by Amos Oz
Perhaps it was this: to sweep away at a single stroke, starting today, from the onset of this Sabbath, the empty talk, the wastefulness, the lies that buried his life. He was ready to accept his misery humbly, to reconcile himself finally to the solitude he had brought on himself, to the very end, with no right of appeal. From now on he would live in silence, he would cut himself off, he would sever his repugnant links with all the do-gooding women who flocked around him in his flat and his life, he would stop pestering Tsvi and Uri and the rest of the gang with casuistic sophistry. He would love Yael from a distance, without being a nuisance. He might not even bother to have his telephone repaired: from now on it too could be silent. It could stop boasting and lying.
And what about Dimi?
He would dedicate his book to him. Because, starting next week, he would spend five or six hours before work in the reading room of the National Library. He would systematically recheck all the extant sources, including the most obscure and esoteric ones, and in a few years’ time he would be in a position to write an objective and dispassionate history of the Rise and Fall of the Zionist Dream. Or perhaps he would write instead a sort of whimsical, half-crazy novel about the life, death, and resurrection of Judas Iscariot, based on himself.
In fact better not to write. Better to say good-bye now and forevermore to the papers, the radio, the television. At most he would listen to classical music programmes. Every morning, summer and winter alike, he would get up at daybreak and walk for an hour in the olive grove in the wadi below his flat. Then he would have a leisurely breakfast: vegetables, fruit and a single slice of black bread with no jam. He would shave – no, why should he shave; he’d grow a shaggy beard – and sit and read and think. After work every evening he would devote another hour or two to strolling around the city. He would get to know Jerusalem systematically. He would gradually uncover its hidden treasures. He would explore every alley, every back yard, every recess; he would find out what was hiding behind every stone wall. He would not accept another penny from his demented father. And in the evening he would stand alone at the window listening to his inner voice which up to now he had always tried to silence with inanities and buffoonery. He would learn a lesson from Yael’s senile father, the veteran pioneer Naftali Tsvi Levin, who sat staring at the wall for whole days, answering every remark with the question ‘In what sense?’ Not a bad question, in fact. Although on second thoughts even this question could be dispensed with, the term ‘sense’ being itself apparently devoid of meaning.
Snows of yesteryear.
Azoy.
Fima remembered with disgust how the previous Friday, exactly a week ago, at Shula and Tsvi Kropotkin’s the conversation had turned after midnight to the Russian component which had had such a strong influence on various strands of Zionism. Tsvika made ironic fun of the naïve Tolstoyism of A. D. Gordon and his disciples, and Uri Gefen recalled how once the country had been full of fans of Stalin and songs about Budyonny’s cavalry. Whereupon Fima stood up, stooped slightly, and had the whole room doubled up with laughter when he began declaiming in liquid, orotund tones a typical passage from an early translation of Russian literature:
‘Dost thou here also dwell, my good man? Beside Spasov I dwell, close by the V— Monastery, in the service of Marfa Sergeyevna, who is the sister of Avdotya Sergeyevna, if Your Honour might condescend to recall, her leg she broke as from the carriage she leaped, when to the ball then she was going. Now beside the monastery she dwells, and I – in her house.’
Uri had said:
‘You could go around the country giving public performances.’
And Teddy said:
‘It’s straight out of the wedding scene in The Deerhunter – what was it called in Hebrew?’
Whereas Yael remarked drily, almost to herself:
‘Why do you all encourage him? Just look at what he’s doing to himself.’
Fima now accepted those words of hers like a slap in the face that brought tears of gratitude to his eyes. And he resolved that he would never again make a fool of himself in her presence. Or in front of the others. From now on he would concentrate.
While he was standing there preparing his new life, staring at the names of the residents inscribed on a row of tatty letter boxes in the hallway of a grey stone building, startled to see that there was a Pizani family here too and half surprised not to find his own name underneath it, a smooth-talking Sephardi rabbinical student, a thin, bespectacled youth clad in the costume of an Ashkenazi Hasid, addressed him politely. Warily, as if fearing a violent reaction, he urged Fima to fulfil the commandment of putting on tefillin, here, on the spot. Fima said:
‘So, will that hasten the coming of the Messiah, in your opinion?’
The youth replied at once, eagerly, as though he had prepared himself for this very question, in a North African accent with a Yiddish lilt:
‘It will do your soul good. You will feel relief and joy instantly, something amazing.’
‘In what sense?’ asked Fima.
‘It’s a well-known fact, sir. Tried and tested. The arm tefillin cleanses the defilement of the body and the head tefillin washes all the dirt out of the soul.’
‘And how do you know that I have a defiled body and a dirty soul?’
‘Heaven forfend that I should say such a wicked thing. Lest I sin with my lips. Every Jew, be he even a sinner – may it not happen to us – his soul was present at Mount Sinai. This is a well-known fact. That is why every Jewish soul shines forth like the heavenly radiance. Nevertheless, sometimes it happens, sadly, on account of all our troubles, on account of all the rubbish that life in this lower world is always heaping on us, that the heavenly radiance inside the soul becomes dirty, so to speak. What does a man do if he gets dirt inside the engine of his car? Why, he takes it to be cleaned out. That is an allegory of the dirt in the soul. The commandment of putting on tefillin cleanses that dirt out of you instantly. In a moment you will feel like new.’
