A Tale of Love and Darkness (80 page)

"Never mind."

Mother hurried us along so my father would not be late for work and I would not be late for school. At the door, as my father was putting his galoshes on over his shoes and I was getting into my boots, I suddenly let out a long, bloodcurdling howl, which made him jump and shiver with fear, and when he recovered himself, he was just about to hit me when Mother interposed herself between us, pressed me to her breast, and calmed us both down, saying, "That was all because of me. I'm sorry." That was the last time she hugged me.

We left home at about half past seven, Father and I, not saying a word because he was still angry with me over the rabid fox howl. At the front gate he turned left toward Terra Sancta Building and I turned right toward Tachkemoni School.

When I got home from school, I found Mother dressed up in her light skirt with two rows of buttons and her navy jumper. She looked pretty and girlish. Her face looked well, as though all the months of illness had vanished overnight. She told me to put my school satchel down and keep my coat on, she put her coat on too, she had a surprise for me:

"We're not going to have lunch at home today. I've decided to take the two men in my life out to a restaurant for lunch. But your father doesn't know anything about it yet. Shall we surprise him? Let's go for a walk in town, and then we'll go to Terra Sancta Building and drag him out of there by force, like a blinking moth out of a heap of book dust, and then we'll all go and eat somewhere that I'm not even going to tell you, so that you'll have some suspense too."

I didn't recognize my mother. Her voice was not her usual voice, it was solemn and loud, as though she were speaking a part in a school play; it was full of light and warmth when she said, "Let's go for a walk," but it shook a little at the words "blinking moth" and "book dust"; for an instant it made me feel a vague fear, which gave way at once to happiness at the surprise, at Mother's cheerfulness, at the joy of her return to us.

My parents hardly ever ate out, although we often met up with their friends in cafés on Jaffa Road or King George Street.

Once, in 1950 or 1951, when the three of us were staying with the aunts in Tel Aviv, on the last day, literally just before we left for Jerusalem, Father uncharacteristically declared himself to be "Baron Rothschild for the day" and invited everybody, my mother's two sisters with their respective husbands and only sons, out to lunch at Hamozeg Restaurant on Ben Yehuda Street, at the corner of Sholem Aleichem Street. A table was laid for the nine of us. Father sat at the head, between his two sisters-in-law, and seated us in such a way that neither sister sat next to
her husband and none of us children sat between his parents: as though he had made up his mind to shuffle all the cards. Uncle Tzvi and Uncle Buma were slightly suspicious, as they could not understand what he was up to, and firmly refused to join him in a glass of beer, as they were not used to drinking. They chose not to speak, and left the floor to my father, who apparently felt that the most urgent and exciting topic must be the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been found in the Judaean desert. So he embarked on a detailed lecture that lasted right through the soup and the main course about the significance of the scrolls that had been found in some caves near Qumran and the possibility that more and more priceless hidden treasures were waiting to be discovered among the ravines in the desert. Eventually Mother, who was sitting between Uncle Tzvi and Uncle Buma, remarked softly:

"Perhaps that's enough for now, Arieh?"

Father understood and left off, and for the rest of the meal the conversation broke up into separate conversations. My older cousin Yigal asked if he could take my younger cousin Ephraim to the nearby beach. After a few more minutes I also decided I had had enough of the company of the grown-ups and left Hamozeg Restaurant to look for the beach.

But who could have imagined that Mother would suddenly decide to take us out for lunch? We had become so accustomed to seeing her sitting day and night staring at the window and not moving. Only a few days earlier I had given up my bedroom for her and run away from her silence to sleep with Father in the double sofa bed. She looked so beautiful and elegant in her navy jersey and light skirt, in her nylon stockings with a seam at the back and her high-heeled shoes, that strange men turned around to look at her. She carried her raincoat over one arm, and linked the other arm in mine as we walked along:

"You'll be my cavalier today."

And as though she had adopted Father's normal role as well, she added:

"A cavalier is a knight:
cheval
is a horse in French, and
chevalier
is a horseman or knight."

Then she said:

"There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tyrant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And remember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation."

"Good," I said, because I wanted her to stop talking about things that had nothing to do with me and talk about something else instead. We hadn't talked for weeks, and it was a pity to waste this walking time that was just hers and mine. As we approached the city center, she slipped her arm through mine again, gave a little laugh, and asked suddenly:

"What would you say to a little brother? Or sister?"

And without waiting for a reply, she added with a sort of jocular sadness, or rather a sadness wrapped in a smile that I could not see but that I heard in her voice as she spoke:

"One day when you get married and have a family of your own, I very much hope you won't take me and your father as an example of what married life ought to be."

I am not just re-creating these words from memory, as I did a dozen lines earlier with her words about love and friendship, because I remember this plea not to take my parents' marriage as an example exactly as it was said to me, word for word. And I remember her smiling voice precisely, too. We were on King George Street, my mother and I, walking arm in arm past the building called Talitha Kumi on our way to Terra Sancta Building to take Father away from his work. The time was one-thirty p.m. A cold wind mixed with sharp drops of rain was blowing from the west. It was strong enough to make passersby close their umbrellas so they would not blow inside out. We did not even attempt to open ours. Arm in arm, Mother and I walked in the rain, past Talitha Kumi and the Frumin Building, which was the temporary home of the Knesset, and then we passed the Hamaalot Building. It was at the
beginning of the first week of January 1952. Five or four days before her death.

And as the rain grew heavier, Mother said, with an amused tone to her voice:

"Shall we go to a café for a bit? Our Father won't run away."

