Chapter 5 A Tale of Love and Darkness (5)

Occasionally, my parents allowed me to take books from Dad's bookshelf to the yard to dust them off.Do not have more than three at a time so you don't mess up the placement, so each book returns to its proper place.The task was daunting but pleasant, as I found the smell of book dust so ecstatic that I sometimes forgot my duties, duties, and responsibilities, and stayed out the door until Mom got anxious and sent Dad on a rescue mission, checking Find out if I have heat stroke or have I been bitten by a dog.He would always see me huddled in a corner of the yard, lost in a book, legs curled up, head tilted to one side, mouth half-open.Dad half angry and half kindly asked me why I was like this again, and it took me a while to recover, like a drowning person and a dizzy person, slowly and reluctantly, from an unimaginably distant place, to this place full of daily chores from the mundane world.All through my childhood, I liked to arrange things, shuffle them, and rearrange them, each time a little differently.Three or four empty egg cups can become fortresses, or a fleet of submarines, or a meeting of superpower leaders at Yalta.I would sometimes make a sudden, lightning-fast attack, breaking into the realm of disorder and chaos.There’s something audacious about it that’s exhilarating.I like to dump a box of matches on the floor and try to find all the possible combinations.Throughout the World Wars, a large map of the European Theater of War with pins and colorful flags hung on the corridor wall.Every day or two, Dad would move the pins and flags in response to radio news broadcasts.I build a similar private reality: I lay out my own map of the battle zone on rush mats, my virtual reality, I spread the army around, execute the strategy of flanking movement and attacking west, conquering bridgeheads, and outflanking the enemy. , signed a tactical retreat order, and then carried out a strategic breakout.I was a kid fascinated by history.I try to correct the mistakes of the generals in the past.I resumed the campaign of the Jews against the Romans, liberated Jerusalem from the clutches of the armies of Titus, pushed the campaign into enemy land, brought Bar Kochba's army to the walls of Rome, and swiftly took down the Roman dome Theatre, to plant the Hebrew banner to the Temple of Jupiter.After all this was done, I moved the Jewish Special Forces in the British Army to the 1st century AD and the 2nd Temple period, and two machine guns actually knocked out Hadrian's and Titus' damned superb regiments. I Revel in it.A light plane and a plumer (piper) can bring the mighty Roman Empire to its knees.I turned the doomed battle of the Masada defenders into a decisive Jewish victory with the help of a mortar and a few grenades.In fact, I had a strange urge as a kid—to give something a second chance when it couldn't have had this chance—and that exact same urge still drives me today, no matter when I Sit down and write a novel.Many things happened in Jerusalem.Cities were destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt.

One by one the conquerors came and ruled for a while, leaving a few walls and towers, a few cracks in the stone, bits of pottery and documents, and then disappeared like a thin morning mist over a hillside .Jerusalem is the aging nympho who drains her lovers one by one to death before shaking them off with a yawn; the black widow spider who devours her mate while she's still copulating with it .Meanwhile, new continents and islands were discovered on the other side of the world.Mom always said, you were born too late, child, forget it, Magellan and Columbus have discovered the largest island.I argue with her.I said: How can you be so sure?After all, long before Columbus, people thought they knew the whole world and there was nothing left to discover.Between rush mats, table legs, and beds, I sometimes found not only unknown islands, but new stars, solar systems, entire galaxies.If I go to jail, I'll lose my liberty and a thing or two, but if I'm allowed to have a box of dominoes, or a pack of cards, or a box of matches, or a handful of buttons, I won't suffer from boredom.I spend my days arranging and re-arranging, taking it apart and bringing it back together into a small piece.All this may be because I am the only child in the family.

I have no siblings, very few friends, and they get tired of me quickly because they have to fight and can't adapt to the epic rhythm of my game.Sometimes, I start a new game on Monday, spend Tuesday morning at school figuring out the next move, come one afternoon for one or two moves, and leave the rest for Wednesday or Thursday.My friends resented this and went out to the backyard to play man chase while I continued my history game on the floor day after day, transporting troops, besieging a castle or city, smashing the enemy army like a hammer, Start a resistance movement in the mountains and attack forts and fortifications.Liberate, then reconquer, stretching or shrinking borders with matchsticks.If adults stray into my little territory by mistake, I declare a hunger strike or stop brushing my teeth.But the Judgment Day will come, and Mom can't stand the growing dust and will wipe it all out, the ships, the troops, the capital, the mountains and the coastline, the whole continent, like a nuclear holocaust.When I was nine years old, an uncle named Nehemiah once taught me a proverb, "Love is like war".I didn't know anything about love then, except I saw in the Edison theater a vague connection between love and the killing of Indians.But from what Uncle Nehemiah said, I came to the conclusion that haste makes waste.

