by Неизвестный
Chapter four
Hillel was a pudgy, awkward little boy. He had a hiding place at the end of the garden, behind the fig tree or up among its branches, which he called his “hideaway.” He would hide himself away there and secretly eat sticky sweets that the women gave him, and dream of Africa, the sources of the Nile, the lions in the jungle.
At night he would wake up with attacks of asthma. Especially in the early summer. Feverish, suffocated, he would see the horrific smile of the terrifying white thing through the slats of the shutters and burst into tears. Until Father appeared holding a small flashlight, to sit on his bed and sing him a soothing song. Aunts, neighbors, and nursery-school teachers adored Hillel, with Russian kisses and Polish displays of affection. They called him “Little Cherry.” Sometimes they would leave heavy lip marks on his cheeks or his mouth. These women were plump and excitable. Their faces wore an expression of bitter complaint: life has not been as kind to me as I deserve.
Madame Yabrova the pianist and her niece, Lyubov, who called herself Binyamina Even-Hen, in the determined way they played the piano, seemed to be nobly refraining from repaying life for what it had done to them. Mrs. Vishniak the pharmacist would grumble to Hillel and say that little children were the only hope of the Jewish people, particularly herself. At times Hillel wrapped himself in introspection or sadness, and then he would delight them with a sweet phrase, such as: “Life is a circle. Everyone goes around and around.”
And stir ripples of emotion.
But the children of Tel Arza called him by the unpleasant nickname “Jelly.” Unkind, skinny girls, vicious Oriental girls, enjoyed knocking him down on a heap of gravel and pulling his blond hair. Keys and amulets hung around their necks. They emitted a pungent smell of peanuts, sweat, soap, and halvah.
Hillel would always wait until they had had enough of him and his curls. The he would get up and shake the dust off his gym shorts and his cotton undershirt; gasping for breath, his eyes full of tears, he would bite his lip and begin to forgive. How nobly forgiveness shone in his eyes: those girls did not know what they were doing; they probably had unhappy fathers and brothers who were high up in the underworld or in football; their mothers and sisters probably went out with British soldiers. It was a terrible thing to be born an Oriental girl. And one of them had even started to grow breasts under her sweaty vest. Hillel reflected, forgave, and was filled with love of himself for his ability to understand and to forgive.
Then he would run to Mrs. Vishniak’s pharmacy to cry a little, not because of the scratches but because of the cruel lot of the girls and his own magnanimity. Mrs. Vishniak would kiss him, console him with sticky candy, tell him about the mill on the banks of the blue river, which no longer existed. He would tell her, in carefully chosen words, about a dream he had had the previous night, interpret the dream himself, and leave behind a delicate mood of poetry as he went off to practice the piano in the dark, airless house of Madame Yabrova and Binyamina. He returned the caresses he had received from Mrs. Vishniak to the haughty bronze Beethoven on top of the sideboard. After all, Herzl, in his youth, was called a madman in the street. And Bialik was always being beaten.
In the evening, before he went to bed, Hillel would be summoned to his father’s room in his pajamas. This room was called the study. It contained bookshelves, a desk, and a glass-fronted showcase of fossils and ancient pots; the whole was skeptically surveyed from a sepia photograph by the famous geographer Hans Walter Landauer.
He had to utter an intelligent sentence or two for the benefit of the guests. Then he was kissed and sent off to bed. From across the corridor came the sounds of the grownups talking passionately, and Hillel in his bed caught their passion and began to pamper his tiny organ with his fingers through the opening of his pajama trousers.
Later, the forlorn sound of Lyubov Binyamina’s cello came to him through the darkness, and he suddenly despised himself. He called himself “Jelly.” He was filled with sorrow for all men and women. And fell asleep compassionately.
“He’s a real mensch,” Mrs. Vishniak would say in Yiddish. “Clever. Witty. A little devil. Just like the whole family.”
