A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [189]
It transpired that her knowledge of Hebrew was not extensive, or perhaps her views were not the same as mine. Instead of responding to my challenge, she chose to sidestep it: her elder brother, she told me, was in London, studying to be a "solicitor and a barrister."
Puffed up with representativity, I asked her what she was thinking of studying when she was older.
She looked straight into my eyes, and at that moment, instead of blushing, I turned pale. Instantly I averted my eyes, and looked down at her serious little brother Awwad, who had already laid out four precise circles of leaves at the foot of the mulberry tree.
How about you?
Well, you see, I said, still standing, facing her, rubbing my clammy palms against the sides of my shorts, well, you see, it's like this—
You'll be a lawyer too. From the way you speak.
What makes you think that exactly?
Instead of replying, she said: I'm going to write a book.
You? What kind of a book will you write?
Poetry.
Poetry?
In French and English.
You write poetry?
She also wrote poetry in Arabic, but she never showed it to anyone. Hebrew was a beautiful language, too. Had anyone written any poetry in Hebrew?
Shocked by her question, swollen with indignation and a sense of mission, I began there and then to give her an impassioned recital of snatches of poetry. Tchernikhowsky. Levin Kipnes. Rahel. Vladimir Jabotinsky. And one poem of my own. Whatever came to mind. Furiously, describing circles in the air with my hands, raising my voice, with feeling and gestures and facial expressions and occasionally even closing my eyes. Even her little brother Awwad raised his curly head and fixed me with brown, innocent lamblike eyes, full of curiosity and slight apprehension, and suddenly he recited in clear Hebrew: Jest a minute! Rest a minute! Aisha, meanwhile, said nothing. Suddenly she asked me if I could climb trees.
All excited and perhaps a little in love with her and yet trembling with the thrill of national representativity, eager to do anything she wanted, I instantly transformed myself from Jabotinsky into Tarzan. Taking off the sandals that Uncle Staszek had polished for me that morning till the leather gleamed like jet, oblivious of my neatly pressed best clothes, I took a jump and swung myself up onto a low branch, scrabbled with my bare feet against the gnarled trunk, and without a moment's hesitation climbed up into the tree, from one fork to the next and upward, toward the topmost branches, not caring about scratches, ignoring bruises, grazes, and mulberry stains, up beyond the line of the wall, beyond the tops of the other trees, out of the shade, up to the topmost part of the tree, until my tummy was clinging to a sloping branch that bent under my weight like a spring, and I groped and suddenly discovered a rusty iron chain with a heavy iron ball, also rusty, attached to the end of it, the devil only knew what it was for and how it had got to the top of the mulberry tree. Little Awwad looked at me thoughtfully, doubtfully, and called again: Jest a minute! Rest a minute!
These were apparently the only Hebrew words he knew.
I held on to my sighing branch with one hand, and with the other, uttering wild war cries, I waved the chain and whirled the iron ball in quick circles, as though brandishing some rare fruit for the young woman underneath. For sixty generations, so we had learned, they had considered us a miserable nation of huddled yeshiva students, flimsy moths who start in a panic at every shadow, awlad al-mawt, children of death, and now at last here was muscular Judaism taking the stage, the resplendent new Hebrew youth at the height of his powers, making everyone who sees him tremble at his roar: like a lion among lions.
But this awesome tree lion that I was exultantly acting