A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [232]
I promised, and I kept my word. He called me a bright boy, and once or twice he even called me "young man."
My mother smiled at me affectionately, but it was a smile without a smile. That winter she got more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
We had few visitors. Lilenka—Lilia Kalish, Lea Bar-Samkha, the teacher who wrote two popular books about child psychology—came over some days; she sat facing my mother, and the two of them chatted in Russian or Polish. I had the feeling they were talking about their hometown, Rovno, and about their friends and teachers who were shot by Germans in the Susenki Forest. Because occasionally they mentioned the name of Issachar Reiss, the charismatic headmaster whom all the girls in Tarbuth were in love with, and the names of some other teachers too—Buslik, Berkowski, Fanka Seidman—and of some of the streets and parks from their childhood.
Grandma Shlomit came around occasionally, inspected the icebox and the larder, screwed up her face, had a brief whispered conversation with Father at the end of the corridor, outside the door of the little bathroom that was also the toilet, then peeped into the room where Mother was resting and asked her in a sweetened voice:
"Do you need anything, my dear?"
"No, thank you."
"Then why don't you lie down?"
"I'm fine like this. Thank you."
"Aren't you cold? Shall I light the heater for you?"
"No thanks, I'm not cold. Thank you."
"What about the doctor? When did he call?"
"I don't need the doctor."
"Really? Nu, and how exactly do you know you don't need the doctor?"
Father said something to his mother in Russian, sheepishly, then immediately apologized to both of them. Grandma told him off:
"Be quiet, Lonya. Don't interfere. I'm talking to her, not to you. What an example, excuse me, you're setting for the child."
The child hurriedly got out of the way, although once he did manage to hear Grandma whispering to Father when he saw her to the door:
"Yes. Play-acting. As though she deserves the moon. Just stop arguing with me. You'd think she was the only one who has a hard time here. You'd think the rest of us are living in the lap of luxury. You should open her window a bit. A person could literally suffocate to death in there."
Nevertheless, the doctor was called. He was called again not long afterward. Mother was sent to the clinic for thorough tests and even had to spend a couple of nights at Hadassah Hospital, in its temporary premises at Davidka Square. The tests were inconclusive. A fortnight after she came back from the hospital, pale and drooping, our doctor was called again. Once he was even called out in the middle of the night, and I was woken by his kind voice, thick and rough like wood glue, joking with Father in the corridor. By the side of the sofa that opened out at night into a narrow double bed, on Mother's side, all sorts of packets and jars appeared, vitamin pills, migraine pills, something called APC, and bottles of medicine. She refused to lie in bed. She sat quietly on her chair by the window for hours on end, and sometimes she seemed in a very good mood. She spoke gently and kindly to Father that winter, as though he were the patient, as though he were the one who shuddered if anyone raised their voice. She got into the habit of speaking to him as though to a child, sweetly, affectionately, sometimes she even spoke to him in baby talk. Whereas to me she spoke as one might speak to a confidant.
"Please don't be angry with me, Amos," she would say, piercing my soul with her eyes. "I'm not having an easy time of it right now. You can see for yourself how hard I'm trying to make everything all right."
I got