A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [239]
*Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, act II, scene 2.
50
SOMETIMES MY parents took me with them when they went "into town," that is to say to King George Street or Ben Yehuda Street, to one of the three or four main cafés that may have been reminiscent of cafés in the cities of Central Europe in the interwar years. In these cafés Hebrew and foreign-language newspapers were at the disposal of customers, fixed into long sticks, as well as a selection of weeklies and monthlies in various languages. Beneath the brass and crystal chandeliers a subdued foreign murmur mingled with blue-gray cigarette smoke and a whiff ofother worlds, in which tranquil lives of study and companionship proceeded at a peaceful pace.
Well-groomed ladies and distinguished-looking gentlemen sat at the tables, conversing quietly. Waiters and waitresses in white jackets with white tea towels folded neatly over their arms floated among the tables serving piping-hot coffee on top of which floated pure, curly angels of whipped cream, Ceylon tea with the essence served separately in little china pots, liqueur-filled pastries, croissants, apple strudel with cream, chocolate cake with vanilla icing, mulled wine on winter evenings, and little glasses of brandy and cherry brandy. (In 1949 and 1950 there still was only ersatz coffee, and the chocolate and cream were probably ersatz too.)
In these cafés my parents sometimes met a different group of acquaintances, far removed from their usual circle of doll menders or the post office. Here we conferred with such valuable acquaintances as Mr. Pfeffermann, who was Father's boss in the newspaper department at the library, Joshua Czaczik the publisher, who came to Jerusalem occasionally from Tel Aviv on business, promising young philologists and historians of my parents' age who were embarking on a university career, and other young scholars, including professors' assistants, whose future seemed assured. Sometimes my parents met a small group of Jerusalem writers whom Father felt honored to know: Dov Kimche, Shraga Kadari, Yitzhak Shenhar, Yehuda Yaari. Today they are almost forgotten, and even most of their readers have gone the way of all flesh, but in their time they were very well known, and their books were widely read.
Father would prepare for these meetings by washing his hair, polishing and buffing his shoes till they shone like jet, securing his favorite tie, the gray-and-white striped one, with a silver tie clip, and explaining to me not once but several times the rules of polite behavior and my duty to reply to any question with brevity and good taste. Sometimes he shaved before we left home, even though he had already shaved in the morning. My mother would mark the occasion by putting on her coral necklace, which set off her olive complexion perfectly and added an exotic touch to her rather withdrawn beauty, making her look Italian or possibly Greek.
The well-known scholars and writers were impressed by Father's acuity and erudition. They knew they could always rely on his extensive knowledge whenever their dictionaries and reference works let them down. But even more than they made use of my father and took advantage of his expertise, they were openly pleased by my mother's company. Her profound, inspirational attentiveness urged them on to tireless verbal feats. Something in her thoughtful presence, her unexpected questions, her look, her remarks, would shed a new, surprising light on the subject under discussion, and made them talk on and on as though they were slightly intoxicated, about their work, their creative struggles, their plans and their achievements. Sometimes my mother would produce an apposite quotation from the speaker's own writings, remarking on a certain similarity to the ideas of Tolstoy, or she would identify a stoic quality