My Michael (26 page)

Michael spent three days in Shaare Zedek Hospital. He showed the early symptoms of a stomach disease. Thanks to Dr. Urbach's alertness, the disease was diagnosed in its early stages. From now on certain foods would be forbidden him. Within a week he would be able to go back to work as usual.

On one of our visits to the hospital Michael managed to keep his promise to tell Yair about the war. He told of patrols, ambushes, and alarms. No, he could not answer questions about the fighting itself: "Unfortunately, Daddy didn't capture the Egyptian destroyer in Haifa Bay or visit Gaza. He wasn't parachuted near the Suez Canal, either. Daddy isn't a pilot or a paratrooper."

Yair showed understanding:

"You weren't too fit. That's why they left you behind."

"Who do you think
is
fit for war, Yair?"

"Me."

"You?"

"When I grow up. I'm going to be a big strong soldier. I'm stronger than lots of bigger boys in the playground. It's no good to be weak. Just like in our playground. I've finished speaking."

Michael said:

"You need to be sensible, Yair."

Yair pondered this statement silently. Compared, contrasted, connected. He was serious. Thoughtful. Finally he pronounced sentence:

"Sensible isn't the opposite of strong."

I said:

"Strong, sensible men are my favorite people. I'd like to meet a strong, sensible man some day."

Michael replied, of course, with a smile. And silence.

Our friends spared no effort. We had frequent visitors. Mr. Glick. Mr. Kadishman. The geologists. My best friend Hadassah and her husband, Abba. And finally, Yardena, Michael's blonde friend. She arrived with an officer of the United Nations Emergency Force. He was a Canadian giant, and I could not keep my eyes off him, even though Yardena caught me looking at him and smiled at me twice. She bent over the bed, kissed Michael's lean hand as though he were dying, and said:

"Snap out of it, Micha. It doesn't suit you, all this illness. I'm surprised at you. Believe it or not, I've already handed in my paper and I've even registered for the final exams. Slow but sure, that's me. You'll be an angel, won't you, Micha, and give me a hand with the work for the exams?"

"Sure," Michael replied, laughing. "Of course I will. I'm delighted for you, Yardena."

Yardena said:

"Micha, you're great. I've never met anybody as clever or sweet as you. Get better now, there's a good boy."

Michael recovered and went back to work. He also went back, after a long break, to working on his thesis. Once more his silhouette moving about at night beyond the frosted glass which divides his study from the room where I sleep. At ten o'clock I make him a glass of tea, without lemon. At eleven he takes a few moments off to listen to the final news broadcast. After that, shadows dancing and writhing on the wall with every movement of his in the night: Opening a drawer. Turning a page. Resting his head on his arms. Reaching out for a book.

Michael's glasses came back from being mended. His Aunt Leah sent him a new pipe. My brother Emanuel sent a crate of apples from Nof Harim. My mother knitted me a red muffler. And our Persian greengrocer, Mr. Elijah Mossiah, came back from the army.

Finally, halfway through November, the long-awaited rain arrived. Because of the war it was late that year. It fell with violence and fury. The city was shuttered. There was soft soaking all around. The gloomy gurgling of drainpipes. Our backyard was wet and abandoned. Fierce winds shook the shutters by night. The ancient fig tree stood bleak and bare outside our kitchen balcony. But the pines turned rich and verdant. They whispered sensuously. Never left me alone. Every car that passed in the street drew a long-drawn-out swish from the sodden asphalt.

Twice a week I attend advanced English classes arranged by the Working Mothers' Association. In the interlude between showers Yair floats battleships and destroyers in the puddle outside our house. He has a strange yearning for the sea now. When we are shut up indoors by the rain, the rug and armchair serve as ocean and harbor. The dominoes are his fleet. Great sea battles are fought out in our living room. An Egyptian destroyer blazes at sea. Guns spit fire. A captain makes a decision.

Sometimes, if I finish preparing supper early, I too join in the game. My powder compact is a submarine. I am an enemy. Once I suddenly clasped Yair in an affectionate embrace. I showered his head with rough kisses because for a moment Yair seemed to me like a real sea captain. As a result I was promptly banished from the game and the room. My son displayed once more his sullen pride: I could take part in his game only so long as I remained aloof and unemotional.

