A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [216]
I loved that little tortoise, who used to crawl to my hideaway under the pomegranate bush every morning and eat lettuce leaves and juicy cucumber peel right out of my hand. He was not afraid of me and did not retract his head inside his shell, and while he was gobbling up his food, he would make funny movements with his head, as though he were nodding in agreement at what you were saying. He was like a certain bald professor from Rehavia, who also used to nod enthusiastically until you had finished talking, but then his approval turned to mockery, as he continued to nod at you while he tore your views to shreds.
I used to stroke my tortoise's head with my finger while he ate, amazed at the similarity between his nose holes and his ear holes. In my heart of hearts, and behind Father's back, I secretly called him Mimi instead of Abdullah-Gershon.
During the bombardment there were no cucumbers or lettuce leaves and I wasn't allowed out into the yard, but I still used to open the door sometimes and throw scraps of food out for Mimi. Sometimes I could see him in the distance, and sometimes he disappeared for several days on end.
The day that Greta Gat and my mother's friend Piri Yannai were killed, my tortoise Mimi was killed too. He was sliced in half by a piece of shrapnel. When I tearfully asked Father if I could at least bury him under the pomegranate and put up a tombstone to remember him by, Father explained to me that I could not, mainly for reasons of hygiene. He told me he had already gotten rid of the remains. He refused to tell me where he had gotten rid of them, but he took the opportunity to give me a little lecture on the meaning of irony: our Abdullah-Gershon was an immigrant from the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, so it was ironic that the piece of shrapnel that killed him came from a shell fired from one of King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan's guns.
That night I could not get to sleep. I lay on my back on our mattress in the far corner of the corridor, surrounded by the snores, mutterings, and intermittent moans of old people. I was dripping with sweat as I lay between my parents, and by the faint trembling light of the single candle in the bathroom, in the fetid air, I suddenly thought I saw the form of a tortoise, not Mimi, the little tortoise I loved to stroke with my finger (there was no possibility of a cat or a puppy: forget it!), but a terrifying gigantic monster-tortoise, dripping blood and mashed bones, floating through the air, digging with its sharp-clawed paws and chuckling mockingly at me from above all the people sleeping in the corridor. Its face was horrible, crushed and torn by a bullet that had entered its eye and come out in the place where even a tortoise has a sort of ear hole, although it has no actual ear.
I may have tried to wake Father. He did not wake up: he was lying motionless on his back breathing deeply, like a contented baby. But Mother took my head and pressed it to her bosom. Like the rest of us, she was sleeping in her clothes, and the buttons of her blouse hurt my cheek a little. She hugged me hard but didn't try to comfort me; instead she sobbed with me, smothering her crying so that no one would hear, and her lips whispered over and over again: Piri, Piroshka, Piriii. All I could do was stroke her hair and her cheeks, and kiss her, and it was as though I was the grown-up and she was my child, and I whispered, There there, Mummy, it's all right, I'm here.
Then we whispered a little more, she and I. Tearfully. And later on, after the faint flickering candle at the end of the corridor went out and only