Amos Oz - The Hill of Evil Counsel

Until you finally taught me to call you Jasmine, to unleash the panting satyr, to conjure up a Baghdad harem in low-ceilinged boardinghouses. To torment and be tormented. To scream aloud. Again and again to grovel at your feet when it was all over, while you lit a cigarette, shook out the match, and studied our love-making in precise terms, like a general returning to a battlefield to analyze the fighting and learn lessons for the future.

No, Mina, there is no bitterness, no regret. On the contrary. Unbearable longing. Longing for your rare words of praise. And longing for your rebukes. For your mockery, too. And for your fingers. My own Jasmine, I am a sick man now, I don't have much time left. One might say I fell into your clutches. Or one might say I loved you out of humiliation.

New paragraph.

Let me return to my record of the place and the time. As I have already said, here I am, on the lookout.

Jerusalem, evening, summer's ending, signs of autumn, a man of thirty-nine, already retired for reasons of serious ill health, sitting on his balcony writing to a girl friend, or a former girl friend. He is telling her what he can see, and also what he is thinking. What the purpose is, what can be called the "subject," I have already said I do not know.

The daylight has been fading for an hour and a quarter now, and it is still not quite dark. I am at rest. On the face of it, this is a peaceful hour. Every Saturday evening there is a miracle of sound in Jerusalem: even the noises of the children playing, the cars, and the dogs, and in the distance a woman singing on the radio — ail these sounds are assimilated into the silence. Even the shouting down the road. Even a stray burst of machine-gun fire from the direction of Sanhedriya. The silence cloaks it all. In other words, on Saturday evening total silence reigns in Jerusalem.

Now the church and convent bells have started to ring out from nearby and far away, and they, too, are inside the silence. Tomorrow is Sunday. The color of the sky is dark-gray with a segment of orange between the clouds. They are fast-moving autumn clouds. And there is a flock of birds flying past. Larks, perhaps. Various people pass below my balcony in Malachi Street. A woman from next door with a basket. A student with an armload of books. And now a boy and a girl walking past rapidly, separated from each other by a good yard or so, not exchanging a word, yet there is no doubt that they are together and that their hearts are at rest.

Opposite, on the corner of Zechariah Street, an old Arab woman is sitting on the sidewalk. A peasant woman. Cross-legged and almost motionless. In front of her there is a large brass tray full of figs for sale. At the edge of the tray, a little pile of coins, no doubt milliemes and half-piasters, her day's takings. She comes here all the way from Sheikh Badr, or perhaps even from Lifta or Malha. How calm she is, and what a long journey she still has to make this evening. Meanwhile she is waiting. Chewing something. Mint leaves? I do not know. Soon she will get up, I almost said arise, balance the tray on her head, and pick her way in the dark among the thistles and boulders. Like a fine network of nerves, the footpaths stretch across the fields, joining the suburbs to the villages all around Jerusalem. A slow, sturdy old woman, at peace with her body and the desolate mountains; my heart yearns for that peace. As she goes on her way, the yellow lights of the street lamps will come on all over the neighborhood. Then the ringing of the bells will cease, and only the sadness of the evening will remain. Iron shutters will be closed. All the doors will be locked. Jerusalem will be in darkness, and I shall be alone in its midst. Suppose I have an attack in the night. Will the child really watch out for the slanting crack of light at my bathroom window, will he really slip out and come to me, be at my command?

Panic seizes me at the very possibility of such a thought's occurring to me. No. Tonight, as usual, I shall be alone. Good night.

Sunday

September 7, 1947

Dear Mina,

I do not know what words one can use to describe to you a blue autumn morning such as we had here today, before the westerly wind blew up, bringing with it a cold, cloudy evening. The whole morning was flooded a deep sky-blue. Much more than a tone or a color: it was such a pure, concentrated blue that it felt like a potion. The buildings and plants responded with a general awakening, as though redoubling their hold on their own colors, or giving concrete expression to a national slogan that is current at the moment in the Hebrew newspapers and Underground broadcasts: To any provocation we shall react twofold; we are determined to stand by what is ours to the last.

That is to say, the blazing geraniums, for instance, in gardens, in backyards, in olive cans on verandas, in window boxes. Or the Jerusalem stone: this morning it is truly "shouting from the walls," in a powerful, concentrated gray. An unalloyed gray, like the color of your eyes. Or the flowering creeper climbing up the olive tree next to the grocer's, dotted all over with points of dark-blue brilliance. It all looked like a painting by an overenthusiastic amateur who has not learned, and has no wish to learn, the secret of understatement. I am almost tempted to use biblical Hebrew words, like sardius, beryl, carbuncle — even though the precise meaning of these words is unknown to me.

Should this miracle be attributed to the clarity of the desert air? To the breath of autumn? To my illness, perhaps? Or to some change that is impending? I have no answer to all these questions. I must try to define my feelings in words, and so I go back to writing: Today I feel painful longings for sights that are present, as though they were recollected images. As though they had already passed, perhaps as though they had passed beyond recall forever. Longings so powerful that I feel an urgent need to do something at once, something unusual, perhaps to put on a light jacket and go out for a walk. To the Tel Arza woods. Among the knitting mothers and their infants sprawled on rugs. To recall the Sunday outings of my childhood to the Vienna woods, and suddenly to sense a smell of other autumns, elsewhere, a smell of lakes, mushrooms, droplets of dew on the branches of fir trees, the smell of Lederhosen, the smoke of holiday-makers' campfires, the aroma of freshly ground coffee. How strange I must have seemed this morning to the neighbors' wives in the Tel Arza woods: Look, there is Dr. Nussbaum out for a walk, tall and elegantly dressed, his hands clasped behind his back, smiling to himself as he treads the pine needles underfoot, as though he has just discovered an amusing solution.

"Good morning, Dr. Nussbaum, how are you this morning, and what are they saying at the Jewish Agency?"

"Good morning, a beautiful morning, Mrs. Litvak, I'm fairly well, thank you, and how your lovely little boy is growing. Little girl, I'm sorry. But still lovely."

"As you know, sir, happy are we who have been permitted to behold the light of Jerusalem with the eyes of the flesh and not merely with the eyes of the spirit, and surely what our eyes behold today is as nothing compared to the light that tomorrow will bring. Happy is he who waits."

"Yes indeed, Mr. Nehamkin, yes indeed. It's a wonderful day today, and I am very glad to see you so hale and hearty."

"Since you are also out for a stroll, sir, permit me to accompany you. Together we shall walk, and together our eyes shall behold, for, as it is written, the testimony of two witnesses is valid."

Only in this case the two witnesses were none too healthy. We were soon tired. My neighbor the poet Nehamkin apologized and turned for home, but not before assuring me that a momentous change would soon take place in Jerusalem.

And I, as usual, turned into the Kapitanski brothers' milk bar for a vegetarian lunch: tomato soup, two fried eggs, eggplant salad, buttermilk, and a glass of tea. Then I came home, and, without any pill or injection, I fell into a deep afternoon sleep: as if I had been drinking wine.