A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [234]
When he came home in the middle of the night, he probably showered thoroughly, singing to himself cheerfully, shamelessly out of tune, "I have a garden, and I have a well," catching himself in the middle and silencing himself at once, covered with shame and confusion, getting undressed in a guilty silence, putting on his striped pajamas, gently repeating his offer of tea or milk or a cold drink, and perhaps trying once more to induce her to lie down in bed, next to him or instead of him. And begging her to banish her bad thoughts and think pleasant thoughts instead. While he got into bed and curled up under the blanket, he suggested all sorts of pleasant thoughts that she might think, and ended up falling asleep like a baby with all those pleasant thoughts. But I imagine that he would wake up, responsibly, two or three times in the night to check on the patient in her chair, bring her her medicine and a glass of water, straighten her blanket, and go back to sleep.
By the end of the winter she had almost stopped eating. Sometimes she dunked a dry rusk in a glass of tea and said that was enough for her, she was feeling a little queasy and had no appetite. Don't worry about me, Arieh, I hardly ever go out. If I did eat, I'd get fat like my mother. Don't worry.
Father said sadly to me:
"Mother isn't well, and the doctors can't discover what's wrong with her. I wanted to call in some other doctors, but she wouldn't let me." And once he said to me:
"Your mother is punishing herself. Just to punish me."
Grandpa Alexander said:
"Nu, what. Mental state. Melancholia. Whims. It's a sign that the heart is still young."
Auntie Lilenka said to me:
"It can't be easy for you either. You're such a bright, sensitive child. You'll be a writer one day. And your mother says you're a ray of sunshine in her life. You really are a ray of sunshine. Not like someone whose childish selfishness allows him to go out and gather rosebuds at such a time, without realizing that he's only making matters worse. Never mind. I was talking to myself there, not to you. You're a rather lonely child, and you may be even more lonely than usual right now, so whenever you need to have a heart to heart with me, don't hesitate, please remember that Lilia is not just a friend of Mother's but, if only you let me, a good friend of yours too. A friend who doesn't just see you the way grown-ups see children, but is a real kindred spirit."
I may have understood that when Aunt Lilia said "go out and gather rosebuds" she was referring to Father's habit of going to see friends in the evening, although I couldn't see what rosebuds she thought grew in the Rudnickis' cramped apartment, with the bald bird and the pine-cone bird and the herd of raffia animals behind the glass doors of the sideboard, or in the miserable, run-down apartment that was all the Abramskis could afford, and that they had almost stopped cleaning and keeping tidy since they went into mourning for their son. Or perhaps in those rosebuds of Aunt Lilia's I guessed at something that was impossible. And that may be why I refused to understand it or to make a connection with Father's meticulous polishing of his shoes or his new aftershave.
Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered not the event itself but the previous recollection, which itself was more than forty years ago, as though an old moon were reflected in a windowpane from which it