Black Box

by Amos Oz

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  GIDEON MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL NEW YORK

  FURTHER TO MY PHONE CALL YESTERDAY EVERYTHING ARRANGED IF YOU DECIDE TO COME INCLUDING EXCELLENT CLINIC PRIVATE DOCTOR AND NURSE HAVE INSTRUCTED ZAND TO DROP SOMMOS AND BOAZ AM INVESTING YOUR CASH IN TENTPEG BUT NOT TOUCHING REAL ESTATE UNDERSTAND YOU DONT WANT ME TO TELL ILANA OR BOAZ ABOUT YOUR CONDITION DORIT AND I LEAVE FOR NEW YORK AT THE WEEKEND TO BE WITH YOU FAILING OTHER INSTRUCTIONS WITH YOUR PERMISSION A BIG HUG MANFRED

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  PERSONAL ZAKHEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

  THANKS DONT COME NO NEED UPDATED WILL ON ITS WAY I MAY COME OR NOT FEEL FINE AND BEG YOU TO GIVE ME A BREAK ALEX

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  SOMMO HOTEL CASTILLE RUE GAMBON PARIS

  MICHEL DONT BE ANGRY IVE GONE TO ZIKHRON WITH YIFAT I HAD TO YOULL UNDERSTAND FOR YOUR SAKE ILL TRY TO KEEP SABBATH AND EAT KOSHER NO NEED FOR YOU TO CUT SHORT YOUR TRIP BOAZ SENDS AFFECTIONATE GREETINGS AND TELLS YOU TO ENJOY YOURSELF AND NOT WORRY LOVE YOU ILANA

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  MRS SOMMO GIDEON HOUSE NEAR ZIKHRON YAAKOV ISRAEL

  ILANA GO HOME WITH THE GIRL AT ONCE OR ILL GET ALMALIAH TO FETCH YOU WITH A PATROL I HAVE TO STAY HERE A FEW MORE DAYS ON A MATTER VERGING ON LIFE AND DEATH I FORGIVE YOU ON CONDITION YOU GO HOME TODAY I HAVENT WRONGED YOU SO I DONT DESERVE THIS FROM YOU IN GREAT SORROW MICHEL

  ***

  To Mrs. Janine Fuchs

  Lemon St. 4

  Ramat Hasharon

  August 31, 2335 hrs.

  Dear Janine,

  It’s two days now that I’ve tried to get you on the phone and this evening I came to your house personally and found everything closed and locked. From the neighbors I discovered that you’ve taken an organized holiday in Rhodes, supposedly flying back El Al from Athens in the early hours. Since I have to be in Eilat on official business, I’ve decided to slip this under your door in the hope that you’ll find it. It’s in the matter of our mutual friend Michel (Sommo). Michel went to Paris on a certain matter of public interest (and also to visit his parents, who are living now near his sister in Marseille). When he returned the day before yesterday he came upon a very bad situation following on the step taken by his wife on her own initiative, who has gone with her little girl to stay with her son by her previous marriage, who is living in an abandoned building between Zikhron Yaakov and Binyamina. And now it turns out that approximately one day before Michel’s return her first husband (the scholar who emigrated to America) also turned up there. You can imagine the shock to Michel and the unheard-of shame to our friends the Sommo family because of this dishonorable situation, that she is cohabiting with her first husband, causing tongues to wag and refusing for the time being to return home to Michel, whose world has collapsed in ruins around him.

  I went there yesterday with Michel’s elder brother and two more friends to talk to her, but what do you think? She refused to see us! And so we went back to Jerusalem empty-handed and sat there in grief and despondency with the whole family until half past three in the morning and then we came up with the following plan: that Michel should register a formal complaint against her for taking the girl away from home without his consent, which is verging on kidnapping.

  The sad thing is though that Michel is suffering from a terrible depression and insists like a mule that he will never issue a criminal complaint against his wife. He would rather die, he says, what’s done can’t be undone, and even worse things of the same sort. He seems to me completely shattered and even quite desperate. And you see without a formal complaint from him my hands are tied. His brother and the cousins were thinking of going there and taking a rash step which I don’t even want to mention in writing, but I talked them out of it with great difficulty.

