Chapter 4 A Tale of Love and Darkness (4)

Anyway, think of the contempt with which Tolstoy viewed these people, who bought one cheese and not another simply because of religion, nationality or race!What about universal value?What about humanitarianism?What about brotherhood?But how pathetic, how weak, how small-minded it is to buy Arabic cheese for twenty cents less, instead of the cheese of the pioneers who fought for our interests!shameful!Shameful and disgraceful!It's not shameful, it's shameful!The whole life is so shameful, so humiliating. Here's another classic paradox: Should people send flowers for birthdays?If so, what kind of flowers should I send?Gladiolus is expensive, but it has cultural charm, aristocratic style, and can express emotions. It is not a wild Asian weed.We can choose as many anemones and cyclamen as we want, but it is not appropriate to give anemones and cyclamen for birthdays, or to celebrate the publication of books.Gladiolus has the charm of recitals, grand banquets, drama performances, ballets, and cultural events, expressing deep and delicate emotions.So, we sent gladiolus.Do not ask the price.But the question is, is it too much to give away seven branches?Is five sticks a little less?Maybe six sticks?Maybe it's better to just give seven sticks.Do not ask the price.We can put a circle of cypresses around the gladiolus and send six branches.On the other hand, isn't it a bit old-fashioned to do so?Gladiolus?Where is there still a gift of gladiolus now?In Galilee, did pioneers send each other gladiolus?Who cares about gladiolus in Tel Aviv?What are the benefits of doing this?They are a waste of money and wither in four or five days.So what should we give away?How about a box of chocolates?a box of chocolate?Even funnier than gladiolus.Probably the best idea is to get some paper napkins, or a set of small silver engraved cup holders with cute handles for serving hot tea, these are no frills gifts, they are beautiful and very functional , don't throw them away, but use them for decades, and maybe think of us for a split second whenever you use them.

Emissaries from that promised land in Europe are everywhere.Like runts, I mean the little men who hold the shutters open during the day, those little metal figures.Whenever you want to close the shutters, you turn them and they hang their heads upside down all night.This is how Mussolini and his mistress Clara were hung upside down there at the end of World War II.It was a horrible scene, a terrible scene, and the horror and the horror was not the fact that they were hanged, they deserved it, the horror and the horror was that they were hanged head down.I kind of sympathize with them, even though I shouldn't.Are you crazy?Sympathy for Mussolini?Almost identical to sympathizing with Hitler!But I tried it. I clamped a pipe on the wall with my legs and turned my head downwards. After a few minutes, all the blood rushed to my head, and I felt dizzy.Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down like that not just for a few minutes, but for three days and three nights, after they were executed!I think that's an extremely harsh punishment.Even to the executioner.Even for mistresses.It's not that I'm ignorant of the concept of a mistress.In that year and month, there was not a single mistress in all of Jerusalem.There are "girlfriends," "partners," "double-meaning girlfriends," and even affairs of all kinds.There are such careful legends, for example, that Mr. Cherniansky had an affair with Rupatin's girlfriend, and my heart pounded, realizing that "having an affair" is a mysterious and deadly expression that will sweeten , horrible, humiliating things are hidden.But what about the mistress?Totally biblical stuff, bigger than life stuff.Incredible.Maybe there's something like that in Tel Aviv, I think, they always have things that don't exist or are banned here.

