A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [84]
Ephraim Mussman was in his fifties when he became an impressive if somewhat vague old sage. He was less and less capable of distinguishing between a man of God and God himself. He started to mind-read, tell fortunes, spout morality, interpret dreams, grant absolution, perform pious acts, and take pity. From morning to evening he sat over a glass of tea at the desk in the mill office and simply took pity. Apart from taking pity, he did virtually nothing all day.
He always had a smell of expensive scent about him, and his hands were soft and warm. ("But I," my Aunt Sonia said at eighty-five with ill-disguised jubilation, "I was the one he loved best of all his grandchildren! I was his favorite! That's because I was such a little krasavitsa, such a little coquette, like a little Frenchwoman, and I knew how to twist him around my little finger, though actually any girl could twist his handsome head around her little finger, he was so sweet and absentminded, so childish, and so emotional, the slightest thing brought tears to his eyes. And as a little girl I used to sit on his lap for hours on end, combing his magnificent white beard over and over, and I always had enough patience to listen to all the rubbish he used to spout. And on top of everything else I was given his mother's name. That's why Grandpa Ephraim loved me the best of all, and sometimes he used to call me Little Mother.")
He was quiet and good-tempered, a gentle, amiable man, rather a chatterbox, but people liked to look at him because of an amused, childlike, captivating smile that constantly flicked across his wrinkled face. ("Grandpa Ephraim was like this: the moment you looked at him, you started to smile yourself! Everybody started smiling, willy nilly, the moment he came into the room. Even the portraits on the walls started smiling the moment he came into the room!") Fortunately for him, his son Naphtali Hertz loved him unconditionally, and always forgave him or pretended not to notice whenever he got the accounts mixed up or opened the cash box in the office without permission and took out a couple of notes to hand out, like God in Hasidic folk tales, to grateful peasants after telling their fortunes and treating them to a moralizing sermon.
For days on end the old man used to sit in the office staring out the window, contentedly watching his son's mill at work. Perhaps because he looked "just like God," he actually saw himself in his later years as a kind of deity. He was humble yet arrogant, perhaps a little feebleminded in his old age. He sometimes offered his son all kinds of advice and suggestions for improving and expanding the business, but most of the time he forgot what he had said after an hour or so and proffered new advice instead. He drank one glass of tea after another, glanced absentmindedly at the accounts, and if strangers mistook him for the boss, he did not correct them but chatted to them pleasantly about the wealth of the Rothschilds or the terrible hardships of the coolies in China (which he called Kitai). His conversations normally lasted for seven or eight hours.
His son indulged him. Wisely, cautiously, and patiently Naphtali Hertz expanded the business, opening branches here and there, making a little money. He married off one sister, Sarah, took in another sister, Jenny, and finally managed to marry her off too. ("To a carpenter, Yasha! A nice boy, even if he was very simple! But what other choice was there for Jenny? After all, she was nearly forty!") He employed his nephew Shimshon at a decent wage, and Jenny's Yasha the carpenter too, he spread his largesse over all his brothers and sisters and kinsfolk; his business prospered, and his Ukrainian and Russian customers bowed to him respectfully, with their hats pressed to their chests, and addressed him as Gertz Yefremovich (Hertz son of Ephraim). He even had a Russian assistant,