by Amos Oz
In his childhood, on warm summer evenings here in Rehavia, solitary sounds of a piano could be heard through barred shutters. Even the stifling air seemed to mock these sounds. Now they were gone and forgotten. Ben Gurion and Lupatin were dead. The refugee scholars with their homburgs and bow ties were dead. And between them and Yoezer, we lie and fornicate and murder. What is there left? Pine trees and silence. And some battered German tomes with the gold lettering on their spines already fading.
Suddenly Fima had to fight back tears of longing. Not longing for the dead, or for what once existed here and no longer did, but for what might have been and was not, and never would be. There came into his head the words ‘his place does not know him’. But however hard he tried, he could not remember whom he had heard pronounce this terrifying phrase within the past two or three days.
It struck him now as precise and penetrating.
The minarets on the hilltops surrounding Jerusalem, the ruins and the stone walls enclosing secretive convents, topped with sharp broken glass, the heavy iron gates, the wrought-iron grilles, the cellars, the gloomy basements, a brooding, resentful Jerusalem, sunk up to its neck in nightmares of prophets stoned and saviours crucified and redeemers hacked to pieces, surrounded by a string of barren rock-strewn hills, the emptiness of slopes pockmarked with caves and gullies, apostate olive trees that had almost ceased to be trees and joined the realm of the inanimate, solitary stone cottages in the folds of incised valleys, and beyond them the great deserts extending southwards to Bab el-Mandeb and eastwards to Mesopotamia and northwards to Hama and Palmyra, the lands of asp and viper, expanses of chalk and salt, haunt of nomads with herds of black goats and with vengeful knives in the folds of their robes, dark desert tents, and encircled in the midst of all this, Rehavia with its melancholy piano music in tiny rooms at evening, its frail old scholars, its shelves of German tomes, its good manners, its raised homburgs, silence between the hours of one and five, crystal chandeliers, exiled lacquered furniture, brocade and leather upholstery, china dinner services, sideboards, the Russian excitability of his father, and Ben Gurion and Lupatin, the monkish halo of light around the desks of dour scholars gathering footnotes on their way to acquiring world fame, and we, following in their footsteps with helpless, hopeless perplexity, Tsvika with Columbus and the church, Ted and Yael and their jet-propelled vehicles, Nina orchestrating the liquidation of her ultra-pious sex boutique, Wahrhaftig struggling to defend a civilised enclave in his abortion inferno, Uri Gefen roaming the world conquering women and mocking his conquests with his wry humour, Annette and Tamar, the unwanted, and you yourself with your Heart of Christendom and your lizards and your late-night letters to Yitzhak Rabin and the price of violence in a time of moral decline. And Dimi with his slaughtered dog. Where was it all leading? Where did that Chili get lost on her way to the Aryan side?
As though this were not a district of a city but a remote camp of whale hunters who had settled at the world’s end, on a godforsaken coast in Alaska, throwing up a few shaky structures and a rickety fence in the boundless waste, among bloodthirsty nomadic tribes, and then they all set off together far out on the grey water in search of a nonexistent whale. And God has forgotten them, as the proprietress of the café across the road said yesterday.
Fima had a vivid image of himself standing guard, alone in the dark, over the abandoned whalers’ camp. A faint lantern sways in the wind at the top of a pole, flickering, guttering in the black expanse, and there is no other light in all the length and breadth of the Pacific wastes extending northwards to the Pole and southwards to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. A solitary glow-worm. Absurd. Its place does not know it. And yet, this precious radiance. Which it is your duty to keep alive as long as possible. It must not stop glimmering in the depth of the frozen expanse at the foot of the snow-covered glaciers. It is your responsibility to prevent it from being blown out by the wind. At least as long as you are here and until Yoezer arrives. Never mind who you are and what you are and what you have to do with whalers who never existed, you with your myopia, your flabby muscles, your floppy breasts, your ridiculous, clumsy body. The responsibility is yours.
But in what sense?
