All of Edward’s naïveté was evident even in his back when he turned it to me. The thought that he was going to Tel Aviv because some of its streets were like the ones in the city of his birth stuck in my mind only after he went away.
—
The practical nurse came over to me. She was a tall woman, carelessly dressed, and with a look of perpetual wonderment. Her face reminded me of the tall women on the coast of Naples. We used to sneak over to them whenever we had some spare change. Some of them were quiet and submissive, offering their bodies without complaining or rushing. But others were angry, and they would scream and pinch whenever you made a careless move. Those secret pleasures didn’t go well with the moral purity that was being demanded of us, but they did cultivate the manliness that was bursting out of us so strongly. We were afraid to talk about those experiences and kept them secret. Ephraim spoke to us quite often about moral purity, decent behavior, and untainted love. It was clear that if we were caught, we would face a trial before our comrades. That fear spoiled the pleasure of the sin.
The nurse brought me plum compote.
“How do you feel today?” she asked.
“Well,” I said.
“A guy like you should feel great.”
“Why ‘great’ in particular?”
“Because you’re young and handsome,” she said, winking at me.
I caught the hint, but I ignored it.
“Give me your hand,” she said, putting out hers.
I reached out.
“A nice hand,” she said, kissing it.
She apparently had far-reaching intentions, but luckily for me the doctor came in to talk with me, and she scurried away.
46
The new patients wouldn’t leave me alone. They were impressed by my spoken Hebrew. I of course didn’t tell them about the three to four hours every day that I spent copying from the book of Genesis. That activity bound me not only to the words but also to their form.
The patients didn’t ask me where I was from or what my mother tongue was. Instead, they were worried about my future. The past wasn’t important to them. In their youth they had been pioneers, and since then they thought only about the future.
—
“What are you going to do?” one of the patients startled me one day by asking.
“I’m training myself to be an author.” I tried to emerge from my misery for a moment.
He pierced through me with his gaze. “How are you training yourself?”
“I’m studying the Bible,” I said, without emphasizing any of the words.
He looked at me in surprise, and then his eyes narrowed.
“We all studied Bible,” he said with derision.
“I pray in my heart that the Bible will help me write.”
The word “pray” actually got this patient mad, and he confronted me like someone who had been insulted to the depths of his soul.
“You pray?” he said. “What are you praying for, and who to?”
“I pray in my heart,” I repeated.
He didn’t let up. “You’re a young man. You shouldn’t give yourself over to false visions. We came to the Land to live in reality, in this reality. Remove the word ‘pray’ from your head. The Jews have prayed more than enough.”
I didn’t know how to answer, so I just said, “So be it.” But that one wasn’t satisfied with this retreat.
“We came to this country to work the soil. To bring forth bread from the earth and not to give ourselves over to imaginary things. You’re allowed to study the Bible—to learn botany from it, geography, history—but not to sink into worthless beliefs that we had been given for generations.”
Only later, on my bed in my room, did I feel those angry words seeping into me.
Words spoken with conviction work upon you in secret and uproot the tender sprouts that come up in your secret garden without your being aware of it. I have to keep away from those patients, I said to myself, though I knew that in this shared space, I couldn’t escape their prying eyes.
—
The sharp pains reappeared. I didn’t give up on my copying. The more I copied, the more I felt the power of the exposed sentences. I didn’t deceive myself into believing that I could make use of them. They were carved out of a whole world, and I had only fragments. In my sleep I saw the vocalized words in their entirety and in their full splendor, and fear made my body tremble.
—
Ephraim came to visit me. His entire right arm was bandaged, and he was sitting in a wheelchair. To my surprise, he hadn’t changed. A few lines crisscrossed his face, but except for that, he was the same Ephraim: bashful in an unfamiliar place. He was a master of carrying burdens and smashing rocks, an excellent exercise coach by day and by night. But hospitals and convalescent homes unsettled him.
I told him I was copying from the book of Genesis into my notebook.
“Copying?” he wondered. “Why copy?”
I tried to string together a few words to tell him about my struggles to connect with the Hebrew letters, but some of his inarticulateness had rubbed off on me. I observed his simplicity, his direct engagement with life, his willingness to help, even in his present situation, and I was ashamed of my authorial pretensions. In my embarrassment, I said, “I haven’t lost hope.”
“Who planted that good feeling in you?”
“It’s hard for me to say. I feel that one day I’ll stand on my own.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“Doctors aren’t usually optimistic.”
My words seemed exaggerated—or who knows what—to Ephraim. He groped for something to say to me.
“Medicine in our time is advanced.”
The cliché pained me.
I asked him about his wound.
He didn’t hide the truth from me. “I won’t be able to go back to my work,” he said. “I’ll return to my kibbutz.”
I remembered Ephraim’s modest way of standing on the pristine coast of Naples, the long runs with him, the big meals after hours of exhausting training. His poetry recitations while we were running made him appear like a spiritual adviser who believed in the power of human speech. He planted within us many poems by Natan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky, and Leah Goldberg, quite a few verses from the Bible, and even some sayings from Ethics of the Fathers.
