Black Box

by Amos Oz

  As he leaves I arrive. Bringing a thermos bottle for the night and the tray of medicines. I turn the kerosene heater around. I close the shutters that Boaz has fixed up for us. I wrap him in his blankets and sing a few lullabies. If he considers that I have sung sloppily, repeated myself, or finished too soon, he turns to his mother and complains. But at times a sharp flash, a rapid, sly flicker, flares up and dies in his eyes and the wolfish smile passes for an instant across his lips. As though to hint to me that despite everything he is still running the game, and that of his own free will he chooses to play the fool a little so that I can play at being a nurse. If pain brings out a sweat on his high pale forehead, I wipe it with my hand. I run my fingers over his face and through the remnants of his hair. Then his hand between mine and silence and dozing and the bubbling of the kerosene every few moments on its way from the tank of the heater to the wick that burns with a blue flame. As he dozes he sometimes whispers woefully: “Ilana. Wet.”

  And I change his pajama trousers and the bottom sheet without getting him up. I’ve become an expert at this. I have spread oilcloth over the mattress. And at one o’clock in the morning he stirs, sits up in bed, and asks to dictate something to me. I sit down at the table, switch on a light, and take the cover off the Baby Hermes. I wait. He hesitates, coughs, and finally mutters: “It’s not important. Go to sleep, Mother. You’re tired too.”

  And he curls himself up in his blanket.

  In the silence of the night he says after a couple of hours, in his low inner voice: “You look good in that Bedouin dress.” Or: “It was a slaughter, not a battle.” Or: “Hannibal should have acquired naval supremacy first.” When he finally gets to sleep I have to leave the wall light on. I sit and knit to the sound of the dogs barking and the wind sweeping the darkened garden, until my eyes close. In the past four weeks I have knitted him a sweater, a hat, and a scarf. For Yifat I have knitted a pair of gloves and a cardigan. I shall knit something for you too, Michel: a sweater. White. With stripes. Who irons your shirts? Your sister-in-law? The cousin? Your dumpy arranged match? Perhaps you have learned to launder and iron Yifat’s clothes and your own by yourself? Silence. No answer. Exile. As if I never existed. I am unworthy of all the Biblical punishments you have all condemned me to. What will you do if I turn up tomorrow afternoon on your doorstep? With a suitcase in my right hand, a plastic bag over my shoulder, a woolly teddy for Yifat, a tie and after-shave for you, I’ll ring the bell and you’ll open the door and I’ll say, Here I am, I’m back. What will you do, Michel? Where will you put your shame? You’ll slam the door in my face. They’ll never come back, our Saturday mornings in the simple flat, the sparrows chirping into our late sleep from the branches of the olive tree at the open window. Yifat, in her pajamas with the pattern of cyclamens, creeping in with her dolly between the two of us under the blanket to make a cave with pillows. Your warm hands, half-awake before your eyes have opened, groping blindly in my long hair and her tousled curls. The morning kiss we all three bestow, ceremoniously, upon the bald plastic doll. Your custom of bringing us a glass of orange juice and a cup of strained cocoa in bed on Saturday mornings. Your habit of sitting Yifat on the marble shelf next to the basin in the bathroom, lathering her cheeks and yours with your shaving cream, and having a toothbrushing race with her while I make breakfast and the sparrows squeak outside as if the happiness were more than they could bear. Our Sabbath walks to the wadi at the foot of the monastery. Grace after meals on the balcony performed by the Sommo Trio. The great pillow fight and animal and bird fables and the rebuilding of the Temple in toy bricks on the mat with the Chamber of Hewn Stone made of dominoes and colored buttons from my sewing basket representing priests and Levites. The Sabbath afternoon rest amid a scattering of evening papers on the bed and the armchair and the mat. Your repertoire of Parisian stories and the imitations of singing clochards, which made us both weep with laughter. And fill my eyes even now, as I remember and write. Once Yifat took my lipstick and colored a map of the ten tribes of Israel that hung above your desk, a gift from an evening paper to its readers, and in your fury you locked her outside on the balcony “to ruminate on her actions and mend her evil ways” and stuffed your ears with cotton wool lest your heart be softened at the sound of her faint weeping and you forbade me to take pity on her because of the text “He that spareth the rod hateth his child.” But when her weeping suddenly stopped and a strange silence descended, you rushed outside and cuddled her and folded her tiny body deep inside your sweater. As though you were pregnant with her. Won’t you take pity on me too, Michel? Shan’t I be folded into the warmth of your hairy womb, underneath your shirt, when my punishment is complete?

