A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [230]
Hayim Toren, the writer and writers' union hack, might say, for example:
"Surely everyone must realize that you cannot run a state the way you might run a grocer's shop. Or like the town council in some godforsaken shtetl."
My father says:
"It may be too early to judge, my dear Hayim, but everyone with eyes in his head occasionally discerns cause for profound disappointment in our young state."
Mr. Krochmal, the dolls' doctor, adds shyly:
"Apart from which, they don't even mend the pavement. Two letters I've written to the mayor, and I haven't had a single reply. I'm not saying that to disagree with what Mr. Klausner was saying, but in the self-same spirit."
My father ventures one of his puns:
"The only things that work in this country of ours are the road works."
Mr. Abramski quotes:
"'And blood toucheth blood,' saith the prophet Hosea, 'therefore shall the land mourn.' The remnant of the Jewish nation has come here to rebuild the kingdom of David and Solomon, to lay the foundation of the Third Temple, and we have all fallen into the sweaty hands of assorted bloated kibbutz treasurers of little faith, and other red-faced hacks of uncircumcised heart, 'whose world is as narrow as that of an ant.' Rebellious princes and companions of thieves the lot of them, who are sharing among themselves plot by plot the paltry strip of the Fatherland that the nations have left in our hands. It was to them and no one else that the prophet Ezekiel was referring when he said: 'The suburbs shall shake at the sound of the cry of thy pilots.' "
And Mother, with her smile hovering on her lips and barely touching them:
"Perhaps when they've finished sharing out the plots, they'll start mending the pavements? And then they'll mend the pavement in front of Mr. Krochmal's shop."
Now, fifty years after her death, I imagine I can hear in her voice as she says these words, or something like them, a tense mixture of sobriety, skepticism, sharp, fine sarcasm, and ever-present sadness.
In those years something gnawed at her. A slowness started to make itself felt in her movements, or something resembling a slight absence of mind. She had stopped giving private history and literature lessons. Sometimes, for a paltry payment, she would correct the grammar and style of articles written in limping Germanic Hebrew by professors from Rehavia and edit them for publication. She still did all the housework herself, ably and nimbly: she spent each morning cooking, frying, baking, shopping, slicing, mixing, drying, cleaning, scraping, washing, hanging out, ironing, folding, until the whole place was gleaming, and after lunch she sat in an armchair reading.
She had a strange way of sitting when she read: the book always rested on her knees, and her back and neck were bent over it. She looked like a young girl shyly lowering her eyes to her knees when she sat reading like that. Often she stood at the window looking out for a long time at our quiet street. Or she took her shoes off and lay on her back on the bedspread, fully dressed, with her open eyes fixed on a particular spot on the ceiling. Sometimes she would suddenly stand up, feverishly put on her outdoor clothes, promise to be back in a quarter of an hour, straighten her skirt, smooth down her hair without looking in the mirror, hang her plain straw handbag on her shoulder, and go out briskly, as though she was afraid of missing something. If I asked to go with her, or if I asked her where she was going, my mother would say:
"I need to be on my own for a bit. Why don't you be on your own too?" And again: "I'll be back in a quarter of an hour."
She always kept her word: she'd be back very soon, with a sparkle in her eyes and color in her cheeks, as though she had been in very cold air. As though she'd run all the way. Or as though something exciting had happened to her on the way. She was prettier when she returned than when she left.
Once I followed her out of the house without her noticing me. I trailed her at a distance, clinging to walls and bushes,