  In short, dear Janine, seeing as how you and Bruno have good personal relations with all the various parties, that is to say with Michel and with Ilana and with her son Boaz who was living with you for a while after I got him out, and seeing as Bruno served in the army at one time under the first husband and knows him from then, perhaps it would be worth the two of you going and trying to talk to them? Before heaven forbid a public scandal breaks out with the newspapers and all sorts of unpleasantness and disgrace, which will be a terrible blow to Michel and the whole Sommo family. I beg of you in the name of family and friends in the strongest possible terms. We are all pinning our last hopes on you!

  If you consider it would be any use me joining you (in plain clothes), of course I am prepared to go there with you as soon as I get back from Eilat. Just leave a phone message for me at Tel Aviv District HQ under the name Chief Inspector Almaliah, and they’ll pass it on to me at once. But you know what, maybe it would be best not to waste any more time but for you two to go there directly as soon as possible? Also Janine please call Michel without delay because he’s in a very bad way and talk to him, tell him not to do anything foolish and not to listen to bad advice. Thanking you and hoping you will succeed and of course as always in friendship,

  Yours,

  Prosper Almaliah

  ***

  Mr. A. Gideon

  Gideon House

  Zikhron Yaakov

  By the Grace of G-d

  Jerusalem

  Eve of the Holy Sabbath

  8th Elul 5736 (3.9.76)

  BY HAND

  Dear Sir,

  This letter will be delivered to you by special messenger before the commencement of the Sabbath, so that we are giving you approximately thirty hours to ponder and consider the state of your soul, since on Sunday morning at nine-thirty a.m. some friends of mine will be arriving to fetch my little girl, Madeleine Yifat, and bring her home, whether politely and respectfully or by other means, depending on your own behavior. As for the poor woman who is also dwelling under your roof, she must face her own fate. How can I behold her face when my heart is empty within me? According to what the Rev. Rabbi Bouskila kindly explained to me last night, her status is still in need of clarification: she may very well be in the position of a woman who is forbidden both to her husband and to her paramour, and expelled from both worlds. At all events my present demand concerns only my daughter, Madeleine Yifat, over whom you have no rights, responsibilities, or claims under either religious or state law, and consequently it would be better for you to return her peacefully on Sunday morning and not compel us to resort to other means. You have been warned, sir.

  [Signed] Michael (Michel-Henri) Sommo

  P.S.: For the life of me I cannot understand how you can have acted so disgracefully. Or so cruelly. Even among the heathen or in gangs of brigands and robbers you would not find such behavior! Have you heard, sir, of the Prophet Nathan? About the sin of King David with Bathsheba? Or perhaps in these days our modern professors are dispensed from having to know what is in the Holy Scriptures?

  It is three days and four nights now that I have been roaming the streets of Jerusalem, with mourner’s stubble on my cheeks—for how can I shave? Roaming the streets and asking myself: Are you a Jew or are you an Amalekite? Are you a human being created in G-d’s image, or are you, Heaven forbid, some kind of a demon? All the wrongs you have done in the past against the woman and the boy are as driven snow compared to your latest outrage. Even the men of Sodom and Gomorrah would not have received you in their midst! Not content with maltreating your wife and casting off your son, you could not keep your unholy paws off the poor man’s ewe lamb and spilled my blood as well!

