Free My Michael by Amos Oz

had to stop working and also mentioning my mental condition. Thanks to the help of my best friend Hadassah's husband, Michael succeeded in getting a modest loan from the Students' Assistance Fund.
    At the end of August a registered letter arrived from Aunt Jenia. She had not seen fit to write us a single line, but in the envelope we found a folded check for three hundred pounds.
    Michael said that if my pride compelled me to return the money he was willing to give up studying and look for a job, and that I was free to send back Aunt Jenia's money. I said I didn't like the word "pride," and that I accepted the money gratefully. In that case, Michael asked me always to remember that he had been willing to give up his studies and look for a job.

    "I shall remember, Michael. You know me. I don't know how to forget."

    I stopped attending lectures at the university. I would never study Hebrew literature again. I recorded in my exercise book that a quality of desolation pervades the works of the poets of the Hebrew renaissance. Where this quality of desolation came from, what it consists in, I would never know.
    The housework, too, was neglected. I would sit for most of the morning alone on our little balcony, which overlooked a deserted backyard. I would rest on the deck-chair, throwing crumbs of bread to the cats. I enjoyed watching the neighbors' children playing in the yard. My father occasionally used to use the phrase "silently stand and stare." I stand and stare silently, but far from the silence, far from the staring to which my father probably referred. What point do the children in the yard see in their eager, panting competition? The game is tiring and the victory is hollow. What does victory hold in store? Night will fall. Winter will return. Rains will fall and eradicate all. Strong winds will blow again in Jerusalem. There may be a war. The game of hide-and-seek is absurdly futile. From my balcony I can see them all. Can anyone really hide? Who tries? What a strange thing excitement is. Relax, tired children. Winter is still far off, but already he is gathering his forces. And the distance is deceptive.
    After lunch I would collapse onto my bed, exhausted. I could not even read the newspaper.
    Michael left at eight o'clock in the morning and came home at six in the evening. It was summer. I could not breathe on the window and draw shapes on the glass. To make things easier for me, Michael resumed his old routine and lunched with his student friends in the student canteen at the end of Mamillah Road.

    December was the sixth month of my pregnancy. Michael took the examinations for his first degree. He got an upper second. I was unmoved by his success. Let him celebrate by himself and leave me alone. My husband had already started studying for his second degree in October. In the evening, when he came home tired, he would volunteer to go out to the grocer, the greengrocer, the druggist. On one occasion he absented himself on my account from an important experiment, because I had asked him to go to the clinic for me and collect the result of a test.
    That evening Michael broke his mental vow of silence. He tried to explain to me that his life was not so easy these days, either. I shouldn't imagine that he was living in a bed of roses, as it were.
    "I didn't imagine you were, Michael."
    Then why did I make him feel guilty?
    Did I make him feel guilty? He must realize that I couldn't be romantic at a time like this. I didn't even have a maternity dress. Every day I wore my ordinary clothes, which didn't fit and weren't comfortable. So how could I look pretty and attractive?
    No, that wasn't what he wanted of me. It wasn't my beauty which he missed. What he did ask, what he implored, was that I should stop being so stiff and so hysterical.

    Indeed, during this time there was a kind of uneasy compromise between us. We were like two travelers consigned by fate to adjacent seats on a long railway journey. Bound to show