A Tale of Love and Darkness (76 page)

In vain.

In his fifties now, he was too old to become a teaching assistant or a junior lecturer, and not sufficiently well thought of to be in the running for a senior academic position. He was not wanted anywhere. (This was also a time when Professor Joseph Klausner's reputation suffered a dramatic decline. All Uncle Joseph's work on Hebrew literature had by the 1960s begun to seem antiquated and rather naive.) As Agnon writes about one of his characters, in the story "Forever":

For twenty years Adiel Amzeh conducted research into the secrets of Gumlidatha, which was a great city and the pride of mighty nations until the Gothic hordes descended upon it and made it into a heap of dust and its inhabitants into eternal slaves, and all the years during which he labored he did not show his face to the sages of the universities or to their womenfolk and children; now that he came to ask them for a favor, their eyes radiated such cold anger that their spectacles glinted as they addressed him in these terms: Who are you, sir, we do not know you. His shoulders sagged and he departed from them a disappointed man. Nevertheless, the matter was not without benefit, for he had learned the lesson that if one wishes to be recognized by people, one must be close to them. He was not, however, a man who knew how to be close to people...*

*S. Y. Agnon, "Forever," in
Complete Works of S. Y. Agnon
, vol. 8 (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, 1962), pp. 315-14.

My father never learned "how to be close to people," even though he always tried his hardest to do so, by means of jokes and wisecracks, displays of erudition and plays on words, a constant willingness to shoulder any task without counting the cost. He never knew how to flatter, and he did not master the art of attaching oneself to academic power groups and cabals; he was nobody's lackey, and he wrote in praise of people only after their death.

Eventually he seems to have accepted his fate. For another ten years or so he spent his days sitting meekly in a windowless cell in the bibliographical section in the new National Library building in Givat Ram,
accumulating footnotes. When he came home from work, he sat down at his desk and compiled entries for the
Hebrew Encyclopedia
, which was taking shape at the time. He mainly wrote about Polish and Lithuanian literature. Slowly he converted some chapters of his doctoral dissertation about I. L. Peretz into articles that he published in Hebrew journals, and once or twice he even managed to publish in French. Among the copies that I have here in my home in Arad I have found articles on Saul Tchernikhowsky ("The Poet in His Homeland"), Immanuel of Rome, Longus's
Daphnis and Chloe
, and one entitled "Mendele Studies," which my father dedicated

To the memory of my wife, a woman of discrimination and good taste, who left me on 8 Tebeth 5712*

In 1960, just a few days before Nily and I were married, my father had his first heart attack. It prevented him from attending the ceremony, which took place in Hulda under a canopy held up on the points of four pitchforks. (It was a fixed tradition in Hulda to support the bridal canopy on two rifles and two pitchforks, symbolizing the union of work, defense, and the kibbutz. Nily and I caused quite a scandal by refusing to marry in the shadow of rifles. In the kibbutz assembly Zalman P. called me a "bleeding heart," while Tzvi K. inquired mockingly whether the army unit I was serving in allowed me to go on patrol armed with a pitchfork or a broom.)

My father recovered two or three weeks after the wedding, but his face did not look the same: he was gray and tired. From the mid-1960s on, his liveliness gradually left him. He still got up early in the morning enthusiastic and eager for work, but after lunch his head would start drooping wearily onto his chest, and he would lie down and rest at the end of the afternoon. Then his stamina began to ebb at midday. In the end he only had the first two or three hours of the morning, after which he became gray and faded.

He still liked jokes and wordplay, and he still got pleasure from explaining to me, for example, that the Hebrew word for a faucet,
berez
, was derived from the Modern Greek
vrisi
, a spring, and that Hebrew
mahsan
, a store, like the English word "magazine," came from Arabic
mahzan
, a storeroom, which may be derived from a Semitic root HSN meaning strong. As for the word
balagan
, mess or confusion, he said, which was wrongly considered by many to be a Russian word, it actually came from Persian
balakan
, denoting an unobtrusive veranda where unwanted rags were thrown, from which the English word "balcony" was derived.

