Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Amos Oz

Title Page

Epigraph

Black Box

Acknowledgment

Copyright

About the Book

A powerful and tragicomic blend of politics and personal destiny, Black Box records in a series of letters the wrecked marriage of Ilana and Alex. Seven years of silence following their bitter divorce is broken when Ilana writes to Alex for help over their wayward and illiterate son, Boaz, and old emotional scars are reopened.

About the Author

Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz studied philosophy and literature at Hebrew University and is one of Israel’s finest living writers, as well as a respected political commentator and campaigner for peace in the Middle East. He is the author of many previous works of fiction, including My Michael, To Know a Woman, Black Box, Don’t Call It Night and, most recently, The Same Sea, as well as acclaimed works of non-fiction, In the Land of Israel, The Slopes of Lebanon, Israel, Palestine & Peace and The Story Begins. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and he has won many international literary awards. Amos Oz is married, with two daughters and a son, and lives in Arad, Israel.

Black Box was the winner of the Prix Femina Etranger 1988, and the H. H. Wingate/Jewish Quarterly Prize.

ALSO BY AMOS OZ

Fiction

Elsewhere, Perhaps

Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

Unto Death

The Hill of Evil Counsel

Where the Jackals Howl

A Perfect Peace

My Michael

To Know a Woman

Fima

Don’t Call It Night

Panther in the Basement

The Same Sea

Non Fiction

In the Land of Israel

The Slopes of Lebanon

Israel, Palestine & Peace

The Story Begins

For Children

Soumchi

But you, you knew the night is still and silent,

And I alone remain alert and brood.

I am the only victim of your weeping:

The beast has fixed his eye on me to be his only food.

At times I shudder suddenly and tremble,

I wander, lost, and panic drives me wild:

I hear you calling me from all directions,

I feel like a blind man being tormented by a child.

But you, you hid your face. You did not stop me,

With pigeon’s blood and darkness in your tears,

Entangled in the dark, remotely sobbing,

Where memory or sense or understanding disappears.

From “Weeping” by Natan Alterman

Dear Alec,

If you didn’t destroy this letter the moment you recognized my handwriting on the envelope, it shows that curiosity is stronger than hatred. Or else that your hatred needs fresh fuel.

Now you are going pale, clenching your wolfish jaws in that special way of yours, so that your lips disappear, and storming down these lines to find out what I want from you, what I dare to want from you, after seven years of total silence between us.

What I want is that you should know that Boaz is in a bad way. And that you should help him urgently. My husband and I can’t do anything, because Boaz has broken off all contact. Like you.

Now you can stop reading, and throw this letter straight on the fire. (For some reason I always imagine you in a long, book-lined room, sitting alone at a black desk, with white snow-covered plains stretching away beyond the window opposite. Plains without hill or tree, dazzling arid snow. And a fire blazing in the fireplace on your left, and an empty glass, and an empty bottle on the empty desk in front of you. The whole image is in black and white. You too: monkish, ascetic, haughty, and all in black and white.)

Now you crumple up the letter, humming in a British sort of way, and shoot it accurately onto the fire: what do you care about Boaz? And, in any case, you don’t believe a word I’m saying. Here you fix your grey eyes on the flickering fire and say to yourself: She’s trying to pull a fast one again. That female won’t ever give up or let be.

Why then am I writing to you?

In despair, Alec. Of course, when it comes to despair, you’re a world authority. (Yes, naturally, I read—like everybody else—your book The Desperate Violence: A Study in Comparative Fanaticism.) But what I am talking about now is not your book but the substance of which your soul is fashioned: frozen despair. Arctic despair.

Are you still reading? Feeding your hatred of us? Tasting schadenfreude like expensive whisky, in small sips? If so, I’d better stop teasing you, and concentrate on Boaz.

The plain fact is that I haven’t the faintest idea how much you know. I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it turned out that you knew every detail, that you have instructed your lawyer, Zakheim, to send you monthly reports about our lives, that you’ve been keeping us on your radar screen all these years. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be astonished to discover that you don’t know anything at all: neither that I’ve married a man called Michael (Michel-Henri) Sommo, nor that I’ve had a daughter, nor what’s become of Boaz. It would be just like you to turn your back with one brutal gesture and cut us once and for all out of your new life.

After you kicked us out, I took Boaz and we went to stay with my sister and her husband in their kibbutz. (We didn’t have anywhere else to go, and we didn’t have any money, either.) I lived there for six months and then I came back to Jerusalem. I worked in a bookshop. Meanwhile Boaz stayed in the kibbutz for another five years, until he was thirteen. I used to go and see him every three weeks. That’s how it was until I married Michel, and ever since then the boy has called me a whore. Just like you. He didn’t come to see us once in Jerusalem. When we told him our daughter (Madeleine Yifat) was born, he slammed the phone down.

Then two years ago he suddenly turned up one winter’s night at one o’clock in the morning to inform me that he was through with the kibbutz, and either I send him to an agricultural high school or he’ll go and “live on the streets” and that’ll be the last I’ll hear from him.