‘And what good will it do you if a non-believer puts on tefillin once and then goes on sinning?’
‘Well, you see, it’s like this, sir. First, even once helps. It improves the maintenance. One commandment leads to another. It’s also like a car: after so many kilometres you service it, clean out the carburettor, change the oil, and all that. Naturally, once you’ve invested a little something in maintenance, you start to take better care of your car. So it keeps its value. Gradually you get into a daily maintenance routine, as we call it. I give you this example only as an illustration, to help you grasp the idea.’
‘I don’t have a car,’ Fima said.
‘No, really? You see, it’s true what they say: everything comes from Heaven. I’ve got something for you. A bargain like you’ve never seen. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. But first let’s mark the difference between sacred and profane.’
‘I can’t drive,’ said Fima.
‘We’ll get you through the test for three hundred dollars all in. Unlimited lessons. Or we’ll find a way to include it in the price of the car. Something special. Just for you. But first put on tefillin: you’ll see, you’ll feel like a lion.’
Fima laughed:
‘Anyhow, God’s forgotten me.’
‘And secondly,’ the young man continued, oblivious, with ever-mounting enthusiasm, ‘you should never say “nonbeliever”. There’s no such thing as a non-believer. No Jew in the world can be a nonbeliever. The very expression is tantamount to slander, or even – Heaven forfend! – to blasphemy. As it is written, a man should not reckon himself as wicked.’
‘I happen,’ Fima insisted, ‘to be a one-hundred-per cent non-believer. I don’t observe a single commandment. Only the six hundred and thirteen transgressions.’
‘You are mistaken,’ the young man said, politely but firmly, ‘totally mistaken, sir. There is no such thing in the whole world as a Jew who does not keep some commandments. There never has been. One does more, another does less. As the Rebbe says, it is a matter of q
uantity, not quality. Just as there is no such thing as a righteous man who never sins, so there is no such thing as a sinner who does not perform some righteous acts. Just a few. Even you, sir, with all due respect, every day you observe a few commandments, at least. Even if a person considers himself a total apikoros, he still observes a few commandments each day. For example, the fact that you’re alive, you’re already keeping the commandment “Thou shalt choose life”. Every hour or two, every time you cross the road, you choose life, even though you could have chosen the opposite, Heaven forfend! Am I right? And then the fact that you’ve got kids – they should be healthy! – you have observed the commandment “Be fruitful and multiply”. And the fact that you’re living in the Land of Israel – that’s another half-dozen commandments. Then if you feel happy sometimes, you’ve got another one. Every one’s a winner! Sometimes you may have an overdraft up in heaven, but they never cut off your credit. Unlimited credit, that’s what you get. And meanwhile, for the few commandments that you do keep, you’ve got your own private savings plan up there, and every day you invest a bit more and a bit more, and every day they credit you with interest and they add it to your capital. You’d be amazed, sir, how rich you are without even knowing it. As it is written, the ledger lies open and the hand writes. Five minutes to put on tefillin, less than five minutes even – believe me, it doesn’t hurt – and you accumulate an extra bonus for Sabbath. Whatever your line of business in the lower world, believe me there’s no other five-minute investment that will give you a higher yield. It’s a tried and tested fact. No? So it’s not so terrible. Maybe it’s just that your time hasn’t come yet to put on tefillin. When it comes, you’ll know. You’ll receive a signal there’s no mistaking. The main thing, sir, don’t forget: The gates of repentance stand ever open. Around the clock, as they say. They never close. Sabbaths and festivals included. Now, about the business of the car and the driving test, here, take these two phone numbers.’
Fima said:
‘Right now I haven’t even got a phone.’
The missionary shot him a pensive sideways glance, as though he was making some kind of mental assessment, and hesitantly, in a voice that was close to a whisper, he said:
‘You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you, sir? Shall we send someone round to see what we can do to help? Don’t be embarrassed to say. Or maybe the best thing would be, why don’t you come and make Sabbath with us? Feel what it’s like to be among brothers, just for once?’
Fima said:
‘No, thank you.’ This time there was something in his voice that made the young man timidly wish him a good Sabbath and move away. He turned twice and looked back towards Fima, as though he was afraid he was being pursued.
For a moment Fima was sorry he had not given this peddler of pious deeds and used cars a vitriolic answer, a theological knockout blow that he would not forget in a hurry. He could have asked him, for example, whether you got five credit points up there for killing a five-year-old Arab girl. Or whether to bring a child into the world that neither you nor the mother wanted was a virtuous act or a transgression. After a moment, to his surprise, he felt some regret that he had not said yes, if only to afford a small pleasure to this North African youth in the Volhynian or Galician costume, who, despite his transparent guile, seemed to Fima to be innocent and goodhearted. No doubt in his own way he too was trying to put right what cannot be put right.