  The truth is that I have doubts whether someone like you, a confirmed evildoer and rogue imbued with the spirit of Belial, possesses any fear of Heaven or even any conscience. Apparently not. I have heard people talking about you here in Jerusalem, and saying that you are a great devotee of the Arabs. According to your “views” this is apparently the Land of Ishmael, promised by Heaven to the seed of Ibrahim, the land that Musa spied from the distance and over which Daoud ruled, and we Jews have no business here at all. In that case perhaps you might consider me as an Arab? Perhaps you could treat me according to the fine prin
ciples you adopt toward them? Would you have taken away an Arab’s wife? His daughter? His little ewe lamb? No doubt you would have written newspaper articles about it and organized demonstrations and signed petitions and moved Heaven and earth if someone had dared to do such a thing even to the least of the Arabs! But we are as outlaws, our lives are unprotected, a disgrace to our neighbors and scorn and derision to all those around us. We are already in the Days of Penitence, Mr. Gideon, and it would be better for you not to forget that there is One Who dispenses retribution to the arrogant, One before Whom there is neither laughter nor levity. Or am I living in error? Perhaps, Heaven forbid, there is nothing in Heaven? No judge and no justice? Perhaps the world is really an ownerless property?

  The truth is that right from the outset I had a suspicion that your heart harbored evil schemes. From the moment you and that wretched woman began to correspond with each other all of a sudden beyond the bounds of natural behavior. From the moment your checks began to descend upon us like bounteous rain. At times my entrails tormented me with fear in the night, lest you were spreading a net at our feet to trap us. What is happening? Have you suddenly got a new heart within you? Or is this Satan dancing before us? Why is he showering all this money upon us? Perhaps when all is said and done he is lying in wait to snatch the poor when he pulls in the net, as it is written in the Book of Psalms? But I said to myself, perhaps my duty is to stand the test. Not to fall into suspicions. To give you the benefit of the doubt and open the gates of repentance before you. Too pure of eyes to behold the evil, that is what I was, instead of nipping this filthy scheme in the bud.

  Or did I also sin? Were my eyes blinded by greed?

  I confess today that I transgressed against the verse “Thou shalt not be excessively righteous.” And now Heaven has punished me sevenfold. To teach me a lesson, not to give my back to the lash nor to turn the other cheek. Which is not the way of Judaism, but to do to the evildoer what the Passover Haggadah says we should. Now I have paid my penalty and you are merely the whip with which I am scourged. For five or six years Michael Sommo was allowed to hold his head up, for five or six years he was permitted to stand upright as a father and a husband and a human being, and now he is called to repay his debts with interest and to return to being nothing. To return to the dust from which he had the impudence to attempt to raise himself.

  This evening at the beginning of the sunset I went to the Talpiyyot woods and stood there for a while. I lifted up my eyes to the hills to see from where my help would come, where was Sommo and where were the hills. The hills were silent and did not bother to give me an answer to age-old questions such as how long shall the wicked rejoice? or shall the judge of the whole earth not do justice? Instead of replying the hills wrapped themselves in darkness. Who am I to complain? Rabbi Bouskila advised me to accept suffering with love. He reminded me that the aforementioned questions remained unanswered even when they were asked by greater and better men than I, thousands of years ago. The hills wrapped themselves in darkness and paid no attention to me. And I stood there a little longer, I marveled that the wind could bother to caress someone like me, I was astonished that the stars could show themselves to such a worm-and-not-a-man, until it began to be cold. Then I understood, vaguely, that Sommo is very small. That his sorrow is like a passing shadow. That he is forbidden to investigate what is too wonderful for him. So that if for a moment I pondered on the ways of Providence, if for a moment I was sick of life and hoped for death, if I even harbored the terrible thought of killing you with my own hands, after a moment I regretted it and submitted. By the time the moon came out I had calmed and silenced my soul. My days are like a shadow and I shall wither like grass.

  But what of you, sir? How can you not be afraid? Where will you lift up your eyes? And your hands full of blood?

