A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [217]
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In September, during a cease-fire that interrupted the fighting in Jerusalem, we had visitors on Saturday morning: Grandpa and Grandma, the Abramskis, and maybe some others. They drank tea in the yard and discussed the successes of the Israeli army, and the terrible dangers of the peace plan put forward by the UN mediator, the Swede Count Bernadotte, a scheme behind which the British were undoubtedly lurking and whose aim was to crush our young state to death. Somebody had brought a rather large, ugly new coin from Tel Aviv: it was the first Hebrew coin to be minted, and it was passed excitedly from hand to hand. It was a twenty-five prutot coin, and it had a picture of a bunch of grapes, a motif that Father said was taken straight from a Jewish coin of the Second Temple period, and above the bunch of grapes was a clear Hebrew legend: ISRAEL. To be on the safe side, it was written not just in Hebrew but in English and Arabic as well.
Mrs. Zerta Abramski said:
"If only our dear late parents, and their parents, and all the generations, had been privileged to see and hold this coin. Jewish money—" Her voice choked. Mr. Abramski said:
"It is fitting to give thanks with the appropriate benediction. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast given us life, preserved us, and permitted us to reach this time!"
Grandpa Alexander, my elegant, hedonistic grandfather, so beloved of the fair sex, said nothing, but simply touched the overlarge nickel coin to his lips and kissed it twice, gently, and his eyes brimmed. Then he passed it on. At that moment the street was startled by the wail ofan ambulance on its way to Zephaniah Street, and ten minutes later the siren howled again on its way back, and Father may have seen in this a pretext to make some pallid joke about the last trump or something of the sort. They sat and chatted and may even have had another glass of tea, and after half an hour or so the Abramskis took their leave, wishing us all the best, and Mr. Abramski, who loved rhetorical flourishes, probably uttered a few high-flown phrases. While they were still standing in the doorway, a neighbor arrived and gently called them over to a corner of the yard, and they were in such a hurry to follow him that Aunt Zerta forgot her handbag. A quarter of an hour later the Lembergs came, looking bewildered, to tell us that while his parents were visiting us, Yonatan Abramski, twelve-year-old Yoni, had been playing in Nehemiah Street, when a Jordanian sniper firing from the Police Training School had hit him with a single shot in the middle of his forehead, and the boy had lain there dying for five minutes, vomited, and expired before the ambulance reached him.
I found this in Zerta Abramski's diary:
September 23,1948
On the eighteenth of September, at a quarter past ten on Saturday morning, my Yoni,Yoni my child, my whole life, was killed ... He was hit by an Arab sniper, my angel, he only managed to say "Mummy," to run a few yards (my wonderful, pure boy was standing near the house) before he fell ... I did not hear his last word, neither did I answer him when he called out to me. When I returned, my sweet, beloved child was no longer alive. I saw him at the mortuary. He looked so wonderfully beautiful, he seemed to be asleep. I embraced him and kissed him. They had put a stone under his head. The stone moved, and his head, his cherubic head, moved a little. My heart said, He is not dead, my son, look, he's moving ... His eyes were half shut. Then "they" came—the mortuary workers—came and insulted