"Where's Mr. Levi?"
Daddy looked at Mommy. Mommy said nothing. She was wearing summery white slacks and a low-cut, flower-patterned blouse. She looked as though she were going on a journey, too.
"Mr. Levi," I said. "The one who was here last night."
At the end of a silence Daddy spoke sadly:
"Mr. Nehamkin will get better, we hope. The doctor at Hadassah was optimistic. He's just had a slight stroke, and now he needs to rest."
"Did you take Mr. Levi to Hadassah, too?"
"Now go and wash, Uri," Daddy said, and he stressed the sh of "wash," as though telling me to be quiet.
"What have you both been up to?" I exclaimed with horror.
Mommy said nothing.
Daddy got up, emptied the ashtray, put the dirty cups in the sink, wiped the oilcloth with a damp rag, and dried it with a dish towel.
"If you like," he said, "you can come with us to visit Mr. Nehamkin in the hospital this afternoon. Provided they tell us on the phone that he's well enough to have visitors. Now go and wash. I've told you three times already."
"Not till you tell me where Mr. Levi is."
"Why does he keep tormenting me, this son of yours?"
Mommy said nothing.
Daddy made up his mind. He took me by the shoulders, then relaxed his grip; his lips touched my forehead.
"He's got a slight temperature," he said.
Suddenly he pulled me onto his lap and ran his hand over my hair, and his voice sounded sad but firm:
"Uri. You've been talking strangely ever since you got up. First of all, you wake up screaming in the night because you've had a bad dream, and then you get up before five o'clock and start to nag. All right. It's your age. It's understandable. We're not angry. But you must make an effort. Listen carefully. Last night we had two visitors: Ephraim Nehamkin and his father. The same as usual. In the middle of the night we had to call for an ambulance. I've already explained. Period. Now kindly go and get washed, if you don't mind. That's all."
I said:
"Mommy."
And suddenly, with a sob:
"You're both rotten."
I snatched a box of matches from beside the primus stove and rushed out of the kitchen and the house. I lit the fuses on all three bombs. None of them would light, even though I wasted one match after another. Ephraim had deceived me. I was nobody's lieutenant. The High Commissioner would never come to Schneller, and if he did come, I couldn't care less. Mr. Szczupak was selling dresses at Riviera Fashions. Mr. Nehamkin was going to die, and with him his springs of water. For all I cared, Ruhama could come and stay all night. There had never been a leopard in the Tel Arza woods. There would never be a Hebrew state. Even Abrasha's Linda had run away to Paris with the son of Barclay's Bank. You can watch me crying. Never mind. You'll cry, too, poor Bat-Amroi. You've also been thrown out of the house at half past five in the morning. Now there's just the two of us outside, and all the rest of Jerusalem's indoors. I'll take you somewhere far away the other side of the mountains and you'll teach me what my mother and Froike and the rest of them… Come on, Bat-Ammi, let's go. We won't be sad.
Bat-Ammi is sitting on a stone. She has blue gym shorts like mine, only fastened with elastic. And she has an orange shirt, and her brothers are nowhere around. There's nobody around. The sun is beginning to come out. Light is shining again off the drainpipes and windows and corrugated-iron walls, and the clouds are blazing. Fiery horsemen can be seen galloping on mountains of fire above the Kedron Valley, transfixing the foes of Israel with lances of fire. The same as usual. Go away, horsemen, go to Tel Aviv even and to the sea. Without me. Bat-Ammi has a notebook open on her lap and she stops writing and doesn't ask me to tell her what and she doesn't tell me to calm down.
What is Bat-Ammi writing in her notebook on a big stone in the yard at half past five in the morning? She is making a note in her autograph book: When snow is black and pigs can fly, only then will my memory die.
Shall I write something, too?
I write:
Our little bear is feeling ill,
He stayed up late and caught a chill.
Soon the shops will start opening. The greengrocer will put crates of grapes out on the sidewalk. The wasps will come. Singsong sounds of Talmud study will come from the synagogue. Father and his two assistants will start printing New Year's greeting cards. There's a pile of shirts waiting for Mommy to iron. And there's a minor miracle here this morning: the bread hasn't come yet, but the air is full of the smell of fresh-baked bread. I remember: we've got to go on waiting. What has been has been, and a new day is beginning.
1975
Longing
FROM DR. EMANUEL NUSSBAUM TO DR. HERMINE OSWALD, LATE OF KIBBUTZ TEL TOMER
Malachi Street, Jerusalem
September 2,1947
Dear Mina,
There is not much time left. You are probably in Haifa by now, perhaps packing your brassbound black leather trunk; your lips are pursed, you have just reprimanded some waiter or obsequious clerk, you are throbbing all over with efficiency and moral indignation, repeating to yourself over and over again, perhaps even aloud, the word "disgusting."
Or maybe you are not in Haifa. Perhaps you are already on board the ship bound for New York, sitting in your second-class cabin, wearing your reading glasses, digesting some uninspired article in one of your learned journals, untroubled and unexcited by the swell of the waves and the salt smell of the sea air, undistracted by the seagulls, the darkening expanse of the sea, or the strains of the tango wafting down from the ballroom. You are completely absorbed in yourself, no doubt. As always. Up to your ears in work.
I am simply guessing.
I do not know where you are at this moment. How could I know? You never answered either of the letters I wrote you two months ago, and you left no forwarding address. So, you've made up your mind to turn over a new leaf. Your gray eyes are fixed firmly on the future and on the assignments you have undertaken. You will not look back, remember, feel longing, regret. You are striding purposefully forward. Naturally, you are not entirely unacquainted with weakness of mind: after all, that is the subject of your research. But who can rival your firm resolve to turn over a new leaf from time to time? And you didn't leave me any address. I even wasted my time trying at the Kibbutz Tel Tomer office. She's through. Gone away. She's been invited to lecture in America. She may have left already. Sorry.
It is possible that eventually you will be stirred by courtesy or curiosity, and I shall suddenly receive an American postcard with a picture of colorful towers or some grandiose steel bridge. I have still not entirely given up hope, as I said to myself this morning while shaving. However, the sight of my face in the mirror almost stirs feelings of curiosity and sadness in me myself. And disgust, too. My illness has made my cheeks collapse inward, it has made my eyes so prominent that they terrify little children, and it has especially emphasized my nose, like a Nazi caricature. Symptoms. And my hair, that artistic gray mop that you used to enjoy running your fingers through for the static electricity, is all faded and thin. No more sparks. If it went on falling out at that rate for a few more months, I shouldn't have a hair left on my head. As if I had deliberately set out to make fun of the appearance of my dear father, by exaggerating it.
What have I to do with exaggeration? What have I to do with fun? I have always been, and still am, a quiet man. The happy medium, a balanced choice of words — these were always my pride. Albeit a silent pride. There were times, in our nights of love, when I would let go and a savage, pulsating side of me would temporarily take over. Now our love is finished, and I am my usual self again. I have settled back and found nothing. A salty waste. An arid plain. A few stray longings scattered here and there like thornbushes. You know. After all, inside you, too — forgive me — there is a barren desert. A different kind of desert, though. Scorched earth, a phrase I came across this morning in the paper in connection with the termination of the British Mandate.