A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [203]
"It's a pity about all your calculations and guesses. There's not going to be any partition. There aren't going to be two states, seeing as what the whole of the Negev is going to remain in British hands so they can protect their bases in Suez, and the British will also hang on to Haifa, the town as well as the port, and the main airfields at Lydda, Ekron, and Ramat David, and their clump of army camps at Sarafand. All the rest, including Jerusalem, the Arabs will get, seeing as what America wants them to agree in return to let the Jews have a kind of pocket between Tel Aviv and Hadera. The Jews will be permitted to establish an autonomous canton in this pocket, a sort of Jewish Vatican City, and we'll gradually be allowed to bring into this pocket up to a hundred thousand or at most a hundred and fifty thousand survivors from the DP camps. If necessary, this Jewish pocket will be defended by a few thousand US marines from the Sixth Fleet, from their giant aircraft carriers, seeing as that they don't believe the Jews will be able to defend themselves under these conditions."
"But that's a ghetto!" Mr. Abramski shouted in a terrible voice. "A prison! Solitary confinement!"
Gustav Krochmal, for his part, smiled and suggested pleasantly:
"It would be much better if the Americans took this Lilliput they want to give us, and simply gave us their two aircraft carriers instead: we'd be more comfortable there, and safer too. And a bit less crowded."
Mala Rudnicki begged the policeman, implored him, as though she were pleading with him for our lives:
"What about Galilee? Galilee, dear Dudek? And the Valleys? Won't we even get the Valleys? Why can't they leave us that at least? Why must they take the poor man's last ewe-lamb?"
Father remarked sadly:
"There's no such thing as the poor man's last ewe-lamb, Mala: the poor man had only one ewe-lamb, and they came and took that away from him."
After a short silence Grandpa Alexander exploded furiously, going red in the face, puffing up as if he was about to boil over:
"He was quite right, that villain from the mosque in Jaffa! He was quite right! We really are just dung! Nu, what: this is the end! Vsyo! Khvatit! That's enough! All the anti-Semites in the world are very right. Khmelnicki was right. Petliura was right. Hitler was right also: nu, what. There really is a curse on us! God really does hate us! As for me," Grandpa groaned, flaming red, shooting flecks of saliva in every direction, thumping on the table till he made the teaspoons rattle in the glasses, "nu, what, ty skazal, the same way as God hates us so I hate him back! I hate God! Let him die already! The anti-Semite from Berlin is burnt, but up there is sitting another Hitler! Much worse! Nu, what! He's sitting there laughing at us, the rascal!"
Grandma Shlomit took hold of his arm and commanded:
"Zisya! that's enough! Shto ty govorish! Genug! Iber genug!"
They somehow calmed him down. They poured him a little brandy and put some biscuits in front of him.
But Uncle Dudek, Sergeant Wilk, apparently considered that words such as those that Grandpa had roared so desperately should not be uttered in the presence of the police, so he stood up, donned his splendid policeman's peaked cap, adjusted his holster on his left hip, and from the doorway offered us a chance of a reprieve, a ray of light, as though taking pity on us and condescending to respond positively to our appeal, at least up to a point:
"But there's another officer, an Irishman, a real character, who keeps repeating the same thing, that the Jews have