I pretty much started reading by myself, when I was very young.What else can we do?The night at that time was longer than it is now, because the earth's rotation speed was slower, and the Milky Way was more free than it is now.The electric lights were dim and often interrupted by power outages.To this day, the smell of a smoking candle or a kerosene lamp makes me want to read.We were confined to our homes at 7pm due to the British curfew in Jerusalem.Even if there was no curfew, who would want to go out in the dark in Jerusalem at that time?Everything is tightly closed, and the stone street is extremely empty, and every passerby passing through that narrow street will drag three or four shadows.Even when there are no blackouts, we are always living with dim lights because conservation is paramount.My parents replaced all the 40-watt light bulbs with 25-watt ones, not only for saving money, but mainly because the bright lights caused a kind of waste, and waste is immoral.Our little house is always full of human rights pain: for the starving children in India, I have to eat everything on my plate; the survivors from Hitler's hell were transported by the British to the detention in Cyprus battalions; ragged orphans still wandering the snowy forests of the ravaged Continent.Dad used to work until two o'clock in the morning with the poor lighting of twenty-five-watt light bulbs, which hurt his eyes because he thought it was wrong to use strong light bulbs.The pioneers sat night after night in their tents in the kibbutz of Galilee, writing poems and philosophical monographs by flickering candlelight, how could you forget them and be like Rothschild sitting under the bright forty-watt electric lamp Down?What would the neighbors say if they saw our house suddenly lit up like a dance hall?He would rather damage his own eyesight than attract the attention of others.We are not yet the poorest.Dad works in the National Library and has a meager but regular income.Mom teaches private lessons.I earn a shilling every Friday at Taylor Aza for watering Mr Cohen's garden, and on Wednesdays I earn four piastres behind Mr Auster's general shop putting empty bottles in boxes, and I teach Mrs. Finster's son reads maps, two piasters per lesson (but it's on credit, and the Finsters haven't paid me to this day).Despite these sources of income, we save money and save money every day.Life in the cabin was similar to life on a submarine I had seen in an Edison movie theater. Whenever the sailors went from one watertight compartment to another, they had to close the hatch behind them.When I turn on the light in the toilet with one hand, I use the other to turn off the light in the hallway, so as not to waste electricity.I tug on the chain lightly, because it would be wrong to empty the reservoir of Niagara Falls just by pissing.Any other needs (never named) to do a full douche from time to time, but a whole Niagara to piss?At this time, the pioneers of the Negev Desert are saving the water they brushed their teeth to water the plants, right?At this time in the detention camp in Cyprus, the whole family has to use a bucket of water for three days, right?I turn off the light with my left hand when I leave the toilet, and at the same time turn on the light in the hallway with my right hand, because the Holocaust seems like yesterday, because there are still homeless Jews in the Carpathians and the Dolomites wandering mountains, suffering in makeshift camps and on stormy ships, bony as skeletons and ragged, for in other parts of the world there is misery and poverty: Chinese coolies, Mississippi cotton pickers, African Children, Sicilian fishermen.We have a responsibility not to waste.Besides, who knows what's going to happen every day?Our troubles are not over yet, and it's best to believe that the worst is yet to come.The Nazis may have been wiped out, but the pogrom continues in Poland, the Hebrew speakers are being persecuted in Russia, the British here have yet to make a final decision, the grand mufti is discussing the massacre of the Jews, who Knowing what the Arab countries are going to do to us, and the cynical world supports the Arabs considering the oil market and other interests.We're not going to have an easy time here.

We just have tons of books.Books are everywhere, from wall to wall, lined with books.There are books everywhere in the aisle, kitchen, doorway and windowsill.Thousands of books are scattered throughout the entire house.People come and go, life and death, but books are immortal, what a feeling.When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a book, not a writer.People can be killed like ants, and writers are not difficult to kill, but books, no matter how hard you try to systematically exterminate them, there will be one or two books that will survive and continue in Reykjanes In places like Meiling, Valladolid, or Vancouver, enjoy the shelf treatment in a corner of a library that few people care about.Once or twice, when there was not enough money for the Sabbath food, Mama would look at Papa, and Papa would know it was time to make a sacrifice, and would turn away from the bookshelves.He was a man of sense, who knew that bread was more important than books, and the health of children above all else.I remember him walking down the corridor stooped, two or three cherished books under his arm, towards Mr. Meyer's second-hand bookstore, as if his stooped back was making him uncomfortable.Is this how our ancestor Abraham bowed his body in the early morning when he put Isaac on his shoulders from his tent to the land of Moriah?