Beyond the low fence, which Father had made from iron posts and old netting and painted in bright colors, began the wasteland. Plots of scrap iron, dust, smelling of thistles, of goat dung; and farther on, the wadi and the lairs of foxes and jackals; and still farther down, the empty wood where the children once discovered the remains of a half-eaten man in the stinking tatters of a Turkish soldier’s uniform. There were desolate slopes teeming with darting lizards and snakes and perhaps hyenas at night, and beyond this wadi, empty, stony hills and more wadis, in which Arabs in desert robes roamed with their flocks all day long. In the distance were more and more strange mountains and strange villages stretching to the end of the world, minarets of mosques, Shu’afat, Nabi Samwil, the outskirts of Ramallah, the wail of a muezzin borne on the wind in the evening twilight, dark women, deadly-sly, guttural youths. And a slight hint of brooding evil: distant, infinitely patient, forever observing you unobserved.
Mother said, “While you, Hans, will dance like a teddy bear with that old lady you treated, I shall sit all alone in my blue dress on a wickerwork chair at the end of the veranda, sipping a martini and smiling to myself. But later on I, too, shall suddenly get up and dance, with the Governor of Jerusalem, or even with Sir Alan himself. Then it will be your turn to sit it out by yourself, and you won’t feel at all like smiling.”
Father said, “The boy can hear you. He understands exactly what you’re saying.”
And Hillel said, “So what?”
For the occasion, Father borrowed an English evening suit made by the Szczupak textile factory in Lodz from his neighbor Engineer Brzezinski. Mother sat on the shady balcony all morning altering it to fit him.
At lunchtime, Father tried the suit on at the mirror, shrugged his shoulders, and remarked, “It’s ridiculous.”
Mother, laughing, said, “The boy can hear you. He understands everything.”
Hillel said, “So what? ‘Ridiculous’ isn’t a dirty word.”
Father said, “No word is dirty in itself. In general, dirt lies either behind words or between them.”
And Mother, “There’s dirt everywhere here. Even in the grand ideas you’re always putting into Hillel’s head. Even in your stray remarks. And that’s also ridiculous.”
Father said nothing.
That morning the newspaper Davar said that the politics of the White Paper were leading up a blind alley. Hillel, with an effort of the imagination, could almost visualize the “blind alley.”
Mitya the vegetarian lodger padded barefoot from his room to the kitchen to make himself a glass of tea. He was a tall, etiolated young man with thinning hair. His shoulders always drooped, and he walked with short, nervous steps. He had an odd habit of suddenly chewing the tip of his shirt collar, and also of angrily stroking every object he came across, table, banister, bookshelf, mother’s apron hanging on a hook in the kitchen. And he would whisper to himself. Engineer Brzezinski declared hotly that one day it would emerge that this Mitya was really a dangerous Communist in disguise. But Mother good-naturedly offered to launder his few clothes with the family wash.
As Mitya shuffled to the kitchen, he waved his hand in every direction in greeting, as though confronting a large crowd. Suddenly his glance fell on the words “blind alley” in the headline on the center page of Davar, lying open on the oilcloth on the kitchen table. He bared his bad teeth and snarled furiously, “What rubbish.”
Then, clasping the hot glass in his large white hands, he strode stormily back to his room, locking his door behind him.
Mother said softly, “He’s just like a stray dog.”
After a short pause, she added, “He washes five times a day, and after each time he puts on scent, and even so he always smells. We ought to find him a girlfriend. Perhaps a new immigrant from the Women’s Labor Bureau, poor but charming. Now, Hans, y
ou go and shave. And Hillel—go on with your homework. What am I doing in this madhouse?”
Chapter five
She had come from Warsaw as a young woman to study ancient history at the university on Mount Scopus. Before a year was up, she was in despair at the country and the language. Nyuta, her elder sister in New York, had sent her a ticket to go from Haifa to America aboard the Aurora. A few days before the date of her departure, Dr. Ruppin had introduced her to Father, shown him her beautiful watercolors, and expressed in German his sadness that the young lady was also leaving us, that she, too, found the country unbearable and was sailing to America in disappointment.
