A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [51]
Grandpa Alexander, furious at my impertinent words, turned in an instant from a pleasant pink hue to a blazing red, thumped the table with his fist, and roared: "The real Jerusalem? What on earth does a little bed-wetter like you know about the real Jerusalem?! The real Jerusalem is the one in my poems!!"
"And how long will you go on writing in Russian, Grandpa?"
"What do you mean, ty durak, you fool, you little bed-wetter? I do sums in Russian! I curse myself in Russian! I dream in Russian! I even—" (but here Grandma Shlomit, who knew exactly what was coming next, interrupted him: "Shto's toboi? Ty ni normalni?! Vidish malchik ryadom's nami!!"—What's the matter with you? Are you crazy? You can see the boy is right here!!)
"Would you like to go back to Russia, Grandpa? For a visit?"
"It doesn't exist anymore. Propali!"
"What doesn't exist anymore?"
"What doesn't exist anymore, what doesn't exist anymore—Russia doesn't exist anymore! Russia is dead. There is Stalin. There is Dzherzhinsky. There is Yezhov. There is Beria. There is one great big prison. Gulag! Yevsektsia! Apparatchiks! Murderers!"
"But surely you still love Odessa a little?"
"Nu. Love, don't love—what difference does it make. Chort ego znayet. The Devil knows"
"Don't you want to see it again?"
"Nu, sha, little bed-wetter, that's enough now. Sha. Chtob ty propal. Sha."
One day, in his study, over a glass of tea and kichelakh, after the discovery of one of those scandals of embezzlement and corruption that shook the country, Grandpa told me how, when he was fifteen, in Odessa, "on my bike, very fast, I once carried a dispatch, a message, to Mr. Lilienblum, a committee member of the Lovers of Zion." (Besides being a well-known Hebrew writer, Lilienblum served in an honorary capacity as treasurer of the Lovers of Zion in Odessa.) "He, Lilienblum, was really our first finance minister," Grandpa explained to me.
While he was waiting for Lilienblum to write the reply, the fifteen-year-old man-about-town took out his cigarettes and reached for the ashtray and matchbox on the drawing room table. Mr. Lilienblum quickly put his hand on Grandpa's to stop him, then went out of the room and returned a moment later with another matchbox that he had brought from the kitchen, explaining that the matches on the drawing room table had been bought out of the budget of the Lovers of Zion, and were to be used only at committee meetings, and then only by members of the committee. "So, you see. In those days public property was public property, not a free-for-all. Not the way it is in the country at the moment, when after two thousand years we've established a state so as to have someone to steal from. In those days every child knew what was permitted and what was not, what was ownerless property and what was not, what was mine and what was not."
Not always, however. Once, it may have been in the late 1950s, a fine new ten-lira note came into circulation bearing a picture of the poet Bialik.* When I got hold of my first Bialik note, I hurried straight to Grandpa's to show him how the state had honored the man he had known in his youth. Grandpa was indeed excited, his cheeks flushed with pleasure, he turned the note this way and that, held it up to the lightbulb, scrutinized the picture of Bialik (who seemed to me suddenly to be winking mischievously at Grandpa, as if to say "Nu?!"). A tiny tear sparkled in Grandpa's eye, but while he reveled in his pride his fingers folded up the new note and tucked it away in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Ten liras was a tidy sum at that time, particularly for a kibbutznik like me. I was startled:
"Grandpa, what are you doing? I only brought it to show you and to make you happy. You'll get one of your own in a day or two, for sure."
"Nu," Grandpa shrugged, "Bialik owed me twenty-two rubles."
14
BACK IN ODESSA, as a mustachioed seventeen-year-old, Grandpa had