Meanwhile he shuffled past a carpenter’s workshop, a grocer’s that smelled strongly of salt fish, a butcher’s shop that struck him as murderously bloodstained, and a dingy shop selling snoods and wigs, and he stopped at a nearby newsstand to buy the weekend editions of Yediot, Hadashot, and Ma’ariv. And so, laden with newspapers (for once he also bought the ultra-pious paper Yated Ne’eman, out of vague curiosity), Fima entered a small café on the corner of Zephaniah Street. It was a sort of family restaurant, with three tables covered with peeling pink Formica, and lit by a single feeble bulb that cast a tacky yellow light. Lazy flies wandered everywhere. A bearlike man was dozing behind the counter, with his beard between his teeth, and Fima wondered for a moment at the possibility that this was actually himself behind the reception desk at the clinic transported here by magic. He dropped onto a plastic chair that seemed none too clean, and tried to recall what his mother used to order for him on those Fridays a thousand years ago at the Danzigs’ restaurant. Eventually he asked for chicken soup, beef stew, a mixed salad, pitta and pickles, and a bottle of mineral water. As he ate he rummaged in his pile of papers until he fingers were black and the pages were grease-stained.
In Ma’ariv, on the second page, there was a report about an Arab youth in Jenin who had been burned to death while trying to set fire to a military jeep that was parked in the main street of the town. Investigations had shown, the newspaper reported, that the Arab mob which gathered round the burning youth had prevented the military orderly from offering him first aid and did not allow the soldiers to get close enough to douse the flames, apparently in the belief that the young man burning to death in front of them was an Israeli soldier. He roasted for about ten minutes in the fire that he himself had lit, uttering ‘fearful screams’, before finally expiring. In the town of Or Akiva, on the other hand, a minor miracle had occurred. A five-year-old boy who had fallen from an upper storey, receiving serious head injuries, had been lying unconscious since the Day of Atonement. The doctors had written him off and placed him in a home, where he was expected to live out the rest of his days as a vegetable. But the mother, a simple woman who could neither read nor write, refused to give up hope. When the doctors told her the child did not have a chance and that only a miracle could save him, she prostrated herself at the feet of a famous rabbi in Bnei Brak, who told her to employ a certain rabbinical student who was known to be brain-damaged himself to repeat a page of the Zohar about Abraham and Isaac day and night into the ear of the unresponsive child (whose name was Yitzhak or Isaac). And indeed, after four days and nights the boy began to show signs of life, and he was now fully recovered, running around and singing hymns and attending a religious boarding school, where he had a special scholarship and was gaining a reputation as a budding genius. Why not try reading the same passage of the Zohar into the ears of Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir, Fima chuckled to himself, and then muttered when he spilled some sauce on his trousers.
In the religious paper, Yated Ne’eman, he skimmed through various malicious rumblings about desertions from the kibbutzim. According to the paper, the younger generation of kibbutzniks were all wandering around the Far East and the Indian mountains, attaching themselves to all sorts of terrible pagan sects. And again in Ma’ariv a veteran columnist argued that the government should not be in a hurry to rush off to all sorts of dubious peace conferences. We should wait until the Israeli deterrent was renewed. We must not go to the negotiating table from an inferior position, with the sword of the intifada, as it were, at our throats. Discussions about peace might be desirable, but only when the Arabs finally realised that they had no chance politically or militarily, indeed no chance at all, and came pleading for peace with their tails between their legs.
In Hadashot he came across a satirical piece more or less suggesting that instead of hanging Eichmann we should have had the foresight to spare him, so we could make use of his experience and his organisational skills at the present juncture. Eichmann would be well received among the torturers of Arabs and those who wanted to deport them to the east en masse, an area in which he was known to have particular expertise. Then in the weekend magazine of Yediot Aharonot he came across an article, illustrated with colour photographs, about the ordeals of a once well-known singer who had got hooked on hard drugs, and now, just when she was fighting the addiction, a heartless judge had deprived her of custody of her baby daughter by a famous soccer star who refused to acknowledge his paternity. The judge ruled that the baby should be handed over to a foster family, despite the singer’s protest that the foster father was
actually a Yugoslav who had not been properly converted and might not even be circumcised. When Fima had searched all the pockets of his trousers, his shirt, and his overcoat and almost given up hope, he eventually fished out of the inside pocket of the coat, of all places, a folded twenty-shekel note which Baruch had managed to plant there without his noticing. He paid and took his leave with a muttered apology. He left all his newspapers on the table.
Outside the restaurant the cold had intensified. There was a hint of evening in the air, even though it was still only midafternoon. The cracked asphalt, the rusty wrought-iron gates, some of which had the word ‘Zion’ worked into them, the signboards of the shops, workshops, Torah schools, estate agencies, and charities, the row of dustbins parked along the pavement, the distant view of the hills glimpsed beyond neglected gardens – everything was becoming clothed in shades of grey. Occasionally alien sounds penetrated the regular hubbub of the streets: church bells, high and slow, punctuated by silence, or low or shrill or heavy and elegiac, and also a distant loudspeaker, and pneumatic drills, and the faint blaring of a siren. All these sounds could not subdue the silence of Jerusalem, that permanent underlying silence, which you can always discover if you look for it underneath any noise in Jerusalem. An old man and a boy walked slowly past, grandfather and grandson perhaps. The boy asked: