by Amos Oz
And what now, dear premier? Is a second adolescence about to begin? Or perhaps the first one is not over yet? In a single day you have had two women in your arms and you managed to lose both of them and inflict embarrassment or, worse, humiliation on them both. Clearly you’ll have to go on waiting for your father to remember his promise at long last. Look what they’ve done to you, stupid, his mother had said to him in the dream. And now, belatedly, standing naked and shivering in front of the bathroom mirror, he answered her peevishly, That’s enough. Leave me alone.
As he said this, he had an image of Yael’s face twisted with shock and disgust when she turned the light on in her bedroom a couple of hours previously and found him sleeping fully dressed under her blanket, clutching her nightie. She had raised her voice in exasperation, Quick, Teddy, come and see this. As if some insect, some kind of Gregor Samsa, had crept into her bed. He must have looked utterly stupid, if not demented, when he woke in a daze, stretched, and sat up, all rumpled from sleep, and hopelessly tried to explain to them what had happened. As if hoping that if he could explain himself, they would take pity on him and let him curl up and go back to sleep. But he only succeeded in becoming more and more embroiled in his explanation, claiming at first that Dimi had not been feeling very well, then weakening and changing his line of defence, presenting a contrary version of events: Dimi had been fine but he himself had felt unwell.
Tobias, as usual, maintained his self-control. He pronounced a single frosty sentence:
‘This time, Fima, I think you’ve gone a bit too far.’
And while Yael put Dimi to bed, Ted phoned for a taxi and even helped Fima to get his arm into the tricky sleeve, fetched his shabby cap, accompanied him downstairs, and personally gave the driver Fima’s address, as though to make certain beyond all doubt that he would not change his mind and come knocking on their door again.
And in fact, why not?
He owed them a full explanation.
At that moment, standing naked and sticky in his bathroom, he made up his mind to get dressed at once, ring for a taxi, march back in there, wake them up, and talk to them earnestly, till dawn if necessary. It was his duty to alert them to the child’s misery. To misery in general. To activate them. Confront them with the full urgency of the danger. With all due respect to jet-propelled vehicles, our first responsibility is to the child. This time he would not give in, he would also open the taxi driver’s eyes on the way there, shattering all stubbornness and heartlessness: he would counteract all that brainwashing and force everyone to recognise at long last how close disaster was.
But when there was no answer from the taxi company, he changed his mind and called Annette Tadmor. After two rings he gave up. At three o’clock he got into bed with the history of Alaska in English, which he had absent-mindedly carried away with him from Ted and Yael’s without asking their permission. He leafed through it until his eyes tracked down a curious section about the sexual habits of the native Eskimos: every spring they took a mature woman who had been widowed during the winter and handed her over to the adolescent boys as part of their initiation rites.
After ten minutes he switched the light off, curled up, and commanded his cock to calm down and himself to go to sleep. But again he had the impression that a blind man was wandering around outside in the empty street, tapping with his stick on the pavement and the low walls. Fima got out of bed, determined to get dressed and go outside to see what really went on in Jerusalem when no one was looking. He sensed with a kind of nocturnal lucidity that he had to render an account of everything that happened in Jerusalem. The hackneyed word ‘nightlife’ suddenly stepped out of its literal meaning. Severed in Fima’s mind from thronged cafés, brightly lit boulevards, theatres, squares, cabarets, ‘nightlife’ took on a different, sharp, ice-cold meaning that brooked no frivolity. The ancient Aramaic expression sitra de-itkasia, the concealed or covered side, passed through Fima’s body like a single note on the cello out of the heart of darkness. A shudder of fear ran through him.
So he turned the light on, got out of bed, and sat down in his yellowing long underwear on the floor in front of the brown wardrobe. He had to use force to dislodge the jammed bottom drawer. For twenty minutes or so he rummaged through old notebooks, pamphlets, drafts, photographs, jottings, and newspaper cuttings, until he came upon a shabby cardboard folder with the words ‘Ministry of the Interior: Department of Local Government’ printed on it.
