A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [63]
For a few hours Stakh would sit motionless on the windowsill, raking the street below with unfathomable longing in his melancholy black eyes, his black nose raised in vain to sniff at the bitches in the little street, his woolen ears pricked up, straining to catch the myriad sounds of the neighborhood, the wail of a lovesick cat, the cheerful chirruping of the birds, noisy shouting in Yiddish, the rag-and-bone man's bloodcurdling cry, the barking of free dogs whose lot was better by far than his own. His head was cocked thoughtfully to one side, his short tail tucked sadly between his hind legs, his eyes had a tragic look. He never barked at passersby, never cried for help to dogs in the street, never burst out howling, but his face as he sat there expressed a silent despair that tugged at my heartstrings, a dumb resignation that was more piercing than the most dreadful howl.
One morning Grandma, without a second thought, wrapped her Stashinka up in newspaper and threw him in the trash, because all of a sudden she was smitten with suspicions of dust or mold. Grandpa was no doubt upset but didn't dare utter a peep. And I never forgave her.
This overcrowded living room, whose smell, like its color, was dark brown, doubled as Grandma's bedroom, and from it opened Grandpa's monastic cell of a study, with its hard couch, its office shelves, the piles of sample cases, the bookcase, and the little desk that was always as neat and tidy as the morning parade of a bright and shiny troop of Austro-Hungarian hussars.
Here in Jerusalem, too, they eked out an existence on Grandpa's precarious earnings. Once again he bought here and sold there, storing up in the summer to bring out and sell in the autumn, going around the clothes shops on Jaffa Road, King George V Avenue, Agrippa Street, Luncz Street, and Ben-Yehuda Street with his cases of samples. Once a month or so he went off to Holon, Ramat Gan, Netanya, Petah Tikva, sometimes as far as Haifa, to talk to towel manufacturers, or haggle with underwear makers or suppliers of ready-made clothing.
Every morning, before he went out on his rounds, Grandpa made up parcels of clothes or cloth for the mail. Sometimes he was awarded, lost, or regained the position of local sales representative for some wholesaler or factory. He did not enjoy trading and was not successful at it—he barely made enough to keep himself and Grandma alive—but what he did enjoy was walking the streets of Jerusalem, always elegant in his Tsarist diplomat's suit, with a triangle of white handkerchief protruding from his top pocket, with his silver cufflinks, and he loved to spend hours sitting in cafés, ostensibly for business purposes but in reality for the conversations and arguments and steaming tea and leafing through the newspapers and magazines. He also liked eating in restaurants. He always treated waiters like a very particular yet magnanimous gentleman.
"Excuse me. This tea is cold. I ask you bring me right away hot tea: hot tea, that means the essence also must be very very hot. Not just the water. Thank you very much."
What Grandpa loved best were the long trips out of town and the business meetings in the offices of the firms in the coastal towns. He had an impressive business card, with a gold border and an emblem in the form of intertwined rhombuses, like a little heap of diamonds. The legend on the card read: "Alexander Z. Klausner, Importer, Authorized Representative, General Agent and Accredited Wholesaler, Jerusalem and District." He would hold out his card with an apologetic, childlike little laugh:
"Nu, what. A man has to live somehow."
His heart was not in his business but in innocent, illicit love affairs, romantic yearnings, like a seventy-year-old schoolboy, vague longings and dreams. If