My Michael (25 page)

"Old—you? On the contrary, Mrs. Gonen, on the contrary ... What I was trying to say was ... You take an interest in my problem, and ... with you I can sometimes ... No. When I try to put it into words, it comes out all back to front. All I meant was..."

"Relax, Yoram. You don't have to say it."

He was mine. All mine. He was at my mercy. I could paint any expression I liked on his face. Like on a sheet of paper. It was years since I had last enjoyed this grim game. I turned the screw further, relishing with cautious sips the laughter welling inside me.

"No, Yoram, you don't have to say it. You can write me a letter. In any case, you've already said nearly everything. By the way, has anyone ever told you you've got beautiful eyes? If you had more self-confidence, you'd be a real heart-throb. If I were your age instead of an old hag, I don't know how I could resist falling for you. You're a lovely boy."

I did not take my cold eyes off his face for a moment. I absorbed the astonishment, the longing, the suffering, the mad hope. I was intoxicated.

Yoram stammered:

"Please, Mrs. Gonen..."

"Hannah. You can all me Hannah."

"I ... I feel respect for you, and ... no, respect isn't the right word ... regard, and ... interest."

"Why apologize, Yoram? I like you. It's not a sin to be liked."

"You make me regret, Mrs. Gonen, Hannah ... I won't say anything else, or I'll regret it later. I'm sorry, Mrs. Gonen."

"Keep talking, Yoram. I'm not so sure you'll regret it."

At that moment Yair intervened. With his mouth crammed full of corn he exclaimed:

"Regret—that's the British. In the War of Independence they were on the Arab side, and now they regret it already."

Yoram said:

"This is where I turn off, Mrs. Gonen. I take back everything I said just now and I beg your pardon."

"Wait a moment, Yoram. There's something I'd like to ask you to do."

"When we were in Holon, when Grandpa Zalman was alive, he told me the British are cold-blooded like snakes."

"Yes, Mrs. Gonen. What can I do for you?"

"Mummy, what does it mean that snakes are cold-blooded?"

"It means that their blood isn't warm. What I wanted to ask you..."

"But why isn't snakes' blood warm? And why do people have warm blood, except the British?"

"Say you're not cross with me, Mrs. Gonen. Perhaps I said something silly."

"In some animals the heart pumps the blood and warms it. I can't explain exactly. Don't torture yourself, Yoram. When I was your age I had a lot of strength to love. I'd like to have another chat with you. Today or tomorrow. Be quiet for a moment, Yair, stop nagging. How often has your father told you not to interrupt when people are talking? Today or tomorrow. That's what I wanted to ask you. I'd like to have a chat with you. I'd like to give you some advice."

"I didn't interrupt. Maybe only after Yoram interrupted me when I was talking."

"Meanwhile, don't torture yourself unnecessarily. Good-bye, Yoram. I'm not cross with you, and don't be cross with yourself. Yair, I've answered your question. That's the way it is. I can't explain everything in the world. How, why, where, when. 'If Grandma had wings and she could fly, she'd be an eagle in the sky.' When your father comes back he'll explain everything, because he's cleverer than I am and he knows everything."

"Daddy doesn't know everything, but when Daddy doesn't know he says he doesn't know. He doesn't say he knows but he can't explain. That's impossible. If you know something then you can explain it. I've finished."

"Thank goodness for that, Yair."

Yair threw away his chewed corncob. Carefully wiped his hands on his handkerchief. He refrained from taking offense. He did not speak. Even when I asked him in a sudden panic if we had turned off the gas before we left the house, he didn't say a word. I hated his stubborn pride. When we got to the clinic I sat him down forcibly in the dentist's chair, even though he had made no attempt to resist. Ever since Michael had explained to him how rot attacks the roots of the teeth he had proved understanding and thoroughly cooperative. Dentists were always amazed at him. Moreover, the drill and the other dental instruments aroused in the child a lively curiosity which I found revolting: a child of five who was fascinated by tooth rot would grow up to be a disgusting person. I hated myself for the thought, but I could not dismiss it.

While the dentist attended to Yair's teeth I sat on a low stool in the corridor and arranged in my mind the things I intended to say to Yoram Kamnitzer.

