A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [77]
A week passed, and none of the three copies at Achiasaph's was sold. Father no longer spoke of his sorrow, but it filled the apartment like a smell. He no longer hummed popular songs out of tune while he shaved or washed the dishes. He no longer told me by heart of the doings of Gilgamesh or the adventures of Captain Nemo or Engineer Cyrus Smith in The Mysterious Island, but immersed himself furiously in the papers and reference books scattered on his desk, from which his next learned book would be born.
And then suddenly, a couple of days later, on Friday evening, he came home beaming happily and all atremble like a boy who has just been kissed in front of everyone by the prettiest girl in the class. "They're sold! They've all been sold! All in one day! Not one copy sold! Not two copies sold! All three sold! The whole lot! My book is sold out—Shakhna Achiasaph is going to order more copies from Chachik in Tel Aviv! He's ordered them already! This morning! By telephone! Not three copies, another five! And he thinks that's not going to be the end of the story!"
My mother left the room again and came back with the sickly sweet Tokay and the three tiny liqueur glasses. This time, though, she did not bother with the borscht or the white tablecloth. Instead she suggested the two of them go out to the Edison Cinema the next evening to the early showing of a famous film starring Greta Garbo, whom they both admired.
I was left with the novelist Zarchi and his wife, to have my supper there and behave myself until they got back, at nine or half past. Behave yourself, you hear?! Don't let us hear the tiniest complaint about you! When they set the table, don't forget to offer to help. After supper, but only once everyone has got up from the table, clear away your dishes and put them carefully on the draining board. Carefully, you hear?! Don't you break anything there. And take a dishcloth as at home and wipe the oilcloth nicely when the table's cleared. And only speak when you're spoken to. If Mr. Zarchi is working, just find yourself a toy or a book and sit as quietly as a mouse! And if heaven forbid Mrs. Zarchi complains of a headache again, don't bother her with anything. Anything, you hear?!
And so they went off. Mrs. Zarchi may have shut herself up in the other room, or gone to visit a neighbor, and Mr. Zarchi suggested I go into his study, which, as in our apartment, was also the bedroom and the sitting room and everything. That was the room that had once been my father's room when he was a student, that was also my parents' room and where apparently I was conceived, since they lived there from their wedding up to a month before I was born.
Mr. Zarchi sat me down on the sofa and talked to me for a bit, I don't remember what about, but I shall never forget how I suddenly noticed on the little coffee table by the sofa no fewer than four identical copies of The Novella in Hebrew Literature, one on top of the other, as in a shop, one copy that I knew Father had given to Mr. Zarchi with an inscription, and three more whose existence I just couldn't understand, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask Mr. Zarchi, but at the last moment I remembered the three copies that had just been bought today, at long last, in Achiasaph's bookshop, and I felt a rush of gratitude inside me that almost brought tears to my eyes. Mr. Zarchi saw that I had noticed them and he did not smile, but shot me a sidelong glance through half-closed eyes, as though he were silently accepting me into his band of conspirators, and without saying a word he leaned over, picked up three of the four copies on the coffee table, and secreted them in a drawer of his desk. I too held my peace, and said nothing either to him or