A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [66]
He loved getting to know her. He loved to understand, to get to the bottom of her. And beyond.
He loved to give himself. He enjoyed giving himself up to her more than he enjoyed it when she gave herself up to him.
Nu, what: they talked and talked to him to their heart's content, even about the most private, secret, vulnerable things, while he sat and listened, wisely, gently, with empathy and patience.
Or rather with pleasure and feeling.
There are many men around who love sex but hate women.
My grandfather, I believe, loved both.
And with gentleness. He never calculated, never grabbed. He never rushed. He loved setting sail, he was never in a hurry to cast anchor.
He had many romances in his twenty-year Indian summer after my grandmother's death, from when he was seventy-seven to the end of his life. He would sometimes go away with one or another of his lady friends for a few days to a hotel in Tiberias, a guesthouse in Gedera, or a "holiday resort" by the seaside in Netanya. (His expression "holiday resort" was apparently his translation of some Russian phrase with Chekhovian overtones of dachas on the Crimean coast.) Once or twice I saw him walking down Agrippa Street or Bezalel Street arm in arm with some woman, and I did not approach them. He did not take any particular pains to conceal his love affairs from us, but he did not boast about them either. He never brought his lady friends to our house or introduced them to us, and he rarely mentioned them. But sometimes he seemed as giddy with love as a teenager, with veiled eyes, humming to himself, an absentminded smile playing on his lips. And sometimes his face fell, the baby pink left his cheeks like an overcast autumn day, and he would stand in his room furiously ironing shirts one after the other, he even ironed his underwear and sprayed it with scent from a little flask. and occasionally he would speak harshly but softly to himself in Russian, or hum some mournful Ukrainian melody, from which we deduced that some door had shut in his face, or, on the contrary, he had become embroiled again, as on his amazing trip to New York when he was engaged, in the anguish of two simultaneous loves.
Once, when he was already eighty-nine, he announced to us that he was thinking of taking an "important trip" for two or three days, and that we were on no account to worry. But when he had not returned after a week, we were beset with worries. Where was he? Why didn't he phone? What if something had happened to him, heaven forbid? After all, a man of his age...
We agonized: should we involve the police? If he was lying sick in some hospital, heaven forbid, or had got into some sort of trouble, we would never forgive ourselves if we hadn't looked for him. On the other hand, if we rang the police and he turned up safe and sound, how could we face his volcanic fury? If Grandpa didn't appear by noon on Friday, we decided after a day and a night of dithering, we would have to call the police. There was no alternative.
He turned up on Friday, about half an hour before the deadline, pink with contentment, brimming with good humor, amusement, and enthusiasm, like a little child.
"Where did you disappear to, Grandpa?"
"Nu, what. I was traveling."
"But you said you'd only be away for two or three days."
"So what if I did? Nu, I was traveling with Mrs. Hershkovich, and we were having such a wonderful time we didn't notice how the time was flying."
"But where did you go?"
"I've told you, we went away to enjoy ourselves for a little. We discovered a quiet guesthouse. A very cultured guesthouse. A guesthouse like in Switzerland."
"A guesthouse? Where?"
"On a high mountain in Ramat Gan."
"Couldn't you at least have phoned us? So we wouldn't be so worried about you?"
"We didn't find a phone in the room. Nu, what. It was such a wonderfully cultured guesthouse!"
"But couldn't you have phoned us from a public telephone? I gave you the tokens myself."
"Tokens. Tokens. Nu, shto takoye, what are tokens?"
"Tokens for