In short, I accepted. Anyway, the man didn't wait for an answer. As if he had given me an order. Ever since I had drawn up that memo, or perhaps since Dushkin had spoken to me in his usual effusive way at some meeting, someone must have been crediting me with magical powers, or expecting me to be a sort of alchemist for them. In brief, they would be very pleased but not at all surprised if I turned up tomorrow morning, tonight, clutching the formula for a powerful explosive that could be manufactured quickly, cheaply, in any kitchen, and of which a minute quantity would have a devastating effect. There is a slogan current here at the moment that is repeated every evening by the Underground on their short-wave broadcasts: "When your back's to the wall, even the incredible is possible." Admittedly, you or I could easily refute this slogan on a philosophical plane. But nevertheless, for the time being I accept it, both out of a sense of loyalty and because, with a little effort, I can discern a certain poetry in it. A crude poetry, it is true, but then, if I may so express myself, the state of affairs at the moment is crude.
A minor miracle has just occurred. I have managed despite everything to bring the desk lamp from my study out onto the balcony. The extension cord was almost long enough. A slight compromise: I moved the table a little nearer to the door. But I'm still outside, surrounded by a halo of electric light, with incredible shadows flickering on the stone wall behind me, and now what do I care if it's dark.
By the way, I have already numbered my little pages: I shall have to concentrate. On what? On the main point. Dear Mina, let me try to define just what the main point is at the moment. I shall put my empty cup down on the pages, because the wind is liable to blow up without warning, as usual here in the evening in the early autumn.
Well, then.
It has occurred to me to set down in writing various details about myself, about my immediate surroundings, certain observations about Jerusalem, and, in particular, my district, Kerem Avraham: things seen and heard. No doubt here and there cautious comparisons will emerge, and certain memories may find their way in. Don't worry, Mina: I don't intend to emhellish or sully our shared memories in writing this. No chains around your new life. America, I have read, is a good and wonderful country where all eyes are constantly on the future, where even longing is directed to the future, and everybody agrees that the past is condemned to silence.
Have you arrived yet, Mina, have you discovered a quiet café among the towers and bridges where you can sit down, put on your glasses, and spread out your notes? Are you getting used to speaking Red Indian? Or are you still on the boat, on your way, just passing, say, the Azores? Does the name Sierra Madre mean something to you yet? Dear Mina, are you all right?
Perhaps it isn't too late yet.
Perhaps you are still in Haifa, packing, getting ready, and I could still catch the evening train, arrive before midnight, find you in some small boardinghouse on the Carmel, and sit with you in silence looking out over the dark water, the shadow of the Galilean hills, with British warships ablaze with lights in the bay, and one of them suddenly bursting into a plaintive moan.
I don't know.
My health isn't up to the journey, either.
And if I do come, and if I manage to find you, you're sure to say:
"Emanuel. Why have you come? And what a mess you look."
If I say that I've come to say good-bye, my voice will betray me. Or my lips will tremble. And you will remark with cold sorrow:
"That's not true."
I shall be forced into silence. There will be embarrassment, awkwardness, probably physical pains as well. I shall be a burden on you.
No journey. After all, I have no idea where you are.
I don't even know why I am writing you this long letter, what the subject is, what, as they say, is on the agenda, what I am writing to you about. I'm sorry.
It is evening now. I've already said that twice, but still the evening continues. Below me, on the sidewalk, some girls are playing hopscotch, and Uri, out of their sight, is following their skipping from his hiding place among the shrubs with a slow movement of the muzzle of his ray gun. Now he has stopped and is sunk in thought or in dreams. From where I am sitting, I can see his head and the silhouette of the gun. This child is always on guard and always seems to be asleep at his post. Soon the children will be going indoors. The cries will die away, but there will be no quiet. I have pains; one of them is particularly cruel, but I shall persist in ignoring it and concentrate on recording the place and the time. Dear Mina, please don't read these words with your patient, ironic smile; try for once to smile innocently or not at all. I hate your irony. Always effortlessly piercing the barrier of words, deciphering what lies behind them, always forgiving. How desolate. Are the birds really changing guard in the fig tree and the mulberry as the blaze of oleanders dies down in the garden? Evening has come. Barking of dogs far away, echo of bells, shooting, a raven's croak. Such simple, instant, trivial things — why do they all sound to me as though never again.
Now the moment is approaching when the light in Jerusalem is distorted. It is the light of the stone that is beginning to make itself felt, as if it were not the last traces of the sun setting behind the clouds but, rather, the walls, the ramparts, the distant towers projecting the inner light of their souls. At this point you may exhale your cigarette smoke through your nostrils, as usual, and say to yourself, "What, again."
You may, I said. Meaning, I can't prevent it.
I could never prevent anything. Whatever happened, happened because you wanted it.
You said to me once: Here we are, Emanuel and Mina, two educated people, two people with similar backgrounds, and yet there is no reason for them to establish a permanent relationship.
