A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [196]
The whole Silwani family, I was told after the Six Day War, left Jordanian Jerusalem in the 1950s and early 1960s. Some went to Switzerland and Canada, others settled in the Gulf emirates, a few moved to London, and some others to Latin America.
And what about their parrots? "Who will be my destiny? Who will be my prince?"
And what about Aisha? And her lame brother? Where on earth is she playing her piano, assuming she still has one, assuming she has not grown old and worn out among the dusty, heat-blasted hovels in some refugee camp where the sewage runs down the unpaved streets.
And who are the fortunate Jews who now live in what was once her family home in Talbieh, a neighborhood built of pale blue and pinkish stone with stone vaults and arches?
It was not because of the approaching war but for some other, deeper reason that I would be suddenly seized with dread in those autumn days of 1947 and feel aching pangs of yearning mixed with shame and the certainty of impending punishment and also some ill-defined pain: a sort of forbidden longing, blended with guilt and sorrow. For that orchard. For that well that was covered with a sheet of green metal, and the blue-tiled pool where golden fish sparkled for an instant in the sunlight before disappearing into the forest of water lilies. For the soft cushions trimmed with fine lace. For the richly textured rugs, one of which showed birds of paradise among trees of paradise. For the stained-glass trefoils, each of which colored the daylight a different shade: red leaf, green leaf, gold leaf, purple leaf.
And for the parrot who sounded like an inveterate smoker: "Mais oui, mais oui, chere mademoiselle," and its soprano counterpart that answered in a voice like a silver bell: "Tfaddal! S'il vous plaît! Enjoy!"
I was there once, in that orchard, before I was banished from it in disgrace, I did touch it once, with my fingertips—
"Bas! Bas, ya 'eini! Bas min fadlak! Usqut!"
Early in the morning I would wake to the smell of first light and see through the iron slats of the closed shutters the pomegranate tree that stood in our yard. Hidden in this tree every morning an invisible bird would repeat joyfully and precisely the first five notes of Fur Elise.
Such an articulate fool, such a noisy little fool.
Instead of approaching her like the New Hebrew Youth approaching the Noble Arab People, or like a lion approaching lions, perhaps I could simply have approached her like a boy approaching a girl. Or couldn't I?
42
"JUST LOOK how that strategist of a child has occupied the whole apartment again. You can't move in the corridor, it's so full of fortifications and towers made out of building blocks, castles made out of dominoes, mines made out of corks, and borders made out of spillikins. In his room there are battlefields of buttons from wall to wall. We're not allowed in there, it's out of bounds. That's an order. And even in our room he's scattered knives and forks all over the floor, presumably to mark out some Maginot Line or navy or armored corps. If it goes on like this, you and I will have to move out into the yard. Or into the street. But the moment the paper arrived, your child dropped everything, he must have declared a general cease-fire, and he lay back on the sofa and read it from cover to cover, including the small ads. Now he's running a line from his HQ behind his wardrobe right through the apartment to Tel Aviv, which is apparently on the edge of the bathtub. If I'm not mistaken, he's about to use it to speak to Ben-Gurion. Like yesterday.