My husband woke up and told him to get out of his wet clothes, eat something, have a good wash, and go to bed, and tomorrow morning we’d talk. And the boy (even then, at thirteen and a half, he was a good bit taller and broader than Michel) replied, as though he were crushing an insect underfoot, “And who are you, anyway? Who asked you?” Michel chuckled and answered, “I suggest you step outside, chum, calm down, change the cassette, knock on the door, and come in all over again, and this time try to act like a human being instead of a gorilla.”

Boaz turned toward the door. But I put myself between him and the doorway. I knew he wouldn’t touch me. The baby woke up and started crying, and Michel went off to change her and warm some milk for her in the kitchen. I said, “All right, Boaz. You can go to agricultural school if that’s what you really want.” Michel, standing there in his underwear holding the baby, who was quiet, added, “Only on condition you say ‘sorry’ to your mother and ask nicely and then say ‘thank you.’ What are you, anyway, a horse?” And Boaz, his face contorted with that desperate loathing and contempt he’s inherited from you, whispered to me, “And you let that thing fuck you every night?” and immediately afterward he stretched his hand out and touched my hair and said, in a different voice, which wrings my heart when I remember it, “But your baby’s quite pretty.”

Then (thanks to the influence of Michel’s brother) we got Boaz into Telamim Agricultural High School. That was two years ago, at the beginning of 1974, not long after the war that you—so I was told—came back from America to take part in as commander of a tank battalion in the Sinai, before running off again. We even gave in to his request not to go and visit him. We paid the fees and kept quiet. That is to say, Michel paid. Well not exactly Michel, either.

We did not receive so much as a single postcard from Boaz during these two years. Only alarms from the headmistress. The boy is violent. The boy got in a quarrel and smashed open the night watchman’s head. The boy disappears at night. The boy has a police record. The boy has been put on probation. The boy will have to leave the school. This boy is a monster.

And what do you remember, Alec? The last thing you saw was a creature of eight, long and thin and sandy, like a cornstalk, standing silently for hours on end on a stool, leaning on your desk, concentrating, making model airplanes out of balsa for you from do-it-yourself booklets you brought him—a careful, disciplined, almost timid child, although even then, at the age of eight, he was capable of overcoming humiliations with a kind of silent, controlled determination. And in the meantime, like a genetic time bomb, Boaz is now sixteen, six foot three and still growing, a bitter, wild boy whose hatred and loneliness have invested him with astonishing physical strength. And this morning the thing that I have been expecting for a long time finally happened: an urgent telephone call. They have decided to throw him out of the boarding school, because he assaulted one of the women teachers. They declined to give me the details.

Well, I went down there at once, but Boaz refused to see me. He merely sent word that he didn’t want “to have anything to do with that whore.” Was he talking about the teacher? Or about me? I do not know. It turned out that he had not exactly “assaulted” her: he had uttered some sick joke, she had given him a slap in the face, and he had instantly given her two in return. I pleaded with them to postpone the expulsion until I could make other arrangements. They took pity on me and gave me a fortnight.

Michel says that, if I like, Boaz can stay here with us (even though the two of us and the baby live in one and a half rooms, for which we are still repaying the mortgage). But you know as well as I do that Boaz won’t agree to that. That boy loathes me. And you. So we do have something in common, you and I, after all. I’m sorry.

There’s no chance that they’ll take him at another vocational school, either, with his police record and the probation officer on his back. I’m writing to you because I don’t know what to do. I’m writing to you even though you won’t read this, and if you do, you won’t reply. At the very best you’ll instruct your lawyer Zakheim to send me a formal letter begging to remind me that his client still denies paternity, that the blood test did not produce an unambiguous result, and that it was I who at the time adamantly opposed a tissue test. Checkmate.

Yes, and the divorce released you of any responsibility for Boaz and any obligation toward me. I know all that by heart, Alec. I have no room for hope. I am writing to you as though I were standing at the window talking to the mountains. Or to the darkness between the stars. Despair is your field. If you like, you can treat me as a specimen.

Are you still thirsting for vengeance? If so, I am hereby turning the other cheek. Mine, and Boaz’s too. Go ahead, hit as hard as you can.

Yes, I will send you this letter, even though just now I put the pen down and made up my mind not to bother; after all, I’ve nothing to lose. Every way ahead is blocked. You have to realize this: even if the probation officer or the social worker manages to persuade Boaz to undergo some kind of treatment, rehabilitation, aid, a transfer to another school (and I don’t believe they’d succeed), I haven’t got the money to pay for it.

Whereas you’ve got plenty, Alec.

And I have no connections, whereas you can get anything fixed up with a couple of phone calls. You are strong and clever. Or at least you were seven years ago. (People have told me you’ve had two operations. They couldn’t tell me what sort.) I hope you’re all right now. I won’t say more than that, so you won’t accuse me of hypocrisy. Flattery. Bootlicking. And I won’t deny it, Alec: I’m still prepared to lick your boots as much as you like. I’ll do anything you ask of me. And I mean anything. Just so long as you rescue your son.

If I had any brains, I’d cross out “your son” and write “Boaz,” so as not to infuriate you. But how can I cross out the plain truth? You are his father. And as for my brains, didn’t you make up your mind a long time ago that I’m a total moron?