  On the eve of New Year, a month ago, you sent your brother-in-law Armand in his Peugeot truck to take Yifat to you. By way of Rabbi Bouskila you informed me in writing that you had initiated divorce proceedings, that my status was that of a “rebellious wife,” and that you had begun to raise loans so that you could repay “that tainted money of yours.” At the beginning of the week Rahel and Yoash were here: they came to talk me into hiring a lawyer (not Zakheim) and insisting on my right to know what you have done with my daughter, demanding to see her, not just giving her up. Yoash went down with Boaz to look at the water pump, and Rahel put her arm around my shoulder and said, “Lawyer or no lawyer, Ilana, you have no right to ruin your life and abandon Yifat.” She volunteered to go to Jerusalem and talk you into agreeing to a reconciliation. She demanded to speak to Alex face to face. She suggested enlisting Boaz for the round of shuttle diplomacy that she was apparently planning. And I sat facing her like a clockwork doll whose spring has run down and said nothing except “Just leave me alone.” When they had gone I went up to Alec to make sure he took his pills. I asked him if he would agree to letting you and Yifat come here at Boaz’s invitation. Alec smiled wryly and asked if I was thinking of holding a little orgy here. And he added, “Sure, sweetie; on the contrary, there’s no shortage of rooms here and I’ll pay him a hundred dollars for every day he agrees to stay.” Next day he suddenly told us to send urgently for Zakheim. Who arrived two hours later, red and puffing, in his Citroën from Jerusalem and received a cold rebuke and instructions to transfer another twenty thousand dollars to you at once. Which you apparently decided despite everything to accept, taint or no taint: because the check was never returned. Alec also told Zakheim to put the house and the land around it in Boaz’s name. Dorit Zakheim received a gift of a little plot near Nes Ziyyona, and Zakheim himself, the next day, two cases of champagne.

  “Are you or are you not his wife?”

  “Yes. And yours too.”

  “And the child?”

  “With him.”

  “Go to him. Get dressed and go. That’s an order.”

  Then, woefully, in a whisper: “Ilana. Wet.”

  Poor Michel: right to the end he has the upper hand. I am in his hands, your honor is underneath his feet, and even the halo of the victim deserving of pity is filched from you, because he is dying, and is placed on his own balding head. I saw the noble note you wrote him magnanimously inviting us all to stay with you and instead of weeping I burst out laughing suddenly and couldn’t stop myself: “It’s creeping annexation, Alec. He’s got the impression that you’ve weakened, and that the time is right to annex us all under the wings of his presence.” And Alec twisted his lips in the grimace that serves him as a smile.

  Every Sunday I go with him in a taxi to Haifa, to the hospital, where they treat him with chemotherapy. Meanwhile they have stopped the radiotherapy. And, surprisingly, there is an improvement in his condition: he is still weak and tired, he still dozes most of the day and lies half-awake at night, his mind is muddled by drugs, but he has less pain. He manages now to spend two or three hours walking between the wall and the door. To make his own way with the help of his stick to the kitchen in the evening. I allow him to stay there until they disperse to their rooms, close to midnight. I even encourage him to converse with them to
distract his mind. But once, last week, it happened that he failed to control himself and he wet himself in their company. He couldn’t be bothered or forgot to ask me to take him to the toilet. I told Boaz to take him straight up to our room, I cleaned him up, I changed him, and the next day, as a punishment, I forbade him to come downstairs. Since then he tries harder. Before the rain that started falling yesterday he even walked by himself a little in the garden. Tall and gaunt in his patched jeans and a ridiculous sweatshirt. When he misbehaves I don’t hesitate to hit him. For example, when he slipped away from me one night and climbed up to the observatory on the roof and on the way back slipped and fell off the rope ladder and lay stunned in the hallway until I found him. I beat him like a puppy, and now it is clear to him that he does not have the strength to climb stairs, and he lets Boaz carry him up to our room every evening in his arms. You have taught us all compassion.

