A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [95]
Sometimes he used to take you with him in his cart around Haifa Bay. Do you still remember? Yes? When he was old, your grandpa made a living carrying around wide planks for scaffolding or sand from the seashore for new buildings.
I can remember you sitting next to him, a skinny little kid, as taut as a rubber band; Papa used to give you the reins to hold. I can still see the picture clearly in front of my eyes: you were a white child, as pale as a piece of paper, and your grandpa was always very suntanned, a strong man, even when he was seventy he was strong, as dark as an Indian, some kind of Indian prince, a maharajah with blue eyes that sparkled with laughter. And you sat on the plank that served as the driver's seat in a little white vest, and he sat next to you in a sweaty gray workman's vest. He was actually happy, content with his lot, he loved the sunshine and the physical labor. He rather enjoyed being a carter, he had always had proletarian leanings, and in Haifa he felt good being a proletarian again, as at the beginning of his journey, when he was just an apprentice on the Vilkhov estate. Perhaps he enjoyed life much more as a carter than he had as a rich mill owner and man of property in Rovno. And you were such a serious little boy, a boy who couldn't stand the sunshine, too serious, seven or eight years old, all stiff on the driver's seat next to him, anxious about the reins, suffering from the flies and heat, afraid of being lashed by the horse's tail. But you behaved bravely and didn't complain. I remember it as if it were today. The big gray vest and the little white one. I thought then that you would surely be much more of a Klausner than a Mussman. Today I'm not so sure...
22
I REMEMBER we used to argue a lot, Aunt Sonia says with our girlfriends, with the boys, with teachers at school, and at home too, among ourselves, about questions like what is justice, what is fate, what is beauty, what is God? Of course we also argued about Palestine, assimilation, political parties, literature, socialism, or the ills of the Jewish people. Haya and Fania and their friends were especially argumentative. I argued less, because I was the little sister, and they would always say to me: You just listen. Haya was big in the Zionist youth movement. Your mother was in Hashomer Hatsair, and I joined Hashomer Hatsair too, three years later. In your family, the Klausners, it was best not to mention Hashomer Hatsair. It was too far left for them. The Klausners didn't even want the name mentioned because they were scared stiff you might get a sprinkling of red just from hearing it.
Once, it may have been in the winter, at Hannukah, we had a huge argument that lasted off and on for several weeks, about heredity versus free will. I remember as if it were yesterday how your mother suddenly came out with this strange sentence, that if you open up someone's head and take out the brains, you see at once that our brains are nothing but cauliflower. Even Chopin or Shakespeare: their brains were nothing but cauliflower.
I don't even remember in what connection Fania said this, but I remember that we couldn't stop laughing, I laughed so much I cried, but she didn't even smile. Fania had this habit of saying in deadly earnest things that would make everyone laugh, and she knew they would, but she didn't join in the laughter. Fania would laugh only when it suited her, not together with everyone else, just when nobody thought there was anything funny in what we were talking about—that's when your mother would suddenly burst out laughing.
Nothing but cauliflower, she said, and she showed us the size of the cauliflower with her hands, and what a miracle it is, she said—into this cauliflower you can get heaven and earth, the sun