Amos Oz - Panther in the Basement

It turned out that the package was cool and quite hard, oblong, exactly like a book wrapped in paper, smooth but not slippery. Its weight, too, seemed like that of a thick book: lighter than the concordance but a little heavier than the gazetteer.

And that, I hoped, was the end of that. I was freed. The temptations had had their prey and now they could go away, satisfied, and I could get on with my work at last.

I was mistaken.

It was the exact opposite.

Like a pack of hounds that have smelled bloody flesh, have had a taste of it, and turned into wolves, ten minutes after I put the package back in its place, the temptations attacked me unexpectedly on an exposed flank:

To summon Ben Hur. Let him come here.

To let him into the secret of what we were hiding here. If he didn't believe me, then I'd show him the package and stun him so that at last, just for once, I'd see with my own eyes the outward indifference of the leopard turning to stunned amazement. Those tyrannical thin lips, normally too lazy to open, would gape wide with astonishment. At once, like morning mist that dissolves with the heat of the sun, the Orient Palace affair would melt away. I would force him to swear that he would never reveal what he had seen. Not even to Chita. And, in any case, he would only be allowed to take one look at the package, and then he must immediately forget what he had seen.

But he wouldn't forget. Ever. And so, in the shadow of the threat of imprisonment that would henceforth hang over the two of us, we would be bound together once more by a strong, openhearted friendship. Like David and Jonathan. Together we would spy and collect secrets. We would even learn English together from Sergeant Dunlop, because a man who controls the enemy's language also controls his ways of thinking.

I suddenly had a strange, almost unbearable feeling that here, alone in this apartment all morning and all afternoon, I was the only ruler of a ferocious typhoon that was slumbering inside an outwardly innocent package, quite well camouflaged among the gems of literature on that shelf.

No. There was no question of bringing in Ben Hur. I would do it on my own. Without him.

Toward midday new, crazy temptations broke out like a thunderstorm in my chest and stomach. Everything is in your power now. From now on, if you really want it, everything is possible. Everything depends on your wish. Take this unique package. You can put another package just like it, a book wrapped in identical paper, in its place on the shelf among the gems of literature, and no one will be the wiser. Not even Father.

As for you, son of man, pick up this destructive device, put it in your schoolbag, and take it straight to Government House. Fix it with wire underneath the High Commissioner's car in the parking lot. Or stand waiting for him by the gate, and when he comes out throw it at his feet.

Or else: Hebrew youth from Jerusalem blows himself up to rouse the conscience of the world and to protest the rape of his homeland.

Or maybe innocently ask Sergeant Dunlop to place the present in the CID commander's office. No: he might get blown up or implicated himself.

Or fit it to the tip of our rocket and threaten to blow London off the map if Jerusalem is not liberated.

Or eliminate Ben Hur and Chita. That would show them.

And so on and so forth, until one o'clock, when a new and terrifying temptation raised its venomous head. And started to burrow and gnaw blindly inside me like a mole. (I found in the dictionary the proper word for this sucking, suckling temptation to cast off restraint and yield to the call of sin: it is "seduction." Like a cross between "sedition" and suction.)

This seductive urge clung to me relentlessly, pulling at my heart and my diaphragm through my ribs, penetrating my deepest recesses, insisting hideously, pleading and winking ingratiatingly, whispering febrile promises, sweetness of corrupt delights, secret joys that I had never tasted or only tasted in my dreams:

To leave the package where it was among the gems of world literature, after all. Not to lay a finger on it.

To go out. Lock the apartment. Go straight to the Orient Palace.

If he wasn't there, then drop it. It would be a sign. But if he was there, it would be sign that I had to go ahead with it. It would be a sign that it had to be, that come what might this cloying sweetness had to overflow and take shape.

Tell him what was hidden in our apartment.

Ask him what to do about it.

And do whatever he told me.

Seduction.

Just before four o'clock there was a moment when I almost—

But I managed to resist. Instead of going to the Orient Palace, I ate a meatball and some beans from the icebox, as well as a couple of potatoes, all cold: I didn't have the patience to heat them up. Then I closed my parents' door from the outside and my own bedroom door from the inside and lay down, not on my bed, but on the cold floor in the cell like space between my bed and my wardrobe, and there, by the striped light that filtered like a ladder of shadows through the slats of the shutter, I read for an hour and a half. I knew the book already: it was about Magellan and Vasco da Gama, about islands and bays and volcanoes and thickly forested heights.

I shall never forget the pangs of fear: like a ring of cold steel tightening around my fluttering heart. Very early, after the newspaper boy but before the milkman, in the middle of the dawn chorus, a British armored car drove down our street with a loudspeaker and woke me up. Woke us all up. They announced in English and Hebrew a curfew from half past six until further notice. Anyone found outside would be risking his life.

Barefoot, with gummed eyes, I crawled into my parents' bed. I felt frozen, not with cold, but with the python's grip of foreboding: They'll find it. At once. What a ridiculous hiding place! It's not a hiding place at all, just a light-brown package stuck into a row of books with slightly less light-brown jackets. It stands out among the books because it's thicker and wider and taller, like a bandit who has wrapped himself in sackcloth and thrust himself into a procession of nuns. Father and Mother would be locked up in the Russian Compound, or taken to Acre jail. They might even be deported in handcuffs to Cyprus or Mauritius or Eritrea, or possibly to the Seychelles. The word "banishment" pierced my chest like a stiletto.

And what would I do all alone in this apartment, knowing as well as I did how quickly it could change from being small and pleasant to being huge and sinister, in the nights, weeks, and years to come, alone at home, alone in Jerusalem, and alone altogether, since my grandparents (both sets), aunts, and uncles were all murdered by Hitler, and they would murder me, too, when they got here and dragged me out of my wretched hiding place in the broom closet. Anti-semitic drunken British soldiers, or bloodthirsty Arab gangs. Because we are the few and we are in the right and we always were in the right but we were always few, surrounded on all sides and without a friend in the world. (Apart from Sergeant Dunlop? And you go spying on him and stealing secrets from him. Traitor traitor. You're doomed.)

For a few moments we lay there in bed, the three of us. We did not speak. Then Father's quiet voice came, a voice that seemed to paint in the darkness of the room a ring of common sense:

"The paper. We still have another thirty-two minutes. I definitely have time to go and get the paper."

My mother said:

"Please stay. Don't go."

I backed her up, trying to make my voice more like his than like hers:

"Yes, really, Dad, don't go. It's definitely not rational to take risks for a newspaper."

He came back a moment later, still in his blue pajamas and his black open-backed sandals, smiling self-deprecatingly, as if he had returned from hunting a lion in the jungle for us. And he handed the paper to my mother.