  And what about you? Do you take time off from your work of redemption and fetch Yifat from the nursery at half past one? Do you sing to her in your scorched voice “For the food which Thou hast given us,” “Behold thou art fair,” “Mighty in kingship”? Or perhaps you have planted her in your brother’s family, packing all her clothes and toys in the brown suitcase, and left for the rocky hills of Hebron? If you come and bring her I’ll forgive you, Michel. I’ll even sleep with you. I’ll do whatever you ask for. And even what you’re too shy to ask for. Time is passing and every day that slips by and every night is another hill and another valley that we have lost. They will not return. You are silent. Avenging and resenting and punishing with all the rigor of your silence. You have compassion for all Israel, for ancient ruins, for Boaz, for Alec, but not for your wife or daughter. Even about the divorce proceedings you saw fit to tell me through your rabbi. Who informed me in your name that I am a rebellious wife and henceforth I am forbidden to see Yifat. Am I too unworthy for you to demand an explanation from me? For you to impose a penance on me and show me the way of repentance? That you should write me a Biblical curse?

  Boaz says: “The best thing for you to do, Ilana, is to let him finish being angry out there. Let him work it all off on his religious chums. Then he’s bound to cool down and give in to you whatever you ask.”

  “Do you think I wronged him?”

  “Nobody’s any better than the next person.”

  “Boaz. Frankly. Do you think I’m mad?”

  “Nobody’s more sane than the next person. Do you feel like sorting some seeds?”

  “Tell me: who are you making that merry-go-round for?”

  “For the little one. I mean, when she comes back.”

  “Do you believe?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe. Why not?”

  This morning I hit him again. Because he went out on the balcony without my permission and stood in the rain and got wet. There was an expression of total idiocy on his tortured face. Had he decided to kill himself? He smiled. Replied that the rain was very good for the fields. I grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him indoors and slapped him. And I couldn’t stop myself. I beat on his chest with my fist and knocked him down on the bed and went on hitting him until my hand hurt, and he didn’t stop smiling, as though he was enjoying making me happy. I lay down next to him and kissed him on the eyes, on the sunken chest, on his forehead which is spreading upward thanks to his falling hair. I stroked him till he dozed off. And I got up and went out on the balcony myself to see what the rain was doing to the fields and to wash away the pain of my longing for you, for the smell of your hairy body, the smell of bread and halva and garlic. For your voice cracked from smoking and your bold moderation. Will you come? Will you bring Yifat? We’ll all be here. It’s nice here. Wonderfully quiet.

  Take the ruined fish pool, for example: it’s been mended with cement and now there are fish in it once more. Carp instead of goldfish. The renovated fountain replies to the rain in its own language: it doesn’t gush, it drips. And all around, the fruit trees and the ornamental trees stand in the grey silence in the gentle rain that falls on them all day. I have no hope, Michel. This letter is pointless. The moment you identify my handwriting on the envelope, you will tear the paper to shreds and flush it down the toilet. You have already mourned for me. All lost. What is there left for me except to accompany my obsession to his grave?