I agree. On the one hand, Dr. Nussbaum, a gentle man, a man beset by doubts: even when he wants something he always suspects his motives, and frequently his smile is confused, like that of a man who has finally dared to tell a story and immediately starts wondering: Is it funny, has it been understood, is it out of place. On the other, Dr. Oswald, a bitter, determined woman; ever her rare compromises are almost a matter of life and death. She stubs out her cigarettes as though she were trying to bore a hole in the bottom of the ashtray.
Surely we both knew in advance it would be a mistake.
Yet even so, you saw fit to be linked to me for a while. As for me — is it proper for a man like me, a man in my condition, to say so? — I loved you. I still do.
Jerusalem
September 3, 1947
Dear Mina,
In my dreams at night you come back to me in a gray-brown dress, with knowing fingers. Quiet. Even your voice in the dreams is different, calmer, warmer.
At midnight I had a snack: a roll with olives, tomato, cucumber. I gave myself my nightly injection and took two different pain-killing tablets. In bed I read a few pages of the journal of an acute English pilgrim who visited the Holy Land eighty years ago and saw Jerusalem in a dismal light. It was O'Leary who lent me the book. Then I turned off the light and heard the distant humming of engines, probably a British military convoy making its way to Ramallah and the mountains of Samaria. Drowsily, unconcernedly, I could see in my mind's eye the desolate valleys, the miserable stone-built villages, some sacred tree wrapped in darkness among the boulders, with perhaps a fox sniffing in its shadows, and farther on the caves, embers of bonfires, ancient olive trees, the sadness of the deserted goat tracks in the night, the rustling thistles in the scented, late-summer breeze, and the column of British jeeps with dimmed headlights winding up the mountain road. A very ancient land. Then there was a whispering on the steps of the house. My father and his lawyer in the passage, arguing, chuckling, I can hardly catch the words, but the subject is apparently some fraud, some investigation that threatens me, legal arguments that can still perhaps save me from some great disgrace. I lock the study door and rush to the kitchen. I must push my father almost roughly out of there, while the lawyer bows to me sadly and tactfully. In vain I search feverishly for the source of the damp smoke. I cough and almost choke. I must hurry. Any moment now, the British police may arrive, and Uri's parents would blame me for everything. And then your brown dress on the kitchen balcony, and suddenly you. I don't try to resist. I drape my jacket carefully over the back of the chair, roll up my vest, even guide you to the line of my diaphragm and almost enjoy the sight of your knowing fingers. Unerringly, painlessly, you rip open the skin, penetrate the rib cage, seek and find the affected gland, and extract the revolting fluid from it with forceps and a fine scalpel. There is no bleeding. No pain. The nerve endings are like white worms. The muscle tissue tears with the sound of ripping cloth. And I sit and watch your fingers operating inside my body as in an illustrated textbook. Look, Emanuel, you smile, it's all over. Thank you, I whisper. And I add: I'd like to get dressed. And then the gland itself, bloated and bluish-green, looking like a gigantic tick, swollen with pus, walking insectlike on thin, hairy legs slowly down my thigh, my calf, onto the floor; I throw the tin mug at it and miss, you crush it under the toe of your shoe, and a greasy jet squirts out. Now get dressed and we'll have a drink, you say, coffee, you say, but the shrewd light glints in your eye as you change your mind: You mustn't drink coffee, Emanuel, you must make do with fresh fruit until you are a little stronger. Your hands in my hair. I feel good. I say nothing. My child, you say, how cold you are. And how pale. Now close your eyes. Stop thinking. Sleep quietly. I obey. Inside my closed eyes the kitchen fades, and there is only the jam jar on the kitchen table, swarming with wormlike glands, hairy, damp, with insect antennae, and in the bread, too, in the fruit bowl, there is even one crawling up my pajama sleeve. Never mind. I am at rest. With my eyes closed I can hear your voice, a Russian song. Where did you get this Russian, from the kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, from the fields, take me there when my strength returns, and there I shall follow you. Dear Mina. At three o'clock, the bell of the clock tower in the Schneller Barracks pierces my sleep. I switch on the light; with a shaking hand I clutch the cup of cold tea, remove the glass saucer that covers it, have a sip, take another pill, and return to the English pilgrim and argue with him in my mind about the line of the watershed, which he unhesitatingly locates along the ridge of Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. With the dawn, I fall asleep again in the twilight, without turning off the light, and I hear you say that now you can reveal that you have borne me a child and lodged it in one of the kibbutzim in the valley to spare me the trouble of looking after it in my present condition. Your lips in my hair. You have not gone, Mina. No, I haven't gone. I am here. Every night I shall come to you, Emanuel, but during the day I must hide because of the searches and the curfew, until we have outwitted the enemy and the Hebrew state has gained its freedom. I fall asleep with my head in your lap and wake up to the sound of repeated bursts of sharp firing. Tonight the Irgun or the Stern Group has raided the British barracks again. Perhaps the first tentative engagements of the new war have begun. I get up.