He put his hand in his pocket to look for a heartburn tablet, but instead of the little tin his fingers dredged up the silver earring, which sparkled for an instant as though bewitched in the light that came from the room behind him. As he hurled it into the heart of darkness, he seemed to hear Yael’s sardonic voice:
‘Your problem, pal.’
And with his face to the night, in a low, decisive voice, he answered:
‘Correct. It is my problem. And I am going to solve it.’
And he smiled to himself again. But this time it was not his habitual, sad smile of self-deprecation, but the astonished curled lip of a man who for a long time has been seeking a complex answer to a complex question and suddenly discovers a simple one.
With that he turned and went inside. At once he noticed Yael, who was deep in conversation with Uri Gefen on the sofa, their knees touching. Fima had the impression that laughter had frozen on their lips as he entered. But he felt no envy. On the contrary, a secret joy welled up inside him at the thought that he had slept with every woman in this room, Shula, Nina, and Yael. And yesterday with Annette Tadmor. And tomorrow was another day.
At that moment he caught sight of Dimi kneeling on the carpet in a corner, an elderly, philosophical child, slowly revolving with his finger Baruch’s huge terrestrial globe, which was illuminated from within. The electric light painted the oceans blue and the land masses gold. The child seemed absorbed, detached, concentrating entirely on what he was doing. And Fima remarked to himself, like a man making a mental note of the whereabouts of a suitcase or an electric switch, that he loved this child more than he had ever loved any living soul. Including women. Including the boy’s mother. Including his own mother.
Yael got up and approached him, as though uncertain whether to shake his hand or just rest a hand on his sleeve. Fima did not wait for her to make up her mind, but hugged her hard and pressed her head to his shoulder, as though it were she, not he, who needed and deserved consolation. As though he were making her a present of his new orphanhood. Yael mumbled into his chest something that Fima did not catch and did not even want to hear, because he was enjoying the discovery that Yael, like Prime Minister Ben Gurion, was shorter then he by almost a head. Even though he was not a tall man himself.
Then Yael broke away from his clasp and hurried, or escaped, to the kitchen, to help Shula and Teddy, who were making open sandwiches for everybody. It occurred to Fima to ask Uri or Tsvi to call the two gynaecologists on his behalf, and also Tamar, and why not Annette Tadmor too? He had a sudden urge to gather together all the people who had some bearing on his new life. As though something inside him was planning, without his knowledge, to have some kind of a ceremony. To preach to them. To try to tell them something new. To announce that henceforth … But perhaps he was confusing mourning with a farewell party. Farewell to what? What sort of sermon could he preach? What news did a man like him have to give? Be holy and pure, all of you, in preparation for the Third State?
He changed his mind, and abandoned the idea of a gathering.
However, he suddenly chose not to sit in the place vacated by Yael next to Uri on the sofa, but in his father’s armchair. He stretched his legs comfortably on the upholstered footstool. He relished the soft seat that took his body as though it had been made to measure for him. Without thinking, he banged twice on the floor with the silver-headed cane. But when they all stopped talking and looked at him attentively, ready to do his bidding, to offer him affection and condolence, Fima smiled benignly and exclaimed:
‘Why this silence? Carry on.’
Tsvi, Nina, and Uri tried to draw him into a conversation to distract him, a light exchange about subjects dear to his heart, the situation in the Territories, the way it was presented on Italian television, which Uri had been watching in
Rome, the significance of the American overtures. Fima refused to be drawn. He contented himself with not removing the absent-minded smile from his face. For a moment he thought of Baruch lying in a refrigerated compartment in the basement of Hadassah Hospital, in a sort of honeycomb of freezer drawers, populated, in part or in whole, by the fresh Jerusalem dead. He tried to feel in his own bones the frost, the darkness of the drawer, the dark northern ocean bed below the whaling station. But he could find no pain in his heart. Or fear. No. His heart was light, and he almost began to see a funny side to the metallic mortuary honeycomb with its drawers of corpses. He recalled his father’s anecdote about the argument between the Israeli and the American railway boss, and the story of the famous rabbi and the highwayman who exchanged their cloaks. He realised he would have to say something. But he had no idea what he could tell his friends. However, his ignorance was growing thinner and thinner. Like a veil that only half hides the face. He got up and went to the lavatory and rediscovered that here at his father’s the bowl was flushed by a tap that could be turned on or off at will, with no race, no defeat, no constant humiliation. So that was one less thing to worry about.