  And then to disappear. Not to exist. If Alec leaves me some money I’ll go abroad. I’ll rent myself a small room in a big faraway city. If loneliness gets the better of me I’ll give myself to strange men. I’ll close my eyes tight and taste you and him in them. I can still manage to stir bashful glances of desire in the three odd youths who wander around here among all the girls who are twenty years younger than I. Because Boaz’s commune is slowly expanding: every now and then another lost soul drops in. And the garden is cultivated now, the trees in the orchard have been pruned, new saplings have been planted on the slope of the hill. The pigeons have been evicted from the house and installed in a large dovecote. Only the peacock is still entitled to roam at will in the bedrooms, hallways, and staircases. Most of the rooms have been cleaned out. The electricity has been rewired. We have about twenty kerosene heaters. Bought? Or stolen? Impossible to tell. Instead of the sunken tiles, concrete floors have been laid. An aromatic wood fire burns in the grate in the kitchen. The small tractor stands in a corrugated-metal shelter and all around it are various attachments: sprayer, mower, cultivator, disk harrow. It wasn’t a waste to send Boaz to an agricultural school. He purchased all these things with the money his father gives him. And there are beehives and a goat shed and a little stable for the donkey and coops for the geese, which I have learned to look after. Even though the hens still wander around the yard, pecking among the plants as in an Arab village, with the dogs chasing after them. Opposite my window the wind stirs the tatters of the scarecrows that Yifat and I put up in the vegetable garden before you sent to take her away from me. Does she ask if she can come back? Does she ask after Boaz? Or the peacock? If she complains of earache again don’t rush to give her antibiotics. Wait a day or two, Michel.

  The bougainvillaea and wild oleander have been cleared away from the house. The cracks in the walls have been filled. There is no more scampering of mice across the floor at night. Boaz’s friends bake their own bread; its warm, guttural smell fills me with longing for you. We make yogurt too and even cheeses from the goats’ milk. Boaz has made two wooden barrels and next summer we shall have our own wine. On the roof stands a telescope, and on the night of the Day of Atonement I was invited to climb up and look through it and I saw the dead seas that extend over the surface of the moon.

  Low, stubborn, even, the rain continues to fall. To fill the stone water hole in the yard, the pit that Volodya Gudonski dug and his grandson cleared and restored and which they erroneously call a well. The storehouses, sheds, and shelters are full of sacks of seed, sacks of organic and chemical fertilizer, drums of kerosene and oil, pesticides, cans of engine oil, hoses, sprinklers, and other irrigation equipment. Yoash sends The Field every month. From here and there they have collected old furniture, camp beds, mattresses, bookcases, wardrobes, a mixed multitude of household and kitchen utensils. In the refurbished workshop in the cellar he makes tables, benches, easy chairs for his father. Is he trying to say something to Alec with his two huge hands? Or is he also bewitched in his own way? In a niche dug out underneath the rusty boiler they discovered the treasure chest that Alec’s father hid there. All that was left in it were five Turkish gold coins, which Boaz is keeping for Yifat. For you he is reserving the job of builder, because I told him that during your first year in the country you worked as a construction worker.

  The bottle chimes tinkle on the ground floor, because Alec’s bed of planks, his table and chair and typewriter have been taken up to his mother’s old room, which has a window and a little balcony looking out over the coastal strip and the sea. He doesn’t write a thing, nor does he dictate to me. The typewriter is gathering dust. Books that he asked Boaz to buy fo
r him in the shop in Zikhron stand arranged by height, like soldiers, on the shelf but Alec doesn’t touch them. He is content with stories I tell him. Only the Hebrew dictionary and grammar are open on his table. Because in his lucid hours, in the afternoon, Boaz sometimes comes up: Alec is teaching him spelling and basic syntax. Like Friday with Robinson Crusoe.

  When he leaves, Boaz stoops slightly in the doorway, as though bowing to us. Alec takes up his stick and starts measuring the room with his rhythmic steps. The tire-and-string sandals that Boaz made for him make a padding sound. Sometimes he stops, surprised, bites his dead pipe, and bends over to adjust the angle of the chair to the table. Sternly straightens his blanket. Or mine. Removes my dress from the hook on the door and hangs it in the packing box that serves us as a wardrobe. A slightly stooping, balding man, with fine skin; his appearance reminds me of a Scandinavian village pastor, on his face a strange mixture of mortification, meditation, and irony, his shoulders sloping downward, his back bony and stiff. Only the grey eyes seem cloudy and damp, like the eyes of a confirmed alcoholic. At four o’clock I take him up an herbal infusion, pita fresh from the oven, a little goat cheese that I made myself. And on the same tray a cup of coffee for myself. For the most part we sit and sip in silence. Once, he spoke up and said, without a question mark at the end of the sentence: “Ilana. What are you doing here.”