Hans Kipnis looked at the watercolors for a while and suddenly thought of the wandering German ornithologist with whom he had traveled to the remote sources of the Jordan. He traced the lines of one of the pictures delicately with his finger, hurriedly withdrew his hand, and uttered some remarks about loneliness and dreams in general and in Jerusalem in particular.
Mother smiled at him, as though he had accidentally broken a precious vase.
Father apologized and lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
Dr. Ruppin had a pair of tickets for a concert that night by a recently formed refugee chamber orchestra. He was glad to present the tickets to the young couple: he could not go anyway, because Menahem Ussishkin the Zionist leader had unexpectedly arrived from abroad a day or two earlier, and as usual had convened a frantic meeting for that evening.
After the concert, they strolled together along Princess Mary’s Way. The shop windows were brightly lit and decorated, and in one of them a small mechanical doll bobbed up and down. For a moment, Jerusalem looked like a real city. Ladies and gentlemen walked arm in arm, and some of the gentlemen were smoking cigarettes in short cigarette holders.
A bus stopped beside them, and the driver, who was wearing shorts, smiled at them invitingly, but they did not get on. An army jeep with a machine gun mounted on it rolled down the street. And in the distance a bell rang. They both agreed that Jerusalem was under some cruel spell. Then they agreed to meet again the next day to eat a strawberry ice cream together at Zichel’s Café.
At a nearby table sat the philosopher Martin Buber and the writer S.Y. Agnon. In the course of a disagreement, Agnon jokingly suggested that they consult the younger generation. Father made some remark; it must have been perceptive and acute, because Buber and Agnon both smiled; they also addressed his companion gallantly. At that moment Father’s blue eyes may perhaps have lit up behind his round spectacles, and his sadness may have shown around his mouth.
Nineteen days later, the Nazis publicly declared their intention of building up their armed forces. There was tension in Europe. The Aurora never reached Haifa; she changed her course and sailed instead to the West Indies.
Father arranged to see his fellow townsman Professor Julius Wertheimer, who had been his patron ever since he had arrived in Palestine. He said he wanted to consult him on a personal matter. He was confused, furtive, obstinate, and tongue-tied. Professor Wertheimer listened in an anxious silence. Then he drove his cats out of the room and closed the door behind them. When they were alone, he warned Father obliquely not to complicate his private life unnecessarily. And it was precisely these words that brought Father to the certainty that he was finally in love.
Ruth and Hans were married in Jerusalem on the day that Hitler declared in Nuremberg that he was bent on peace and understanding and that he detested war. The guests consisted of the officials of the veterinary department, including two Christian Arabs from Bethlehem, the Ruppin family, some refugees and pioneers, a few neighbors from Tel Arza, and an emaciated revolutionary student from the university who could not take his blazing eyes off the beautiful bride. He it was who toasted the happy couple on behalf of all their friends and vowed that right would triumph and that we would see as much with our own eyes. But he spoiled the effect of his words by getting thoroughly drunk on one bottle of Nesher beer and calling the bridegroom and bride respectively “burzhui ” and “artistka.” The guests departed, and Father hired a taxi to convey Mother’s few belongings from her simple room in Neve Sha’anan to the house he had been making ready for several years in the suburb of Tel Arza.
There, in Tel Arza, in the little stone-built house facing the rocky wadis, there was born to them a year later a fair-haired son.
When Mother and the baby came home from the hospital, Father indicated his diminutive estate with a sweep of his hand, gazed raptly at it, and pronounced these words, “For the moment this is a remote suburb. There are only young saplings growing in our garden. The sun beats down all day on the shutters. But as the years pass, the trees will grow, and we shall have plenty of shade. Their boughs will shelter the house. Creepers will climb over the roof and all over the fence. And the flowers will bloom. This will be our pleasure garden when Hillel grows up and we grow old together. We shall make an arbor of vines where you can sit all day through the summer, painting beautiful watercolors. We can even have a piano. They’ll build a civic center, they’ll pave the road, our suburb will be joined to a Jerusalem ruled by a Hebrew government with a Hebrew army. Dr. Ruppin will be a minister and Professor Buber will be president or perhaps even king. When the time comes, I may become director of the veterinary service. And immigrants will arrive from every country under the sun.”