Fima extracted from this folder a bundle of old letters in their original envelopes. He systematically scrutinised each envelope in turn, determined for once not to be defeated or sidetracked. Eventually he found Yael’s farewell letter. The pages were numbered 2, 3, 4. So apparently the first page was lost. Or perhaps it had merely strayed into another envelope. He noticed that the end of the letter was also missing. Lying on the floor in his underwear, he started to read what Yael had written to him when she went off without him to Seattle in 1965. Her handwriting was tiny, pearl-like, neither feminine nor masculine, but rounded and fluent. Perhaps this was the sort of calligraphy that was taught in respectable schools in the last century. In his mind Fima compared this chaste handwriting to his own scrawl, which resembled a mob of panic-stricken soldiers jostling each other out of the way as they fled during a rout.
18
‘You’ve forgotten yourself’
‘… terrible in you, but I simply didn’t understand it. I still don’t. There’s no resemblance between the soulful, dreamy young man who inspired and entertained three girls in the mountains of northern Greece and the lazy, gossipy receptionist who moons around at home all morning, arguing with himself, listening to the news every hour, reading three newspapers and scattering them all over the flat, opening cupboard doors and forgetting to shut them, poking around in the fridge and complaining there isn’t any this and there isn’t any that. And scurrying off to your friends every evening, barging in without waiting to be invited, with a grubby shirt collar, a cap left over from the 1940s, picking quarrels about politics with everybody into the early hours of the morning until they are literally praying for you to leave. Even your outward appearance has a secondhand look. You’ve put on weight, Effy. Maybe it wasn’t your fault. Those eyes that were alert and dreamy started to fade and now they’ve gone dull. In Greece you could hold Liat, me, and Ilia spellbound from moonrise to sunrise with stories about the Eleusinian mysteries, the cult of Dionysos, the Erinyes, goddesses of fate, and the Moirai, goddesses of furious vengeance, Persephone in the underworld, and fabled rivers with names like Styx and Lethe. I haven’t forgotten a thing, Effy: I’m a good pupil. Though I sometimes wonder if you yourself can remember anything. You’ve forgotten yourself.
‘We lay on the ground near a spring and you played on a pipe. We found you amazing, enchanting, but also a little frightening. I remember one evening Ilia and Liat made a wreath of oak leaves and arranged it on your head. At that moment I wouldn’t have minded if you’d slept with one of them in front of my eyes. Or even with both of them at once. In Greece, in that springtime four years ago, you were a poet even though you didn’t write a single word. Now you sit and cover pages every night, but the poet isn’t there any more.
‘What charmed us all was your helplessness. On the one hand you were so enigmatic, and on the other hand you were a little clown. A sort of child. One could be a hundred per cent certain that if there was a single sliver of glass in the valley, you would tread on it with your bare foot; that if there was just one loose stone in the whole of Greece, it would fall on your head; that if there was a single wasp in the Balkans, it would sting you. When you played your pipe outside some peasant’s hut or at the mouth of a cave, there was sometimes a feeling that your body was not a body but a thought. And vice versa: every time you talked to us at night about thoughts, we felt we could almost touch them. All three of us loved you, but instead of getting jealous, with each day that passed we loved each other more. It was something miraculous. Liat slept with you at ni
ght on behalf of all three of us, as it were: through Liat you were sleeping with me and with Ilia too. I can’t explain it and I don’t need an explanation. You could have had any or all of us. But the moment you made your choice, even though the winner turned out to be me, the spell was broken. When you invited us to Jerusalem to meet your father, the magic was not there any more. Then, when the preparations for the wedding began, you became tired, absent-minded. Once, you forgot me at the bank. Once, you called me Ilia. When you signed that lunatic contract with your father, in the presence of the notary, you suddenly said: ‘Goethe ought to be here to see the Devil selling his soul for a mess of pottage.’ Your father laughed and I fought back my tears. Your father and I took care of all the arrangements, and you grumbled that your life was foundering in candlesticks and frying pans. Once you lost your temper and shouted at me that you couldn’t stand a bedroom without curtains: even in a brothel there were curtains. You stamped your foot like a spoiled brat. Not that I cared: I had no objection to curtains. But that moment was the end of Greece. Your pettiness had begun. One time you made a scene on account of my wasting your father’s money, another time on account of your father’s money not arriving on time, and several times on account of my over using ‘on account of. You corrected my grammar every other sentence.