Returning, he joined Dimi on the carpet, got down on his knees, and asked:
‘Do you know the legend of Atlantis?’
Dimi said:
‘Sure I do. There was a programme about it once on educational TV. It’s not exactly a legend.’
‘What is it then? Fact?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So, if it’s not a legend and it’s not fact?’
‘It’s a myth. A myth is not the same thing as a legend. It’s more like a nucleus.’
‘Where was this Atlantis, roughly?’
Dimi turned the illuminated globe a little and gently placed a pale hand on the ocean that glowed from the depths in the radiance of the electric light between Africa and South America, and the boy’s fingers were also illuminated with a ghostly glow.
‘Roughly here. But it makes no difference. It’s more in the mind.’
‘Tell me something, Dimi. Do you think there’s anything after we die?’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you believe Granpa can hear us right now?’
‘There isn’t that much to hear.’
‘But can he?’
‘Why not?’
‘And can we hear him?’
‘In our minds, yes.’
‘Are you sad?’
‘Yes. Both of us. But it’s not good-bye. You can go on loving.’
‘So – we shouldn’t be afraid of dying?’
‘No, that isn’t possible.’
‘Tell me something, Dimi. Have you had any supper tonight?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Then give me your hand.’
‘What for?’
‘Nothing. Just to feel.’
‘Feel what?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘Stop it, Fima. Go back to your friends.’
At this point their conversation was interrupted, because Dr Wahrhaftig burst into the room, red-faced, panting, and ranting, as if he had come to put a stop to some scandal rather than offer his condolences. Fima was unable to conceal his smile when he suddenly noticed a superficial resemblance between Wahrhaftig and the Ben Gurion who bellowed at his father in Rashbam Street forty years before. Tamar Greenwich arrived with the doctor, nervous, rather weepy, full of good intentions. Fima turned towards them, patiently accepted the handshake and the hug, but did not grasp what they were saying to him. For some reason his lips muttered vacantly:
‘Never mind. No harm done. These things happen.’
Apparently they too failed to catch what was said. They were quickly given a glass of tea.
At half past eight, seated again in his father’s armchair, with his legs comfortably crossed, Fima pushed away the yogurt and the roll with pickled herring that Teddy had placed in front of him. He removed the arm that Uri put round his shoulder. And he declined Shula’s offer of a blanket for his lap. He suddenly handed back to Nina the brown envelope he had removed from her attaché case earlier and told her to start reading the will aloud.
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
‘Even though usually …’
‘Even though usually.’
‘But Fima …’
‘Now, please.’
After a hesitation and an exchange of rapid glances with Tsvi and Yael and Uri, Nina decided to comply. She drew two closely typed sheets of paper from the envelope. In the silence that had fallen she started to read, at first with some embarrassment and then in her professional voice, which was calm and detached.
First came detailed, punctilious instructions concerning the conduct of the funeral and the memorial service and the tombstone. Then came the substance. Boris Baruch Nomberg bequeathed two hundred and forty thousand United States dollars to be divided in unequal parts among the sixteen foundations, organisations, associations and committees that were listed in alphabetical order, each name accompanied by the relevant sum of money. At the head of the list came the Association for the Promotion of Religious Pluralism and at the bottom the Zeal for Torah Orthodox School. After this last item and the signatures of the deceased, the notary, and the witnesses, came the following lines:
‘With the exception of the property in Reines Street, Tel Aviv, mentioned in the annexe, I hereby bequeath and leave all my belongings to my only son, Efraim Nomberg Nisan, who is adept at distinguishing good from evil, with the hope that henceforth he will not be content merely to distinguish but will devote his strength and excellent talents to doing what is good and refraining so far as possible from evil.’
Above the signatures came another line in a bold hand: ‘Signed, sealed, and delivered, the testator being of sound mind, here in Jerusalem capital of Israel, in the month of Marheshvan 5749 corresponding to 1988 of the civil era, the fortieth year of the uncompleted renewal of the sovereignty of Israel.’