I can imagine his grief.Dad and books have a sensual connection.He loves to feel, touch, and smell his books.He took pleasure in fiddling with books: he couldn't help himself, he had to go and touch books, even other people's books.Books were indeed sexier then than they are now: good for sniffing, caressing, fondling.There are books bound in somewhat rough leather, with gilt lettering, that give off scents that give you goosebumps when you touch them, as if you were touching something hidden and inaccessible, something that rises at your touch. And trembling things.Others were bound in cloth-covered cardboard, held together with a wonderfully scented glue.Each book has its own unique and provocative scent.Sometimes the cloth surface comes off the cardboard, like a naughty skirt, and the temptation is irresistible to peer into the dark space between the flesh and the clothes, and smell the blinding smell.Typically, Dad would come back in an hour or two, bookless, and full of brown paper bags of bread, eggs, cheese, and sometimes even a can of corned beef.But sometimes he came back from the sacrifice, smiling, without his favorite book, but also without food: he did sell the book, but immediately bought another one to replace it, because he found such a rare treasure in a second-hand bookstore Yibao, maybe there is only such a chance in a lifetime, so I can't control myself.Mom forgave him, and I forgave him, because I liked almost nothing but sweet corn and ice cream.I hate scrambled eggs and corned beef.Frankly, I sometimes even get jealous of hungry kids in India because they are never told to eat what's on their plate.誗① refers to the fact that God tested Abraham and asked him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering, see Chapter 22 of the Old Testament Genesis.When I was almost six years old, a big event happened in my life: Dad made a small space on his bookshelf for me to put my own books.He gave me a quarter of the last shelf on the bookshelf, to be exact.I cradled all my books that had been sitting on a stool next to my bed, took them to Dad's bookshelf, and put them there neatly, facing away from the world and facing the wall.It is a kind of rite of initiation, a rite of real growth: when a man's book stands up, he is not a child but a man.I'm already like my dad.My book is already standing there.I made a serious mistake.While Dad was away at work, I was free to tidy up my library corner, but doing so was childish.I arrange books by height.The tallest books really demeaned me were children's literature, written in rhyme, with pictures, that they read to me when I was a toddler.I put them there because I wanted to fill the shelves that were allotted to me.I want my domain to be full, crowded, overflowing, like Dad's bookshelf.After my father got off work, I was still in a state of excitement. He glanced at my bookshelf in surprise, and then stared at me without saying a word. I will never forget that look: it was a look of contempt, which cannot be described in words. Painful and disappointed eyes, almost despairing eyes.Finally, he pursed his lips and hissed me: Are you crazy?Sort by height?Did you mistake books for soldiers?Do you think they're some kind of honor guard?Is the fire brigade inspected? ’ He stopped talking. There was a long, terrible silence on Baba’s side, a sort of Gregor Samsa-like silence, as if I had been transformed into an insect before him. A guilty silence on my side, as if I It was really some poor insect all along, and now the secret is out, and from now on all is lost. Papa broke the silence and continued talking, and in about twenty minutes Papa revealed to me all the truths of life. Nothing is hidden. He began to lead me to explore the inner secrets of the library maze: exposing the main traffic arteries, also exposing the forest trails, dizzying scenery. They are ever-changing, nuanced, strangely imagined, Like an exotic street, with bold combinations and even outlandish ideas. Books can be sorted by subject, by author name, by series or publisher, by chronology, by language, by title, by field , even by place of publication. The list goes on and on. So I learned all kinds of secrets. There are different paths in life. Anything can happen in one form or another, according to a different score and logic. These Parallel logic follows its own path to maintain harmony, self-improvement, and distinction. In the days that followed, I spent hours at a time rearranging my little library, and I treated the twenty or thirty books like a pack of cards Turning it upside down like that, and rearranging it in all sorts of ways. I learned the art of layout from books, not from what is written in the book, but from the book itself, from the way the book looks. There are bewildering no-man’s lands and flickering zones in between, between the conventional and the outlandish, the standard and the eccentric. This lesson has stayed with me ever since. When I found love, I No longer a novice, I have learned that there are all kinds of cuisines, there are highways and scenic routes, and back roads that are less traveled. Some things that are allowed are almost taboo, and some taboos are almost allowed. The list is too long.