I’ll make you an offer. I’m prepared to admit in writing, in the presence of a notary, if you like, that Boaz is the son of anyone you want me to say. My self-respect was killed long ago. I’ll sign any bit of paper your lawyer puts in front of me if, in return, you agree to give Boaz first aid. Let’s call it humanitarian assistance. Let’s call it an act of kindness to a totally strange child.

It’s true; when I stop writing and conjure him up, I stand by these words: Boaz is a strange child. No, not a child. A strange man. He calls me a whore. You he calls a dog. Michel, “little pimp.” He calls himself (even on official documents) by my maiden name, Boaz Brandstetter. And the school we had to pull strings to get him into, at his own request, he calls Devil’s Island.

Now I’ll tell you something you can use against me. My in-laws in Paris send us a little money each month to keep him in this boarding school, even though they have never set eyes on Boaz and he has probably never so much as heard of their existence. And they are not at all well off (they’re immigrants from Algeria), and they have, besides Michel, five more children and eight grandchildren, in France and Israel.

Listen, Alec: I’m not going to write a word about what happened in the past. Apart from one thing, something I’ll never forget, even though you’ll probably wonder how on earth I know about it. Two months before our divorce, Boaz was taken to Shaarei Zedek Hospital with a kidney infection. And there were complications. You went without my knowledge to Dr. Blumenthal to find out whether, if necessary, an adult could donate a kidney to an eight-year-old child. You were planning to give him one of your own kidneys. And you warned the doctor that you would make only one condition: that I (and the child) should never know. And I didn’t until I made friends with Dr. Adorno, Blumenthal’s assistant, the young doctor you were planning to sue for criminal negligence over Boaz’s treatment.

If you are still reading, at this moment you’re probably going even whiter, snatching up your lighter with a gesture of strangled violence and putting the flame to your lips (because your pipe isn’t there) and saying to yourself all over again: Of course. Dr. Adorno. Who else? And if you haven’t destroyed the letter already, this is the moment when you destroy it. And me and Boaz too.

And then Boaz got better and then you kicked us out of your house, your name, and your life. You never donated any kidney. But I do believe that you seriously intended to. Because everything about you is serious. That much I will grant you—you are serious.

Flattering you again? If you want, I plead guilty. Flattering. Bootlicking. Going down on my knees in front of you and hitting my forehead on the ground. Like the good old days.

Because I’ve got nothing to lose and I don’t mind begging. I’ll do whatever you command. Only don’t take too long, because in a fortnight they throw him out on the street. And the street is out there waiting for him.

After all, nothing in the world is beyond you. Unleash that monster of yours, your lawyer. Maybe with some string pulling they’ll take him into the naval college. (Boaz has a strange attraction to the sea; he has had ever since he was a small child. Do you remember, Alec, in Ashkelon, the summer of the Six-Day War? The whirlpool? Those fishermen? The raft?)

And one last thing, before I seal this letter: I’ll even sleep with you if you want. When you want. And any way you want. (My husband knows about this letter and even agreed that I should write it—apart from the last sentence. So now if you feel like destroying me, you can simply photocopy the letter, underline the last sentence with your red pencil, and send it to my husband. It’ll work like a charm. I admit it: I was lying when I wrote earlier that I have nothing to lose.)

And so, Alec, we are now all completely at your mercy. Even my little daughter. And you can do anything you like to us.

Ilana (Sommo)

——

EXPRESS

Dear Madam,

Your letter of the 5th inst. was forwarded to me only yesterday from the United States. I shall refer to only a small part of the matters you chose to raise therein.

This morning I spoke on the telephone with an acquaintance in Israel. Following this conversation the headmistress of your son’s school telephoned me on her own initiative. It was agreed between us that the expulsion is canceled and his record will simply carry a warning. If, nevertheless, your son prefers—as is vaguely hinted in your letter—to transfer to a cadet school, I have reasonable grounds for supposing that that can be arranged (via my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim). Mr. Zakheim will also convey to you a check in the sum of two thousand dollars (in Israeli pounds and in your husband’s name). Your husband will be asked to acknowledge in writing receipt of this sum as a gift to you on account of hardship, and not in any sense as a precedent or as an admission of any obligation on our part. Your husband will also be required to give an assurance that no further appeals will be forthcoming from you in the future (I hope that his indigent and very extended family in Paris is not planning to follow your example and demand pecuniary favors from me). Over the remaining contents of your letter, including the gross lies, the gross contradictions, and the simple common, or garden, grossness, I shall pass in silence.

[Signed] A. A. Gideon

P.S: I am retaining your letter.

——

Dear Alec,

As you know, last week we signed on the dotted line and received the money from your lawyer. But now Boaz has left his school and he has been working for several days in the central market in Tel Aviv with a wholesale greengrocer who is married to one of Michel’s cousins. It was Michel who fixed him up with the job, at Boaz’s request.

