents and their visitors, aunts, neighbors, and acquaintances.

  Nevertheless, one of the most popular performances in the family repertoire, a favorite comedy with a set plot, revolved around a transgression followed by a session of soul-searching and then a fitting punishment. After the punishment came remorse, repentance, pardon, remission of part or most of the punishment, and, finally, a tearful scene of forgiveness and reconciliation, accompanied by hugs and mutual affection.

  One day, for example, driven by love of science, I sprinkle black pepper into my mother's coffee.

  Mother takes one sip, chokes, and spits the coffee out into her napkin. Her eyes are full of tears. Already full of regret, I say nothing, I know very well that the next scene belongs to Mother.

  Father, in his role of unbiased investigator, cautiously tastes Mother's coffee. He may just wet his lips with it. At once he gives his diagnosis:

  "Somebody has decided to season your coffee. It is my suspicion that this is the work of some high-ranking personage."

  Silence. Like a supremely well-behaved child I shovel spoonful after spoonful of porridge from my plate into my mouth, wipe my lips with my napkin, pause for a moment, and then eat another two or three spoonfuls. composed. Sitting up straight. As though acting out an etiquette book. Today I shall finish all my porridge. Like a model child. Until the plate is sparkling clean.

  Father continues, as though deep in thought, as though sharing with us the general outlines of the mysteries of chemistry, without looking at me, talking only to Mother, or to himself:

  "There might have been a disaster, though. As is well known, there are a number of compounds made up of substances that in themselves are completely harmless and fit for human consumption, but that when combined are liable to pose a threat to the life of anyone who tastes them. Whoever it was who put whatever it is in your coffee might well have mixed in some other ingredient. And then? Poisoning. Hospital. Life-threatening, even."

  A deathly silence fills the kitchen. As though the worst has already happened.

  Mother, unconsciously, pushes the poisoned chalice away from her with the back of her hand.

  "And then what?" Father continues, thoughtfully, nodding his head a few times as though he knows very well what almost happened but is too tactful to name the horror.

  Silence.

  "I therefore suggest that whoever performed this prank—no doubt inadvertently, as a misplaced joke—should have the courage to stand up at once. So that we should all know that if there is such a frivolous miscreant in our midst, at least we're not harboring a coward. A person bereft of all honesty and self-respect."

  Silence.

  It is my turn.

  I get to my feet and say in a grown-up tone just like my father's:

  "It was me. I'm sorry. It was a really stupid thing to do. It won't ever happen again."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Definitely."

  "On your word of honor as a self-respecting man?"

  "On my word of honor as a self-respecting man."

  "Confession, regret, and promise all point to a reduction of the penalty. We shall content ourselves on this occasion with your kindly drinking it. Yes, now. Please."

  "What, this coffee? With the black pepper in it?"

  "Yes, indeed."

  "What, me, drink it?"

  "Yes, please."

  But after a first hesitant sip Mother intervenes. She suggests that will be enough. There is no need to exaggerate. The child has such a sensitive stomach. And he has surely learned his lesson by now.

  Father does not hear the plea for compromise. Or pretends not to. He asks:

  "And how does Your Highness find his beverage? Does it taste like manna from heaven?"

  I screw up my face in utter revulsion. Expressing suffering, remorse, and heart-wrenching sadness. So Father declares:

  "Very well, then. that's enough. We shall make do with that on this occasion. Your Highness has expressed his contrition. So let us draw a line under what has been done. And let us underline it with the help of a piece of chocolate, to take away the bad taste. Then, if you like, we can sit at my desk and sort some more stamps. Right?"

  Each of us enjoyed his fixed part in this comedy. Father was fond of acting the part of a vengeful deity, all-seeing and punishing wrongdoing, a sort of domestic Jehovah flashing sparks of rage and rumbling terrible thunder, but also compassionate and merciful, long-suffering and abundantly loving.

  But occasionally he was overcome with a blind wave of real fury, not just theatrical anger, especially if I did something that might have been dangerous for me, and then, without any foreplay, he would hit me across the face two or three times.

  Sometimes, after I had been playing with electricity or climbing onto a high branch, he even ordered me to pull my trousers down and get my bottom ready (he called it "The seat, if you please!"), then he beat me ruthlessly six or seven times with his belt.

  But generally Father's anger was expressed not through pogroms but through courtly politeness and icy sarcasm:

  "Your Highness has deigned to tread mud from the street all down the corridor again: apparently it is beneath Your
Honor's dignity to wipe his feet on the doormat as we poor mortals take the trouble to do on rainy days. On this occasion I fear Your Excellency will have to condescend to wipe away his royal footprints with his own fair hands. And then Your Supreme Highness will kindly submit to being locked in the bathroom for an hour in the dark so as to have an opportunity to reflect on the error of his ways and resolve to make amends for the future."

  Mother immediately protested at the severity of the sentence:

  "Half an hour will do. And not in the dark. What's the matter with you? You'll be forbidding him to breathe next."

  "How very fortunate for His Excellency that he always has such an enthusiastic counsel to leap to his defense."

  Mother said:

  "If only there was a punishment for having a warped sense of humor—" but she never finished the sentence.

  A quarter of an hour later it was time for the final scene. Father himself would come to fetch me from the bathroom. Reaching out to give me a quick, embarrassed hug, he would mutter a sort of apology:

  "Of course I realize you didn't leave the mud on purpose, it's just that you're absentminded. But of course you also realize that we only punished you for your own good, so that you don't grow up to be another absentminded professor."

  I looked straight into his innocent, sheepish brown eyes and promised him that from now on I would always be careful to wipe my shoes when I came in. Moreover, my fixed part in the drama was to say at this point, with an intelligent, grown-up expression on my face and words borrowed from my father's arsenal, that naturally I understood full well that I was only punished for my own good. My set part even included an address to Mother, in which I begged her not to be so quick to forgive me, because I accepted the consequences of my actions and was perfectly capable of taking the punishment I deserved. Even two hours in the bathroom. Even in the dark. I didn't care.