My Michael (8 page)

December was the sixth month of my pregnancy. Michael took the examinations for his first degree. He got an upper second. I was unmoved by his success. Let him celebrate by himself and leave me alone. My husband had already started studying for his second degree in October. In the evening, when he came home tired, he would volunteer to go out to the grocer, the greengrocer, the druggist. On one occasion he absented himself on my account from an important experiment, because I had asked him to go to the clinic for me and collect the result of a test.

That evening Michael broke his mental vow of silence. He tried to explain to me that his life was not so easy these days, either. I shouldn't imagine that he was living in a bed of roses, as it were.

"I didn't imagine you were, Michael."

Then why did I make him feel guilty?

Did I make him feel guilty? He must realize that I couldn't be romantic at a time like this. I didn't even have a maternity dress. Every day I wore my ordinary clothes, which didn't fit and weren't comfortable. So how could I look pretty and attractive?

No, that wasn't what he wanted of me. It wasn't my beauty which he missed. What he did ask, what he implored, was that I should stop being so stiff and so hysterical.

Indeed, during this time there was a kind of uneasy compromise between us. We were like two travelers consigned by fate to adjacent seats on a long railway journey. Bound to show consideration for each other, to observe the conventions of politeness, not to impose and not to intrude on each other, not to presume on their acquaintance. To be courteous and considerate. To entertain each other, perhaps, from time to time with pleasant, superficial chatter. Making no demands. Even displaying restrained sympathy at times.

But outside the carriage window there stretches a flat and gloomy landscape. A parched plain. Low scrub.

If I ask him to close a window, he is delighted to be of service.

It was a kind of wintry balance. Cautious and laborious, like going down a flight of steps slippery from the rain. Oh, to be able to rest and rest.

I admit it: It was often I who upset the balance. Without Michael's firm grasp I should have slipped and fallen. I deliberately sat for whole evenings in silence as if I were alone in the house. If Michael asked how I felt I would answer:

"What do you care?"

If he took offense and did not ask how I felt next morning, I would snarl that he didn't ask because he didn't care.

Once or twice, early in the winter, I embarrassed my husband by my tears. I called him a brute. I accused him of insensitivity and indifference. Michael rebutted both charges mildly. He spoke calmly and patiently, as if it were he who had given offense and I was to be placated. I resisted like a rebellious child. I hated him till a lump rose in my throat. I wanted to shake him out of his calm.

Coolly and thoroughly Michael washed the floor, wrung out the cloth, and dried the floor twice. Then he asked me if I felt better. He warmed me some milk and removed the skin, which I hated. He apologized for making me angry, in my special condition. He asked me to explain what exactly he had done to make me angry, so that he could avoid making the same mistake again. Then he went out to fetch a can of paraffin.

In the last months of my pregnancy I felt ugly. I did not dare look in the mirror; my face was disfigured with dark blotches. I had to wear elastic stockings because of my varicose veins. Perhaps now I looked like Mrs. Tarnopoler or old Sarah Zeldin.

"Do you find me ugly, Michael?"

"You're very precious to me, Hannah."

"If you don't find me ugly, why don't you hold me?"

"Because if I do you'll burst into tears and say that I'm just pretending. You've already forgotten what you said to me this morning. You told me not to touch you. And so I haven't."

When Michael was out of the house I experienced a return of my old childhood yearning, to be very ill.

M
ICHAEL'S FATHER
composed a letter in verse congratulating his son on his examination success. He rhymed "resounding success" with "my joy to express" and "Hannah's great happiness." Michael read the letter out loud to me and then admitted that he had hoped to receive some small token from me too, such as a new pipe, to mark his success in his first final examination. He said this with an embarrassed, embarrassing smile. I was angry with him for what he had said, and his smile also made me angry. Hadn't I told him a thousand times that my head ached as if it were being stabbed with ice-cold steel? Why did he always think of himself and never of me?

