meanings, real formulations as I was accustomed to
doing in the analysis of a story by Brenner or Genessin, something musical,
maybe a feeling that had lodged in me and now disappeared, that behind
every pain is a certain logic and that I had to decipher it for the students
and there's understanding behind the complexity of the instincts and a
wisdom woven in this or that pattern and grief and love have their own
grammar.
So when, maybe too late, I noticed the garden being cultivated next to
my house, when I saw a new rake, a new ladder, a hose, young virgin foliage and a sprinkler spinning, maybe then something penetrated my consciousness even though consciously, maybe as a defense from something I
was afraid of, I started working our garden and some audacious sickness,
certainly not acute, poured into me intoxicating letters of what I could
have read by myself if only I dared: furtive bliss, bliss stemming from the
fact that for a long time I hadn't yet succeeded in hating the garden because of the nothingness of my son. My wife then said to me: Obadiah,
what are you trying to do in old age? You'll start knocking nails for me and
knowing how they hang pictures on a wall, Obadiah, said my wife, you're
too old to be a human being-that she said now with a wickedness that
even she herself felt but couldn't stop herself, you'll start learning to long
for your son without the whole world knowing it, she added with a kind of
poison of love, maybe you'll even learn how to take out the garbage without spilling half on the floor and you'll learn how to make children who live
and don't die. Much as her words pained me, especially the last ones, I
knew it wasn't at me that she aimed her anger and even she herself was
sorry for her words and she said: The department of dead children is me,
you just watered gardens, children, a new nation, empty rhetoric, and my thirsty body. I saw her, I looked at her sad eyes. And with a solid longing
that lodged in me from the first day I saw her, her little body wrapped in
skin soft as down, her limbs that haven't grown old but only softened with
the years, her frightening orphanhood, and I said: Not everything is locked,
Hasha Masha, and I went outside, I meant love, maybe hate. I ripped up
some crabgrass. I started tending a garden in my old age. I stood there, I
knew she was looking at me, I thought of the album, of the photos of the trip
to Caesarea that her innocent eyes see through the binding of the album now
closed forever, I thought of her inability to really hate, I contemplated the
bright but blurred photo of the tour, the picture of Caesarea, a few children
in bathing suits, rocks, an older girl with a wet skirt clinging to the hard
body and to identify him and Menahem's face in the middle of the photo, his
hands held out to the sides, oxygen ate part of the picture, and his hands are
trying to embrace the world with a love that maybe really did lodge in him,
for life, for the garden, for Noga, for the sun, and for the sea and he's there
linked to his mother's words, not mine.
And so I discovered that the Giladis had disappeared and no longer lived
next door to us. Together we moved here, together we built our houses,
together we had children, Amihud their son and Menahem our son play
with one another, and then they fly kites and frolic in the bamboo nests
they called boos and look at the sea and swim. Here we came to live as a
national mission, to conquer another square of land for the nation, here in
the far north then, cut off, and now it's become part of a city with many
gigantic hotels and shops and cafes and restaurants. Giladi was an official
in the company to prepare for settlement and bought land all over Israel
from the old and spoiled effendis in Beirut or Damascus for the institutions
and he'd run around on his big motorcycle and there was always some big
secret on his face that he couldn't reveal and after Menahem's death, the
doing in the analysis of a story by Brenner or Genessin, something musical,
maybe a feeling that had lodged in me and now disappeared, that behind
every pain is a certain logic and that I had to decipher it for the students
and there's understanding behind the complexity of the instincts and a
wisdom woven in this or that pattern and grief and love have their own
grammar.
So when, maybe too late, I noticed the garden being cultivated next to
my house, when I saw a new rake, a new ladder, a hose, young virgin foliage and a sprinkler spinning, maybe then something penetrated my consciousness even though consciously, maybe as a defense from something I
was afraid of, I started working our garden and some audacious sickness,
certainly not acute, poured into me intoxicating letters of what I could
have read by myself if only I dared: furtive bliss, bliss stemming from the
fact that for a long time I hadn't yet succeeded in hating the garden because of the nothingness of my son. My wife then said to me: Obadiah,
what are you trying to do in old age? You'll start knocking nails for me and
knowing how they hang pictures on a wall, Obadiah, said my wife, you're
too old to be a human being-that she said now with a wickedness that
even she herself felt but couldn't stop herself, you'll start learning to long
for your son without the whole world knowing it, she added with a kind of
poison of love, maybe you'll even learn how to take out the garbage without spilling half on the floor and you'll learn how to make children who live
and don't die. Much as her words pained me, especially the last ones, I
knew it wasn't at me that she aimed her anger and even she herself was
sorry for her words and she said: The department of dead children is me,
you just watered gardens, children, a new nation, empty rhetoric, and my thirsty body. I saw her, I looked at her sad eyes. And with a solid longing
that lodged in me from the first day I saw her, her little body wrapped in
skin soft as down, her limbs that haven't grown old but only softened with
the years, her frightening orphanhood, and I said: Not everything is locked,
Hasha Masha, and I went outside, I meant love, maybe hate. I ripped up
some crabgrass. I started tending a garden in my old age. I stood there, I
knew she was looking at me, I thought of the album, of the photos of the trip
to Caesarea that her innocent eyes see through the binding of the album now
closed forever, I thought of her inability to really hate, I contemplated the
bright but blurred photo of the tour, the picture of Caesarea, a few children
in bathing suits, rocks, an older girl with a wet skirt clinging to the hard
body and to identify him and Menahem's face in the middle of the photo, his
hands held out to the sides, oxygen ate part of the picture, and his hands are
trying to embrace the world with a love that maybe really did lodge in him,
for life, for the garden, for Noga, for the sun, and for the sea and he's there
linked to his mother's words, not mine.
And so I discovered that the Giladis had disappeared and no longer lived
next door to us. Together we moved here, together we built our houses,
together we had children, Amihud their son and Menahem our son play
with one another, and then they fly kites and frolic in the bamboo nests
they called boos and look at the sea and swim. Here we came to live as a
national mission, to conquer another square of land for the nation, here in
the far north then, cut off, and now it's become part of a city with many
gigantic hotels and shops and cafes and restaurants. Giladi was an official
in the company to prepare for settlement and bought land all over Israel
from the old and spoiled effendis in Beirut or Damascus for the institutions
and he'd run around on his big motorcycle and there was always some big
secret on his face that he couldn't reveal and after Menahem's death, the
Similar Books