I was afraid Ephraim would be angry at me for giving myself over simply to copying from the book of Genesis. As I said, he was the same Ephraim, only more attentive. But some of the beliefs that had guided his life must have slackened within him after he was wounded, or they had been silenced.
“Tomorrow is the fateful operation,” he said as he was leaving. “I’ve already gotten used to the thought that they’re going to amputate some of my arm.”
“No!” The word leaped from my mouth.
“Being without an arm isn’t shameful. You can do a lot even without an arm.” The voice from the old days returned to him.
For a moment it seemed that Ephraim wasn’t talking about himself but had come to tell me that even on shaky legs a person can do what’s required.
47
The woman at the defense ministry who was responsible for the war-wounded visited me. It was hard when people spoke to me as though to a cripple whose needs must be taken care of. My youthful energy still flowed within me, and the desire to once again stand on my own hadn’t been extinguished. While I had known pain and despair in the past months, I also knew how to shake off these feelings and return to my desk and copy whole passages with more energy.
“Do you understand what you’re copying?” the woman asked me arrogantly. I’m copying not only to train my right hand, I wanted to tell her, but also to connect with the hidden meanings of the ancient letters. But I restrained myself and said, “I understand.”
She didn’t let up. “I’m interested in what you understand.”
I couldn’t restrain myself.
“In secondary school I started to learn Latin,”
I said. “True, my studies were interrupted, but ancient texts are no strangers to me.”
My words appeared to stun her.
“I believe you,” she said.
It’s not a matter of belief, I wanted to say.
After that, she changed her tone and addressed practical matters. She asked me if I wished to live in a kibbutz or a city.
“In a city,” I answered without hesitation.
“Do you have relatives who live in a city?”
“No.” I was brief.
She looked at me, half doubting and half pitying.
“It won’t be easy,” she said.
With that, our meeting ended.
—
At every turn, people asked me about personal matters. Or they tried to be helpful. I was confined to a wheelchair, but my thoughts were as free as ever. In my imagination I ran along the beach, lifted hammers, smashed stones, and built a wall for the terrace.
Dr. Winter examined me and found that my condition had improved immeasurably. But another operation was needed, a relatively simple one, to connect what hadn’t yet been connected. Even though he showed me the X-rays, I couldn’t get a clear picture of my situation from his explanations. To my obstinately repeated question of whether I would be able to stand on my own, he answered, “I hope so.” Sometimes he added, “A doctor isn’t a prophet or a prophet’s son. He watches what he does and hopes in his heart for success.”
Dr. Winter heard about my interview with the woman who was responsible for the war-wounded. He immediately listed for me the advantages of the kibbutz: society, mutual assistance, and, of course, medical supervision. He didn’t take into account that I needed solitude, hours of quiet, and uninterrupted sleep. When I told him this, he narrowed his eyes and said, “Man is a social creature, and solitude brings despair.”
“It brings inspiration to me,” I informed him.
He was stunned by my answer, shrugged his shoulders in a way that showed he wasn’t pleased with my words, and then went back to the treatment room.
—
That night I dreamed I was sitting at a table and trying to put together broken Hebrew letters. I invested all my efforts, but I couldn’t manage it: the broken pieces wouldn’t fit together. But amazingly, another effort, from deeper within me, not only connected the pieces, but also enabled me to construct my own Hebrew sentence: “Mother, don’t despair. I’m on my way to you.” I felt that the written message expressed what I hadn’t been able to say out loud.
Not long before this, I sometimes asked Ephraim for a sleep day. At first he accepted my request with some understanding, but eventually he began to ask, “Is this necessary?” What could I tell him? That I needed it like I need air to breathe? Once, when I did let that expression slip out, he looked baffled.
At the convalescent home, I would plunge easily and without guilt feelings into slumber. I quickly reached the bottom, reconnecting with everyone I had been connected to. I had plenty of time, and no one was pressuring me. The threat that the morning bell in the courtyard of the training program would uproot me from the foundation of my life had faded. The moment I plunged in, I was totally in my own world.
48
Everyone in the Land was enlisted in the struggle, even old people. I still saw myself returning to Ephraim’s team, and it was hard for me to accept that I would not be regaining my youth, that I was sentenced to observe and not take part. I imagined myself walking on my own, awestruck by the pinkish-red peach blossoms in the orchard.
One night I saw Father, and he was pale from some significant effort. I asked him whether he had succeeded in finding a publisher. He looked at me with great intensity.
“One mustn’t despair,” he said. “I have been in places that could have discouraged men even stronger than I, but I, as you see, am alive and well.” It was hard to know whether he was talking about his experience in the camps or about his writing, with which he had struggled for years.
—
I went back to copying. Sometimes I had the feeling that I wasn’t copying but revealing ancient finds, removing the earth that clung to them, and suddenly—as in a magic trick—an urn decorated with Hebrew letters stood before me.