This is how it happened: After the headmistress told Boaz the news that he was not going to be expelled, but only cautioned, the boy simply picked up his kit bag and disappeared. Michel got in touch with the police (he has some relations there), and they informed us that they were holding the kid in custody in Abu Kabir for possession of stolen goods. A friend of Michel’s brother, who has a senior position in the Tel Aviv police, had a word with Boaz’s probation officer on our behalf. After some complications we got him out on bail.

We used part of your money for this. I know that was not what you had in mind when you gave it to us, but we simply don’t have any other money: Michel is merely a nonqualified French teacher in a religious state school, and his salary after deduction of our mortgage payments is barely enough to feed us. And there is also our little girl (Madeleine Yifat, almost three).

I must tell you that Boaz hasn’t the faintest idea where the money for his bail came from. If he had been told, I think he would have spat on the money, the probation officer, and Michel. As it was, to start with he flatly refused to be released and asked to be “left alone.”

Michel went to Abu Kabir without me. His brother’s friend (the police officer) arranged for him and Boaz to be alone together in the office at the police station, so they could talk privately. Michel said to him, Look, maybe you’ve somehow forgotten who I am. I’m Michael Sommo and I’m told that behind my back you call me your mother’s pimp. You can say it right to my face if it’ll help you let off steam. And then I could come back at you and tell you you’re off your rocker. And we could stand here swearing at each other all day, and you wouldn’t win, because I can curse you in French and in Arabic and you can barely manage Hebrew. So when you run out of swearwords, what then? Maybe better you should get your breath back, calm down, and make me a list, what exactly it is you want from life. And then I’ll tell you what your mother and I can give. And then we’ll see—perhaps we can strike a deal.

Boaz replied that he didn’t want anything at all from life, and the last thing he wanted was to have all sorts of people coming along asking him what he wanted from life.

At this point Michel, who has never had it easy, did just the right thing. He simply got up to go and said to Boaz, Well, if that’s the way it is, the best of luck, chum. As far as I’m concerned, they can put you in an institution for the mentally retarded or the educationally subnormal, and that’s that. I’m off.

Boaz tried to argue; he said to Michel, So what? I’ll murder someone and run away. But Michel just turned around in the doorway and answered quietly: Look here, honey child. I’m not your mother and I’m not your father and I’m not your anything, so don’t go putting on a show for me, ’cause what do I care about you? Just make your mind up in the next sixty seconds if you want to leave here on bail, yes or no. For all I care, you can murder whoever you like. Only, if you can, just try to miss. Good-bye.

And when Boaz said, Hang on, Michel knew at once that the boy blinked first. Michel knows this game better than any of us, because he has seen life most of the time from the underneath, and suffering has made him into a human diamond—hard and fascinating (yes, in bed too, if you must know). Boaz said to him: If you really don’t care about me, why did you come all the way from Jerusalem to bail me out? And Michel laughed from the doorway and said, Okay, two points to you. The fact is I actually came to see close up what sort of a genius your mother had; maybe there’s some potential in the daughter she had by me, as well. Are you coming or aren’t you?

And that’s how it happened that Michel got him freed with your money and invited him to a kosher Chinese restaurant that’s opened recently in Tel Aviv and they went to see a movie together (anyone sitting behind them might have got the idea that Boaz was the father and Michel the son). That night Michel came back to Jerusalem and told me the whole story, and meanwhile Boaz was already fixed up with the wholesale greengrocer from the market in Carlebach Street, the one who’s married to Michel’s cousin. Because that’s what Boaz told him he wanted: to work and earn money and not be dependent on anyone. So Michel answered him then and there, without consulting me: Yes, I like that, and I’ll fix it up for you this very evening right here in Tel Aviv. And he did.

Boaz is staying now at the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv: one of the people in charge there is married to a girl who studied with Michel in Paris back in the fifties. And Boaz is rather attracted by the Planetarium. No, not by the stars, but by the telescopes and by optics.

I am writing this to you with all the details about Boaz with Michel’s consent. He says that since you gave the money, we owe it to you to let you know what we’re doing with it. And I think you’ll read this letter several times over. I think you also read my first letter several times. And I enjoy thinking about the fury I’ve caused you with these two letters. Being furious makes you masculine and attractive, but also childlike and almost moving: you start to waste an enormous amount of physical effort on fragile objects like pen, pipe, glasses. Not to smash them but to master yourself and to shift them two inches to the right or an inch to the left. This waste is something I treasure, and I enjoy imagining it taking place now, as you read my letter, there in your black-and-white room, between the fire and the snow. If you have some woman who sleeps with you, I admit that at this moment I am jealous of her. Jealous even of what you are doing to the pipe, the pen, the glasses, my pages between your strong fingers.

To return to Boaz: I’m writing to you as I promised Michel I would. When we get the bail money back, the whole sum you presented to us will go into a savings account in your son’s name. If he decides to study, we’ll finance his studies with this money. If he wants to rent himself a room in Tel Aviv or here in Jerusalem, despite his young age, we’ll rent him one with your money. We won’t take anything from you for ourselves.

If you agree to all this, you don’t have to answer me. If not, let us know as soon as possible, before we’ve used the money, and we’ll return it to your lawyer and manage without it (even though our finanacial situation is pretty bad).