  The truth is that you may be a great champion of the Arabs and a hater of the Jews, but you have shed Arab blood like water during the wars and perhaps even between them. Whereas I, the so-called chauvinist and extremist, have never shed blood in my whole life. Not a single drop. And I have never caused an Arab hair to fall to the ground, despite the fact that both I and my forefathers received our fill of insults and spitting and worse. I have not caused harm or distress to Jew or gentile; I have merely contained myself and said nothing. But what happened? You are considered a great humanitarian, showing compassion and making concessions, whereas I am considered a cruel zealot. You are considered a man of the world and I am considered narrow-minded and limited. You are considered the peace camp and I am considered the vicious circle of bloodshed. And how does this slander come to take wing? Because you and those like you are apparently worthy of praise, whereas I and those like me apparently deserve only silence. No doubt it is because you have shed so much Arab blood that you have become such a blood-shedder. And how we admired you and those like you when we were young! How we looked up to you out of the depths! Such heroes! Such demigods! The new lions of Judah! But why should I argue with you and recount my humiliation to you. You must give me back my child on Sunday morning, and after that—go and burn in hellfire. Perhaps you will read all this with mocking laughter, imitating my accent, chuckling at the mentality, and she will rebuke you and tell you to stop, that it’s not nice to laugh at the poor man, but even she will not be able to suppress her smile. What is lost is lost.

  King David was not only prevented from building the Temple. He was also reminded by Heaven of the innocent blood he had shed. But this punishment did not console those whose blood had been shed. Doubtless the Sommos of the days of King David were not content with their lot. We are chaff before the wind. Doormats underneath your feet.

  Relatives, friends, and acquaintances come and sit with me from morning till evening to offer their condolences. They enter with bowed heads as into a house where there is a corpse, squeeze my hand, tell me to be strong and of good courage. I am like a mourner, except that my heart does not allow me to rend my garments for her. Perhaps there is still a shadow of doubt? And I give her the benefit of this doubt, of course on the conditions that I shall stipulate for her and in accordance with the legal decision of Rabbi Bouskila. But you shall return the child on Sunday morning and not an hour later; otherwise you may compel me to take desperate steps. I have even thought of standing outside your gate day and night with a placard: “A shameful deed has been done in Israel!” Relatives and friends of ours speak of even more fateful steps against you. It may be Heaven that stays my hand. That I do not sink to your level.

  All day long my brother’s dear wife stays in the house with me. She has left her own children and come to be with me in my sorrow. She serves the guests with cold soda water, savories, and black coffee, empties the ashtrays, reproaches me with “Eat, eat,” and I heed her and eat my bread with a tear. Good people strive all day long to distract my mind from my ordeal. They talk to me about the government, about the Agranat Commission, about Rabin and Kissinger and Hussein. I pretend to listen to them to the best of my ability. Even Mr. Zakheim has called. He spoke smooth words and proposed himself as intermediary. Why do we need intermediaries? Only give me back the girl, and after that you must stand and face your own fate. And the woman must face her own fate too. Yesterday evening when the last guest had left, my brother arrived clutching a bottle of brandy; he hugged and kissed me, and sadly said: “We should never marry with them. They are infected with something that we neither understand nor know; we should remain among our own, avoiding their contact and their contagion.” So he spoke, and then he took his wife and left. I too went out to wander around the streets. I went up the hill to watch the sunset and to ask forbidden questions. The only answer I received was the whispering of the trees. Perhaps it is all a mistake? Perhaps the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Flood and the Binding of Isaac and the Burning Bush never existed, but were merely allegory? Perhaps the great sages erred in their identification, and the ancient Jerusalem is not here, or the Biblical Land of Israel, but somewhere completely different
? Beyond the hills of darkness? Could a mistake like that not happen? Do scientists never make mistakes? Perhaps that is why it befell that there is no G-d in this place?

  When the moon came out from behind the hills I came home. I have no dealings with the moon, lest my instincts get the better of me and I despair of life or strangle you, sir. And when I got back to my empty home what had I left to do but pour myself a glass of the brandy that my brother had left behind, turn on the television, and sit in the dark watching the lithe and lissom detectives with their pistols chasing some criminal in the land of Hawaii in America? In the midst of the leaping and the shooting, in the midst of the chase, I stood up and left them. They needn’t do me any favors. Let them flicker on their own in the dark. I went out instead on the balcony to see if the world was still standing and the moon still submitting itself with pieces of silver despite the shameful deed that had been done in Israel. Passers-by went past on the sidewalk, each going home to his wife and children, and my eyes followed their shadows: perhaps I could find where to take my disgrace?