*January 6,1952, in the Roman calendar.

He repeated himself more and more. Despite his once-sharp memory, he would now repeat a joke or explanation twice in the same conversation. He was tired and withdrawn and sometimes found it hard to concentrate. In 1968, when my third book,
My Michael
, came out, he read it in a few days and then phoned me in Hulda to say that "there were some quite convincing descriptions, but in the end the book lacks a certain spark of inspiring vision, it lacks a central idea." And when I sent him my story "Late Love," he wrote me a letter in which he expressed his joy that

your daughters are so splendid, and the main thing is that we shall see each other soon ... As for the story, it is not bad. Apart from the main character, however, the rest are mere caricatures in my humble opinion. But the main character, unappealing and ridiculous as he is, is alive. A few observations: 1.p. 3, "the mighty river of the galaxies": "Galaxy" comes from Greek
gala
, milk, and means "the milky way." The singular is preferable. To the best of my knowledge there is no basis for the plural. 2.p. 3 (and elsewhere), "Liuba Kaganovska": This is the
Polish
form; in Russian it should be "Kaganovskaya." 3. On p. 7 you have written
viazhma:
it should be
viazma
(z, not zh!).

And so on and so forth, up to observation no. 23, by which time he only had a tiny space left at the end of the page to write "Regards from all of us, Dad."

But a few years later Hayim Toren said to me: "Your father used to run from room to room in the National Library, beaming, and showing us what Gershom Shaked had written about your book
Where the Jackals Howl
and how Avraham Shaanan had praised
Elsewhere, Perhaps.
Once he explained to me angrily how blind Professor Kurzweil had been to cast aspersions on
My Michael.
I believe he even called Agnon
especially to complain to him about Kurzweil's review. Your father was proud of you in his own way, even though of course he was too shy to tell you, and he may also have been afraid of making you big-headed."

In the last year of his life his shoulders slumped. He had grim fits of rage, when he would hurl rebukes and accusations at anyone around, and shut himself away in his study, slamming the door behind him. But after five or ten minutes he would come out and apologize for his outburst, blaming it on his poor health, his tiredness, his nerves, and sheepishly asking us to forgive him for saying things that were so unjust and unfair.

He often used the words "just and fair," just as he often said "definitely," "indeed," "undoubtedly," "decidedly," and "from several points of view."

At this time, when my father was unwell, Grandpa Alexander, in his nineties now, was still at the height of his physical blossoming and in full romantic bloom. As pink-faced as a baby, as full of sap as a young bridegroom, he would come and go all day erupting and exclaiming, "Nu,
shto!
" or "Such
paskudniaks!
Such scoundrels!
Zhuliks!
Crooks!" or "Nu,
davai
, forward march!
Khorosho!
Enough, already!" Women flocked to him. Frequently, even in the morning, he would sip a "teeny-weeny brandy," and at once his pink face turned as red as the dawn. If my father and grandfather stood in the garden talking, or paced up and down on the pavement in front of the house, arguing, at least by their body language Grandpa Alexander seemed much younger than his younger son. He was to outlive his older son David and his first grandson Daniel Klausner, who were killed by Germans in Vilna, by four decades, his wife by two, and his remaining son by seven years.

One day, on October 11,1970, some four months after his sixtieth birthday, my father got up early as usual, long before the rest of the household, shaved, splashed on some toilet water, wetted his hair before brushing it back, ate a roll and butter, drank two glasses of tea, read the newspaper, sighed a few times, glanced at the diary that always lay open on his desk so that he could cross things out when he had done them, put on a jacket and tie, made himself a little shopping list, and drove
down the street to Denmark Square, where Beit Hakerem Road meets Herzl Avenue, to buy some items of stationery from the little basement shop where he used to purchase whatever he needed for his desk. He parked and locked the car, went down the half-dozen steps, got in line and even gave up his place politely to an elderly woman, bought everything on his list, joked with the woman who owned the shop about the fact that the word "clip" can be both a noun and a verb, said something to her about the negligence of the city council, paid, counted his change, picked up his bag of shopping, thanked the shopkeeper with a smile, asked her not to forget to pass on his greetings to her dear husband, wished her a good and successful day, greeted two strangers who were in line behind him, turned and walked to the door, and dropped dead of a heart attack. He left his body to science, and I inherited his desk. These pages are being written on it, not tearfully, because my father was fundamentally opposed to tears, particularly in men.

