Black Box by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online Page B

police record closed. Little by little Michel is finding his way toward Boaz. Like making a way through a thicket. Can you believe it? He managed to make Boaz come and see us here in Jerusalem last weekend, and several times I could not help laughing at the sight of my tiny husband and my giant of a son competing with each other all day for the favors of the little girl, who seemed to be enjoying the contest and even fanning the flames. When the Sabbath was over, Michel made us all a salad with olives and hot peppers, hamburgers and fried potatoes, and asked the neighbors’ son to baby-sit so we could go to the second show at the cinema.
Does this rapprochement complicate your strategy? I’m sorry. You have lost a point. How did you put it to me once? When the battle is at its height there is no more sense in the initial briefings. In any case, the enemy now knows about the briefing and does not act in accordance with it. That’s how it happened to you that Boaz and Michel are almost friends now, while I watch and smile: for instance, when Michel climbed up on Boaz’s shoulders to change a light bulb on the veranda. Or when Yifat tried to put Michel’s slippers on Boaz’s feet.
Why am I telling you all this?
In fact we ought to have gone back to our established silence. From now to the end of our days. To accept your money and say nothing. But there is a will-o’-the-wisp that persists in flickering over the marsh at night, and neither of us can take our eyes off it.
If despite everything you have decided to go on reading these pages, if you have not shot them onto the fire burning in your room, I suspect that at this moment your face is wearing that mask of contempt and arrogance that suits you so well and gives you an air of arctic strength. The frozen ray at the touch of which I melt as though under a spell. Right from the start. I melt and hate you. I melt and give myself to you.
I know: from the letter you are holding in your hands right now there is no going back.
But then, my two previous letters would be enough for you, if you want to destroy me.
What have you done with my previous letters? Are they in the fire, or in the safe?
As a matter of fact, there’s hardly any difference.
Because you do not trample to death, Alec, you sting. Your poison is fine and slow; it does not slay at once but destroys and dissolves me over the years.
Your prolonged silence: For seven years I tried to withstand it, to exorcise it with the noises of my new home. And in the eighth year I have given in.
I was not lying to you when I wrote you my first and second letters in February. All the details I brought to your knowledge about Boaz were accurate, as Zakheim has no doubt already confirmed to you. And yet, it was all a lie. I was deceiving you. I was setting a trap for you. In my heart I was perfectly certain, from the very first moment, that it was Michel who would rescue Boaz from his troubles. Michel, not you. And so indeed it turned out. And I knew from the very first moment that Michel, even without your money, would do the right thing. And at the right time and in the right way.
And I knew this too, Alec: that even if the Devil made you try to help your son, in fact you would not know what to do. You would not even know where to begin. You have never in your whole life known how to do something on your own. Even when you made up your mind to propose to me, you couldn’t go through with it. Your father had to ask me for you. All your Olympian wisdom and all your titanic powers always begin and end with one thing—your checkbook. Or else with transatlantic telephone calls to Zakheim or to some government minister or general from your old gang (and they, in their turn, call you when the time comes to get their sons into some prestigious college or to fix themselves a nice cushy sabbatical year).
And what else can you do? Spread charm or icy fear with your air of drowsy condescension. Classify historic zealots. Send thirty