Perhaps I was wrong. Yair is showing signs of a cold authority. He does not get it from Michael. Or from me, either. His powers of memory repeatedly cause me amazement. He still remembers Hassan Salame's gang and its assault on Holon from Tel Arish, which he heard about from his grandfather a year and a half ago, when Yehezkel was still alive.

In a few months' time Yair will move on from kindergarten to school. Michael and I have decided to send him to Beit Hakerem School rather than to Tachkemoni Orthodox Boys' School, which is near where we live. Michael is determined that his son have a progressive education.

Our upstairs neighbors, the Kamnitzers, treat me with polite hostility. They still condescend to return my greeting, but they have stopped sending their little daughter down to ask for the loan of the iron or a baking dish.

Mr. Glick visits us regularly every five days. His reading in the
Encyclopaedia Hebraica
has progressed as far as the article on Belgium. His poor wife Duba's brother is a diamond merchant in Antwerp. Mrs. Glick herself is doing well. The doctors have promised to send her home in April or May. Our neighbor's gratitude knows no bounds. In addition to the weekend supplements of the religious daily
Hatsofeh,
he brings us presents of packets of pins, paper clips, stamp hinges, foreign stamps.

Michael has finally managed to arouse in Yair an active interest in stamp-collecting. Every Saturday morning they devote themselves to the collection. Yair soaks the stamps in water, carefully peels them off the paper, lays them out to dry on a large sheet of blotting paper which Mr. Glick has given him as a present. Michael sorts the dry stamps and sticks them in the album. Meanwhile I put a record on the phonograph, curl up in an armchair with my tired feet tucked underneath me, knit, and listen to the music. Relax. Through the window I can watch the woman next door hanging the bedclothes out on the balcony railings to air. I don't think and I don't feel. Time is powerfully present. I ignore it deliberately so as to confound it. I treat it in exactly the same way as I used to respond in my youth to the cheeky glances of rude men: I don't avert my eyes or turn away. I fix a smile of cold disdain on my face. Avoid panicking or feeling embarrassed. As if I were saying:

"So what?"

I know, I admit: this is a pathetic defense. But then the deception, too, is pathetic and ugly. I don't make excessive demands: only that the glass should remain transparent. A clever, pretty girl in a blue coat. A shriveled kindergarten teacher with varicose veins spreading on her thighs. In between, Yvonne Azulai drifts on a sea which has no shores. That the glass should remain transparent. Nothing more.

J
ERUSALEM IN WINTER
knows bright, sun-drenched Saturdays when the sky takes on a hue which is not sky-blue but a deep, dark, concentrated blue, as if the sea had come up and settled upside down over the city. It is a limpid, radiant purity, pricked out with choirs of carefree birds, steeped in light. Distant objects, hills, buildings, woods seem to shimmer ceaselessly. The phenomenon is caused by the evaporating moisture, so Michael explained to me.

On Saturdays like this we generally have breakfast early and go out for a long walk. We leave the Orthodox neighborhoods behind us and wander as far afield as Talpiot, or Ein Kerem or Malcha, to Givat Shaul. At midday we sit down in one of the woods and eat a picnic lunch. We go home at nightfall on the first bus after the Sabbath. Such days are calm. At times I imagine that Jerusalem lies open before me with all its hidden places alight. I do not forget that the blue light is a fleeting vision. That the birds will fly away. But now I have learned to ignore it. To float along. Not to resist.

On one of our Saturday expeditions we happened to meet the old professor under whom I had studied Hebrew literature when I was younger. With a touching effort the scholar managed to remember me and to fit my name to my face. He asked:

"What secret surprise are you planning for us, dear lady? A volume of poems?"

I denied the suggestion.

The professor thought for a moment, then smiled kindly and proffered the remark:

"What a wonderful city our Jerusalem is! It is not for nothing that it has been the object of the yearnings of countless generations in the gloomy depths of the Diaspora."

I agreed. We parted with a handshake. Michael wished the old man well. The professor bowed slightly and waved his hat in the air. The meeting made me happy.