This is what I found written in his desk diary: "
Stationery: l. Writing pad. 2. Spiral-bound notebook. 3. Envelopes. 4. Paper clips. 5. Ask about cardboard folders.
" All these items, including the folders, were in the shopping bag that his fingers were still clutching. So when I reached my father's home in Jerusalem, after an hour or an hour and a half, I picked up my father's pencil and crossed off the list, just as Father always used to cross things off as soon as he had done them.

WHEN I LEFT
home and went to live in the kibbutz, at the age of fifteen, I wrote down some resolutions that I set for myself as a test that I absolutely must not fail. If I was really to start a brand-new life, I must start by getting a tan within a fortnight so that I looked just like one of them; I must stop daydreaming once and for all; I must change my last name; I must take two or three cold showers every day; I must absolutely force myself to give up doing that filthy stuff at nights; I must not write any more poems; I must stop chattering; and I must not tell stories: I must appear in my new home as a silent man.

Then I tore up the list. For the first four or five days I actually managed not to do the filthy stuff and not to chatter. When I was asked a
question like, Will one blanket be enough? or Do you mind sitting in the corner of the classroom near the window?, I replied with a movement of the head, without any sound. To the questions Was I interested in politics? and Would I consider joining a newspaper-reading circle? I answered
Ahem.
If I was asked about my previous life in Jerusalem, I answered in fewer than ten words, which I held back for a few seconds on purpose, as though I was deep in thought: let them know that I'm a reserved, secretive kind of man, with an inner life. I even succeeded in the matter of the cold showers, although it took an act of heroism to force myself to strip naked in the boys' showers. It even looked as though for the first weeks I could manage to stop writing.

But not reading.

Every day after work and school the kibbutz children went to their parents' homes, while the outside boarders relaxed in the clubroom or played basketball. In the evenings there were various activities—dancing, for instance, or sing-alongs—which I avoided so as not to appear ridiculous. When everyone else had disappeared, I would lie down half naked on the grass in front of our dormitory sunbathing and reading till it was dark. (I was very careful to avoid lying on my bed in the empty room, because there my filthy mind lay in wait for me, swarming with Scheherazade-like fantasies.)

Once or twice a week toward evening I would check the progress of my tan in the mirror before putting on my shirt, then pluck up my courage and go to the veterans' block to drink a glass of fruit juice and eat a slice of cake with my kibbutz "parents" Hanka and Oizer Huldai. This pair of teachers, both originally from Lodz, in Poland, presided year after year over the cultural and educational life of the kibbutz. Hanka, who taught in the primary school, was a buxom, energetic woman, always as taut as a spring, and surrounded by a powerful aura of dedication and cigarette smoke. She shouldered the whole burden of organizing the Jewish festivals, weddings, anniversaries, putting on productions and shaping the local tradition of rustic proletarian life. This tradition, as Hanka envisaged it, was supposed to blend the flavor of the Song of Songs with the olives-and-carobs Hebraic taste of the new biblical tillers of the soil, Ha-sidic melodies from Eastern Europe with the rough and ready ways of
Polish peasants and other children of nature who drew their purity of mind and mystical joie de vivre straight from the Knut Hamsun-like
Growth of the Soil
under their bare feet.

As for Oizer Huldai, the director of the "continuation classes" or secondary school, he was a hard, wiry man whose Jewish wrinkles were plowed with suffering and ironic sagacity. Occasionally a mischievous sparkle of anarchic playfulness flickered for an instant among these tortured lines. He was lean and angular, short of stature but with devastating steely eyes and a hypnotic presence. He had the gift of the gab and a radioactive sarcasm. He could emanate a warmth of affection that melted anyone who was exposed to it to the point of total submission, but he was also capable of volcanic fits of rage that could put the fear of doomsday into those around him.