A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [30]
At that time, when the whole of Jerusalem was cramped into one-and-a-half- or two-bedroom apartments partitioned between two rival families, Professor Klausner's mansion seemed to me like a model for a sultan's palace or that of the Roman emperors, and often before I went to sleep, I would lie in bed imagining the restoration of the Davidic kingdom, with Hebrew troops standing guard over the palace in Talpiot. In 1949, when Menahem Begin, the leader of the opposition in the Knesset, put Uncle Joseph's name forward in the name of the Herut movement as a rival candidate to Chaim Weizmann for the presidency of Israel, I conjured up an image of my uncle's presidential residence in Talpiot surrounded on every side by Hebrew troops with two gleaming sentries standing on either side of the entrance under the brass plate promising all those who approached that Jewish and humanist values would be united and never come into conflict with each other.
"That crazy child is running around the house again," they said; "just look at him, running to and fro, all out of breath, flushed and perspiring, as though he's swallowed quicksilver." And they scolded me: "What's the matter? Have you been eating hot peppers? Or are you simply chasing your own tail? Do you think you are a dreidel? Or a moth? Or a fan? Have you lost your beautiful bride? Have your ships sunk at sea? You're giving us all a headache. And you're getting in Aunt Zippora's way. Why don't you sit down calmly for a change? Why don't you find a nice book and read it? Or shall we find you some pencils and paper so you can sit quietly and draw us a pretty picture? Well?"
But I was already on my way, galloping excitedly from the hall to the corridor and the maid's room, out into the garden, and back, full of fantasies, feeling the walls and knocking on them to discover hidden chambers, invisible spaces, secret passages, catacombs, tunnels, burrows, secret compartments, or camouflaged doors. I haven't given up to this day.
9
IN THE DARK glass-fronted sideboard in the living room were displayed a floral dinner service, long-necked glass jugs, prized items of china and crystal, a collection of old Hanukkah menorahs, and special dishes for Passover. On top of a display cabinet stood two bronze busts: a sullen Beethoven facing a calm, pinch-lipped Vladimir Jabotinsky, who stood carefully polished, resplendent in uniform, with an officer's peaked cap and an authoritative leather strap across his chest.
Uncle Joseph sat at the head of the table talking in his reedy, feminine voice, pleading, wheedling, at times almost sobbing. He would speak about the state of the nation, the status of writers and scholars, the responsibilities of cultural figures, or about his colleagues and their lack of respect for his research, his discoveries, his international standing, while he himself was none too impressed with them, in fact he despised their provincial pettiness and their pedestrian, self-serving ideas.
Sometimes he would turn to the wider world of international politics, expressing anxiety at the subversiveness of Stalin's agents everywhere, contempt for the hypocrisy of the sanctimonious British, fear of the intrigues of the Vatican, who had never accepted, and never would accept, Jewish control of Jerusalem in particular and the Land of Israel in general, cautious optimism about the scruples of the enlightened democracies, and admiration, not without reservations, for America, which stood in our times at the head of all democracies even though it was infected by vulgarity and materialism and lacked cultural and spiritual depth. In general, the heroic figures of the nineteenth century, men like Giuseppe Garibaldi, Abraham Lincoln, William Gladstone, were great national liberators and outstanding exponents of civilized and enlightened values, whereas this new century was under the jackboot of those two butchers, the Georgian shoemaker's son in the Kremlin and the crazed ragamuffin who had seized control of the land of Goethe, Schiller, and Kant...
His guests