8 Great Hebrew Short Novels

by Неизвестный

  “Lately I’ve noticed,” said Mother, “that you don’t have much interest in anything. Nothing interests you anymore.”

  I denied this, citing my studies again.

  Father said, “Do what you think is best.”

  I told them about the article by G. Schoffman I had discovered at my uncle’s. Mother was horrified that I had found such a book in her beloved brother’s library. “Nonsense!” she said. “How could anyone print such utter nonsense!” And she was right of course, but at the time the article had seemed to me the height of reason. Father said, “It doesn’t matter. If you want to stop, there’s no point arguing about it.”

  I had the vague impression that I was leaving them again, coming into my own. I wasn’t worried anymore about hurting their feelings or breaking faith with them.

  “Remember how I ran with you in the pouring rain like a crazy woman?” said Mother. “You were so stubborn. I thought we’d put it off a day or two, but you, you couldn’t wait.”

  I remembered that rainy day, and it didn’t seem particularly relevant just then. I loved my father’s calm, his sense of moderation, and especially his irony when he said, “Well, you’ll have to go to Mr. Alfredi and tell him yourself.”

  “Of course,” I said reluctantly. “Fine.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Again I was struck by the growing significance of the word responsibility. “Yes,” I added as an afterthought, “I’ll tell him myself right after the vacation.”

  When we arrived home I put my violin case where I always kept it, but I knew I would never touch it again.

  Mr. Alfredi’s summer vacation, which lasted a month or two, started after the yearly recital. One day Mother looked at me and asked a familiar question that seemed to come from far, far away. “Have you noticed the change in your eyes?”

  I hadn’t but I could see from her expression that my blinking was noticeably better. I saw tokens of this gradual change in the reactions of people around me yet to me it seemed like a boring, mechanical thing, in no way related to what was going on inside me. When the vacation was over, I decided to go to Mr. Alfredi and say goodbye to him properly. Once again I set off on the long walk I had taken so many times, always by the same route with never a detour or a shortcut. I felt a kind of timorousness, a fear of something very unpleasant happening. How could I look in Mr. Alfredi’s eyes when I told him the news? I was afraid he would be terribly hurt, that he would think I had deceived him all these years and be angry and even yell at me. Yet I knew this was a test of responsibility, and I would have to face the consequences of choosing to live my life as I saw fit. Just as I was walking up the path to Mr. Alfredi’s door, I experienced another of those mysterious shortcuts of coincidence that underscores the symbolism and symmetry of my life to this day.

  From inside I heard the familiar strains echoing out of eternity. It was the long lost music that had meant everything to me once, returning like an errant lover, strange, new, remote yet near and dear. I was transfixed. It took me several minutes to remember what the piece was called: the “La Follia” variations by Corelli. I hadn’t heard it in all these years, not since the recital at the Haifa Conservatory.

  I stood outside, listening to the muffled sounds emerging from the house. I felt anxious suddenly. My heart was pounding. I had reached the crossroads. How well I remembered the boy in Haifa who had played “La Follia”, but I could barely recall the boy in the audience who had listened to him with such jealousy and longing. The music swelled as I climbed the stairs. Mr. Alfredi was playing all by himself. He nodded for me to wait. Did he notice I had come without my violin? I listened to him, moaning and wheezing as he always did, and I tried to remember the enigma of the music that had so enthralled me once. Now “La Follia” was a tattered beggar, throwing herself at my mercy, imploring me to remember the affection of her youth. But I had other things to think about. Where was the enigma? The more I listened the more I hardened myself against the insipidity of the music, the mawkishness Mr. Alfredi lent it in his playing. Here was yet another sign that I had made the right decision. The crossroads were behind me, the worst was over.