Every day brought new discoveries. I dreamed that in an excavation I found ancient coins. I tried to read what was written on them. In the end I managed to read the name of Eli the priest on one of them. I was glad that the old priest, who fell from his chair and met his death on the stone floor, had come to life in a figure on a coin.
Sometimes the formal, printed letters seemed to be angry at me for removing them from their pages and writing them in cursive.
“We’re permanent letters, not written letters. You aren’t allowed to change our form and move us from place to place. The printed form is our proper resting place.”
The copying filled my days. I told Mother that it wasn’t an ordinary task, but a slow coming to know and melding of hearts. Letters that weren’t revealed to you in childhood require a prolonged period of acquaintance.
“What do you mean by acquaintance?” Mother wondered. “A person can copy and copy, and in the end he acquires only the skeletons of letters, and not the living letters. Only the letters of your mother tongue live inside you.”
I knew there was a degree of truth to her words, but nevertheless I refused to accept her argument. The days I spent in copying did connect me to the Hebrew letters. Roman letters became foreign to me.
“That’s what people mean by ‘neither here nor there,’” said Mother, in a voice not her own.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Mother wasn’t a pedant, and she didn’t intentionally use hurtful words. But she tried to warn me before I reached the edge of the abyss.
—
I woke up early. The nighttime visions remained before my eyes and made me dizzy. There was no one in the dining hall. The practical nurse accosted me again. This time she wasn’t satisfied with kissing my hand, and she also kissed my neck. I knew what she was plotting.
“Not today,” I said firmly and slipped out of her hands.
I drank two cups of coffee and went back to my room. I had neither the strength nor the will to sit and copy. The despair that secretly dwelled within me raised its head. I knew that I mustn’t close my eyes.
My longing for Dr. Weingarten brought him to me. He went looking for me that morning, and by eleven there he was. I was astonished by the change in his appearance: he was tan all over. He was no longer guarding building sites; now he was working in an orchard.
“Dr. Weingarten!” I called out, raising my upper body.
When he heard my excitement, he said, “What can I do? This is my new incarnation.”
I told him about my injury and about Dr. Winter’s efforts to restore my legs to me.
I saw his face fill with sorrow. He sat next to me and didn’t say a word. Finally, he asked to learn more about my recuperation. My mother tongue no longer flowed easily from my mouth. Still, I managed to depict with words some of what I was feeling. Dr. Weingarten stared at me.
“It’s hard for me to decide whether you’re more like your father or your mother,” he said. “Your face is your mother’s, but your expressions are your father’s.”
I told him more about my struggles with the Hebrew language. He asked whether I had managed to write anything. I said I hadn’t.
“Did you try?”
“No.”
Once again Dr. Weingarten promised himself that if he had the strength, he would return to Europe to look for Father’s lost manuscripts. I wanted to stop him from leaving, but a great fatigue fell upon me, and I sank into a deep sleep.
In my sleep I saw the refugee camp, the rumbling kerosene stoves, and the tense faces of the people staring at me. I had the powerful feeling that they were all my relatives and that they had distanced themselves from me—or that I had distanced myself from them. That bitter estrangement hurt me.
I wanted to call out in a loud voice, I didn�
�t betray you. I’ll always be with you. You are inside me. But my voice was blocked and stifled. I woke up out of breath.
49
I couldn’t sleep that night. The pains wouldn’t let up. Dr. Winter kept promising me that the next operation would give me much relief. I wanted to believe him, but the pain discouraged me. After a sleepless night, it was hard for me to copy.
I intended to write a letter to Mother and tell her about the sleepless nights and about my distress with language. I sat at the table for a long time, but I couldn’t finish even a single sentence.
In the afternoon, one of the patients brought me a thin booklet containing the story “In the Prime of Her Life,” by S. Y. Agnon. I read the first words: “In the prime of her life, my mother died. She was just about one and thirty years of age at her death. Few and bad were the days of the years of her life. She sat at home all day and never left the house. Her friends and neighbors did not come to visit her, nor did my father welcome guests. Our house stood silent in its grief. Its doors did not open for the stranger.”
I read, and my hands trembled. What stillness, like at the entrance to a sanctuary. And every word specifically chosen, simple and unique. “In the prime of her life.” I didn’t know the source of that expression. The sound of “prime” was echoed in the sound of “life,” emphasizing that unusual word. The entire passage stood on its own, but at the same time, it was related to the Bible: “about one and thirty years,” “few and bad.” I read it over and over, and it was hard for me to part with that passage, full of silence and grief.
I dragged myself out of my room, but I didn’t see anyone I could tell about my discovery. I was glad that the passage had been revealed only to me; from now on, I had a pillar of fire in whose light I could walk. I kept repeating to myself: not “about thirty-one years old,” but “about one and thirty years of age.” A subtle and marvelous innovation.
The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping Page 14