As the years went by, I realized that I was dead wrong, at least from an engagement perspective: on the battlefield, speed is said to be absolutely critical.My delusion probably comes from the fact that Uncle Nehemiah himself is slow to change.Once he got up it was almost impossible to get him to sit down again, and once seated it was impossible to get him up.They'll say, get up, Nehemiah, please, really, what are you doing, it's getting late, get up, how long will you sit here?Sit until tomorrow morning?Sit until next year (next Yom Kippur)?Sit till the Messiah comes?He would reply: at least.Then he reflected, scratched himself, smiled shyly to himself, as if he had figured out our trick, and added: Nothing escapes my eyes.His figure seemed to have always remained, like a corpse, in its last natural state.I am different from him.I absolutely love change, unexpected encounters, and travel.But I also like Uncle Nehemiah.I looked for him not so long ago, but I couldn't find him in the Givat Shore cemetery.The cemetery expanded, receded, and would soon be bordered by Lake Betnikufa, or by Motsia.I sat on the bench for about half an hour, a stubborn wasp buzzing among the cypress branches, the bird repeated a word five or six times, and all I could see were tombstones, trees, hills and clouds.A slender woman in black wearing a black headscarf walked past me, and a five or six-year-old boy snuggled up beside her.The baby's little fingers clutched at the hem of her skirt, and they were both crying.

One winter evening, I was alone at home.It was about five or five-thirty in the evening, and it was cold and dark outside, with wind and rain beating against the closed shutters.Mom and Dad went to have tea with Mara and Staschke Rudnicki on Chancellor Street, on the corner of Prophets Street.They promised me to be home before eight o'clock, no later than 8:15 or 8:20 at the latest.Even if they were a little late, there was nothing to worry about, since they were only with the Rudnickies, fifteen minutes from home.Mara and Staschke Rudnicki had no children but two Persian cats named Chopin and Schopenhauer.There was also a cage in one corner of the living room with an old bird in it, almost blind.To keep the birds from feeling lonely, they put another bird in the cage, made by Mara Rudnicki, with two wooden sticks that act as legs on painted pine cones , plus confetti wings and trimmed with real feathers.My mother said that loneliness is like a heavy hammer, breaking glass and forging steel.Dad, on the other hand, taught us the word "hammer" from the perspective of etymology and its derivatives in different languages.Dad likes to tell me about the various connections, origins, and associations between words, as if the words came from a complicated family in Eastern Europe, with many second cousins ​​and third cousins, aunts, aunts, aunts, and in-laws. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Even aunts and cousins ​​have their own family histories, their own networks of nepotism.For example, "aunt" means dad's sister, and "uncle" means mom's brother. The Hebrew word for uncle, "dod," also means lover, although I'm not sure they were originally the same word. Dad said, you I have to be reminded to look up the big dictionaries to find out exactly where these words come from and how their usage has changed from generation to generation. Or, don't remind me, go get the dictionary now and we'll learn together, and get the cup by the way kitchen.

In the yard and on the street, there is darkness and silence, boundless, and you can hear the clouds flying low between the roofs, caressing the tops of the cypress trees.You can hear the dripping, rustling, or scratching of the faucet in the bathroom. The sound is so soft that you can hardly hear it. You can only feel it with the hair on the back of the neck. The sound comes from between the wardrobe and the wall.I turned on the lights in my parents' room, picked up eight or nine rings from Dad's desk, a pencil sharpener, two small notebooks, a long-necked inkwell filled with black ink, an eraser, and a pack of thumbtacks. Build a kibbutz on the border.Build a wall and a tower in the depths of the desert on the rug, arrange the circular needles in a semicircle, separate the pencil sharpener and eraser on both sides of the tall inkwell, the inkwell is my water tower, in these The buildings are surrounded by walls made of pencils and pens, and forts made of thumbtacks.Soon there will be a surprise attack: a gang of bloodthirsty bandits (two dozen buttons) will attack the settlement from the southeast, but we're going to have to play tricks.We'll leave the gates open and let them drive straight into the farm compound where there's going to be a bloodbath and the gates will be closed so they can't escape, and I'll order the fire to be fired, and at that very moment, from the top of all the buildings, and the On the top of the inkpot of the water tower, the pioneers represented by my white chess pieces will open fire. They will use a fierce burst of artillery fire to wipe out the enemy forces who have thrown themselves into the net, sing the praises of honor, and sing bloody and tragic stories.Then I would sing my praises, elevating the rush cushion to the Mediterranean, the bookshelf to represent the European coastline, the sofa to represent Africa, the Strait of Gibraltar across the chair legs, the scattered cards to represent Cyprus, Sicily and Malta, the notebook to be an aircraft carrier, the eraser And a pencilknife is a destroyer, a thumbtack is a mine, and a ring pin would be a submarine.

