A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [120]
When my eyes met his terrifying gaze, his piercing eye cried Nazi betrayer and murderer, and I began to cry silently, dropping my head on my chest, trying not to let them see. But Lilenka, my mother's best friend and confidante, the soul of a kindergarten teacher in a china doll body, was alarmed and hastened to comfort me. First she felt my forehead and declared, No, he hasn't got a temperature. Then she kept stroking my arm and said, But yes, he is shivering a little. Then she bent over me until her breath almost took my breath away, and said: It looks as though it's something psychological, not physical. With that she turned to my parents and concluded, with self-righteous pleasure, that as she had already told them a long time ago, this child, like all vulnerable, complicated, sensitive future artists, was apparently entering puberty very early, and the best thing was simply to let him be.
Father mulled this over, weighed it, and pronounced judgment: "Very well. But first of all you will please eat your fish like everyone else."
"No."
"No? And why not? Is His Highness by any chance contemplating sacking his team of cooks?"
"I can't."
At this point Mr. Bar-Samkha, overflowing with sweetness and the urge to mediate, started to wheedle in his reedy, placatory voice:
"Well, why don't you just have a tiny bit? Just one symbolic piece, eh? For the sake of your parents and the Sabbath day?"
But Lilka, his wife, a soulful, emotional person, cut in on my behalf:
"There's no point in forcing the child! He has a psychological block!"
Lea Bar-Samkha, also known as Lilenka, formerly Lilia Kalisch,* was a frequent visitor to our apartment during most of my childhood in Jerusalem. She was a small, sad, pale, frail woman with drooping shoulders. She had worked for many years as a schoolmistress and had even written two books about the mentality of the child. From behind she looked like a slim twelve-year-old girl. She and my mother spent hours whispering together, sitting on the wicker stools in the kitchen or on chairs that they had taken out into the garden, chatting or poring over some open book or a picture book of artistic gems, head to head and hand to hand.
*I have changed some of the names, for various reasons.
Mostly Lilka came when my father was out at work. I have a feeling that she and my father maintained that polite mutual loathing that is commonly found between husbands and their wives' best friends. If I approached my mother when she was chatting to Lilenka, they both shut up at once and only resumed their conversation when I was out of earshot. Lilia Bar-Samkha looked at me with her wistful, I-understand-and-forgive-everything-on-emotional-grounds smile, but my mother asked me to buck up and say what I needed and leave them alone. They had a lot of shared secrets.
Once Lilenka came when my parents were out. She eyed me for a while with understanding and sorrow, nodded her head as though she was definitely agreeing with herself, and began a conversation. She had truly, but truly, been so fond of me since I was so small, and interested in me. Not interested like those boring grown-ups who always asked if I was good at school, if I liked soccer, or if I still collected stamps, and what did I want to be when I grew up, and silly things like that. No! She was interested in my thoughts! My dreams! My mental life! She considered me such a unique, original child! The soul of an artist in the making! She would like to try one day—not necessarily right now—to make contact with the inner, vulnerable side of my young personality (I was about ten at the time). For example, what did I think about when I was completely alone? What happened in the secret life of my imagination? What really made me happy and sad? What excited me? What frightened me? What repelled me? What kinds of scenery did I find attractive? Had I ever heard of Janusz Korczak? Had I ever read his book Yotam the Magician?