A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [289]
And since then I have felt good in the company of women. Like my Grandpa Alexander. And even though over the years I have learned one or two things and I have occasionally gotten my fingers burned, I still have the feeling—just as that evening in Orna's room—that women possess the keys of delight. The expression "she granted him her favors" seems right, seems to hit the mark better than others. Women's favors arouse in me not only desire and wonderment but also a childlike gratitude and a wish to bow down in reverence: I am not worthy of all these marvels; I would be grateful for a single drop, let alone this wide ocean. And always I feel like a beggar at the gate: only a woman has the power to choose whether or not to bestow.
There may also be a vague jealousy of female sexuality: a woman is infinitely richer, gentler, more subtle, like the difference between a fiddle and a drum. Or there may be an echo of a memory from the very beginning of my life: a breast as against a knife. As soon as I came into the world, there was a woman waiting for me, and although I had caused her terrible pain, she repaid me with gentleness, and gave me her breast. The male sex, on the other hand, was already lying in wait clutching the circumcision knife.
Orna was in her mid-thirties, more than twice my age that night. She scattered a whole river of purple, crimson, and blue and a mass of pearls before a little swine who did not know what to do with them except grab and swallow without chewing, so much I almost choked. A few months later she left her job in the kibbutz. I did not know where she went. Years later I heard that she had divorced and remarried, and for some time she had a regular column in some women's magazine. Not long ago, in America, after a lecture and before the reception, out of a crush of people asking questions and arguing, Orna suddenly shone out at me, green-eyed, lit up, just a little bit older than she was when I was a teenager, in a light-colored dress with buttons, her eyes sparkling with her knowing, seductive, compassionate smile, the smile from that night, and as though under a magic spell I stopped in the middle of a sentence, forced my way toward her through the throng, pushing everyone out of my way, even the blank-faced old woman that Orna was pushing in a wheelchair, and I seized her, hugged her, said her name twice, and kissed her warmly on the lips. She gently disengaged herself, and without switching off that smile, which spoke of favors and which made me blush like a teenager, she pointed to the wheelchair and said in English: That's Orna. I'm her daughter. Sadly, my mother can no longer speak. She hardly recognizes people.
59
A WEEK OR SO before her death my mother suddenly got much better. A new sleeping pill prescribed by a new doctor worked miracles overnight. She took two pills in the evening, fell asleep fully dressed at halfpast seven on my bed, which had become her bed, and slept for almost twenty-four hours, until five o'clock the following afternoon, when she got up, took a shower, drank some tea, and must have taken another pill or two, because she fell asleep again at half past seven and slept through till the morning, and when my father got up, shaved, and squeezed two glasses of orange juice and warmed them to room temperature, Mother also got up, put on a housecoat and apron, combed her hair, and made us both a real breakfast, as she used to before she was ill, fried eggs done on both sides, salad, pots of yogurt, and slices of bread