  Mr. Alfredi said, “What a pity. Soon we’ll start playing chamber music, and I thought you might switch to viola.” He smiled amiably. I saw he wasn’t angry at all. He wasn’t shocked. Maybe I hadn’t deceived him after all. Maybe he was used to it. Maybe this was just the way of things. I told him that school was getting harder, that I wanted to devote more time to my studies. Only for a couple of years, of course. And he smiled, and nodded.

  It was a very friendly parting, and as I left the house I heard him playing “La Follia” again, who knows why. He couldn’t even get into the orchestra!

  I wended my way home, filled with vague new hopes. I was free and happy, optimistic. It was autumn, the time of fresh beginnings, the time I love best. The High Holidays drew near, and with them a poignant sense of hope, a flurry of suspense. Walking down our street I saw a crowd of people huddling under the Casuarina trees in front of Yoram’s house. As I approached them, I could see Yoram’s mother weeping bitterly and another woman supporting her arms so she wouldn’t collapse. Nearby stood Yoram’s father, the visor cap he always wore shading his pale, arrogant eyes. Yoram stood between them, glancing fitfully from one to the other. Neighbors and passersby shook their heads or whispered together. Some took it upon themselves to explain to latecomers what must have going on for some time.

  Yoram’s mother was clasping her hands, screaming, “This murderer wants to take my boy away so he won’t become a violinist. He wants to ruin him and turn him into what he is. Oh save him! Save him from the murderer!”

  Yoram’s father didn’t react. It was clear that he didn’t want to argue with her. Finally he lost patience and played his last card. “Yoram,” he called, “come with me and you’ll get the Palmach badge I promised you.”

  I stood on the sidelines hoping Yoram wouldn’t notice me but I peeked through the crowd and saw him imploring his father with his eyes to stop setting such grave temptation in his path. But his father only kept repeating, “Remember, Yoram, the Palmach badge!”

  Yoram’s mother had nothing comparable to offer, so she appealed to the crowd, with only justice and mercy to rival her husband’s Palmach badge. “He wants you to think I’m crazy so they’ll take my boy away and give him custody. But I’m not crazy! I’m normal! I won’t give that murderer my child! He won’t turn him into another murderer!”

  The audience followed these proceedings, inclining first this way, then that, and they tried to sway the ones who were still undecided because it was so hard to judge.

  For a moment I thought I saw Yoram’s eyes on me. I felt queasy. How could these people air their problems in public, I wondered. Why were they doing it? For years I was haunted by the scene of skinny little Yoram standing between his parents, pale and torn, surrounded by horrified onlookers. Only a few months before, we had played the Bach Double together at the recital, and now he was a stranger. I didn’t recognize him, I didn’t really pity him, I didn’t feel his pain. I was simply ashamed of this public display and refused to have anything to do with it.

  “He has the hands of a great violinist!” Yoram’s mother screamed.

  She grabbed a hand and raised it sky-high to prove her point. And Yoram’s father said, “Come with me, and you’ll be a man. Stay with her and you’ll be crazy like she is.”

  Yoram broke down. I saw him wrench away from his mother and cover his ears with both hands. It was a hard choice, between a murderer and a crazy woman. His strength was gone. I couldn’t bear to watch any more. I took a few steps and then turned around for a last look. This time I saw the scene in a new light: it was a theatrical performance. The actors were stuck in their roles, loving every minute of the old drama, the theme of the father and the mother and the child prodigy. I never forgot this scene. In time, I lost my youthful contempt for it and learned to love the three players who wandered far and wide
in search of a sympathetic audience. It would be years, though, before I understood how sublime it was in essence, how full of compassion and love.

  When I arrived home that autumn afternoon I was still aghast at what I witnessed. Fled were erstwhile hopes of renewal.

  “I’ve noticed lately that your eyes are getting better,” said Father, “Sometimes you don’t even blink at all. Have you noticed that?”

  I hadn’t. I went to look at myself in the little bathroom mirror. I had never been able to catch myself blinking, and couldn’t tell now that I’d stopped. My face looked blank and strange to me as usual.

  Little by little my scowl faded and the mysterious malady went away. I had never understood what brought it on, and didn’t understand why it chose now of all times to disappear.

  Mother said, “That’s what the doctor explained. He told us it would go away when you’re an adolescent.”

  That word, adolescent, coming from her sounded insulting for some reason.

  A few days later the stigma on my face was gone, and tranquility reigned forevermore.

  A.B. Yehoshua

  The Continuing Silence of a Poet

  Translated by Miriam Arad

  Chapter one

  He was late again last night, and when he did come in he made no effort to enter quietly. As though my own sleep did not matter. His steps echoed through the empty apartment for a long time. He kept the lights in the hall turned on and fussed about endlessly with papers. At last he fell silent. I groped my way back toward the light vague sleep of old age. And then, the rain. For three weeks now this persistent rain, sheets of water grinding down the panes.

  Where does he go at night? I do not know. I once managed to follow him through several streets, but an old acquaintance, an incorrigible prose writer, buttonholed me at one street corner and meanwhile the boy disappeared.

  The rains are turning this plain into a morass of asphalt, sand and water. Tel Aviv in winter—a town without drainage, no outlets, spawning lakes. And the sea beyond, murky and unclean, rumbling as though in retreat from the sprawling town, sea become background.

  Not five yet but the windows are turning gray. What was it? He appeared in my dream, stood there in full view before me, not far from the seashore, I think, dark birds were in his lap, and he quelled their fluttering. His smile amazed me. He stood and faced me, looked hard at me and gave a feeble smile.

  Now the faint sound of snoring reaches me from his room and I know I shall sleep no more. Another boat sails tomorrow or the day after and I expect I shall board it at last. This anguish will dissolve, I know, I have only to preserve my dignity till the moment of parting. Another twenty hours or so, only.

  Though I do not see him now, I know he is asleep, hands over heart, eyes shut, mouth open, his breathing clear.

  I must describe him first. What he looks like. I can do that for, though not seventeen yet, his features appear to have settled. I have long regarded him as unchanging, as one who will never change.

  His slightly stooping figure, fierce frame craned forward in submission. His flat skull. His face—coarse, thick, obtuse. The pimples sprouting on his cheeks and forehead. The black beginnings of a beard. His close-cropped hair. His spectacles.

  I know very well—will even proclaim in advance—that people think he is feebleminded; it is the general opinion, and my daughters share it. As for myself, I am ready to concede the fact, for it contains nothing to betray me, after all, nor to reflect upon the soundness of my senses. I have read scientific literature on the subject and I assure you: it is a mere accident. Moreover, he does not resemble me in the least, and barring a certain ferocity, we two have nothing in common. I am completely unafraid therefore, and yet for all that I insist he is a borderline case. He hovers on the border. The proof ? His eyes. I am the only person to have frequent occasion to look into his eyes and I say at times (though rarely, I admit), something lights up in them, a dark penetrating vitality.

  And not his eyes alone—

  And yet—

  He was born late in my life. Born accidentally, by mistake, by some accursed miracle, for we were both, his mother and I, on the threshold of old age by then.

  I have a vivid recollection of that time, the time before he was born. A gentle spring, very long, very wonderful. And I, a poet with five published volumes of verse behind me, resolved to stop writing, resolved with absolute, irrevocable conviction, out of utter despair. For it was only during that spring that I had come to admit to myself that I ought to keep silent.

  I had lost the melody—

  My closest friends had already started to daunt and to discourage me, dismissing everything I wrote. The young poets and their new poetry bewildered, maddened me. I tried to imitate them secretly and managed to produce the worst I ever wrote. “Well then,” I said, “I shall keep silent from now on…and what of it?” As a result of this silence, however, our daily routine was disrupted. Sometimes we would go to bed in the early hours of the evening, at others spend half the night at crowded cafés, useless lectures or gatherings of aged artists gasping for honors at death’s door.