One more request:

Either destroy this letter and the previous one, or—if you have decided to use them—do it now, right away, don’t keep dithering. Every day that goes by and every night is another hill and another valley that death has captured from us. Time is passing, Alec, and both of us are fading.

And another thing: You wrote to me that you responded to the lies and contradictions in my letter with silent contempt. Your silence, Alec, and your contempt too make me suddenly fearful. Have you really not found in all these years, in all your travels, anyone who could offer you a single crumb of gentleness? I’m sorry for you, Alec. What a terrible business: I’m the one who did wrong, and you and your son are paying the full penalty. If you like, scrub out “your son” and write Boaz. If you like, scrub out the whole lot. As far as I’m concerned, don’t hesitate, just do anything that’ll relieve your suffering.

Ilana

——

REGISTERED POST

Dear Sir,

With your knowledge—and, as she herself claims, with your encouragement—your wife has recently seen fit to send me two long and rather perplexing letters which do her no credit. If I have succeeded in penetrating her vague language, there are indications that her second letter is also intended to hint to me about your pecuniary shortcomings. And I will wager that you, sir, are the puppet-master who lurks behind her demands.

Circumstances make it possible for me (without any special sacrifice on my part) to come to your assistance once again. I have instructed my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim, to transfer to your bank account an additional contribution of five thousand dollars (in your name, in Israeli pounds). If this does not suffice, either, I must ask you, sir, not to address me again via your wife and in ambiguous terms but to inform me (through Mr. Zakheim) of the final and absolute sum you require to solve all your various problems. If you will be good enough to specify a reasonable sum, you are likely to find me ready to go some way toward meeting you. All this on condition that you do not bother me with inquiries into my motives for giving the money, or with effusive expressions of gratitude in the Levantine style. I, for my part, naturally refrain from pronouncing any judgment on the values and principles which permit you to demand and to accept financial assistance from me.

With all due respect,

A. A. Gideon

——

LOCAL

Respected Sir,

Following our telephonic conversation of yesterday: we require in toto a sum of some sixty thousand dollars U.S. to pay off our mortgage and construct an additional room and a half, and another like sum to settle the future of the son and likewise that of the little girl, amounting in all to one hundred and eighty thousand dollars U.S. There is requested further a contribution in the sum of ninety-five thousand dollars U.S. toward the purchase and renovation of Alkalai House in the Jewish Quarter of Old Hebron (a Jewish property that was seized by force by Arab rioters during the 1929 riots, which we are now attempting to repossess, not by violence, but by paying the full market price).

Thanking you in anticipation for your trouble, sir, and with deep respect to Dr. Gideon, whose scientific writing has inspired admiration in our country and increased the honor of the Jewish people among the nations, and with all good wishes for a happy Purim,

Yours faithfully,

Ilana and Michael (Michel-Henri) Sommo

——

A GIDEON HOTEL EXCELSIOR WEST BERLIN

ALEX PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME IMMEDIATELY IS IT BLACKMAIL SHOULD I PLAY FOR TIME SHOULD I INVOLVE ZAND AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS MANFRED

PERSONAL ZAHKEIM JERUSALEM ISRAEL

SELL PROPERTY ZIKHRON YAAKOV IF NECESSARY ALSO BINYAMINA ORANGE GROVE PAY THEM EXACTLY ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND CHECK HUSBANDS BACKGROUND SOONEST CHECK BOYS CONDITION SEND PHOTOCOPY DIVORCE PAPERS RETURNING LONDON END OF WEEK ALEX

——

Ilana,

You asked me to think about it for a day or two and let you know my opinion. You know as well as I do that whenever you ask for someone else’s opinion, or advice, what you are really asking for is their approval for something you have already done or decided to do. Never mind—I’ve decided to write anyway, to clarify for myself how it was that we parted on bad terms.