It was cold in the house.I didn't add a sweater like they told me, so as not to waste electricity, I would light up the electric stove for about ten minutes.The electric furnace has two sets of resistance wires, but there is a power-saving knob that always makes one set of resistance wires, that is, the set of resistance wires with low power, glow.I kept my eyes on how the coils burned.It gradually lights up, and at first you can't see anything, just a crackling sound, like walking on sugar, then a lavender shimmer appears at both ends of the resistance wire, and then a reddish shimmer begins to move toward the center Scattered, like a flush on a shy cheek, then turned crimson, then quickly ran wild with no regard for any decency, from naked bright yellow to lustful lime green, until the center of the coil glowed, burning irresistibly, red hot fire Like the savage sun seen through the shiny metal disk of the reflector, you have to squint your eyes.Now the resistance wire is hot, dazzling, unable to control itself, and will melt at any moment, pouring towards my Mediterranean Sea, like an erupting volcano spewing out torrents of lava, destroying my destroyer fleet and diving fleet.At this moment, its partner, the upper resistance wire, is coldly still and indifferent.The brighter the other set of resistance wires, the more indifferent this set of resistance wires.It shrugged its shoulders and sat on the edge of the stage to see everything, but it didn't move.I jolted as if under my own skin the imprisoned tension between the coils, realizing that I had a simple and quick way to ensure that the indifferent set of resistance wires had no choice but to burn, and it trembled too burst into a passionate red light - but that is absolutely not allowed.It is absolutely forbidden to ignite the second set of resistance wires, not only because it is a shameful waste, but also because there is a danger of overloading the circuit, blowing the fuse, and darkening the whole house. "Find it for me?The second set of resistance wires will only burn if I'm out of my mind, totally out of my mind, completely reckless.But what if I come back before I close the parent?Or I turn it off in time but the coil doesn't have time to cool down and lie there playing dead, so how do I defend myself?So I must resist the temptation to ignite it.I also have to tidy up and get everything in order.

Facts often threaten truth.I once wrote down the real cause of my grandma's death.Schromitt, who came directly to Jerusalem from Vilna on a hot summer day in 1933, was amazed at the sweaty marketplace, at the multi-coloured barns, and heard the sound of people coming and going on the sidewalks. The cries of the peddler, the braying of the donkey, the bleating of the goat, the clucking of the hen hanging by its legs, the blood dripping from the neck of the slaughtered chicken, she saw the shoulders and arms of oriental men, and saw the fruits and vegetables Blinding colors, she saw the surrounding mountains and rocky slopes, and immediately issued the final verdict: the Levant is full of bacteria. "Grandma has lived in Jerusalem for about twenty-five years. She is well aware of the hardships of the years and rarely has a happy time, but she has not weakened or changed her ruling until the last moment of her life. It is said that they just settled in Jerusalem She ordered her grandpa to get up at six or half past six in the morning, spray Fleet to every corner of the house to remove bacteria, spray under the bed, behind the closet, even in the storage area of ​​the bathroom, between the legs of the sideboard, and then pat All the mattresses, bedspreads and eiderdowns. She did it every day they were in Jerusalem, summer and winter. I remember from my childhood that Grandpa Alexander stood on the balcony early in the morning, wearing a vest and night shoes, Beat the pillow as Don Quixote beat the wine-skin, take the rug duster, beat it over and over with wretched, desperate energy. Granny Shlomit would stand a few paces away from him, taller than he, Dressed in a flowered silk dressing gown, tightly buttoned and her hair tied in a green bow, she stood upright like the headmistress of a girls' boarding school, commanding the field to her daily victory.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing war against germs, Grandma is also uncompromising when it comes to cooking fruit and vegetables.She soaked a cloth in a pinkish antiseptic solution called Kari and wiped the bread twice.Instead of washing the dishes after dinner, she gave them the treatment they might have had on Passover night: cooked for a long time.Grandma Shlomit also "boils" herself three times a day: no matter whether it is winter or summer, she takes a bath with boiling water almost three times a day to remove bacteria.She lived to an advanced age, and the bugs and viruses saw her approaching from a distance and ran to the other side of the street.She had two heart attacks in her eighties, and Dr. Colomholz warned her: "My dear lady, if you don't stop these hot baths, I can't be sorry for any mishaps and regrets that may arise." Take responsibility for the consequences.But Grandma Shlomit couldn't give up the bath.She is too afraid of germs.She died in the shower.It is true that she has heart disease.But the truth is that my grandma died of excessive hygiene, not heart disease.Facts have a tendency to obscure the truth.Cleanliness hurt her.Although her Jerusalem-living motto: "The Levant is full of germs," ​​may confirm an earlier truth, a truth that goes deeper than the hygienic devil, a repressed unseen truth. After all, Shlomit Grandma is from Northeastern Europe, where there are as many bacteria as Jerusalem, not to mention other harmful substances. A peephole here may give us a little glimpse of the eastern sights, colors and smells. For my grandma and maybe others like her Psychological impact of refugees and immigrants.