We pick bunches of wild flowers: ranunculus, narcissus, cyclamen, anemones. On the way we cross abandoned building sites. Rest in the shade of a damp gray rock. Gaze into the distance to the coastal plain, the Hebron Hills, the Judean Desert. Sometimes we play hide-and-seek or catch. Slipping and laughing. Michael is gay and lighthearted. Once in a while he can express enthusiasm, saying, for instance:

"Jerusalem is the biggest city in the world. As soon as you cross two or three streets you are in a different continent, a different generation, even a different climate."

Or:

"How beautiful it is, Hannah, and how beautiful you are here, my sad Jerusalemite."

Yair is particularly interested in two subjects: the battles in the War of Independence and the network of public bus services.

On the former subject Michael is a mine of information. He points with his hand, identifies features in the landscape, draws plans in the dust, demonstrates with the help of twigs and stones: The Arabs were here, we were here. They were trying to break through here. We came round behind them there.

Michael also considers it right to explain to the boy about miscalculations, errors of strategy, failures. I, too, listen and learn. How little I knew about the battle for Jerusalem. The villa which belonged to Rashid Shahada, the twins' father, was handed over to the Health Organization, which turned it into a pre- and postnatal clinic. A housing project was built on the empty site. The Germans and the Greeks abandoned the German and Greek Colonies. New people moved in to take their places. New men, women, and children moved into Jerusalem. That would not be the last battle for Jerusalem. So I have heard our friend Mr. Kadishman say. I too can sense secret forces restlessly scheming, swelling and surging and bursting out through the surface.

I am amazed by Michael's ability to explain complicated things to Yair in very simple language, using hardly any adjectives. I am also amazed by the serious, intelligent questions which Yair occasionally asks.

Yair imagines war as an extraordinarily complex game, which displays a whole fascinating world of system and logic. My husband and my son both see time as a succession of equal squares on a sheet of graph paper, which provide a structure to support the lines and shapes.

There was never any need to explain to Yair the conflicting motives in the war. They were self-evident: conquest and domination. The boy's questions turned solely on the order of events: Arabs, Jews, hill, valley, ruins, trenches, armor, movement, surprise.

The bus company's network also fascinated our son, because of the complex interrelations of the lines joining different destinations. The filigree of routes afforded him cold-blooded pleasure: the distances between the stops, the overlapping of the various routes, the convergence on the city center, the dispersal outwards.

On this subject Yair could enlighten us both. Michael foretold a future for him as a route-controller for the bus company. He hastened to stress that he was only joking, naturally.

Yair knew the makes of the buses operating on each route by heart. He enjoyed explaining the reasons for the use of the different makes: Here a steep hill, there a sharp bend or a poor road surface. The child's style of explanation closely resembled his father's. Both of them made frequent use of such words as "thus," "whereas," "in conclusion," and also "remote possibility."

I made an effort to listen to both of them quietly and attentively.

An image:

My son and my husband poring over a huge map spread out on a large desk. Various markers scattered over the map. Colored pins stuck in according to a plan concerted between the two of them, which seems to me like total chaos. They are arguing politely in German. They are both wearing gray suits, and sober ties secured with silver clips. I am there, clad in a flimsy, shabby nightdress. They are completely absorbed in their task. Bathed in white light but casting no shadow. Their attitudes suggest concentration and cautious responsibility. I cut in with some remark or request. They are both sympathetic and affable, not irritated at my interruption. They are at my service. Delighted to be of assistance. Could I possibly wait just five minutes?

There are also rather different Saturday expeditions.

We walk through the most fashionable parts of the city, Rehavia or Beit Hakerem. We pick out a house for ourselves. Inspect half-finished buildings. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of apartment. Distribute the rooms among ourselves. Decide where to put everything: Yair's toys will go here. This will be the study. The sofa here. The bookshelves. The armchairs. The rug.

Michael says:

"We ought to start saving, Hannah. We can't go on living from hand to mouth forever."

Yair suggests:

"We could get some money for the phonograph and the records. The radio makes enough music. And besides I'm sick of hearing it."

Myself: