A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [182]
In the summer of 1947 my parents went to stay with some acquaintances in Netanya, leaving me with Uncle Staszek, Auntie Mala, and Chopin and Schopenhauer Rudnicki for the weekend. ("Just you behave yourself there! Impeccably, do you hear! And give Auntie Mala a hand in the kitchen and don't disturb Uncle Staszek, and keep yourself occupied, take a book to read and keep out of their way, and let them sleep late on Saturday morning! Be as good as gold! You can do it when you really want to!")
The writer Hayyim Hazaz once decreed that Uncle Staszek should get rid of his Polish name, "that smelt of the pogroms," and persuaded him to take the first name of Stav, meaning "autumn" in Hebrew, because it sounded a little like Staszek but had a certain flavor of the Song of Songs. And that is how they appeared in Auntie Mala's handwriting on the card that was attached to the door of their apartment:
Malka and Stav Rudnicki
Please do not knock
during the usual rest times.
Uncle Staszek was a thickset, compact man with powerful shoulders, dark, hairy nostrils like caverns, and bushy eyebrows, one of which was always raised quizzically. He had lost one of his incisors, which sometimes gave him a villainous look, particularly when he smiled. He worked for a living in the registered mail department of the main post office in Jerusalem, and in his spare time he was collecting material on little cards for an original piece of research on the medieval Hebrew poet Immanuel of Rome.
Ustaz Najib Mamduh al-Silwani, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah in the northeast of the city, was a wealthy businessman and the local agent of a number of large French firms whose business extended as far as Alexandria and Beirut and from there branched off to Haifa, Nablus, and Jerusalem. It so happened that at the beginning of the summer a considerable money order or bank draft, or it may have been some share certificates, went missing. Suspicion fell on Edward Silwani, Ustaz Najib's eldest son and his partner in the firm of Silwani and Sons. The young man was questioned, so we were told, by the assistant head of the CID in person, and he was subsequently taken to the remand center in Haifa for further questioning. Ustaz Najib, after attempting to rescue his son in various ways, eventually turned in desperation to Mr. Kenneth Orwell Knox-Guildford, the postmaster general, and begged him to renew the search for a lost envelope that he had, he swore, sent in person, the previous winter, by registered post.
Unfortunately he had mislaid the receipt. It had vanished as though the Devil himself had swallowed it.
Mr. Kenneth Orwell Knox-Guildford, for his part, after assuring Ustaz Najib of his sympathy but informing him candidly and sadly that there was not much hope of the search resulting in a positive outcome, nevertheless entrusted Staszek Rudnicki with the task of investigating the matter and discovering whatever there was to learn about the possible fate of a registered letter sent several months previously, a letter that might or might not have existed, that might or might not have been mislaid, a letter of which there was no trace either in the possession of the sender or in the post office ledger.
Uncle Staszek lost no time in investigating, and discovered that not only was there no entry for the letter in question, but that the whole page had been carefully torn out of the ledger. There was no sign of it. Staszek's suspicions were immediately aroused. He made inquiries, found out which clerk was on duty at the registered counter at the time, and questioned the other clerks