Three times Michael declined on my account to go on important geological expeditions in which all his fellow students took part. One was to Mount Manara, where iron ore deposits had been discovered, another to the Negev, and the third to the potash works at Sodom. Even his married friends went on these expeditions. I did not thank Michael for his sacrifice. But one evening there happened to run through my head two half-forgotten lines from a well-known nursery rhyme about a boy called Michael:

Little Michael danced five years, but then he heard the bell;
He went to school, and tearfully bid his pet dove farewell.

I burst out laughing.

Michael stared at me in subdued amazement. It wasn't often, he said, that he saw me happy. He would very much like to know what it was that had suddenly made me laugh.

I looked at his startled eyes, and laughed louder still.

Michael was sunk deep in thought for a few moments. Then he started to tell me a political joke he had heard that day in the student canteen.

My mother arrived from Kibbutz Nof Harim in Upper Galilee to stay with us till the birth and to look after the housework. Since my mother had moved to Nof Harim after my father's death in 1943 she had never had a chance to manage a household. She was disastrously enthusiastic and efficient. After the first lunch, which she cooked as soon as she arrived, she said to Michael that she knew he didn't like eggplant, but that he had just eaten three dishes made with eggplant without realizing it. It was wonderful, the miracles you could work in the kitchen. Had he really not noticed the taste of the eggplant? Not even a bit?

Michael answered politely. No, he hadn't noticed it at all. Yes, it was wonderful what miracles you could do in the kitchen.

My mother sent Michael on one errand after another. She made his life miserable with her vigorous insistence on strict hygiene. He must always wash his hands. Never put money on the table when people were eating. Take the mesh screens out of the window frames to clean them properly. "What do you think you're doing? Not there on the balcony, if you don't mind—the dust will all come flying back into the room. Not on the balcony; downstairs, outside in the yard. Yes, that's right, that's better."

She knew that Michael had been brought up an orphan, without a mother, and that was why she didn't get angry with him. But still, she couldn't understand him: educated, enlightened, a university man—didn't he realize the world was full of germs?

Michael submitted obediently like a well brought-up child. What can I do to help? Allow me. Am I in your way? No, I'll go and get it. Of course I'll ask the greengrocer. All right, I'll try to come home early. I'll take the shopping basket with me. No, I won't forget; look, I've already made a list. He agreed to give up his idea of buying the first volumes of the new
Encyclopaedia Hebraica.
It was not essential. He knew now that we must both save as much as we possibly could.

In the evenings Michael worked at a part-time job, helping the librarian of the departmental library, which brought in a little money. "Nowadays I don't have the honor of Your Excellency's presence in the evenings either," I grumbled. Michael even gave up smoking his pipe in the house because my mother could not bear the smell of tobacco and was also convinced that the smoke would harm the baby.

When he found it hard to contain himself my husband would go down into the street and stand smoking for a quarter of an hour under a lamppost like a poet in search of inspiration. Once I stood at the window and watched him for a while. By the light of the street lamp I could see the close-cropped hair on the back of his head. Rings of smoke curled around him, as if he were a spirit called up from the dead. I remembered some words Michael had spoken long before: Cats are never wrong about people. He always liked the word "ankle." I was a cold, beautiful Jerusalemite. He was an ordinary young man, in his opinion. He had never had a regular girlfriend before he met me. In the rain the stone lion on the Generali Building laughs under his breath. Emotion becomes a malignant tumor when people are contented and have nothing to do. Jerusalem makes one feel sad, but it is a different sadness at every moment of the day, at every time of the year. That was all a long time ago. Michael must have forgotten it all by now. Only I refused to abandon so much as a crumb to the icy claws of time. I wonder, what is the magical change which time works on trivial words? There is a kind of alchemy in things, which is the inner melody of my life. The youth leader who told the girl we saw by Aqua Bella that love in our modern age should be as simple as drinking a glass of water was wrong. Michael was quite right when he told me that night in Geula Street that my husband would have to be a very strong man. At that moment I felt that, although he had to stand there smoking under a lamppost like a child in disgrace, yet he had no right to blame me for his suffering, because I should soon be dead, and so I need show no consideration for him. Michael knocked out his pipe and started walking back. I hurriedly lay down on the bed and turned my face to the wall. My mother asked him to open a can for her. Michael replied that he would be delighted. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance.

