A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [72]
In one photograph, my father sits comfortably behind his desk, thin, young, and stern, his hair combed back, wearing those serious, black-framed spectacles and a long-sleeved white shirt. He is sitting in a relaxed pose, at an angle to the desk, with his legs crossed. Behind him is a double window, one half of which is open inward, but the shutters are still closed so that only thin fingers of light penetrate between the slats. In the picture my father is deeply engrossed in a big book that he is holding up in front of him. On the desk in front of him another book lies open, and there is something else that looks like an alarm clock with its back to the camera, a round tin clock with little slanting legs. To Father's left stands a small bookcase laden with books, one shelf bowing under the weight of the thick tomes it is carrying, foreign books apparently that have come from Vilna and are clearly feeling rather cramped, warm, and uncomfortable here.
On the wall above the bookcase hangs a framed photograph of Uncle Joseph, looking authoritative and magnificent, almost prophetic with his white goatee and thinning hair, as though he were peering down from a great height on my father and fixing him with a watchful eye, to make sure he does not neglect his studies, or let himself be distracted by the dubious delights of student life, or that he doesn't forget the historic condition of the Jewish nation or the hopes of generations, or—heaven forbid!—underestimate those little details out of which, after all, the big picture is made up.
Hanging on a nail underneath Uncle Joseph is the collecting box of the Jewish National Fund, painted with a thick Star of David. My father looks relaxed and pleased with himself, but as serious and resolute as a monk: he is taking the weight of the open book on his left hand, while his right hand rests on the pages to the right, the pages he has already read, from which we may deduce that it is a Hebrew book, read from right to left. At the place where his hand emerges from the sleeve of his white shirt I can see the thick black hair that covered his arms from elbow to knuckles.
My father looks like a young man who knows what his duty is and intends to do it come what may. He is determined to follow in the footsteps of his famous uncle and his elder brother. Out there, beyond the closed shutters, workmen are digging a trench under the dusty roadway to lay pipes. Somewhere in the cellar of some old Jewish building in the winding alleyways of Sha'arei Hesed or Nahalat Shiv'a the youths of the Jerusalem Hagganah are training in secret, dismantling and reassembling an ancient illicit Parabellum pistol. On the hilly roads that wind among menacing Arab villages, Egged bus drivers and Tnuva van drivers are steering their vehicles, their hands strong and suntanned on the wheel. In the wadis that go down to the Judaean desert, young Hebrew scouts in khaki shorts and khaki socks, with military belts and white kaffiyehs, learn to recognize with their feet the secret pathways of the Fatherland. In Galilee and the Plains, in the Beth Shean Valley and the Valley of Jezreel, in the Sharon and the Hefer Valley, in the Judaean lowlands, the Negev and the wilderness around the Dead Sea, pioneers are tilling the land, muscular, silent, brave, and bronzed. And meanwhile he, the earnest student from Vilna, plows his own furrow here.
One fine day he too would be a professor on Mount Scopus, he would help push back the frontiers of knowledge and drain the swamps of exile in the people's hearts. Just as the pioneers in Galilee and