[114]
We’re asking ourselves what the point of this book is or of books in general.
We’ve never seen books classified by genre. That is, we’ve seen them classified, but not correctly. What’s the point of classifying books as fiction or contemplative literature, for instance, when fiction is part and parcel of contemplation and contemplation is entirely a matter of fiction?
Or take, for instance, science books. These aren’t stories? Accurate ones. But stories nonetheless. Or the distinction between biographies and novels. Is there a biography that isn’t a novel? Or a novel that isn’t the story of a life?
If books are going to be classified by genre, it should be done in an entirely different manner. First, one has to distinguish between happy books and sad books. Not books that make one happy or make one sad. Happy books, plain and simple. A book that can laugh or smile or cry. The book itself. The reader can behave however he likes.
Critics, for example, cry at the sight of happy books and are happy in the face of books that cry. The marble-like faces of academicians are summoned before books of every sort. No wonder most of them (that is, most of the books) get offended.
Apart from the classification by feelings, it’s also possible to classify books by subject matter. The principal group here would be books about pelicans. Or a large group of books about shoreline rock formations. Here too there are secondary classifications (such as pelicans according to their coloration or shore formations according to their shape, and so forth). But better to classify them (that is, the books) by their feelings.
[115]
At first glance this book would seem to be a hybrid. That is, a book that sometimes laughs and sometimes cries. But in fact (as the logicians say), it’s laughing and crying at once, and to the same degree.
The protagonist of this book is the human being. God is a minor character. And so it (that is, the book) is a total failure, since it never really gets to the heart of one or the other. If it were printed on thinner paper we’d suggest the reader use it for rolling cigarettes. The smoke would write the book in the air as it really is.
My father (Avraham Andreas) knew how to blow smoke rings. Much to our amazement he could smoke an entire cigarette without it falling apart. That is, the whole thing would turn into one long tube of ash, and he wouldn’t have to tap it — not even once — on the ashtray.
[116]
When we took him (that is, my father) by taxi for an x-ray, a pickup truck drove in front of us and a large Doberman sat in the back of the vehicle.
Throughout the trip the dog was looking at my father and my father looked at the dog until we got to the hospital. There they told us that a large spot had been found on my father’s abdomen (he was already 86), but, out of courtesy, they didn’t mention the word cancer.
On the way back to the old age home the same pickup truck was driving ahead of us (we recognized the license plate number) but the dog was no longer there. When we got to his room, my father put one string quintet or another on the record player, poured himself a glass of cognac, and said: You don’t need to tell me. I know. It’s over.
[117]
At night we hear the jackals and the moon is twice as large. Wild boars come up to the fence and dogs bark. We see the silhouette of the mountain over the house. The mountain itself is black.
This is the Philharmonic of the Galilee’s Hills. Immigrants from Morocco and Russia, the Druze and the Christians and the Muslims, all have subscriptions to this orchestra.
Citizens of Tel Aviv sit, shut in a hall, in rows, their backs straight, and listen to their own concert. All is finely crafted. Movement by movement. The musicians come in at just the right time. The conductor waves his hands like one of those miserable souls afflicted with an obsession for order and cleanliness. The Galileans, on the other hand, lie down, each in his bed, on the enormous stage of a much greater concert.
At midnight the last of the jackals falls silent. The wild boars return to the thickets, and the dogs go into their doghouses. Each one dreams. The jackal dreams. The boar dreams. The dogs dream, and the human beings dream as well. If the children’s books are to be believed, so do the moon and the mountain.
[118]
Around three o’clock in the morning all sorts of things come to mind. That we said something stupid. That we were spoken to coarsely. That people we’ve loved have died and people we love are far away. That we’re old now. That everything’s gradually slipping away.
In the night air we see loose women. Killing fields. Natural disasters. Jackals are howling outside again, and the dog is barking. Things that were — won’t return.
There’s shouting everywhere. Houses on fire. Thoughts are burning. There’s an air of depression, like a cold front, moving in from the west. We’re walking barefoot along bookshelves that serve no purpose, turned in as they are on themselves, and ponderous, like geological formations in a canyon’s walls. Whence cometh my help, we think. And take a Valium.
[119]
Someone said, “Get hold of yourself.” We’ve always wanted to get hold of ourselves, but to do this we’d need to extend our arms considerably, and how could we stand on the ground if we were in fact to get hold of ourselves (feet and all).
Imagine that we could cradle ourselves like that and move from place to place like large babies carrying themselves. We’d calm ourselves down like mothers do when they rock their babies in the air and sing them lullabies.
People would come with claims only against themselves and with the soles of their feet laid bare. Maybe they’d even be carrying themselves (getting hold of themselves) while they’re naked. So nothing would be concealed from them, and they’d see themselves completely, as a mother sees her baby while she’s changing a diaper.
True. We’d no longer be counted among the bipeds. Our legs might atrophy. Crows would undoubtedly gaze at us in amazement. Maybe we’d be defined in dictionaries as a kind of clumsy bird (lacking wings and feathers) that hovers heavily as it carries itself over the face of the earth. But we wouldn’t be wanting.
[120]
The sun sets in any event, even if you try hypnosis to get it to stop in the sky.
You can sit in Nahariya by the sea and see for yourself. Like we did once, when we met with the editor in chief at Café Kapulski.
The editor in chief didn’t know, of course, that we were trying to do this, and so we could focus on the hypnosis only when he turned to eat his tuna sandwich or took documents out of his briefcase. Maybe that’s why it wouldn’t work. That is, because we weren’t able to look at the sun the entire time as it was setting.
We’ve not yet revealed to a soul that we have hidden powers. We can, for example, break a thought in two and join an entirely new thought to one of the broken halves. Or we can move our hand.
You can go to Café Kapulski in Nahariya and try these things. You might have some luck, even with the sun.
[121]
Among our powers is the power to draw women toward us.
We’ve been endowed with this only to a moderate extent. At times a woman would walk toward us as though against her will, but usually this was a woman we weren’t interested in, like women whose names were Kinneret Lipshitz or Zahara. We were drawn to darker women, but more often than not they would march on, in a straight line (without, that is, veering off in our direction).
Nevertheless we lift up a prayer of thanksgiving for every woman who showed us kindness. One shouldn’t take these things lightly. That, and the green carpet that covers the hills during the rainy season. Or the migration of storks. Or the laundry lines with their white sheets on the rooftops. Or the train’s whistle or the boat’s horn as it comes into port. Or the perfume wafting in the theater lobby. All are blessings from God that exert an influence over us. And, especially, the gentle swish of dresses as women take them off.