The evening I spent with you last week reminded me of the bad old days. I was in a panic when I got home. Even though on the surface everything was as usual, apart from the rain that didn’t stop all night. And apart from Michel, who was looking tired and gloomy. He spent an hour and a half putting up those bookshelves, with Yifat passing him the tools, and at one point when I got up to help him by holding two uprights for him, you mockingly suggested from the kitchen that I should take him back to the kibbutz with me because his talents are wasted here. Then he sat at his desk in his flannel pajamas and dressing gown, marking his students’ exercise books in red ink. He marked exercise books all through the evening. In a corner of the room the kerosene heater glowed, Yifat played for a long time on the straw mat with the toy lamb I’d bought her at the bus station, there was a concerto for flute with Rampal on the radio, you and I sat in the kitchen whispering to each other, and on the surface we were having a quiet family evening together. Michel was withdrawn, and you didn’t address more than twenty words to him the whole evening. Nor to Yifat or me, if it comes to that. You were all wrapped up in yourself. When I told you about the children being ill, about Yoash’s new job in the plastics factory in the kibbutz, about the executive committee’s decision to send me to take a course on cooking for special diets, you were only half listening; you didn’t ask a single question. It didn’t take me long to realize that, as usual, you were waiting for me to finish my trivial report before moving on to your own fateful dramas. That you were waiting for me to ask. So I asked. But I didn’t get an answer. Michel came into the kitchen, spread margarine and cheese on a piece of bread, made himself a cup of instant coffee, and promised that he wouldn’t disturb us, and that he would soon go and put Yifat to bed, so that we could carry on our conversation without interruption. When he’d gone, you told me about Boaz, about your two letters to Alex, about the two payments he made you, and about Michel’s decision “to demand from him this time every last penny he owes,” on the assumption “that perhaps the so-and-so is finally beginning to acknowledge his sins.” The rain hammered on the windows. Yifat fell asleep on the mat, and Michel managed to put her pajamas on her and get her into bed without waking her up. Then he put the television on softly, so as not to disturb us, watched the nine o’clock news, and quietly went back to his marking. You peeled vegetables for lunch the next day, and I helped you a little. You said to me: Look here, Rahel, it’s no good your judging us, you in your kibbutz, you’ve no idea what money is. And you said: I’ve been trying to forget him for seven years. And you also said: In any case, you can’t understand. Through the door I could see Michel’s curved back, his hunched shoulders, the cigarette he’d been clutching all evening, forcing himself not to light it because the windows were closed, and I thought to myself: She’s lying again. She’s even lying to herself. As usual. Nothing changes. But the only thing I said to you when you asked me to tell you what I thought was something like: Ilana, don’t play with fire. Be careful. You’ve had enough already.

To which you replied angrily: I knew you’d start going on at me.

I said: Ilana, if you don’t mind, I wasn’t the one who brought the subject up in the first place. And you said: But you made me. So I suggested we stop. And we did, because Michel came back into the kitchen, jokingly apologized for trespassing on the “women’s quarters,” washed and dried the supper things, and told us in that scorched voice of his about something he had seen on the news. Then he sat down with us, made a joke about “Polish tea,” yawned, asked after Yoash and the children, absentmindedly stroked both our heads, apologized, went to pick up Yifat’s toys from the mat, went out on the veranda for a smoke, said good night and went to bed. You said: After all, I can’t forbid him to meet Alex’s lawyer. And you said: To secure Boaz’s future. And without any obvious connection you added: Anyway, he’s present all the time in our lives.

I said nothing. And you, with suppressed loathing, called me dear old clever, normal Rahel, and added: Only, your normality is an escape from life.

I couldn’t contain myself. I said: Ilana, every time you use the word life I feel as though I’m in the theater.

You took offense. And cut the conversation short. You made up a bed for me, gave me a towel, and promised to wake me at six, so I could catch the bus for Tiberias. You sent me to bed and went back to the kitchen to sit alone and feel sorry for yourself. At midnight I went to the bathroom. Michel was snoring softly, and I saw you sitting in the kitchen in tears. I suggested you go to bed, I offered to sit with you, but when you said, in the second person plural, You leave me alone, I decided to go back to bed. The rain didn’t stop all night long. In the morning, before I left, while we were having our coffee, you whispered to me to think quietly for a day or two and let you know my thoughts. So I tried to think about what you had told me. If only you weren’t my sister, it would be easier for me. Still, I made up my mind to write to you that in my opinion Alex was a disaster for you, and Michel and Yifat are everything you have. As for Boaz, you ought to leave him in peace now, because any attempt to “hold out a maternal hand to him” will only increase his loneliness. And his distance from you. Don’t touch him, Ilana. If there’s any necessity to get involved again, leave Michel to take care of it. And as for Alex’s money, like everything else to do with him, that money has a curse on it. Don’t risk gambling away everything you’ve got. That’s my feeling. You asked me to write, so I have. Try not to be angry with me.

Rahel

All the best from Yoash and the kids. Give a kiss to Michel and Yifat. Be good to them. I’ve no idea when I’ll be in Jerusalem again. We’re having rain the whole time too, and a lot of power cuts.

——

My dear Alex,

If you think the time has come for me to go to hell, just send me a four-word telegram, “Manfred go to hell,” and I shall be on my way right away. But if, on the other hand, you’ve decided to take a look at a psychiatric ward from the inside, then would you please mind doing so alone, without me. I won’t get any kick out of it.

In accordance with your instructions and against my better judgment, yesterday I unfroze our citrus grove near Binyamina (but not the Zikhron Yaakov property: I haven’t quite taken leave of my senses yet). In any event, I can realize about one hundred thousand U.S. at twenty-four hours’ notice for you and hand it over to your lovely ex-wife’s husband, provided I have your final instructions to that effect.

However, I have permitted myself not to finalize the deal yet, so as to leave you an opportunity to change your mind and cancel your whole Father Christmas act without suffering any loss as yet (apart from my commission).

At least could you kindly let me have urgently some convincing evidence that you haven’t gone stark, staring mad: please excuse, my dear Alex, my caustic language. The only thing I’ve got left to do in the fine situation you’ve put me in is to send you a nice letter of resignation. The trouble is that I’m somewhat fond of you.