One night, after we had turned out the light in silence, Michael whispered to me that he had the feeling, sometimes, that I didn't love him any more. He said this calmly, as if reciting the name of some mineral.

"I'm depressed," I said, "that's all."

Michael was understanding. My condition. My poor health. Difficult circumstances. He may have used the words "psycho-physical," "psychosomatic." All the winter a wind stirs the tops of the pine trees in Jerusalem, and when it dies away it leaves not a trace on the pines. You are a stranger, Michael. You lie next to me at night, and you are a stranger.

O
UR SON
Y
AIR
was born in March 1951.

My late father's name, Yosef, had been given to my brother Emanuel's son. My son was given two names, Yair and Zalman, in memory of Michael's grandfather, Zalman Ganz.

Yehezkel Gonen came up to Jerusalem on the day after the birth. Michael brought him to see me in the maternity ward of Shaare Zedek Hospital, a dark and depressing place built in the last century. The plaster on the wall opposite my bed was peeling, and as I stared at the wall I discovered weird shapes, a jagged mountain range or dark women frozen in hysterical convulsions.

Yehezkel Gonen, too, was dark and depressing. He sat for a long time by my bedside, holding Michael's hand and tediously recounting his troubles: How he had come from Holon to Jerusalem, how from the bus station he had gone by mistake to Mea Shearim instead of Mekor Baruch. There were corners of Mea Shearim, among the twisted stairways and sagging washlines, which had reminded him of the poor areas of Radom in Poland. We couldn't possibly imagine, he said, how great was his pain, his longing, how deep his sadness. Well, he got to Mea Shearim, and he asked, and they told him, and he asked again, and they misdirected him again—he wouldn't have believed that Orthodox children were capable of such tricks, or perhaps there's a deceptive quality in the side streets of Jerusalem. Finally, tired and worn out, he had managed to find the house, and even that had been more by chance than anything else. "Still, all's well that ends well, as they say. That's not the point. The point is that I want to kiss your forehead—so—to give you my best wishes and also those of Michael's aunts, to hand over this envelope—there's a hundred and forty-seven pounds in it, the rest of my savings—flowers I'm sorry but I've forgotten to bring you, and I beg and implore you to call my grandson Zalman."

When he had finished speaking, he fanned himself with his battered hat to refresh his weary face and sighed with relief at having finally rolled the great stone from the mouth of the well.

"The reason for the name Zalman I should like to explain to you briefly, in a few words. I have a sentiment about it. Does all this talking tire you, my dear? Well then, I have a sentiment. Zal-man was the name of my father, our dear Michael's grandfather. Zalman Ganz was a remarkable man in his way. It is your duty to honor his memory, as good Jews should. Zalman Ganz was a teacher, and a very fine teacher indeed. One of the best. He taught natural sciences in the Hebrew teachers college in Grodno. It was from him that Michael received his aptitude for science. Well then, to come straight to the point. I am begging you. I have never asked you for anything before. By the way, when will they let me see the baby? So. I've never asked you for anything before. I have always given you everything I've had to offer. And now, my dear children, I am asking you for a favor, a very special favor. It means a great deal to me ... Please will you name my grandson Zalman."

Yehezkel rose and left the room so that Michael and I could discuss the matter. He was a considerate old man. I didn't know whether to laugh or to scream. "Zalman"—what a name!

Michael very cautiously put forward the suggestion that the birth certificate should carry the double name "Yair-Zalman." He suggested, but he did not insist. The final decision was mine. Until the child grew up, Michael proposed that we should keep his second name a secret, so as not to make our son's life a misery.

How wise you are, my Michael. How very wise.

My husband stroked my cheek. He asked what extra things I wanted him to buy on the way home. Then he said goodbye and went outside to announce the compromise to his father. I imagine that my husband praised me to his father for consenting readily to an arrangement which any other woman, and so on.