8 Great Hebrew Short Novels

by Неизвестный

  Sometimes I fancy that everything is in readiness for a journey. That there is nothing to be done but open a suitcase, place the curiously folded clothes inside, and leave. One day I had to go on a short trip up north, and within half an hour of informing him, he had a packed suitcase standing by the door with my walking stick on top.

  Yes, I have got myself a stick lately. And I take it along with me wherever I go, even though I have no need of it yet. When I stop to talk with people in the street I insert it in the nearest available crack and put my whole weight on its handle. He sharpens the point from time to time to facilitate the process. He goes to such lengths in his care of me.

  At about that time he also learned to cook. The elderly cleaning woman who used to come in now and then taught him. At first he would cook for himself and eat alone before I came back from work, but in time he would prepare me a meal too. A limited, monotonous menu, somewhat lacking in flavor, but properly served. He had unearthed a china service in the attic. It had been a wedding present, an elaborate set containing an assortment of golden-edged plates decorated with flowers, cherubs and butterflies. He put it to use. He would place five different-sized plates one on top of the other in front of me, add a quantity of knives and forks, and wait upon me with an air of blunt insistence.

  Where had he learned all that?

  It transpired that a story about a king’s banquet had been read in class.

  I am roused.

  “What king?”

  He does not remember the name.

  “Other heroes?”

  He doesn’t remember.

  I ask him to tell the story, at least.

  He starts, and stops again at once. It has become muddled in his head.

  His eyes cloud over. The first pimples have sprouted on his cheeks.

  A thought strikes me: viewed from a different angle he might fill one with terror.

  At night he helps me in my bath. I call him in to soap my back and he enters on tiptoe, awed by my nakedness in the water, picks up the sponge and passes it warily over my neck.

  When I wish to reciprocate and wait upon him in turn, nothing comes of it. Arriving home I announce: tonight I am going to prepare supper! It appears supper is served already. I wish to help him in his bath, and it appears he has bathed already.

  So I take him with me at night to meetings with friends, to artists’ conventions, for I still belong to all the societies and unions. I have got people used to his presence and they no longer notice him, much as I do not notice their shadow.

  He always sits in the last row, opening doors for latecomers, helping them out of their coats, hanging them up. People take him for one of the attendants, and indeed, he is inclined to attach himself to these. I find him standing near a group of ushers, listening grim-eyed to their talk. At times I find him exchanging words with the charwoman who stands leaning on her broom.

  What does he say to her? I am never able to guess.

  Does he love me? How can one tell? Something in my behavior seems to frighten him. Perhaps it is my age, perhaps my silence. Whatever it is, he carries himself in my presence as one expecting a blow.

  Strange, for there is peace between us. The days pass tranquilly, and I imagined this tranquility would last our life together, till the day I would have to part from him, that is. I thought, how fortunate that in this silence of mine I am confronted by a boy of such feeble brains, on the border, and far from me.

  True, I am sometimes overcome by restlessness, possessed by a desire to cling to somebody. Then I rush off to Jerusalem and surprise my daughters with a visit of an hour or two.

  They receive me affectionately, hang onto my neck and hug me hard. And while we stand there in a clinging embrace their husbands look on, a faint expression of contempt in their eyes. Afterward we sit down and chat, bandying about the kind of word play and witticisms that irritate the husbands. Still, they utter no word of complaint, knowing full well that I won’t stay, that if I come like a whirlwind—so I go. After an hour or two I rouse myself for a speedy departure, still harboring the dregs of my passion. They all urge me to prolong my visit, stay, spend the night, but I never do. I must go home to the boy, I argue, as though his entire existence depended upon me. More kissing and hugging follows; then the husbands take me to the station. We rarely speak during the short ride. We have nothing to say to each other. Besides, I am still suspect in their eyes. This white mane flowing down my neck, the stick jiggling in my hand. I am still some sort of a poet to them. The volumes of my poetry, I know, have a place of honor in their drawing-room bookcase. I cannot prevent that.

  At such a time I prefer the child’s dumb look.

  Winter, there are times when I draw the bolts at six. What do I do in the hours left till bedtime? I read the papers, listen to the radio, thumb the pages of books. Time passes and I make my bargain with boredom in private.

  In summer, I often walk back and forth along the beach or aimlessly through the streets. I am likely to stand in front of a building under construction for hours on end, lost in thought.

  Trivial thoughts—

  Years ago I would carry little notebooks with me wherever I went. Working myself up into a fever, fanning the flame of creation; rhyming, turning words over and over. Nowadays, not even a pang.

  Where is he?

  I look through the window and see him in the garden, under a bleak autumn sky. He is pruning the bushes and trees with a savage violence. Lopping off whole branches, tearing at leaves. He has it in particularly for the old poplar, cuts away with zeal the new shoots that have sprouted at its base, climbs up into the foliage and saws relentlessly. The tree bends and groans.

  Sometimes my eyes stay riveted upon him for hours and I cannot bring myself to look away. His intent gravity, his rage. Shadows play over his face, his face which has taken on an absurdly studious quality owing to the thick spectacles he has begun to wear. He was found to be shortsighted.

  I know he is trimming off more than necessary, that he pulls up plants, roots and all, in his vehemence. Still, I do not interfere and go on standing mutely by the window. I tell myself: what survives will flower in the spring and make up for the damage.

  When was the first time? That he found out about my being a poet, I mean. This madness that has taken a hold over us the past year, I mean.

  Toward the end of last winter I fell ill and kept him home to nurse me. For several days we were together the whole day long, and he did not move from my side. This was something that had never happened before, for as a rule not a day would pass when I did not go out, wandering, sitting in cafés, visiting people.

  I was feverish and confined to bed, dozing fitfully, eyes fluttering. He moved about the house or sat by the door of my room, his head turned in my direction. Occasionally I would ask for tea, and he would rouse himself, go to the kitchen and return with a steaming cup.

  The light was dying slowly, gray sky flattening the windows. We did not turn on the lights for my illness had made my eyes sensitive.

  The silence lay large between us. Could I hold a conversation with him?

  I asked whether he had prepared his homework.

  He nods his head from his corner of the room.

  What could I talk to him about?

  I asked about his monitorship. He replies with yes and no and shakes of his head.

  At last I grew tired. I let my head drop back on the pillow and closed my eyes. The room grew darker. Outside it began to drizzle. During those days of illness my mind had started to wander with fantasies. Fantasies about the bed. I would imagine it to be a white, violent country of sweeping mountains and streaming rivers, and me exploring it.

  Such utter calm. The warmth of the bed enveloping each cell in my body.

  I started at the sound of his harsh voice, sudden in the trickling silence.

  “What do you do?”

  I opened my eyes. He was sitting by the door, his eyes on my face.

  I raised myself a little, as
tonished.

  “What? What do you mean? Now? Well, what? I’m dozing… . ”

  “No, in general…” and he turned away as though sorry he had asked.

  In a while I understood. He was asking about my profession.

  Had they been discussing “professions” in class?

  He did not know—

  I tell him what my profession is (I am employed by a newspaper-clipping bureau), but he finds it difficult to understand. I explain at length. Suddenly he has understood. There is no reaction. He seems a little disappointed. Hard to say why. He cannot have formed the idea in his feeble mind that I am a pilot or a sailor, can he?

  Did he think I was a pilot or a sailor?

  No.

  What did he think?

  He didn’t think.

  Silence again. He sits forlorn in the corner, a sad, somber figure. His glasses gleam in the twilight. It rains harder now outside, the old poplar huddles in the garden, wet with tears. Suddenly I cannot bear his grief. I sit up in bed, eyes open in the dark, and tell him in a low voice that, as a matter of fact, I used to have another occupation. I wrote poetry. You see, father used to be a poet. They must have learned about poets in class. And I get out of bed in a fever of excitement, cross the dark room in my bare feet, light a small lamp, cross back to the bookcase, pluck my books one by one from the shelves.

  He watches me in silence, his spectacles slightly askew, hands limp on the arms of his chair.

  I grasp his wrist, pull him up and stand him before me.

  Dry-handed I open my books in their hard covers. The small, untouched pages move with a faint crackle. Black lines of print on pale paper flit before my eyes. Words like: autumn, rain, gourd.

  He remains unmoved, does not stir, his eyes are cast down, motionless. An absolute moron.

  I sent him out of the room. I gathered my books and took them with me to bed. The light stayed on in my room till dawn. All night I lay groping for the sweet pain passionately poured into ancient poems. Words like: bread, path, ignominy.

  Next day my fever had abated somewhat and I sent him off to school. My books I thrust back among the others. I was convinced he had understood nothing. A few days later, though, I discovering all five volumes ranged neatly side-by-side, I realized something had penetrated. But it was little as yet.

  That was his final school year, though the fact marked no change in his habits. He still spent about half an hour a day on his homework, wrote whatever it was he wrote, closed his exercise books, locked his bag and turned to his household chores. In class he kept to his remote corner, but his attendance at lessons had dwindled. The janitor would call upon him time and again. To help store away stoves in the attic or repair damaged furniture in the cellar.

  When he was present in class he would sit there rapt as ever, his eyes unwavering on the teacher.

  The final days of the year, their slack atmosphere—

  Two or three weeks before the end of school a poem of mine was taught in class. The last pages of the textbook contained a collection of many different poems, some sort of anthology for every season, for a free period or such. An old poem of mine, written dozens of years ago, was among them. I had not aimed it at youth, but people mistook its intention.

  The teacher read it out to the class. Then she explained the difficult words and finally let one of the pupils read it. And that was all there was to it. My son might have paid no attention to the occurrence from his back bench had the teacher not pointed him out to say:

  “But yes, that is his father…”

  The remark did nothing to improve the child’s standing in class, let alone enhance the poem’s distinction. In any case, by the end of the lesson both poem and poet were no doubt forgotten.

