A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [248]
The crowd went mad. So did I. As though we had all become cells in a single giant body, blazing with rage, boiling with indignation.
And it was at this point that it happened. The fall. The expulsion from Paradise. Mr. Begin went on to speak about the imminent war and the arms race that was in progress all over the Middle East. However, Mr. Begin spoke the Hebrew of his generation, and was evidently not aware that usage had changed. A dividing line separated those under the age of twenty-five or so, who were brought up in Israel, from those above that age or who had learned their Hebrew from books. The word that for Mr. Begin, as for others of his generation, of all parties, meant "weapon" or "arm," for the rest of us signified the male sexual organ and nothing else. And his verb "to arm" for us signified the corresponding action.
Mr. Begin took a couple of sips of water, scrutinized the audience, nodded his head a few times, as though agreeing with himself, or lamenting, and in a harsh, accusing voice, like a prosecutor sternly enumerating a series of unanswerable charges, launched into his tirade:
"President Eisenhower is arming the Nasser regime!
"Bulganin is arming Nasser!
"Guy Mollet and Anthony Eden are arming Nasser!!
"The whole world is arming our Arab enemies day and night!!!"
Pause. His voice filled with loathing and contempt:
"But who will arm the government of Ben-Gurion?"
A stunned silence fell on the hall. But Mr. Begin did not notice. He raised his voice and crowed triumphantly:
*Begin's speech is reconstructed from memory and experience.
"If only I were the prime minister today—everyone, everyone would be arming us!! Ev-ery-one!!!"
A few faint claps rose from the elderly Ashkenazim in the front rows. But the rest of the vast crowd hesitated, apparently unable to believe their ears, or perhaps they were shocked. In that moment of embarrassed silence there was just one nationalistic child, one twelve-year-old child who was politically committed to the roots of his hair, a devoted Beginite in a white shirt and highly polished shoes, who could not contain himself and burst out laughing.
This child tried with all his might and main to restrain his laughter, he wanted to die of shame on the spot, but his contorted, hysterical laughter was irrepressible: it was a choked, almost tearful laugh, a hoarse laugh with strident hoots, a laugh that resembled sobbing and also suffocation.
Looks of horror and alarm fixed on the child from every direction. On every side hundreds of fingers were laid on hundreds of lips, as he was hushed and shushed. Shame! Disgrace! All around important persons fumed reproachfully at a horror-smitten Grandpa Alexander. The child had the impression that far away at the back of the hall an unruly laugh echoed his, followed by another. But those laughs, if they occurred, had broken out in the outer suburbs of the nation, while his own outburst had struck in the middle of the third row, which was full of veterans of Beitar and dignitaries of Herut, all well-known and respectable figures.
And now the speaker had noticed him and interrupted his speech; he waited patiently, with an indulgent, tactful smile, while Grandpa Alexander, blushing, shocked, and seething like someone whose world had collapsed around