A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [132]
How long was I there?
There is no one left to ask now. Greta Gat was killed in the siege of Jewish Jerusalem in 1948. An Arab Legion sniper with a diagonal black belt and a red kaffieh fired an accurate shot at her from the direction of the Police Academy that was on the cease-fire line. The bullet, so locals related, went in through Auntie Greta's left ear and came out of her eye. To this day, when I try to imagine what her face was like, I have nightmares about one spilled eye.
Nor have I any means to establish where in Jerusalem that clothes shop was, with its abundance of warrens, caves, and forest tracks, some sixty years ago. Was it an Arab shop? An Armenian one? And what stands on the site now? What happened to those forests and winding tunnels? And the alcoves behind the curtains, the counters, and all the changing cubicles? And the kennel where I was buried alive? Or the witch disguised as a wood nymph, whom I pursued and then fled in terror? What happened to my very first temptress, who drew me into her forest hideaway until I found myself inside her secret lair where suddenly she deigned to show me her face, which with nothing more than a look I managed to transform into a horror, the face of a slain fox, both vicious and desperately sad.
It is possible that Auntie Greta, when she finally deigned to reemerge glittering anew from her limbo, clad in a shiny dress, was alarmed not to find me waiting for her in the place where she had fixed me, on the wicker stool opposite the fitting room. No doubt she was startled and her face blushed so deeply that it turned almost purple. What has happened to the child? He is usually such a responsible and obedient child, a very cautious child, not at all adventurous, not even particularly brave.
We must imagine that at first Auntie Greta tried to find me on her own: perhaps she imagined that the child had waited and waited until he got bored and now was playing hide-and-seek with her to punish her for being away so long. Maybe the little scamp was hiding here behind the shelves? No? Or here among the coats? Perhaps he was standing and staring at waxwork models of half-dressed girls? Perhaps he was looking out at the people in the street from the inside of the shopwindow? Or had he simply found the toilet all by himself? Or a faucet to drink some water? A clever boy, quite a responsible boy, no question of that, only a bit absentminded, muddled, lost in all sorts of daydreams, always getting lost in the stories I tell him or he tells himself. Perhaps he's gone out in the street, after all? Frightened I might have forgotten him, trying to find his own way home? What if a strange man appeared and held out his hand and promised him all sorts of wonderful things? And what if the child let himself be tempted? And went off? With a stranger?
As Auntie Greta's apprehension intensified, she stopped blushing and turned white instead, and she started to shiver as though she had caught a cold. Eventually no doubt she raised her voice, she burst out crying, and everyone in the shop, assistants and shoppers alike, came to help and set to work looking for me. They may have called my name, combed the maze-like alleys of the shop, searched all the forest tracks in vain. And because apparently it was an Arab shop, one may imagine that crowds of children a little older than me were summoned and sent out to search for me in the neighborhood, in the narrow streets, in pits, in the nearby olive grove, in the courtyard of the mosque, in the goat pasture on the hillside, in the passages leading to the bazaar.
Was there a telephone? Did Auntie Greta phone Mr. Heinemann's pharmacy on the corner of Zephaniah Street? Did she or did she not manage to apprise my parents of the terrible news? Apparently not, otherwise my parents would have reminded me of it over and over again, for years to come, at any sign of disobedience they would have brandished a reenactment of that terrible experience of loss and mourning,