Suddenly he felt ashamed of his speech, and particularly regretted his choice of some of the words. A momentary sadness trembled around his mouth, and he added hastily, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Poetry. Philosophizing. A pleasure garden with overhanging vines, all of sudden. Now I’ll go and fetch a block of ice, and you must lie down and rest, so that you won’t have a migraine again tonight. It’s so hot.”
Mother turned to go indoors. By the veranda steps she stopped and looked at the miserable, rusty pots of geraniums. She said: “There won’t be any flowers. There’ll be a flood. Or a war. They’ll all die.”
Father did not answer, because he sensed that these words were not directed at him and that they should never have been spoken.
His khaki shorts came down almost to his knees. Between his knees and his sandals his legs showed brown, thin, and smooth. Behind his round spectacles his face bore an expression of permanent gratitude, or of slight, pleased surprise. And in moments of embarrassment he was in the habit of saying: “I don’t know. It’s just as well not to know everything. There are all sorts of things in the world that are better left alone.”
Chapter six
Here is how Mother appeared as a girl in her old photograph album: a blond schoolgirl with a kind of inner, autumnal beauty. Her fingers clasping a broad-brimmed white hat. Three doves on a fence behind her, and a mustached Polish student sitting on the same fence, smiling broadly.
She had been considered the best reader in her class at the high school. At the age of twelve, she had already attracted the enthusiastic attention of the elderly Polish literature teacher. The aging humanist, Mother would recall, was deeply moved by her charming recitations of gems of Polish poetry. “Ruth’s voice,” the pedagogue would exclaim with hoarse enthusiasm, “echoes the spirit of poetry, eternally playing among streams in a meadow.” And because he secretly considered himself a poet, he would add, overcome by the force of his emotions, “If gazelles could sing, they would surely sing like little Ruth.”
When Mother repeated this sentence she would laugh, because the comparison seemed to her absurd. Not because of the idea of gazelles singing, but because she simply couldn’t sing. Her affections at that time were directed toward small pets, celebrated philosophers and artists, dancing, dresses trimmed with lace, and silk scarves, and also her poor friends who had neither lace-trimmed dresses nor silk scarves. She was fond of the unfortunates she came across, the milkman, the beggar, Grandma Gittel, the maids, and her nanny, even the local idiot. Provided that suffering had not disfigured their outward appearance, and provided that they carried themselves woefully, as if acknowledging their gu
ilt and attempting to atone for it.
She translated from Polish a story she had written on her fifteenth birthday. She copied it out neatly and told Hillel to read it aloud. “The blue sea allows the sun’s rays to draw up its water, to make clouds that look like dirty cotton wool, to pour down rain on mountains, plains, and meadows—but not on the ugly desert—and eventually all the water collects and has to flow back once more into the sea. To return to it with a caress.”
Suddenly she fell into a rage, snatched the paper out of the boy’s hands, and tore it into shreds.
“All gone!” she cried with desperate pathos. “Dead and done for! Lost!”
Outside, a wintry Jerusalem Sabbath, windswept, lashed by dead leaves. Inside the little house in Tel Arza, the kerosene heater burned with a blue flame. On the table there was tea and oranges, and a vase of chrysanthemums. Two of the walls were lined with Father’s books. Shadows fell on them. The wind howled from the wadi. Mists touched the outside of the window, and the panes rattled. With a kind of bitter mockery, Mother spoke of her childhood in Warsaw, rowing on the Wistula, playing tennis in white clothes, the Seventh Cavalry Regiment parading down the Avenue of the Republic every Sunday. Occasionally she turned abruptly to Father and called him Dr. Zichel instead of Dr. Kipnis, Hans, Hanan. Father would rest his fingers on his high brow, unperturbed, unsurprised, silently smiling at the recollection of the acute remark he had made in Zichel’s Café to the writer Agnon and the philosopher Buber. They had both been delighted; they had consulted him about the strawberry ice cream, and even complimented his companion.