  Apparently, however, the boy did not forget; he remained aglow. Possibly he wandered by himself through the empty classroom, picking up peel, wiping the blackboard, excited.

  Coming back from work that evening I found the house in darkness. I opened the front door and saw him waiting in the unlit hall. He could not contain his passion. He threw himself at me, bursting into a kind of savage wail, nearly suffocating me. And without letting me take off my jacket, undo my tie, he dragged me by the hand into one of the rooms, switched on the light, opened the textbook and began reading my poem in a hoarse voice. Mispronouncing vowels, slurring words, bungling the stresses.

  I was stunned in the face of this turbulent emotion. Compassion welled up in me. I pulled him close and stroked his hair. It was evident that he had still not grasped what the poem was about, even though it was not rich in meaning.

  He held my sleeve in a hard grip and asked when had I written the poem.

  I told him—

  He asked to see other poems.

  I pointed at my volumes—

  He wanted to know whether that was all.

  Smiling I showed him a drawer of my bureau stuffed with a jumble of poems and fragments, little notebooks I used to carry on my person and have with me always.

  He asked whether I had written any new poems today. Now I burst out laughing. His blunt face raised up to me in adoration, this evening hour, and I still in my jacket and tie.

  I told him that I had stopped writing before he was born and that the contents of that drawer should have been thrown out long ago.

  I took off my jacket, loosened my tie, sat down to unlace my shoes.

  He fetched my slippers.

  His expression was despondent—

  As though he had received fearful tidings.

  I burst into laughter again.

  I made a grab for his clipped hair and jerked his head with a harsh affection.

  I, who would shrink from touching him—

  A few days later I found the drawer wrenched open, empty. Not one scrap of paper left. I caught him in the garden weeding the patch beneath the tree. Why had he done it? He thought I did not need them. He was just cleaning out. And hadn’t I said myself I wasn’t writing anymore.

  Where were all the papers?

  He had thrown out the written ones, and the little notebooks he had sold to a hawker.

  I beat him. For the second time in my life, and again in the garden, by the poplar. With all the force of my old hands I slapped his rough cheeks with their soft black down.

  He trembled all over—

  His fists closed white-knuckled and desperate over the hoe. He could have hit back. He was strong enough to knock me down.

  But then, abruptly, my anger died. The entire affair ceased to be important. Relics of old poems, long ago lost. Why the trembling? Why, with my silence sealed?

  Once more I believed the affair ended. I never imagined it was but the beginning.

  Long summer days. Invariably blue. Once in a while a tiny cloud sails on its sleepy journey from one horizon to the other. All day flocks of birds flop down upon our poplar, screaming, beating the foliage.

  Evenings—a dark devouring red.

  The child’s last day at school.

  A day later: the graduation ceremony and presentation of diplomas.

  He did not receive one, of course. He ascended the platform with the other pupils nonetheless, dressed in white shirt and khaki trousers (he was about seventeen years old). And sat in the full, heavy afternoon light listening gravely to the speeches. When the turn of the janitor came to be thanked he lifted his eyes and began a heavy, painstaking examination of the audience to search him out.

  I kept myself concealed at the back of the hall behind a pile of chairs, my hat on my knees. The speeches ended and a short artistic program began.

  Two plump girls mounted the stage and announced in voices shrill with emotion that they would play a sonata by an anonymous composer who lived hundreds of years ago. They then seated themselves behind a creaking piano and beat out some melancholy chords with four hands.

  Stormy applause from enraptured parents.

  A small boy with pretty curls dragged an enormous cello onto the stage and he, too, played a
piece by an anonymous composer (a different one, apparently).

  I closed my eyes—

  I liked the idea of all this anonymity.

  A storm of applause from enraptured parents.

  Suddenly I became aware of someone’s eyes upon me. Glancing around I saw, a few steps away, the janitor, sprawled on a chair, dark raisin against light window, dressed in his overalls. He made a gentle gesture with his head.

  Two girls and two boys came on stage and began reciting. A story, a humorous sketch, two or three poems.

  At the first sound of rhymes my boy rose suddenly from his place and began a frantic search for me. The audience did not understand what that spectacled, dumb-faced boy standing up at the back of the stage might possibly be looking for. His fellow pupils tried to pull him down, but in vain. He was seeking me, his eyes hunting through the hall. The rhymes rang in his ears, swaying him. He wanted to shout. But he could not find me. I had dug myself in too well behind the chairs, hunched low.

  As soon as the ceremony was over I fled. He arrived home in the evening. It turned out he had been helping the janitor put back the chairs in the hall.

  The time had come to decide his fate. I reiterate: he verges on the border. A borderline child. Haven’t I let the time slip by? Do I still possess my hold over him?

  For the time being he stayed at home with me, took care of his father and began to occupy himself with poems.