A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [135]
But I didn't go to sleep, I lay quietly under the blanket playing with my metal snail.
I never told my parents about the witch, the bottom of the inky sea, or the man who rescued me: I didn't want them to confiscate my snail. And I didn't know how I would explain to them where I'd found it. I could hardly say I'd brought it back as a souvenir from my dream. And if I told them the truth, they would be furious with Auntie Greta and me. What's that?! His Highness?! A thief?! Has His Highness gone out of his mind?
And they would take me straight back there and force me to give my snail back and say I was sorry.
And then the punishment.
Later in the afternoon Father came to pick me up from Auntie Greta's. As usual, he said, "His Highness looks a little pale today. Has he had a hard day? Have his ships been shipwrecked, heaven forbid? Or have his castles been captured by foes?"
I did not reply, even though I could definitely have made him unhappy. For instance, I could have told him that since that morning I had another father apart from him. An Arab father.
While he was putting on my shoes, he joked with Auntie Greta. He always courted women with witticisms. And he always chatted on endlessly so as not to allow any room for a moment's silence. All his life my father was afraid of silence. He always felt himself to be responsible for the life of the conversation and saw it as a sign of failure and guilt on his part if it flagged for an instant. So he made up a rhyme in honor of Auntie Greta, something like this:
"It's not illegal yet, I bet, to flirt and pet with Gret."
Perhaps he went even further and said:
"Greta dear, Greta dear, you have really touched me here," pointing at his heart.
Auntie Greta blushed immediately, and because she was embarrassed at blushing, she blushed even more deeply, and her neck and chest turned purple like an eggplant, despite which she managed to mutter:
"Nu, but really, Herr Doktor Klausner," but her thighs nodded to him slightly, as though they longed to execute a little pirouette for him.
That same evening Father took me on a long, detailed tour of the remains of Inca civilization: eager for knowledge, we crossed oceans and mountains, rivers and plains together in the big German atlas. With our own eyes we saw the mysterious cities and the remains of palaces and temples in the encyclopedia and in the pages of a Polish book with pictures. All evening Mother sat in an armchair reading, with her legs tucked under her. The paraffin heater burned with a quiet, deep blue flame.
And every few minutes the silence of the room was emphasized by three or four soft mutters as air bubbled through the veins of the heater.
31
THE GARDEN wasn't a real garden, just a smallish rectangle of trampled earth as hard as concrete, where even thistles could scarcely grow. It was always in the shade of the concrete wall, like a prison yard. And in the shade of the tall cypress trees on the other side of the wall, in the Lembergs' garden next door. In one corner a stunted pepper tree struggled to survive, with gritted teeth; I loved to rub its leaves between my fingers and inhale its exciting smell. Opposite, near the other wall, was a single pomegranate tree or bush, a disillusioned survivor of the days when Kerem Avraham was still an orchard, which obstinately flowered year after year. We children did not wait for the fruit but ruthlessly cut off the vase-shaped unripe buds, into which we would insert a stick that was a finger's length or so, and thus make them into pipes like those the British smoked, and a few better-off people in our neighborhood who wanted to imitate the British. Once a year we opened a pipe shop in a corner