As you are well aware, for some thirty years your remarkable father shortened my life, before and during his sclerosis and even after he had already forgotten his own name and my name and how to spell Alex. And no one knows better than you do how hard I worked for five or six years to arrange for you to be appointed sole trustee of all his property, and without three-quarters of it disappearing in inheritance tax or senility tax or some other Bolshevik siphon. The whole exercise brought me—I shall not attempt to hide it from you—a measure of professional satisfaction, a fine apartment in Jerusalem, and even a bit of fun, for which I have paid, it would appear, with an ulcer. But if I had imagined then that in ten years’ time Volodya Gudonski’s one and only son would suddenly start dispensing fortunes to Les Misérables, I wouldn’t have made those titanic efforts to transfer the whole damn dowry intact from madman to madman—for what?

Allow me to inform you, Alex, that the slice that you are intending to hand to that pocket-sized zealot comes, at a rough calculation, to seven or eight percent of everything you own. And how can I be sure that tomorrow you won’t have another brainstorm and decide to parcel out the rest between the Home for Unmarried Fathers and the Shelter for Battered Husbands? And, if it comes to that, why should you give him money at all? Just because he deigned to marry your secondhand ex-wife? Or as emergency aid to the Third World? Or perhaps it’s reparations money for discrimination against Orientals? And if you have gone completely crazy, perhaps you wouldn’t mind making one tiny effort more: Go crazy at a slightly different angle, and leave all your property to my two grandchildren. I’ll arrange it for you without taking any commission. Surely we Germans have suffered here at least as much as the Moroccans have? Didn’t you despise us and trample all over us, you the Frenchified Russian aristocracy from the region of North Binyamina? And don’t leave out of the calculation, Alex, the fact that my grandchildren will invest your fortune in the development of the country! Electronics! Lasers! At least they won’t squander it on restoring ruins in Hebron and turning Arab shithouses into synagogues! For I have to inform you, my dear Alex, that your beloved Mr. Michel-Henri Sommo may be a little man, but he’s a great zealot. Not a noisy zealot, but of the latent variety: soft-spoken, polite, and ruthless. (See, when you can spare a moment, the chapter in your excellent book entitled “Between Fanaticism and Zealotry.”)

I checked Mr. Sommo out yesterday. Here in my office. He earns barely two thousand six hundred pounds a month, of which he contributes a quarter each month to a small national religious splinter group, roughly three fingers to the right of the Greater Israel Movement. Incidentally, you might have thought your dazzling wife, after trying out every fifth man in Jerusalem, had settled in the end for some Gregory Peck—well, it turns out that this Mr. Sommo begins (like the rest of us) on the ground, but he terminates abruptly at five foot three or thereabouts. In other words, he is a good head shorter than she is. Perhaps she bought him cheap, by the yard.

And so this African Bonaparte appears in my office wearing permanent-press slacks, a check jacket a little large for him, curly-haired, uncompromisingly clean-shaven, drenched in radioactive after-shave, sporting gold-rimmed spectacles, a gold watch on a gold watch chain, and a red-and-green necktie fastened with a gold tie-clasp, and on his head—as though to dispel any possible misunderstanding—a small skullcap.

It transpires that the gentleman is far from stupid. Particularly when it comes to money, or to manipulating guilt feelings, or to armor-piercing hints at all sorts of powerful relations he has strategically located in the municipality, the police, his party, and even in the revenue department. I can promise you almost for certain, Alex my dear, that one day you will see this Sommo sitting in Parliament and firing long, devastating patriotic salvos at do-gooders like you and me. So perhaps after all you should be watching out for him, instead of financing him?

Alex. What the hell do you owe them? You, who drove me mad during your divorce, in the best tradition of your deranged father, making me fight like a tiger to make sure she didn’t get a penny out of you, not a roof tile of the villa in Yefe Nof, not even the pen she was eventually forced to sign the papers with! It was only reluctantly that you agreed she could keep her underwear and a few pots and pans, as a special favor, and even then you stubbornly insisted on recording that this was “an ex gratia concession.”

So what’s come over you all of a sudden? Tell me, is somebody threatening you with something by any chance? If so, tell me all about it at once. Treat me like a family doctor. Send me a quick signal—and then you can sit back and watch me making mincemeat of them for you. It’ll be a pleasure.

Listen to me, Alex: The fact is, there’s no reason for me to get involved with your lunatic schemes. I’ve got a nice juicy case on the launching pad right now (concerning the property of the Russian Orthodox Church), and what I make from that, even if I lose it, is worth approximately twice the widow’s mite you have made up your mind to donate as a Passover gift to North African Jewry or the Association for Aging Nymphomaniacs. Go fuck yourself, Alex. Just give me my final instructions, and I’ll hand over whatever you like, whenever you like, to whomever you like. To each according to his greed.

Incidentally, the fact is, Sommo does not whine greedily. On the contrary, he speaks very nicely, in soft, rounded tones, with a smiling, didactic refinement, like a Catholic intellectual. These people have apparently undergone, on the way from Africa to Israel, a thoroughgoing refit in Paris. Outwardly he seems almost more European than you or me. In a nutshell, he could give Emily Post a few lessons in polite behavior.

