A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [116]
Haya and Tsvi's apartment was maybe a quarter of an hour's walk from the port, and Tsvi was a hero and carried most of my luggage himself. On the way we saw some workmen building a great big building, it was the teachers' training college that still stands in Ben Yehuda Street just before the corner of Nordau Avenue. At first sight I took the builders for Gypsies or Turks, but Haya said they were just suntanned Jews. I'd never seen Jews like that before, except in pictures. Then I started crying—not just because the builders were so strong and happy, but also because among them there were some small children, twelve years old at most, and each one was carrying a sort of wooden ladder on his back laden with heavy building blocks. I wept a little when I saw that, from joy but also from sorrow. It's hard for me to explain.
In Haya and Tsvi's tiny apartment, Yigal was waiting with a neighbor who was looking after him until we got there. He must have been about six months, a lively, smily little boy, just like his father, and I washed my hands, picked up Yigal, and hugged him to me, ever so gently, and this time I didn't feel any desire to cry, and I didn't feel a wild joy as on the boat, I only felt a sort of reassurance, from inside, from the innermost depth of my being, as though from the bottom of the well, that it was very good that we were all here and not in the house in Dubinska Street. And I also felt that it was a great pity after all that the cheeky, sweaty sailor had not got the little kiss from me that he'd asked for. What was the connection? I don't know to this day. But that's how I felt there at that moment.
That evening Tsvi and Fania took me out to see Tel Aviv. We walked to Allenby Street and Rothschild Boulevard, because Ben Yehuda Street was not considered really part of Tel Aviv then. I remember how clean and nice everything looked at first glance, in the evening, with the benches and street lights and all the signs in Hebrew: as if the whole of Tel Aviv was just a very nice display in the playground of the Tarbuth school.
It was late December 1938, and since then I have never been abroad, except maybe in my thoughts. And I shall never go. It's not because the Land of Israel is so wonderful, it's because I now believe that all journeys are ridiculous: the only journey from which you don't always come back empty-handed is the journey inside yourself. Inside me there are no frontiers or customs, and I can travel as far as the farthest stars. Or walk in places that no longer exist, visit people who no longer exist. Inside, I can even go to places that never existed, that could never have existed, but where I like being. Or at least, don't dislike being. Now can I make you a fried egg before you go, with some tomato and cheese and a slice of bread? Or some avocado? No? You're in a hurry again? Won't you have another glass of tea, at least?
It was at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, or perhaps in one of those cramped rooms in Kerem Avraham, Geula, or Ahva, where poor students crowded in those days two or three to a room, that Fania Muss-man met Yehuda Arieh Klausner. It was in 1935 or 1936. I know that my mother was living at the time in a room at 42 Zephaniah Street that she shared with two friends from Rovno who were also students, Esterka Weiner and Fania Weissmann. I know she was much courted. But, so I heard from Esterka Weiner, she had also had one or two passing affairs.
As for my father, I've been told that he was very keen on the company of women, he spoke a lot, brilliantly, wittily, he attracted attention and perhaps some mockery. "A walking dictionary," the other students called him. If anyone needed to know, or even if they didn't, he always liked to impress on them all that he knew—the name of the president of Finland, the Sanskrit word for "tower," or where oil is mentioned in the Mishnah.
If he fancied any student, he would take a fussy pleasure in helping her with her work, he would take her out walking at night