A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [229]
My father expressed his resentment of the Bolshevik despotism of the Histadrut leadership who withheld work from those not in possession of their red card. Mr. Gustav Krochmal timidly advanced the view that Ben-Gurion, despite his faults, was the hero of the age: he had been sent to us providentially at a time when petty-minded party hacks might have been put off by the enormity of the undertaking and missed the opportune moment to establish a state. "It was our youth!" Grandpa Alexander shouted loudly, "It was our wonderful youth that gave us the victory and the miracle! Without no Ben-Gurion! The youth!" At which Grandpa leaned toward me and patted me absentmindedly a couple of times, as though to reward the younger generation for winning the war.
Women hardly ever joined in the conversation. In those days it was customary to compliment women on being "such marvelous listeners," on the cakes and biscuits, on the pleasant atmosphere, but not on their contribution to the conversation. Mala Rudnicki, for instance, would nod happily whenever Staszek spoke and shake her head if anyone interrupted him. Zerta Abramski clasped her shoulders with her hands as though she felt cold. Ever since Yoni's death she would sit, even on warm evenings, with her head inclined as though she was looking at the tops of the cypresses in the next-door garden, hugging her shoulders with her hands. Grandma Shlomit, who was a strong-minded, opinionated woman, would sometimes interpose in that deep alto voice of hers: "How very true!" or "It's much worse than you said, Staszek, much, much worse!" Or else: "N-o! What do you mean, Mr. Abramski! That is simply not possible!"
Only my mother sometimes subverted this rule. When there was a moment's silence, she would say something that at first might seem irrelevant but then could be seen to have gently shifted the center of gravity completely, without changing the subject or contradicting those who had spoken before, but rather as though she were opening a door in some back wall of the conversation that up to then had not seemed to have a doorway in it.
Once she had made her remark, she shut up, smiling agreeably and looking triumphantly not at the visitors or at my father but at me. After my mother had spoken, the whole conversation seemed to shift its weight from one foot to another. Soon afterward, still smiling her delicate smile that seemed to be doubting something while deciphering something else, she would get up and offer her guests another glass of tea: Please? How strong? And another slice of cake?
To the child I was then my mother's brief intervention in the men's conversation was rather distressing, perhaps because I sensed an invisible ripple of embarrassment among the speakers, an almost imperceptible search for a way out, as though there were a vague momentary fear that they might inadvertently have said or done something that had caused my mother to snigger at them, but none of them knew what it was. Maybe it was her withdrawn, radiant beauty that always embarrassed those inhibited men and made them fear she might not like them, or find them just a little repulsive.
As for the women, my mother's interventions stirred in them a strange mixture of anxiety and hope that one day she would finally lose her footing, and perhaps a mite of