Chapter 15 A Tale of Love and Darkness (15)

It was Grandma Shlomit, a remarkable woman who loved books and understood writers, who turned her Odessa home into a literary salon—perhaps the first ever Hebrew literary salon.With her unique sensitive awareness, loneliness and thirst for knowledge, shyness and wildness, inner insecurity and self-indulgent arrogance, these awkward combinations drive poets and writers out of the study. I look for you, you touch me and I rely on you, have fun, make fun of, let go of your airs, feel each other, put your hands on your shoulders, or put your arms around your waist, chat, argue endlessly, chatter a little, check other people's photos with curiosity Privacy, flattery, disagreement, collusion, being right, getting angry, apologizing, mending, avoiding each other, and finding your own other partners.She was the perfect hostess, entertaining her guests with unpretentious yet elegant grace.She presents to everyone her ears to listen, shoulders to bear, eyes of curiosity and envy, a heart of sympathy, delicacies made by herself, bowls of steaming and delicious stewed dishes in winter nights, which melt instantly in the mouth Poppy-seed cakes, bowls of piping hot tea poured from samovars.Grandpa's job was to pour liqueurs professionally, serve chocolates and sweet cakes to the ladies and choking Russian smoke to the gentlemen.Uncle Joseph, then twenty-nine years old, took over the editing of Hashroah from Ahad Haam. "Hashroah" is an important publication of modern Hebrew culture (edited by the poet Bialik himself), and has been adjudicating Hebrew literature since the time of Odessa, promoting or derogating according to its own standards writer.Aunt Cipolla accompanied him to "social gatherings" at his brother's and sister-in-law's homes, wrapping herself up in woolen scarves, warm coats, and earmuffs.Menaheim Yusyshkin, Zionist pioneer and leader of the Zion-loving movement, appeared in full costume, with a chest as high as a bison, a voice as hoarse as a Russian governor, and a boiling as cheerful as a samovar.With his arrival, the room fell silent: no one spoke out of respect, someone stood up to make room for him, Yusyshkin strode across the room with the gait of a general, he spread his legs, Sitting there boldly, he tapped the floor twice with his cane, indicating that he allowed the conversation in the salon to continue.Even Rabbi Chernowitz (known as Raf Zaire) was a regular visitor.There was also a chubby young historian who once wooed my grandma. (“He’s hard to get close to elegant women—he’s very smart, funny, but he’s got all kinds of nasty stains on his collar, and his cuffs are full of grime, and sometimes you can see chunks of food stuck in the In his trouser line, he's a total slob!") Occasionally, Bialik would drop by at night, pale with melancholy, or trembling with sternness and anger—or the exact opposite , he can also be the life and soul of the party. "And then!" said Granny, "how he acted like a child! A real scoundrel! No secrets! So indecent. Sometimes he would joke with us in Yiddish until it made the ladies blush, Joe N. Ronitzski would yell at him: 'Ah, shhh! Bialik! What's the matter with you! Ah! Enough!'" Bialik eats and drinks, he likes to be merry, he uses bread and cheese, and then a piece of cake, a cup of hot tea, a shot of liqueur, and one after another he would begin to serenade in Yiddish, expressing the wonder of the Hebrew language and his knowledge of the Hebrew language. deep love.The poet Chernikhovsky also broke into the salon, radiant but shy, passionate yet sensitive, conquering, touching with childlike innocence, vulnerable as a butterfly but painful, even in the Without noticing, people on the left, center and right were injured.And what about the real situation? "He never meant to hurt anyone—he was so innocent! Good hearted! A child who didn't know what sin was! Not like a sad Jewish kid, no! Like an alien kid. Full of life. Joyful, mischievous, and full of energy! Sometimes he's just like a newborn calf! Such a happy newborn calf jumping around. Playing funny characters in front of people! But only sometimes. Sometimes he comes in pain, Immediately made every woman want to care about him! All women! Young and old, married and unmarried, plain and beautiful and lovely, felt an implicit urge to care about him. That was his strength. He didn't even Knowing that he has the power—if he had known, he wouldn't have treated people like this!" Chernikhovsky's spirits rose after a shot or two of brandy.Sometimes he'd start reading those poems he'd composed, filled with joy and sorrow that made everyone in the room grieve with him, or for him.His wild behavior, his thick curly hair, his scraggly beard, and the girls he took with him, not all of them particularly bright, not even Jewish, but all beautiful, with eye-catching eyes, were often the source of criticism. The head is full, which stimulates the envy of the writers-"As a woman, I tell you," the grandmother spoke again, "there is nothing wrong with women in such things, and Bialik is used to sitting there looking at him like this... ...look at the alien girl he brought... If Bialik could live a week like Czernykhovsky, he would live a year less!" Fierce debate over revival, innovation of Hebrew language and literature The limitations of Jewish cultural heritage and the relationship between national culture, members of the League, Yiddishists (Uncle Joseph, in a polemical tone, called Yiddish "nonsense", and when he calmed down called "Jewish German ”), settlements in Judea and Galilee, the old question of the Jewish peasantry in Kherson or Kharkov, Knut Hamsun and Maupassant, power and socialism, women and agriculture, and many others .

