A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [57]
He had not budged from this view of Communism and the Communists even fifty years after the Bolshevik Revolution. A few days after the Israeli army conquered the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Days' War, Grandpa suggested that the international community should now assist Israel in returning all the Arabs of the Levant "very respectfully, without harming a hair of their heads, without robbing them of a single chicken," to their historic homeland, which he called "Arabia Souadia": "Just the way we Jews are returning to our homeland, so they ought to go back honorably to their own home, to Arabia Souadia, where they came here from."
To cut the argument short, I inquired what he proposed doing if Russia attacked us, in a desire to spare their Arab allies the hardships of the journey back to Arabia.
His pink cheeks turned red with rage, he puffed himself up and roared:
"Russia?! What Russia do you mean?! There is no more Russia, bed-wetter! Russia doesn't exist! Are you talking about the Bolsheviks, maybe? Nu, what. I've known the Bolsheviks since they were pimping in the harbor district in Odessa. They're nothing but a gang of thieves and hooligans! Riffraff from the bottom of the pot! The whole of Bolshevism is just one gigantic bluff! Now that we've seen what wonderful Hebrew airplanes we have, and guns, nu, what, we ought to send these young lads and planes of ours across to Petersburg, two weeks there, two weeks back, then one decent bombing—what they've deserved from us a long time now—one big phoosh—and the whole of Bolshevism will fly away to hell there just like dirty cotton wool!"
"Are you suggesting Israel should bomb Leningrad, Grandpa? And for a world war to break out? Haven't you ever heard of atom bombs? Hydrogen bombs?"
"It's all in Jewish hands, nu, what, the Americans, the Bolsheviks, all these newfangled bombs of theirs are all in the hands of Jewish scientists, and they're bound to know what to do and what not to do."
"What about peace? Is there any way to bring peace?"
"Yes there is: we have to defeat all our enemies. We have to beat them up so they'll come and beg us for peace—and then, nu, what, of course we'll give it to them. Why should we deny it to them? After all, we are a peace-loving people. We even have such a commandment, to pursue peace—nu, what, so we'll pursue it as far as Baghdad if we have to, as far as Cairo even. Shouldn't we? How so?"
Bewildered, impoverished, censored, and terrified after the October Revolution, the Civil War, and the Red victory, the Hebrew writers and Zionist activists of Odessa scattered in every direction. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Zippora, together with many of their friends, left for Palestine at the end of 1919 on board the Ruslan, whose arrival in the port of Jaffa announced the beginning of the Third Aliyah. Others fled from Odessa to Berlin, Lausanne, and America.
Grandpa Alexander and Grandma Shlomit with their two sons did not emigrate to Palestine—despite the Zionist passion that throbbed in Grandpa's Russian poems, the country still seemed to them too Asiatic, too primitive and backward, lacking in minimal standards of hygiene and elementary culture. So they went to Lithuania, which the Klausners, the parents of Grandpa, Uncle Joseph, and Uncle Betsalel, had left more than twenty-five years earlier. Vilna was still under Polish rule, and the violent anti-Semitism that had always existed there was growing by the year. Poland and Lithuania were in the grip of nationalism and xenophobia. To the conquered