My Michael by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online Page A

Michael didn't know I was there. I could read a few sentences over his shoulder. His handwriting was neat and well rounded, like a tidy schoolgirl's. But the words made me shudder: Extraction of mineral deposits. Volcanic forces pressing outwards. Solidified lava. Basalt. Consequent and subsequent streams. A morphotectonic process which began thousands of years ago and is still continuing. Gradual disintegration, sudden disintegration. Seismic disturbances so slight that they can be detected only by the most sensitive instruments.
    Once again I was startled by these words. I was being sent a message in code. My life depended on it. But I didn't have the key.

    Then I went back to the armchair and carried on with my embroidery.
    Michael raised his head and said:
    "I've never known a woman like you."
    And then immediately, hastening to forestall me, he added:
    "How very trite."

    I should like to record that until our wedding night I kept my body from Michael.
    A few months before his death my father called me into his room and locked the door behind us. His face was already ravaged by his illness. His cheeks were sunken and his skin was dry and sallow. He looked not at me but at the rug on the floor in front of him, as if he were reading off the rug the words he was about to utter. Father told me about wicked men who seduce women with sweet words and then abandon them to their fate. I was about thirteen at the time. Everything he told me I had already heard from giggling girls and spotty-faced boys. But my father uttered the words not as a joke but on a note of quiet sadness. He formulated his remarks as if the existence of two distinct sexes was a disorder which multiplied agony in the world, a disorder whose results people must do everything in their power to mitigate. He concluded by saying that if I thought of him in moments of difficulty I might prevent myself from taking a wrong decision.
    I do not think that this was the real reason why I kept my body from Michael until our wedding night. What the real reason was I do not want to record here. People ought to be very careful when they use the word "reason." Who told me that? Why, Michael himself. When he put his arms round my shoulders Michael was strong and self-restrained. Perhaps he was shy, like me. He didn't plead with words. His fingers entreated, but they never insisted. He would run his fingers slowly down my back. Then he would remove his hand and look first at his fingers, then at me, at me and at his fingers, as if cautiously comparing one thing with another. My Michael.

    One evening before I took my leave of Michael to go back to my room (I had less than a week left to live with the Tarnopoler family in Achva) I said:
    "Michael, you'll be surprised to learn that I know something about consequent and subsequent streams which perhaps even you don't know. If you're a good boy, one day I'll tell you what I know."
    Then I ruffled his hair with my hand: what a hedgehog! What it was I had in mind I don't know.
    One of the last nights, two days before the wedding, I had a frightening dream. Michael and I were in Jericho. We were shopping in the market, between rows of low mud huts. (My father, my brother, and I had been on an outing together to Jericho in 1938. It was during the Feast of Succot. We went on an Arab bus. I was eight. I have not forgotten. My birthday is during Succot.)
    Michael and I bought a rug, some pouffes, an ornate sofa. Michael didn't want to buy these things. I chose them and he paid up quietly. The
suk
in Jericho was noisy and colorful. People were shouting wildly. I walked through the crowd calmly, wearing a casual skirt. There was a terrible, savage sun in the sky, such as I have seen in paintings by Van Gogh. Then an army jeep pulled up near us. A short, dapper British officer leaped out and tapped Michael on the shoulder. Michael suddenly turned and dashed off like a man possessed, upsetting stalls as he ran till he was swallowed up in the