Read Online Black Box by Amos Oz - Free Book Online

mule growing up in our midst. Although “growing up” is hardly the right phrase in your case—it might be better if you stopped growing like some sort of beanstalk and matured a bit for a change.
Now tell me something, if you don’t mind: did it have to happen just two days after you’d stayed with me for the Sabbath? After we had all tried so hard (yes, you too) and we’d begun to feel that after all we are a family. Just when your sister had started getting used to you and we were so thrilled by the teddy bear you brought her? Just when you had given your mother a little hope after all the suffering you’d caused her? Tell me, have you gone raving mad?
I have to tell you that if you were my own son or my pupil I would not have spared you the rod—on the face and on the bottom too. Although on second thought I’m not so sure in your case. You might have hit me with a vegetable crate as well.
So perhaps after all we made a mistake when we rescued you from that institute for juvenile delinquents. Perhaps that would have been the most natural place for a customer like you. I understand very well that what happened was that Abram Abudarham gave you a little kick after you were insolent. And permit me to put down in writing that I consider he was quite justified (even though personally I don’t hold with kicking).
But what do you think you are? Tell me. A duke? a prince? So you got a little kick because of your big mouth, so what? Is that a sufficient reason to start hitting people with crates? And who did you hit? Abram Abudarham, a man of sixty, who for your information suffers from high blood pressure! And after he’d taken you on to work for him, even with your two police records and the third one, which Inspector Almaliah and I barely managed to have closed for you? What are you? Tell me. An Arab? A horse?
I nearly went mad when you told me on the phone that you really did hit Abraham with a crate because he gave you a tiny kick for being insolent. You may be my wife’s son and my daughter’s brother, but you’re not a human being, Boaz. Scripture says: “School a youth according to his way.” And my interpretation is this: So long as the youth follows the right way he should be schooled gently, but if he makes a mess of himself, then he deserves everything he gets! What, are you above the law? Are you the president?
Abraham Abudarham was your benefactor and a kindhearted man, and you repaid his kindness with wickedness. He invested a lot in you, and you let him down, and you also let me down and Inspector Almaliah too, and your mother has been ill in bed for three days now because of you. You have let down everyone who has had anything to do with you. As it is written in Scripture: “And he looked to make grapes, and it made sour grapes.”
Why did you do it?
Now you don’t answer. Very nice. All right, so I’ll tell you why: because of arrogance, Boaz. Because you were born big and handsome like a demigod and you were given a lot of strength of arm, and in your stupidity you think that strength is for hitting people. Strength is for self-discipline, you ass! For mastering your baser instincts! To take all the buffetings that life has in store for us and to keep advancing quietly but firmly along the path that we have decided to follow, that is to say, the straight and narrow. That’s what I call strength. Smashing someone’s head in—any plank or rock can do that!
That is why I said to you above that you are not a man. Certainly not a Jew. Perhaps it would really suit you to be an Arab. Or a gentile. Because to be a Jew, Boaz, is to know how to stand up to adversity and to practice self-mastery and to keep on treading our ancient path. That is the whole Torah on one leg: self-mastery. And also to understand very well why life has buffeted you, and to learn a lesson from it and always to improve your ways, and also to accept the just decrees of fate, Boaz. Abraham Abudarham, if you think about it for a