Amos Oz - Panther in the Basement

So Chita Reznik had "done a Balaam."

Mr. Zerubbabel Gihon, our Bible and Judaism teacher, had explained to us in class:

"Doing a Balaam. When a curse comes out as a blessing. For instance, when the British minister Ernest Bevin said in Parliament in London that the Jews are a stubborn race, he did a Balaam."

Mr. Gihon had a habit of seasoning his lessons with witticisms that were not funny. He often used his wife as the butt of his jokes. For instance, when he wanted to illustrate the passage from the Book of Kings about whips and scorpions, he said: "Scorpions are a hundred times worse than whips. I afflict you with whips and my wife afflicts me with scorpions." Or: "There is a text that says, 'As the crackling of thorns under a pot.' Ecclesiastes, chapter seven. Like Mrs. Gihon trying to sing."

Once I said during supper:

"You know my teacher Gihon, hardly a day goes by when he isn't unfaithful to his wife in class."

My father looked at my mother and said:

"Your son has definitely taken leave of his senses." (My father was fond of the word "definitely." And also of the words "indubitably," "evidently," "yes indeed.")

My mother said:

"Instead of insulting him, why don't you try to find out what he's trying to say? You never really listen to him. Or to me. Or to anybody. All you ever listen to is the news on the radio."

"Everything in the world," Father replied calmly, refusing as usual to be drawn into an argument, "has at least two sides. As is well known to all but a few frenetic souls."

I didn't know what "frenetic souls" meant, but I did know that this was not the right moment to ask. So I let them sit facing each other in silence for nearly a full minute — they sometimes had silences that resembled arm wrestling — and only then did I say:

"Except a shadow."

My father shot me one of his suspicious glances, with his glasses halfway down his nose, nodding his head up and down, one of those looks that conjure up what we learned in Bible class, "he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes," and his blue eyes above his glasses shone at me in naked disappointment, with me and with young people in general and with the failure of the educational system that had been entrusted with a butterfly and had sent back a chrysalis:

"What do you mean 'shadow'? It's your brain that's the shadow."

My mother said:

"Instead of silencing him, why don't you find out what he's trying to say? He must be trying to say something."

And Father:

"Right. Yes indeed. Well then, what is Your Lordship getting at this evening? What mysterious shadow are you deigning to report to us about this time? 'Thou seest the shadow of mountains as if they were men'? 'As a servant desireth the shadow'?"

I got up to go to bed. I didn't owe him any explanation. Nevertheless, beyond the call of duty, I said:

"Except a shadow, Dad. You said a moment ago that everything in the world has at least two sides. And you were almost right. But you were forgetting that a shadow, for instance, has only one side. Go and check, if you don't believe me. You could even do an experiment or two. Didn't you yourself teach me that it's the exception that proves the rule and that one shouldn't generalize? You've forgotten what you taught me."

So saying, I cleared the table, then went to my room.

Sitting in my father's chair at his desk, I took down the big dictionary and the encyclopedia, and, just as I had learned to do from him, I started to compile a list of words on a blank card.

Traitor:turncoat, defector, deserter, renegade, informer, sneak, collaborator, stool pigeon, saboteur, spy, fifth columnist, plant, mole, foreign agent, double agent, agent provocateur, Brutus ( see Rome), Quisling ( see Norway), Judas (Christian usage). Adj.: treacherous, disloyal, faithless, unfaithful, perfidious, two-faced. Vb: betray, deceive, break faith, deal treacherously, defect, play false, rat. Phr.: snake in the grass, wolf in sheep's clothing, stab in the back, do the dirty. Bibl.: Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth (Prov. 25:19); they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men (Jer. 9:2); wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously? (Hab. 1:13).

I closed the dictionary. I felt dizzy. This list appeared to me like a thick forest with many bifurcating paths from which more and more tracks spread out, losing themselves in the thickets, winding tortuously, joining up for a while and diverging again, leading to hideaways, containing caverns, undergrowth, labyrinths, cells, crannies, forsaken valleys, wonder, and amazement. What connection is there between defect and desert, informer and adulterer, faithless and two-faced, saboteur and stabber, mole and rat? What dark deeds did Brutus and Quisling commit? And more: tracks and treks; tortuous and tortoise. (To this day I dare not open an encyclopedia or a dictionary when I am working. If I do, that's half a day lost.) I no longer cared what I was, a traitor, an argumentative child, a crazy child; all that morning I sailed on the wide seas of the encyclopedia, reaching savage war-painted tribes in Papua, strange craters on the surface of stars blazing with volcanic hellfire or, the opposite, frozen and wreathed in eternal darkness (is that where the shadow of death lurks?), landing on islands, wandering lost through primeval swamps, encountering cannibals and hermits, godforsaken black-skinned Jews from the days of the Queen of Sheba, and I read about the continents drifting away from each other at a rate of half a millimeter a year. (How long could they go on drifting apart? Surely in billions of years' time, because the earth is spherical, they would meet up again on the other side!) Then I looked up Brutus and Quisling and I was going to look for Judas, too, but on the way I stopped at light-years and they overwhelmed me with piercing pleasures.

At midday hunger drove me from the origins of the universe to the kitchen. I bolted down the food my mother had left for me in the icebox: grits, a meatball, soup, along with "Don't forget to heat it all up for a few minutes on the stove and remember to turn it off afterward." But I didn't heat it up: I couldn't spare the time. I was in a hurry to finish and get back to the vanishing galaxies. Suddenly I noticed under the door a folded note in Ben Hur's handwriting:

"To the low-down traitor take note. This evening at half past six present yourself without delay at the place you know in Tel Arza to face a Court Marshal for serious treachery, namely frattenizing with the British persecutor. Signed: FOD Organization, General Command, Department of Internal Security and Interrogation. NB: bring sweater, water bottle, and proper shoes because the questioning may last all night."

First of all I corrected with a pencil: fraternizing not frattenizing; Martial not Marshal. Then I committed the message to memory in accordance with standing orders and burned the note in the kitchen, and I flushed the ashes down the toilet so as not to leave any clues, in case the British mounted a house-to-house search. Then I returned to the desk and tried to get back to the galaxies and light-years. But the galaxies had dispersed and the light-years had faded out. So I took another blank card from my father's little pile and noted: The situation is serious and gives rise to anxiety. And I wrote: But our heads we'll hold up high. Then I tore up the card and put the dictionary and the encyclopedia away. There was fear.

Which I must overcome at once.

But how?

I decided to look at some stamps. Barbados and New Caledonia were each represented in my collection by a single stamp. I managed to locate both places in the big German atlas. I looked for some chocolate but there wasn't any. In the end I went back to the kitchen and licked two spoonfuls of Father's raspberry jam.