A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [293]
From where he was standing on the top step of the ladder Father turned to his head of department and said, "Excuse me, Dr. Pfeffermann, I believe there is something—," and suddenly he noticed the director's broad smile—and he may have been alarmed because he could not understand what was making him smile—and Dr. Pfeffermann's eyes guided Father's bespectacled gaze from the desk to the doorway. When he caught sight of us, I believe his face went white. He returned the large box file he was holding with both hands to its place on the top shelf and carefully climbed down the ladder, looked around, and saw that all the other members of staff were smiling, and as though he had no choice, he remembered to smile too, and said to us, "What a surprise! What a great surprise!" and in a quieter voice he asked if everything was all right, if anything had happened, heaven forbid.
His face was as strained and anxious as that of a child who in the middle of a kissing game at a party with his classmates looks up and notices his parents standing sternly in the doorway, and who knows how long they have been standing there quietly watching or what they have seen.
First of all he tried to shoo us outside very gently, with both hands, into the corridor, and looking back he said to the whole department and particularly to Dr. Pfeffermann: "Excuse me for a few minutes?"
But a minute later he changed his mind, stopped edging us out, and pulled us back inside, into the director's office, and started to introduce us, then he remembered and said: "Dr. Pfeffermann, you already know my wife and son." And then he turned us around and formally introduced us to the rest of the staff of the newspaper department with the words: "I'd like you to meet my wife, Fania, and my son Amos. A schoolboy. Twelve and a half years old."
When we were all outside in the corridor, Father asked anxiously, and a little reproachfully:
"What has happened? Are my parents all right? And your parents? Is everyone all right?"
Mother calmed him down. But the issue of the restaurant made him apprehensive: after all, it was not anyone's birthday today. He hesitated, started to say something, changed his mind, and after a moment he said:
"Certainly. Certainly. Why not. We'll go and celebrate your recovery, Fania, or at any rate the distinct and sudden amelioration in your condition. Yes. We must definitely celebrate."
His face as he spoke, however, was anxious rather than festive.
But then my father suddenly cheered up, and fired with enthusiasm he put his arms around both our shoulders, got permission from Dr. Pfeffermann to leave work a little early, said good-bye to his colleagues, took off his gray dust coat, and treated us to a thorough tour of several departments of the library, the basement, the rare manuscripts section, he even showed us the new photocopying machine and explained how it worked, and he introduced us proudly to everyone we met, as excited as a teenager introducing his famous parents to the staff of his school.
The restaurant was a pleasant, almost empty place tucked away in a narrow side street between Ben Yehuda Street and Shammai or Hillel Street. The rain started again the moment we arrived, which Father took as a good sign, as though it had been waiting for us to get to the restaurant. As though heaven were smiling on us today.
He corrected himself immediately:
"I mean, that is what I would say if I believed in signs, or if I believed that heaven cares at all about us. But heaven is indifferent. Apart from homo sapiens, the whole universe is indifferent. Most people are indifferent too, if it comes to that. I believe indifference is the most salient feature of all reality."
He corrected himself