Free My Michael by Amos Oz Page B

laugh.

    I looked at his startled eyes, and laughed louder still.
    Michael was sunk deep in thought for a few moments. Then he started to tell me a political joke he had heard that day in the student canteen.

    My mother arrived from Kibbutz Nof Harim in Upper Galilee to stay with us till the birth and to look after the housework. Since my mother had moved to Nof Harim after my father's death in 1943 she had never had a chance to manage a household. She was disastrously enthusiastic and efficient. After the first lunch, which she cooked as soon as she arrived, she said to Michael that she knew he didn't like eggplant, but that he had just eaten three dishes made with eggplant without realizing it. It was wonderful, the miracles you could work in the kitchen. Had he really not noticed the taste of the eggplant? Not even a bit?
    Michael answered politely. No, he hadn't noticed it at all. Yes, it was wonderful what miracles you could do in the kitchen.
    My mother sent Michael on one errand after another. She made his life miserable with her vigorous insistence on strict hygiene. He must always wash his hands. Never put money on the table when people were eating. Take the mesh screens out of the window frames to clean them properly. "What do you think you're doing? Not there on the balcony, if you don't mind—the dust will all come flying back into the room. Not on the balcony; downstairs, outside in the yard. Yes, that's right, that's better."
    She knew that Michael had been brought up an orphan, without a mother, and that was why she didn't get angry with him. But still, she couldn't understand him: educated, enlightened, a university man—didn't he realize the world was full of germs?
    Michael submitted obediently like a well brought-up child. What can I do to help? Allow me. Am I in your way? No, I'll go and get it. Of course I'll ask the greengrocer. All right, I'll try to come home early. I'll take the shopping basket with me. No, I won't forget; look, I've already made a list. He agreed to give up his idea of buying the first volumes of the new
Encyclopaedia Hebraica.
It was not essential. He knew now that we must both save as much as we possibly could.

    In the evenings Michael worked at a part-time job, helping the librarian of the departmental library, which brought in a little money. "Nowadays I don't have the honor of Your Excellency's presence in the evenings either," I grumbled. Michael even gave up smoking his pipe in the house because my mother could not bear the smell of tobacco and was also convinced that the smoke would harm the baby.
    When he found it hard to contain himself my husband would go down into the street and stand smoking for a quarter of an hour under a lamppost like a poet in search of inspiration. Once I stood at the window and watched him for a while. By the light of the street lamp I could see the close-cropped hair on the back of his head. Rings of smoke curled around him, as if he were a spirit called up from the dead. I remembered some words Michael had spoken long before: Cats are never wrong about people. He always liked the word "ankle." I was a cold, beautiful Jerusalemite. He was an ordinary young man, in his opinion. He had never had a regular girlfriend before he met me. In the rain the stone lion on the Generali Building laughs under his breath. Emotion becomes a malignant tumor when people are contented and have nothing to do. Jerusalem makes one feel sad, but it is a different sadness at every moment of the day, at every time of the year. That was all a long time ago. Michael must have forgotten it all by now. Only I refused to abandon so much as a crumb to the icy claws of time. I wonder, what is the magical change which time works on trivial words? There is a kind of alchemy in things, which is the inner melody of my life. The youth leader who told the girl we saw by Aqua Bella that love in our modern age should be as simple as drinking a glass of water was wrong. Michael was