A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [15]
All through my childhood I loved to arrange and rearrange things, each time slightly differently. Three or four empty egg cups could become a series of fortifications, or a group of submarines, or a meeting of the leaders of the great powers at Yalta. I made occasional brief sorties into the realm of unbridled disorder. There was something very bold and exciting about this: I loved emptying a box of matches on the floor and trying to find all the infinite possible combinations.
Throughout the years of the World War there hung on the wall in the passage a large map of the theaters of war in Europe, with pins and different-colored flags. Every day or two Father moved them in accordance with the news on the wireless. And I constructed a private, parallel reality: I spread out on the rush mat my own theater of war, my virtual reality, and I moved armies around, executed pincer movements and distractions, captured bridgeheads, outflanked the enemy, resigned myself to tactical withdrawals that I later turned into strategic breakthroughs.
I was a child fascinated by history. I attempted to rectify the errors of the commanders of the past. I refought the great Jewish revolt against the Romans, rescued Jerusalem from destruction at the hands of Titus's army, pushed the campaign onto the enemy's ground, brought Bar Kochba's troops to the walls of Rome, took the Coliseum by storm, and planted the Hebrew flag on top of the Capitol. To this end I transported the British army's Jewish Brigade to the first century ad and the days of the Second Temple, and reveled in the devastation that a couple of machine guns could inflict on the splendid legions of the accursed Hadrian and Titus. A light aircraft, a single Piper, brought the proud Roman Empire to its knees. I turned the doomed struggle of the defenders of Masada into a decisive Jewish victory with the aid of a single mortar and a few hand grenades.
And in fact that selfsame strange urge I had when I was small—the desire to grant a second chance to something that could never have one—is still one of the urges that set me going today whenever I sit down to write a story.
Many things have happened in Jerusalem. The city has been destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt again. Conqueror after conqueror has come, ruled for a while, left behind a few walls and towers, some cracks in the stone, a handful of potsherds and documents, and disappeared. Vanished like the morning mist down the hilly slopes. Jerusalem is an old nymphomaniac who squeezes lover after lover to death before shrugging him off her with a yawn, a black widow who devours her mates while they are still in her.
Meanwhile, far away on the other side of the world, new continents and islands were being discovered. My mother used to say, You're too late, child, forget it, Magellan and Columbus have already discovered even the most far-flung islands. I argued with her. I said, How can you be so sure? After all, before Columbus came along, people thought all the world was known and there was nothing left to discover.
Between the rush mat, the legs of the furniture, and the space under my bed I sometimes discovered not only unknown islands but new stars, solar systems, entire galaxies. If I'm ever put in prison, no doubt I'll miss my freedom and one or two other things, but I'll never suffer from boredom so long as I'm allowed to have a box of dominoes, a pack of cards, a couple of boxes of matches or a handful of buttons. I'll spend my days arranging and rearranging them, moving them apart and together, forming little compositions. It may be because I was an only child: I had no brothers and sisters, and very few friends,