We sat for half an hour or so in a German Jewish café at the entrance to Rehavia, in JNF Street, opposite the Jewish Agency Building, where the prime minister's office was also located at the time. Till the rain stopped. Meanwhile, Mother took a little powder compact and a comb from her handbag and repaired the damage to her hair and face. I felt a mixture of emotions: pride at her looks, joy that she was better, responsibility to guard and protect her from some shadow whose existence I could only guess at. In fact I did not guess, I only half sensed a slight strange uneasiness in my skin. The way a child sometimes grasps without really grasping things that are beyond his understanding, senses them and is alarmed without knowing why:

"Are you all right, Mother?"

She ordered a strong black coffee for herself and for me a milky coffee, even though I was never allowed coffee-is-not-for-children, and a chocolate ice cream, even though we all knew perfectly well that ice cream gives you a sore throat, especially on a cold winter day. And before lunch to boot. My sense of responsibility forced me to eat only two or three spoonfuls and to ask my mother if she didn't feel cold sitting here. If she didn't feel tired. Or dizzy. After all she'd only just recovered from an illness. And be careful, Mummy, when you go to the toilet, it's dark and there are two steps. Pride, earnestness, and apprehension filled my heart. As though as long as the two of us were sitting here in Café Rosh-Rehavia, her role was to be a helpless girl who needed a generous friend, and I was her cavalier. Or perhaps her father:

"Are you all right, Mother?"

When we got to Terra Sancta Building, where several departments of the Hebrew University were relocated after the road to the campus on Mount Scopus was blocked in the War of Independence, we asked for
the newspaper department and went up the stairs to the second floor. (It was on a winter's day like this that Hannah in
My Michael
slipped on these very stairs, and might have twisted her ankle, and the student Michael Gonen caught her by the elbow and said he liked the word "ankle." Mother and I may well have walked past Michael and Hannah without noticing them. Thirteen years separated the winter's day when I was in Terra Sancta Building with my mother from the winter's day when I began to write
My Michael.)

When we entered the newspaper department, we saw facing us the director, gentle, kindly Dr. Pfeffermann, who looked up from the pile of papers on his desk, smiled, and beckoned us with both his hands to come in. We saw Father too, from behind. For a long moment we did not recognize him, because he was wearing a gray librarian's coat to protect his clothes from the dust. He was standing on a small stepladder, with his back to us and all his attention concentrated on the big box files he was taking down from a high shelf, leafing through and returning to the shelf, before taking down another and another file, because apparently he could not find what he was looking for.

All this time, kind Dr. Pfeffermann did not make a sound, but sat comfortably in the chair behind his big desk, his smile growing broader and broader in an amused sort of way, and two or three other people who worked in the department stopped working and smirked as they looked at us and at Father's back without saying anything, as though they were sharing in Dr. Pfeffermann's little game and watching with amused curiosity to see when the man would finally notice his visitors, who were standing in the doorway patiently watching his back, the pretty woman's hand resting on the little boy's shoulder.

From where he was standing on the top step of the ladder Father turned to his head of department and said, "Excuse me, Dr. Pfeffermann, I believe there is something—," and suddenly he noticed the director's broad smile—and he may have been alarmed because he could not understand what was making him smile—and Dr. Pfeffermann's eyes guided Father's bespectacled gaze from the desk to the doorway. When he caught sight of us, I believe his face went white. He returned the large box file he was holding with both hands to its place on the top shelf and carefully climbed down the ladder, looked around, and saw that all the other members of staff were smiling, and as though he had
no choice, he remembered to smile too, and said to us, "What a surprise! What a great surprise!" and in a quieter voice he asked if everything was all right, if anything had happened, heaven forbid.

His face was as strained and anxious as that of a child who in the middle of a kissing game at a party with his classmates looks up and notices his parents standing sternly in the doorway, and who knows how long they have been standing there quietly watching or what they have seen.

First of all he tried to shoo us outside very gently, with both hands, into the corridor, and looking back he said to the whole department and particularly to Dr. Pfeffermann: "Excuse me for a few minutes?"

But a minute later he changed his mind, stopped edging us out, and pulled us back inside, into the director's office, and started to introduce us, then he remembered and said: "Dr. Pfeffermann, you already know my wife and son." And then he turned us around and formally introduced us to the rest of the staff of the newspaper department with the words: "I'd like you to meet my wife, Fania, and my son Amos. A schoolboy. Twelve and a half years old."

When we were all outside in the corridor, Father asked anxiously, and a little reproachfully:

"What has happened? Are my parents all right? And your parents? Is everyone all right?"

Mother calmed him down. But the issue of the restaurant made him apprehensive: after all, it was not anyone's birthday today. He hesitated, started to say something, changed his mind, and after a moment he said:

"Certainly. Certainly. Why not. We'll go and celebrate your recovery, Fania, or at any rate the distinct and sudden amelioration in your condition. Yes. We must definitely celebrate."

His face as he spoke, however, was anxious rather than festive.

But then my father suddenly cheered up, and fired with enthusiasm he put his arms around both our shoulders, got permission from Dr. Pfeffermann to leave work a little early, said good-bye to his colleagues, took off his gray dust coat, and treated us to a thorough tour of several departments of the library, the basement, the rare manuscripts section, he even showed us the new photocopying machine and explained how it worked, and he introduced us proudly to everyone
we met, as excited as a teenager introducing his famous parents to the staff of his school.

The restaurant was a pleasant, almost empty place tucked away in a narrow side street between Ben Yehuda Street and Shammai or Hillel Street. The rain started again the moment we arrived, which Father took as a good sign, as though it had been waiting for us to get to the restaurant. As though heaven were smiling on us today.

He corrected himself immediately:

"I mean, that is what I would say if I believed in signs, or if I believed that heaven cares at all about us. But heaven is indifferent. Apart from homo sapiens, the whole universe is indifferent. Most people are indifferent too, if it comes to that. I believe indifference is the most salient feature of all reality."