From the annexe it emerged that the property in Reines Street, Tel Aviv, which Fima had never heard of before, was a modest block of flats. The old man left it ‘to my beloved grandchild, the delight of my soul, Israel Dimitri, son of Theodore and Yael Tobias, to be held in trust for him until he reaches his eighteenth birthday by my dear daughter-in-law Mrs Yael Nomberg Nisan Tobias nee Levin, who shall enjoy the usufruct thereof, the capital to be reserved for my grandson.’
It further transpired from the annexe that henceforward Fima would be the sole proprietor of a medium-sized but solid and profitable cosmetics factory. He would also own the flat in which he had been born and brought up and in which both his parents had passed away at an interval of more than forty years. It was a large second-floor flat with five spacious rooms and deep-silled windows, in a quiet, prosperous neighbourhood, lavishly furnished in a solid, old-fashioned Central European style. He also received various stocks and shares, a building plot in Talpiyot, declared and concealed bank accounts in several banks in Israel and Belgium, a safe-deposit box containing cash and valuables, including his mother’s jewellery of gold and silver set with precious stones. He also inherited a library of several thousand volumes, including a set of the Talmud and other sacred texts bound in morocco, a collection of Midrashic works, some of which were rare, besides hundreds of novels in Russian, Czech, German, and Hebrew, and two shelves of chemistry books in the same languages, and the poems of Uri Zvi Greenberg, including some very rare editions, biblical studies by Dr Israel Eldad, the works of Graetz, Dubnow, Klausner, Kaufman, and Urbach, and a cabinet of old erotica in German and Czech which Fima could not read. Furthermore he was henceforth the owner of collections of stamps and old coins, nine winter suits and six summer ones, some twenty-five ties of a conservative, rather old-fashioned style, and an attractive walking stick with a silver band.
Fima did not ask himself what he would do with all these things, but he pondered on what someone like himself understood of the manufacture and sale of cosmetics.
And since the Hebrew language does not tolerate such constructions, he corrected himself mentally: the manufacture of cosmetics and their sale.
And suddenly he said to himself:
‘It doesn’t tolerate? So let it not tolerate!’
At ten o’clock, after he had conducted Dimi to a bedroom and told him a short adventure story about the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, he sent all his friends home. He dismissed all their entreaties and protests. No, thank you very much, there was no need for anyone to stay the night. No, thank you very much, he did not want to be driven to his flat in Kiryat Yovel either. Nor did he have any desire to stay with any of them. He would spend the night here. He wanted to be alone. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. No. Absolutely. No need. Kind of you to offer anyway. You’re all wonderful people.
When he was left alone, he was tempted to open a window to let in some fresh air. On second thoughts he decided not to, but instead to close his eyes for a while and try to discover the precise composition of the strange smell of this flat. A smell of doom. Although there was no apparent connection between the smell and the sad event that had taken place here earlier in the day. The flat had always been kept spotlessly clean and tidy. At least outwardly. Both before and after his mother’s death. Twice a week a home help came to polish everything, even the candlesticks, the brass lamps, the silver goblets that were used for religious rituals. His father had taken a cold shower every morning, summer and winter. And the flat had been redecorated regularly every five years.
So what was the source of the smell?
Since he had stopped living here after his military service, his nostrils had recoiled from it every time he came back to visit the old man. It was a faint whiff of something malodorous, half hidden always behind other scents. Was it a dustbin that needed emptying? Dirty linen lingering too long in the basket in the bathroom? Some defect of the drainage system? Mothballs in the wardrobes? Faint cooking odours of thick, oversweet Eastern European food? Fruit that had sat too long in the fruit bowl? Stagnant water in vases that had not been changed although the flowers were changed regularly twice a week? Behind the elegance and tidiness there was always a sourness hovering, minimal and latent admittedly, but deep and persistent, like damp. Was it an ineradicable relic of the opaque, glassy politeness that had spread and frozen here between his father and his mother, and not ceased even with her death? Was there any chance that now it would evaporate?