A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [175]
Naturally I am reconstructing that morning and our conversation from memory—like trying to restore an ancient ruined building on the basis of seven or eight stones that are still left standing. But among the few stones left standing exactly as they were, neither reconstructed nor invented, are these words: "I have to correct myself:...But maybe there has been a change since then?" That is exactly what Zelda said to me on that summer morning in late June 1976. Twenty-nine years after our honey summer. And twenty-five years before the summer morning that I am writing this page (in my study in Arad, in an exercise book full of crossings out, on July 30, 2001: this is therefore a recollection of a visit that was also meant, in its day, to conjure up a recollection or to scratch at old wounds. In all these recollections, my task is a bit like that of someone trying to build something out of old stones that he is digging out of the ruins of something that was also, in its day, built out of stones from a ruin).
"I have to correct myself," Teacher Zelda said. "Maybe there has been a change since then?"
She could have said it in so many different ways. For instance, she might have said: Maybe you don't like lemonade anymore? Or: Maybe you like it very strong now? Or she might have asked, quite simply: What would you like to drink?
She was a person of precision. Her intention was to allude at once, happily, without a hint of bitterness, to our private past, hers and mine (lemonade, not too strong), but to do so without subordinating the present to the past ("Maybe there has been a change since then?"—with a question mark—thus offering me the choice, and also shouldering me with the responsibility for the continuation, for the rest of the visit. Which I had initiated).
I said (certainly not without a smile):
"Thank you. I'd love to have some lemonade like before."
She said:
"That's what I thought, but I felt I ought to ask."
Then we both drank iced lemonade (instead of the icebox there was now a little refrigerator, an obsolete model that was showing signs of its age). We reminisced. She had indeed read my books, and I had read hers, but we passed over all that in five or six sentences, as though hurrying past an unsafe stretch of road.
We talked about what had happened to the Nahlielis, Isabella and Getzel. About other common acquaintances. About the changes that had taken place in Kerem Avraham. My parents and her late husband, who had passed away some five years before my visit, we also mentioned at a run, then went back to walking pace to talk about Agnon and perhaps also about Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel was translated into Hebrew around that time, although it is possible that we had both read it in English). As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I was amazed to see how little the apartment had changed. The dreary brown dresser with its thick coat of varnish was still crouching in its usual corner like an old dog. The china tea set still dozed behind its glass panes. On the dresser there were photographs of Zelda's parents, who looked younger than she did, and a picture of a man who I imagined must be her husband, but I still asked who he was. Her eyes suddenly lit up and sparkled mischievously; she grinned at me as though we had just done something naughty together, then she pulled herself together and said simply:
"That's Chayim."
The round brown table seemed to have shrunk over the years. In the bookcase there were old prayer books in battered dark covers, and a few big new religious books in splendid leather bindings with gold tooling, as well as Schirmann's history of Hebrew poetry in Spain, a lot of books of poetry and modern Hebrew novels, and a row of paperbacks. When I was a child, this bookcase had loomed very, very large; now it only loomed shoulder-height. On the dresser and various shelves there were silver Sabbath candlesticks, a number of Hanukkah lamps, little ornaments made of olive wood or copper, and a sad potted plant on the chest of drawers and a couple more on the windowsill.