First of all, I would extract the confession which was preying on him. I would easily succeed in this, I knew, and so I would revel once more in the powers which I had not lost entirely, even though time was attacking them, ravaging, rotting and wrecking them with pale, precise fingers.

Then, when I had achieved the mastery I longed for, I meant to induce Yoram to choose a precipitous life. That is, encourage him to be, say, a poet instead of a Bible teacher. That is, hurl him to the opposite bank. That is, subjugate a last Michael Strogoff for the last time to the will, to the mission, of a deposed princess.

I intended to offer him nothing more than a handful of friendly words couched in fairly general terms, because he was a gentle boy and I had not discovered in him the magical power of flexibility or the floods of deep-flowing energy.

All my plans came to nothing. The boy did not keep his agonized promise to come and see me. I must have stirred up in him a panic which was stronger than he was.

At the end of that month an obscure magazine published a love poem by Yoram. In contrast to his earlier poems, this time he dared to name parts of a woman's body. The woman was Potiphar's wife, exposing parts of her body to ensnare the righteous Joseph.

Mr. and Mrs. Kamnitzer were immediately summoned to a conference with the headmaster of the Orthodox high school. They decided to avoid making a fuss, provided Yoram completed his final year in an educational institute on an Orthodox kibbutz in the south. I only found out the details later. It was only later, too, that I read the daring poem about the plight of the righteous Joseph. It was sent to me by mail, in a plain cover with my name printed in block capitals. It was a flowery, high-flown poem: an outcry of a tortured body through a veil of low spirits.

I acknowledged my defeat. So Yoram would go to university. He would end up teaching Bible and Hebrew. He would not be a poet. He might manage to compose occasional pedantic verses, on the colored greeting card, for instance, which he would send us each New Year. We, the Gonen family, would respond with a New Year's card to Yoram and his young family. Time would be ever-present; a tall, freezing, transparent presence hostile to Yoram and hostile to me, boding no good.

In fact, it had all been decided by Mrs. Glick, our hysterical neighbor, who had attacked Yoram in the yard shortly before she was committed. She had torn his shirt open, slapped his face, and called him lecher, voyeur, peeping Tom.

But the defeat was mine. This was my last attempt. The menacing presence was stronger than I. From now on I would allow myself to float downstream, borne by the current, in passive repose.

T
HE FOLLOWING EVENING
, as I was bathing Yair and washing his hair, a gaunt, dusty figure stood framed in the doorway. Because of the running water and Yair's talking, I had not heard him come in. He stood in his stocking feet in the bathroom doorway. He might have been standing staring silently at me for several minutes before I noticed him and let out a low cry of shock and surprise. He had removed his shoes in the hall so as not to bring mud into the apartment.

"Michael," I meant to say with a tender smile. But the name came hurtling out of my throat with a sob.

"Yair. Hannah. Good evening to you both. It's good to see you looking well. I'm back."

"Daddy, did you kill any Arabs?"

"No, my boy. On the contrary. The Jewish army nearly killed me. I'll tell you all about it later. Hannah, you'd better dry the boy and dress him before he catches his death. The water's ice cold."

The reserve battalion in which Michael was serving had not been demobilized yet, but they had released Michael early because they had inadvertently called up two radio operators too many, because his broken glasses rendered him all but useless at the radio, because in any case the whole battalion was due to be demobilized within a couple of days, and also because he was slightly ill.

"You, ill." I raised my voice as if I were reprimanding him.

"I said slightly. There's no need to shout, Hannah. You can see that I'm walking, talking, and breathing. Only slightly ill. Some sort of stomach poisoning, apparently."

"It was just the shock, Michael. I'll stop at once. I've stopped. There. No tears. I've got over it. I've missed you. When you left I was ill and bad-tempered. I'm not ill now, and I'll try to be nicer to you. I want you. You get washed and meanwhile I'll put Yair to bed. I'll make you a supper fit for a king. With a white tablecloth. A bottle of wine. And that's just to begin with. There, how silly of me; I've spoiled the surprise."

"I don't think I'm supposed to drink wine this evening," Michael said apologetically, and a calm smile spread over his face. "I'm not feeling too well."

When he had washed up, Michael unpacked his rucksack, threw his dirty clothes in the laundry basket, put everything away in its place. He wrapped himself up in a thick blanket. His teeth were chattering. He asked me to forgive him for spoiling his first evening home with his troubles.