I ask him, for example, if he has any notion why Professor Gideon is suddenly handing him the keys to the safe. And he smiles at me mildly, a sort of “come on, now” smile, as if I have put a truly childish question to him, beneath his dignity and mine, refuses to take one of my Kents and offers me one of his own Europas, but deigns—possibly as a gesture of Jewish solidarity—to accept a light from me. And he expresses his thanks and shoots me a sort of sharp look, which his gold-rimmed spectacles magnify like the look of an owl at midday: “I am sure Professor Gideon could answer that question better than I can, Mr. Zakheim.”

I contain myself and ask him whether a gift of the magnitude of a hundred thousand dollars does not at the very least arouse his curiosity. To which he replies: “Indeed it does, sir,” and shuts up like a clam. I wait for maybe twenty seconds for him to say something more before giving in and inquiring whether he has by chance any theory of his own on the matter. To which he replies calmly that, yes, he does indeed, but that, with my permission, he would prefer to hear my own theory.

Well, at this juncture I determine to fire at point-blank range; I put on the grim Zakheim face I use in cross-examinations, and shoot, with little pauses for added effect between the words: “Mr. Sommo. If you don’t mind, my theory is that somebody is putting strong pressure on my client. What you and your friends would call ‘hush money.’ And I am tempted to discover as quickly as possible who, and how, and why.” That ape, unabashed, smiles a sweet, sanctimonious smile at me and replies: “His sense of shame, Mr. Zakheim; that’s the only thing that’s putting pressure on him.” “Shame? On account of what?” I ask, and the answer is ready on the tip of his honeyed tongue even before I’ve finished asking: “For his sins, sir.” “What sins, for example?” “Putting others to shame, for example. Putting people to shame in Judaism is tantamount to shedding their blood.”

“And what are you, sir? Are you the tax collector? The bailiff?”

“Me?” he answers, without batting an eyelid. “My role is a purely symbolic one. Our Professor Gideon is a man of letters. He has a world-wide reputation. He is enormously respected. One might say admired. The only thing is, until he has put right what he has done wrong, all his good deeds count for nothing. Because they are built on sin. Now he is smitten with remorse, and it would seem that he is finally beginning to seek the path to repentance.”

“And you are the keeper of the gate of repentance, Mr. Sommo? You stand there and sell tickets?”

“I married his wife,” he says, fixing me, like a projector, with his eyes magnified three times in the lenses of his spectacles, “I healed her shame. And I also watch over his son’s footsteps.”

“At a price of one hundred dollars a day times thirty years, cash in advance, Mr. Sommo?”

And so, at last, I managed to ruffle his calm. The Parisian patina shattered and the African fury erupted like pus.

“Mr. Zakheim, with all due respect, you earn for your merry japes more money in half an hour than I have seen for all my labors. Kindly take note, Mr. Zakheim, that I did not ask to receive a penny from Professor Gideon. He was the one who offered. And it was not I who asked for the present meeting with you, sir. You asked to meet me. And now”—the little teacher suddenly got to his feet, and I had a momentary feeling that he was about to pick up a ruler from my desk and rap my over the knuckles; without offering his hand, barely concealing his loathing, he ejaculated—“and now, with your kind permission, I shall put an end to this conversation because of your malicious and indecent insinuations.”

And so I hastened to appease him. I effected what you might call an “ethnic withdrawal.” I put the blame on my impossible Germanic sense of humor. I begged him to be kind enough to ignore my unsuccessful joke and consider my last words as unsaid. And I immediately expressed an interest in the financial contribution he had sought from you toward some zealot monkey business in Hebron. Here he adopted an impassioned didactic air as, still standing on his short legs and with field-marshal-like gestures toward the map of the country on the wall of my office, he favored me with a free (apart from my time, which in any case you pay for on his behalf) mini-sermon on the subject of our right to the land, etc. I shall not weary you with matters we both know ad nauseam. The whole thing was embellished with Biblical quotations and allusions, and simplified, to boot, as though he thought me somewhat slow on the uptake.

I inquired of this miniature Maimonides whether he was aware of the fact that your political views happened to be more or less at the other end of the spectrum, and that all these lunatic schemes for Hebron were diametrically opposed to your publicly stated position.

He retained control of himself this time too. (I tell you, Alex, we shall hear more of this mad mahdi!) He replied patiently, in honeyed tones, that in his humble opinion “Dr. Gideon is currently undergoing, like so many other Jews, an experience of purification leading to intimations of repentance which will soon bring about a general change of heart.”

At this point—I shall not try to conceal it from you, my dear Alex—it was my turn to lose my European patina and to explode at him: What, in heaven’s name, gave him the idea that he knew what went on in your mind? How could he have the nerve, without even having met you, to decide for you—perhaps even for all of us—what is going on or what is going to go on in our hearts, even before we know it ourselves?

“Surely Professor Gideon is attempting even now to expiate the sins that stand between man and man. That is the reason why you invited me here to this meeting in your office, Mr. Zakheim. So why should we not take advantage of the occasion to open up, by means of this donation, a way to expiate the sins that divide man from the Almighty?”

And he was not content to leave until he had taken the trouble to explain to me the inherent ambiguity of the Hebrew word for blood, which can also mean money. Ecce homo.

How