  That long, wonderful spring, filled with gentle breezes, bursting with blossoms. And I, roaming the streets, up and down, swept by excitement and despair, feeling doomed. Vainly I tried to get drunk, proclaim my vow of silence to all, repudiating poetry, jesting about poems computed by machines, scornful, defiant, laughing a great deal, chattering, making confessions. And at night writing letters to the papers about trivial matters (public transportation, etc.), polishing my phrases, taking infinite pains with them.

  Then, suddenly, this unexpected pregnancy—

  This disgrace—

  We found out about it in early summer. At first we walked a great deal, then shut ourselves up at home, finally became apologetic. First we apologized to the girls, who watched the swelling figure of their elderly mother with horror, then to the relatives come to cast silent looks at the newborn infant.

  (The birth occurred one freezing day in midwinter. The tufts of grass in our garden were white with frost.)

  We were imprisoned with the baby now. (The girls would not lift a finger for him and deliberately went out more than ever.) We two wanted to speak, to tell each other: what a wonderful thing, this birth. But our hearts were not in it, quite clearly. Those sleep-drunken night trips once more, the shadow of the tree streaking the walls, damp, heavy diapers hanging up through all the rooms, all of it depressing. We dragged our feet.

  Slowly, sluggishly it grew, the child, late in everything, sunk in a kind of stupor. Looking back now I see him as a gray fledgling, twitching his weak limbs in the cot by my bed.

  The first suspicion arose as late as the third year of his life. It was the girls who broached it, not I. He was retarded in his movements, he was stuttering badly, unprepossessing, a heavy growth—hence the girls declared him feebleminded. And friends would come and scan his face, looking for signs to confirm what we dared not utter.

  I do not remember that period in his life very well. His mother’s illness took up most of my time. She was fading fast. Nothing had remained of her after that late birth but her shell. We had to look on while she withdrew from us into the desert, forced to wander alone among barren, arid hills and vanish in the twilight.

  Each day marked its change in her.

  The child was six when his mother died. Heavy, awkward, not attached to anyone in the household, withdrawn into himself but never lost in dreams—anything but a dreamy child. Tense, always, and restless. He trembled if I ran my fingers through his hair.

  If I could say with pity: an orphan. But the word sticks in my throat. His mother’s dying left no impression, even though, due to my own distraction, he trailed behind us to her funeral. He never asked about her, as though he understood that her going was final. Some months after her death, moreover, every one of her photographs disappeared, and when we discovered the loss a few days later it did not occur to us to question him. When we did, fin
ally, it was too late. The light was fading when he led us to the burial place; in a far corner of the garden, beneath the poplar, among the traces of an old abandoned lime pit, wrapped in an old rag—the slashed pictures.

  He stood there in front of us a long time, stuttering fiercely, his small eyes scurrying.

  Yet nothing was explained—

  For the first time our eyes opened and we saw before us a little human being.

  I could not restrain myself and I hit him, for the first time since he was born. I seized his wrist and slapped him hard in the face. Then the girls beat him. (Why did they hit him?)

  He did not understand—

  He was startled by it. Afterward he flung himself down and wept. We pulled him to his feet and dragged him home.

  I had never realized before how well he knew the house, how thoroughly he had possessed himself of every corner. He had collected his mother’s pictures out of obsolete albums, had invaded old envelopes. He had even found a secret spot in the garden that I did not know of. We have lived in this house for many years and I had spent many troubled nights pacing up and down this small garden, but I had never noticed the old extinguished lime—pale, tufted with gray lichen.

  Were these the first signs? I do not know yet. None of us, neither I nor the girls, were prepared to understand at the time. All we feared was the shame or scandal he might bring down on us. Hiding him was impossible, but we wanted at least to protect him.

  You see—the girls were single still—

  At the beginning of the year I entered him in the first grade of a school in the suburbs; and during his first week at school I left work early in order to wait for him at the school gate. I was afraid the children would bait him.