Free My Michael by Amos Oz Page A

consideration for each other, to observe the conventions of politeness, not to impose and not to intrude on each other, not to presume on their acquaintance. To be courteous and considerate. To entertain each other, perhaps, from time to time with pleasant, superficial chatter. Making no demands. Even displaying restrained sympathy at times.

    But outside the carriage window there stretches a flat and gloomy landscape. A parched plain. Low scrub.
    If I ask him to close a window, he is delighted to be of service.
    It was a kind of wintry balance. Cautious and laborious, like going down a flight of steps slippery from the rain. Oh, to be able to rest and rest.

    I admit it: It was often I who upset the balance. Without Michael's firm grasp I should have slipped and fallen. I deliberately sat for whole evenings in silence as if I were alone in the house. If Michael asked how I felt I would answer:
    "What do you care?"
    If he took offense and did not ask how I felt next morning, I would snarl that he didn't ask because he didn't care.
    Once or twice, early in the winter, I embarrassed my husband by my tears. I called him a brute. I accused him of insensitivity and indifference. Michael rebutted both charges mildly. He spoke calmly and patiently, as if it were he who had given offense and I was to be placated. I resisted like a rebellious child. I hated him till a lump rose in my throat. I wanted to shake him out of his calm.
    Coolly and thoroughly Michael washed the floor, wrung out the cloth, and dried the floor twice. Then he asked me if I felt better. He warmed me some milk and removed the skin, which I hated. He apologized for making me angry, in my special condition. He asked me to explain what exactly he had done to make me angry, so that he could avoid making the same mistake again. Then he went out to fetch a can of paraffin.
    In the last months of my pregnancy I felt ugly. I did not dare look in the mirror; my face was disfigured with dark blotches. I had to wear elastic stockings because of my varicose veins. Perhaps now I looked like Mrs. Tarnopoler or old Sarah Zeldin.
    "Do you find me ugly, Michael?"
    "You're very precious to me, Hannah."

    "If you don't find me ugly, why don't you hold me?"
    "Because if I do you'll burst into tears and say that I'm just pretending. You've already forgotten what you said to me this morning. You told me not to touch you. And so I haven't."

    When Michael was out of the house I experienced a return of my old childhood yearning, to be very ill.

13
    M ICHAEL'S FATHER composed a letter in verse congratulating his son on his examination success. He rhymed "resounding success" with "my joy to express" and "Hannah's great happiness." Michael read the letter out loud to me and then admitted that he had hoped to receive some small token from me too, such as a new pipe, to mark his success in his first final examination. He said this with an embarrassed, embarrassing smile. I was angry with him for what he had said, and his smile also made me angry. Hadn't I told him a thousand times that my head ached as if it were being stabbed with ice-cold steel? Why did he always think of himself and never of me?

    Three times Michael declined on my account to go on important geological expeditions in which all his fellow students took part. One was to Mount Manara, where iron ore deposits had been discovered, another to the Negev, and the third to the potash works at Sodom. Even his married friends went on these expeditions. I did not thank Michael for his sacrifice. But one evening there happened to run through my head two half-forgotten lines from a well-known nursery rhyme about a boy called Michael:
Little Michael danced five years, but then he heard the bell;

He went to school, and tearfully bid his pet dove farewell.
    I burst out laughing.
    Michael stared at me in subdued amazement. It wasn't often, he said, that he saw me happy. He would very much like to know what it was that had suddenly made me