His face looked strange. Without his glasses he had difficulty reading the newspaper. He switched off the light and turned his face to the wall. Several times during the night I woke up, thinking I heard Michael groaning, or perhaps just belching. I asked him if he wanted me to make him a glass of tea. He thanked me and refused. I got up and made some tea. I told him to drink it. He obeyed and gulped it down. Again he let out a sound which was neither a groan nor a belch. He seemed to be suffering a serious attack of nausea.

"Does it hurt, Michael?"

"No, it doesn't hurt. Go to sleep, Hannah. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Next morning I sent Yair off to kindergarten and summoned Dr. Urbach. The doctor came in with china footsteps, smiled wistfully, and declared that we must go into the hospital for an urgent examination. He ended with his customary formula of reassurance:

"Human beings do not die so easily as perhaps in an extreme moment we might imagine. I wish you better."

In the taxi on the way to Shaare Zedek Hospital, Michael tried to dispel my anxiety with a joke:

"I feel like a war hero in a Soviet film. Almost."

Then, after a pause, he asked me to ring his Aunt Jenia in Tel Aviv if he got any worse and to tell her he was ill.

I still remember. When I was thirteen my father, Yosef Green-baum, came down with his last illness. He died of a malignant growth. During the weeks preceding his death his features progressively decayed. His skin grew shriveled and sallow, his cheeks sank, his hair fell out in handfuls, his teeth rotted; he seemed to be shrinking hour by hour. The most frightening thing was the inward sinking of his mouth, giving the impression of a perpetual cunning smile. As if his illness were a practical joke which had come off. In fact, my father clung in his last days to a kind of forced jocularity. He told us that the problem of survival after death was one which had always exercised his curiosity ever since he was a young man in Cracow. Once he had even written a letter in German to Professor Martin Buber inquiring about the question. And once he had had a reply on the subject published in the correspondence column of a leading newspaper. And now in a few days he would have access to a reliable and authoritative solution to the mystery of life after death. Father had in his possession a reply written in German in Professor Buber's own handwriting, in which he said that we live on in our children and our works.

"I can't lay claim to any works," his sunken mouth grinned, "but I do have children. Hannah, do you feel like a continuation of my soul or my body?"

And at once he added:

"I was only joking. Your personal feelings are your own personal feelings. It was of questions such as these that the ancients long ago said that they have no answer."

Father died at home. The doctors did not think it right to move him to the hospital, because there was no hope left, and he knew, and they knew that he knew. The doctors gave him medicines to relieve the pain, and expressed amazement at the composure he displayed in his last days. Father had been preparing all his life for the day of his death. He spent his last morning sitting in an armchair in his brown dressing gown, doing the prize crossword in the English-language newspaper, the
Palestine Post.
At noon he went out to the mailbox to send off his completed solution. When he came back he retired to his room and closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked. He turned his back on the room, leaned on the window sill, and passed away. It was his intention to spare his loved ones the unpleasant sight. At that time my brother Emanuel was already a member of an underground group in a kibbutz a long way from Jerusalem. Mother and I were out at the hairdresser's. Unconfirmed reports had arrived that morning from the front of a dramatic change in the course of the war, at the Battle of Stalingrad. In his will Father left me three thousand pounds for my wedding day. I was to give half the sum to Emanuel in the event of his giving up kibbutz life. Father had been a thrifty man. He also left a file containing a dozen or so letters from eminent men who had deigned to answer his inquiries on a number of theoretical topics. Two or three of them were in the actual handwriting of world-famous personalities. Father also left behind a notebook filled with jottings. At first, I supposed he had been in the habit of secretly noting down his thoughts and observations. Later I realized that these were in fact remarks he had heard over the years from important men. Once, for example, he had conversed with the famous Menahem Ussishkin, with whom he was sharing a compartment in a train going from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and had heard him say: "Although in every action it is necessary to exercise doubt, yet one should also act as if doubt did not exist." I found these words recorded in Father's notebook, with the source, date, and other circumstances added in brackets. Father was an attentive man, always on the alert for hints and omens. He did not regard it as beneath his dignity to spend his whole life kowtowing to powerful forces whose nature remained hidden from him. I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone else in the world.