‘You’re not easy to live with. Whenever I pluck my eyebrows or wax my legs, you stare as though you’ve found a spider in your salad, but if I point out that your socks smell, you start moaning that I’ve stopped loving you. Every evening you grumble, whose turn is it to take the rubbish down and who washed the dishes yesterday, and whether there were more dirty dishes yesterday or today. And then you ask why it is that the only thing we ever talk about in this house is the washing up and the dustbins. I know, Effy, that these are petty things. We could work on them. We could give up, or get used to them. You don’t unpick a family on account of smelly socks. I don’t even get worked up any more over your regular wisecracks about aerodynamics and jet engines, which so far as you’re concerned have to do only with war and killing. As though your wife works for a syndicate of murderers. I’ve managed to get used to your poor jokes. And your grumbling all day long. And your dirty handkerchiefs on the dinner table. And your leaving the door of the refrigerator open. And your endless theories about who really killed President Kennedy and why. You’ve developed verbal diarrhoea, Effy. You’ve even taken to arguing with the radio, correcting the newsreaders’ grammar.
‘If you ask me exactly when my separation from you began, at what moment in time, or what you did wrong to me, I can’t give you an answer. The answer is: I don’t know. What I do know is that in Greece you were alive and here in Jerusalem you’re not. You merely exist, and you do even that as if existence itself is a bother. You’re an infantile thirty-year-old man. Almost a replica of your father, but without his old-world charm, his generosity, his gallantry, and, for the time being, the goatee. Even in bed, you’ve begun to replace love by submissiveness. You’ve become a bit of a flatterer. But only with women. With Uri and Micha and Tsvika and the rest of your chums you’re in a state of perpetual war in your late-night debates. Every now and again you remember to toss Nina or me or Shula some compliment, the same compliment to any of us indiscriminately, a little flattery by way of payment: the cake was excellent, your new hairstyle is lovely, that’s a pretty plant. Even if the cake is a bought one, the hairstyle isn’t new, the plant is really a vase of flowers. Just to make us shut up and stop interrupting you and your chums in your endless skirmishes about the Lavon affair, or the fall of Carthage, or the Cuban missile crisis, or the Eichmann trial, or the antisemitism of Pound and Eliot, or who foresaw what in a discussion you had at the beginning of the winter.
‘In December, when we went to Uri and Nina’s for the surprise party that Shula put on to celebrate Tsvi getting his doctorate, you monopolised the whole evening. You had a fit of spite. I noticed that every time I started to say something, you looked at me like a cat looking at an insect. You simply waited for me to stop for a moment, to draw breath or to look for a word, and then you pounced, snatching my sentence away from me and finishing it yourself. In case I said something silly. Or sided with your opponents. Or wasted your time. Or copied anything from you. Because it was your show, the whole of that evening. It always is. Which did not prevent you cuddling me while you were talking, Nina and Shula too: you joked that I may be the one who keeps the air force in the air, but in this debate you can manage fine without air cover. And you really did. By one in the morning, you had demolished Tsvi’s thesis brick by brick, even though he had made a point of thanking you in his acknowledgements and quoting you in his footnotes. And then you dazzled everyone by reconstructing a brand new thesis out of the rubble. A counter-thesis. The more Tsvika tried to defend himself, the more spiteful and ruthless you became. You never let him finish a sentence. Until Uri stood up, blew an imaginary whistle, and declared that you had won by a knockout and that Tsvi could go out and look for a job on the buses. And you said: Why the buses? Maybe Yael could launch him on one of her rockets and send him straight to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella so that he can find out what really happened there and write a new thesis. When at long last Nina managed to change the subject, and we chatted about a Fernandel film, you just went to sleep in your armchair. You even snored. I had difficulty dragging you home. But when we got back at three o’clock, you were suddenly viciously wide awake, you made fun of them all, you gave me a blow-by-blow reconstruction of your victory. You then declared that you deserved a right royal fuck, you had earned it with the sweat of your brow. The sort of fuck that victorious samurai were granted in old Japan. I looked at you, and suddenly it was not a samurai I saw in front of me but a sort of secularised yeshiva student, perverted by sophistry and casuistry, ebullient and none too bright. You had forgotten yourself completely.
