A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [274]
"What a question! Very well!"
And Father replied:
"Well, for that I am most grateful to you all."
As we were leaving the dining hall, he remarked to Tsvi without sparing my feelings, like someone collecting a dog from a boarding kennels:
"He was rather out of condition in some ways when he came, and now he seems to be in tip-top form."
I dragged him off for a comprehensive tour of the length and breadth of Hulda. I did not bother to ask if he would rather rest. I did not bother to offer him a cold shower, or show him the toilets. Like a sergeant-major on a base for new recruits I rushed my poor father along, red-faced, panting, mopping his face all the time, from the sheep pens to the chicken coops and the barns, and then on to the carpentry shop and the locksmith's shop and the olive-oil plant at the top of the hill, and all the time I lectured him about the principles of the kibbutz, agricultural economy, the advantages of socialism, the contribution of the kibbutz to Israel's military victories. I didn't spare him a single detail. I was possessed by a kind of vindictive didactic zeal that was too strong to contain. I did not let him utter a word. I rebuffed his attempts to ask questions. I talked and I talked and I talked.
From the children's block I dragged him, with his last remaining strength, to see the veterans' quarters, the clinic, and the schoolrooms, until finally we reached the culture hall and the library, where we found the librarian Sheftel, the father of Nily, who was to become my wife a few years later. Kindhearted, smily Sheftel was sitting in blue work clothes, humming a Hasidic melody under his breath and typing something with two fingers on a wax stencil sheet. Like a dying fish that by some miracle has been thrown back into the water at the last minute, my father, who was gasping from the heat and dust and stifled by the smell of manure, revived: the sight of books and a librarian suddenly brought him back to life, and at once he started pouring forth opinions.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, the two future in-laws, about whatever librarians talk about. Then Sheftel's shyness got the better of him, and Father left him and turned to inspect the layout of the library and all its nooks and crannies, like an alert military attaché observing with a professional eye the maneuvers of a foreign army.
Then we walked around a bit longer, Father and I. We had coffee and cakes in the home of Hanka and Oizer Huldai, who had volunteered to be my adoptive family. Here Father displayed the full extent of his knowledge of Polish literature, and after studying their bookcase for a moment, he even had a lively conversation with them in Polish: he quoted from Julian Tuwim, and Hanka replied by quoting Slowacki; he mentioned Mickiewicz, and they responded with Iwaszkiewicz, he mentioned the name of Rejmont, and they answered with Wyspianski. Father seemed to be treading on tiptoe as he talked to the people in the kibbutz, as though being very careful not to let slip something terrible whose consequences might be irretrievable. He spoke to them with great delicacy, as though he saw their socialism as an incurable disease whose unfortunate carriers did not realize how grave their condition was, and he, the visitor from outside who saw and knew, had to be careful not to say something accidentally that might alert them to the seriousness of their plight.
So he took care to express admiration for what he had seen, he showed polite interest, asked a few questions ("Are