A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [238]
My mother and I were like Peer Gynt and his mother Ase on those winter nights:
My young lad and I were companions in grief ...
As we sat in our home there, my young Peer and I—
seeking solace from sorrow and blessed relief ...
So all sorts of adventures we started to spin
of princes and trolls and all manner of beasts;
and of bride-rapes as well. Oh, but who would have thought
that those devilish tales would have stuck in his head?*
Often we played a game on those nights, making up a story alternately: Mother would start a story, I would continue it, then the thread passed back to her, and then to me again, and so on. My father would get home just before or after midnight, and at the sound of his footsteps outside, we instantly switched off the lamp, jumped into bed like a pair of naughty children, and pretended to be sleeping the sleep of the just. Half asleep, I heard him moving about the little apartment, undressing, drinking some milk from the icebox, going to the bathroom, turning on the faucet, turning it off, flushing the toilet, turning the faucet on and off again, humming an old love song under his breath, drinking some more milk, and padding barefoot to the book room and the sofa, which had been opened into a double bed, presumably lying down next to Mother, who was feigning sleep, internalizing his humming, humming inside himself for another minute or two, then dropping off to sleep, and sleeping like a babe until six in the morning. At six he woke first, shaved, dressed, and put on Mother's apron to squeeze us both some oranges, warming the juice, as always, over a pan of boiling water, because cold juice is well known to give you a chill, then bringing each of us a glass of juice in bed.
One of those nights my mother couldn't sleep again. She didn't like lying on the sofa bed next to Father, who was sleeping soundly while his glasses slept quietly on the shelf next to him, so she got up and instead of going to sit in her chair facing the window or to the gloomy kitchen, she got into bed with me, cuddled me, and kissed me till I woke up. Then she asked me in a whisper, right into my ear, if I minded if we whispered together tonight. Just the two of us. I'm sorry I woke you up but I really need to talk to you tonight. And this time in the dark I heard in her voice a smile that was a real smile, not a shadow of one.
When Zeus discovered that Prometheus had managed to steal a spark from the fire that he had withheld from the mortals as a punishment, he almost exploded with rage. Rarely had the other gods seen their king so sullen and angry. Day after day he let his thunder roll, and no one dared approach him. In his rage the furious father ofthe gods decided to bring a great disaster upon the race ofmortals in the guise of a wonderful present. So he commanded Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, to form a beautiful woman out ofclay. The goddess Athena taught her to spin and sew and clothed her in fine garments. The goddess Aphrodite endowed her with graceful charms that beguiled all men and enflamed their desires. Hermes, the god of merchants and thieves, taught her to lie without batting an eyelid, to captivate and to deceive. The beautiful temptress was named Pandora, meaning "She who possesses all gifts." And then Zeus, thirsty for vengeance, ordered her to be given as a bride to Prometheus's foolish brother. In vain did Prometheus warn his brother to beware of the gifts of the gods. When the brother saw this beauty queen, he leaped with joy upon Pandora, who had brought with her as a dowry a casket filled with gifts from all the gods of Olympus, which she was instructed never to open. One day Pandora lifted the lid of the casket of gifts, and out flew illness, loneliness, injustice, cruelty, and death. That is how all the troubles that we see around us came into this world. If you haven't fallen asleep, I wanted to tell you that in my opinion the troubles existed already. There were the troubles of Prometheus and Zeus, and the troubles of Pandora herself,