‘You must understand, Effy: I’m not reminding you of your great night at the Gefens’ to explain myself. That’s something I haven’t even managed to do to myself. At least not in words. After all, it’s not your fault you’ve developed a little paunch. One doesn’t wipe out a marriage just because one of the partners snips the hairs in one nostril and forgets to do the other. Or forgets to flush the loo. Especially since I know that despite the pettiness and the vicious remarks you’re still fond of me in your own way. Maybe more now than when we came back from Greece and for some reason I was the lucky one, even though you could hardly tell the three of us apart. Maybe it’s something like this: You’re in love with me, but you don’t really love me. No doubt you’ll say I’m just playing with words. What I’m saying is that, for you, being in love means wanting to be a baby. You want to be fed and changed and above all adored nonstop, day and night. Admired round the clock.
‘I know I’m contradicting myself: it’s true that I married you because I was taken by your Grecian childishness, and now that I’m leaving you, I’m complaining that you’re childish. OK, you’ve caught me in a contradiction. Enjoy it. Sometimes I think that if you had to choose between the joy of sex and the joy of catching me in a contradiction, it’s the latter you’d find more exciting, more satisfying. Especially as there’s no risk of pregnancy. You get so hysterical every month, in case I’ve fixed you and landed you with a baby on the sly. Which doesn’t stop you hinting to your friends that the real reason is that jet engines are Yael’s baby.
‘A couple of months ago – I expect you’ve already forgotten – I woke up before dawn and I said, Effy, I’ve had enough, I’m leaving. You didn’t ask why, you didn’t ask where I was going, you asked: How? On a jet broomstick? And this brings me to your crude jealousy of my work. Which expresses itself in wisecracks. It’s true I’m not allowed to divulge details about the project. But you see this secrecy as a betrayal. As if I’ve got a lover. And not just any lover, but somebody inferior, somebody despicable. How come the woman who had the rare honour of becoming your wife isn’t satisfied with that? How can she have some othe
r interest apart from you? And such a shady business? Not that you’d understand the project even if I were allowed to tell you about it. You wouldn’t even show interest. On the contrary, your attention would start wandering after two minutes, or you’d fall asleep, or change the subject. After all, you can’t even understand how an electric fan works. Right. Now we’re getting to the point.
‘Six weeks ago, when I got the invitation from Seattle, and those two air force colonels arrived on Saturday evening to talk to you, to explain that it was actually on their initiative that the invitation had been issued, and that my work with the Americans for the next couple of years was of national importance, you just made fun of them and of me. You started to lecture us about the perpetual lunacy associated with the phrase ‘national importance’. You behaved like a Saudi sheik. You ended up more or less telling them to keep their hands off your property and throwing them out of the flat. Up to that evening there was still a part of me at least that wanted to convince you to come along. They say the scenery around Seattle is like a dream. Fjords, snow-covered mountains. You’d be able to attend some lectures at the university. Maybe the change of air and scenery and being cut off from the Israeli papers and news broadcasts would unblock the spring. Maybe away from your father and your friends and Jerusalem you’d be able to get back to some real writing at last. Instead of petty polemics punctuated with jibes and taunts.