In 1921, four years after the October Revolution, Odessa experienced several power alternations in the bloody war between red and white. My father finally changed from a girl to a boy for two or three years. Grandma and grandpa and two The two sons flew to Vilna, which at that time partly belonged to Poland (not yet Lithuania).Grandpa hated the communists. "Don't talk to me about the Bolsheviks," he often muttered, "well, what, even before they came to power, before they walked into looted houses, before they dreamed of being members of the state apparatus and people's commissars, I know them all. I remember what they used to be like, little hooligans, scumbags from the Odessa port area, thugs, bullies, thieves, drunks and scoundrels. Well, what's the matter, they're almost all Jews, all kinds Jew, what can you do. But they are only Jews from the simplest families—well, what, the fishmongers in the market, we generally call them the dross that sticks tightly to the bottom of the pan. Lenin and Torre Loski—what Trotsky, which Trotsky, Leo Blomstein, the crazy son of a Janovka pickpocket called Dovito—the mob put on the garb of revolutionaries, cough , what's the matter, in leather boots, with a revolver in his belt, like a dirty sow in a silk dress. And so they go down the street, arresting people, confiscating their property, as soon as they like someone's house or Girlfriend, just kill them. Cough, what's the matter, of course there are one or two aliens who fuck with them, they are also from the bottom, come from the seaport, scum, they are a mob, cough, what is it, a group of people wearing smelly socks rabble.” Fifty years after the Bolshevik Revolution, this attitude towards Communism and the Communists had not changed.The Israeli army conquered the Old City of Jerusalem in the "Six-Day War". A few days later, Grandpa suggested that the international community should now assist Israel.Return the Levantine Arabs to their historic homeland, which he calls the "Arab homeland": "Just as we Jews have returned to our homeland, so they should return home, to the Arab homeland of their birth." In short , I asked what he thought we should do if the Russians attacked us to spare their Arab allies the hardship of returning home.His pale pink face flushed with rage, and he bellowed domineeringly: "Russia! What Russia are you talking about? Russia doesn't exist anymore, little bed-wetting thing! Russia doesn't exist anymore! Maybe you're talking about the Bolsheviks? Well, what?" Well, I've known the Bolsheviks from their insignificant days in the Odessa port area. They're nothing but a gang of thieves and mobs! The bottom of the pan! The whole Bolshevism is nothing but a bluff! We've seen what a wonderful Hebrew plane we have, guns, heck, what, we should send these young lads and our plane through Petersburg, maybe two weeks each way, a levy Clean bombs - that's what we were supposed to do to them before - a bang - and the whole Bolshevism is like dirty lint flying into hell!" "Do you think Israel should bomb Leningrad, grandpa? World War? Have you heard of the atomic bomb? Have you heard of the hydrogen bomb?" "It's all under the control of the Jews. Well, what's the matter, the Americans, the Bolsheviks, all their new weapons are from the hands of Jewish scientists, They must know what to do and what not to do." "And what about peace? Is there a way to achieve peace?" "Yes. We have to defeat all our enemies. We have to beat them up so they come to us and beg for peace —And then, well, what, we give them peace. Why should we refuse? After all, we are a peace-loving people. We even have such a commandment, to pursue peace—well, what if We make peace with Baghdad if we need it, and we even talk peace with Cairo if we need it. Shouldn’t it? How could it be?”

The confusion, poverty, censorship, and fear following the October Revolution, civil war, and Red victory drove Hebrew writers and Zionists from Odessa.Uncle Joseph and Aunt Cipolla, together with many of their friends, sailed to Palestine on the "Ruslan" at the end of 1919, and their arrival at the port of Jaffa heralded the beginning of the third generation of Arya.Others fled from Odessa to Berlin, Lausanne and the United States.Grandpa Alexander, Grandma Shlomit, and their two sons did not emigrate to Palestine—despite the Zionist passion that throbbed in Grandpa Alexander's poems, the land was too Asian, too primitive in their eyes, It is too backward, lacking the basic sanitation guarantee and basic culture.So they went to Lithuania, where the Klausners, Grandpa, Uncle Joseph, and Betz Ariel's parents had left twenty-five years earlier.Werner was still under the rule of Poland, where fierce anti-Semitism was uninterrupted and intensified every year.Nationalism and xenophobia have always dominated Poland and Lithuania.The large Jewish minority seemed to the conquered Lithuanians the mouthpiece of the oppressor's regime.Across the border, new, ruthless, anti-Semitic Nazis are spreading across Germany.In Werner, Grandpa was also a businessman.He doesn't expect much. He buys something here and sells it there, sometimes making some money in the process.He sent his two sons first to a Hebrew school and then to a traditional secondary school.Brothers David and Ariya, otherwise known as Ziyuzya or Ronia, brought three languages ​​from Odessa: they spoke Russian and Yiddish at home, Russian on the street, and Kindergartens run by the Zionists had to speak Hebrew.Here, at the traditional secondary school in Vilna, they added Greek and Latin, Polish, German and French.Later, in the European Literature Department of the university, I studied English and Italian, and in the Semitic Philosophy Department, my father also studied Arabic, Aramaic, and cuneiform.Uncle David soon found a job teaching literature, and my father, Yehuda Ariye, completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Vilna in 1932, hoping to follow in his brother's footsteps, but by then anti-Semitism had become impossible. Bear.Jewish students had to suffer humiliation, physical attacks, discrimination and sadistic abuse. "But exactly what did they do to you?" I asked my dad, what is sadistic abuse? Did they hit you? Did they tear up your exercise books? Why didn't you complain?" "You can't ,' said Dad, "understand this.It's better not to understand.I'm happy, though you can't understand this either, which is why I'm glad you don't understand the situation.Of course I don't want you to know.Because there is no need to understand.It is because there is no need to understand it anymore.Because it's over.It's over forever.That said, it doesn't happen here.Now let's talk about something else, shall we talk about your planetary album? Of course we still have enemies, there are wars, there are sieges, and the casualties are not small.That's for sure, I don't deny it.But this is not persecution.this is not.Neither persecution, nor humiliation, nor mass murder.Not the sadistic abuse we had to suffer there.That will be gone forever.Not here.If they attack us, we will retaliate with retaliation.I think you have inserted Mars between Saturn and Jupiter.wrong.No, I won't tell you.You can look it up yourself to see what is wrong, or you can put it in the right place yourself. "