Soumchi Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  In Which Love Blossoms

  With All His Heart and Soul

  Who Shall Ascend unto the Hill of the Lord?

  Your Money or Your Life

  To Hell with Everything

  All Is Lost

  One Night of Love

  EPILOGUE

  Footnotes

  First Mariner Books edition 2012

  Copyright © 1978 by Amos Oz and Am Oved

  Publishers, Ltd Tel Aviv English

  English translation copyright © 1980 by Chatto and Windus Ltd

  Illustrations copyright © 1993 Carl Hanser Verlag

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Oz, Amos.

  [Sumkhi. English]

  Soumchi / Amos Oz; translated by Amos Oz and Penelope Farmer;

  illustrated by Quint Buchholz.—1st Mariner Books ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-547-63693-1

  [1. Jerusalem—Fiction.] I. Farmer, Penelope, date. ill.

  II. Buchholz, Quint. III. Title.

  PZ7.O984So 2012

  [Fic]—dc23 2012016430

  To Fania, Gallia and Daniel

  PROLOGUE

  On Changes

  In which may be found a variety of memories and reflections, comparisons and conclusions. You may skip them if you'd rather and pass straight on to Chapter One where my story proper begins.

  Everything changes. My friends and acquaintances, for example, change curtains and professions, exchange old homes for new ones, shares for securities, or vice versa, bicycles for motor bicycles, motor bicycles for cars, exchange stamps, coins, letters, good mornings, ideas and opinions: some of them exchange smiles.

  In the part of Jerusalem known as Sha'are Hesed there once lived a bank cashier who, in the course of a single month, changed his home, his wife, his appearance (he grew a red moustache and sideburns—also reddish), changed first name and surname, changed sleeping and eating habits, in short, he changed everything. One fine day he even changed his job, became a drummer in a night club instead of a cashier (though actually this was not so much a case of change, more like a sock being turned inside out).

  Even while we are reflecting on it, by the way, the world about us is gradually changing too. Though the blue transparency of summer still lies across the land, though it is still hot and the sky still blazes above our heads, yet already, near dusk, you can sense some new coolness—at night comes a breeze and the smell of clouds. And just as the leaves begin to redden and to turn, so the sea becomes a little more blue, the earth a little more brown, even the far-off hills these days look somewhat farther away.

  Everything.

  As for me; aged eleven and two months, approximately, I changed completely, four or five times, in the course of a single day. How then shall I begin my story? With Uncle Zemach or Esthie? Either would do. But I think I'll begin with Esthie.

  In Which Love Blossoms

  And in which facts will at last be revealed that have been kept secret to this day; love and other feelings among them.

  Near us in Zachariah Street lived a girl called Esthie. I loved her. In the morning, sitting at the breakfast table and eating a slice of bread, I'd whisper to myself, "Esthie."

  To which my father would return; "One doesn't eat with one's mouth open."

  While, in the evenings, they'd say of me: "That crazy boy has shut himself in the bathroom again and is playing with water."

  Only I was not playing with water at all, merely filling up the hand basin and tracing her name with my finger across the waves on its surface. At night sometimes I dreamed that Esthie was pointing at me in the street, shouting, "Thief, thief!" And I would be frightened and begin to run away and she would pursue me; everyone would pursue me, Bar-Kochba Sochobolski and Goel Germanski and Aldo and Elie Weingarten, everyone, the pursuit continuing across empty lots and backyards, over fences and heaps of rusty junk, among ruins and down alleyways, until my pursuers began to grow tired and gradually to lag behind, and at last only Esthie and I would be left running all alone, reaching almost together some remote and distant spot, a woodshed, perhaps, or a washhouse on a roof, or the dark angle under the stairs of a strange house, and then the dream would become both sweet and terrible—oh, I'd awake at night sometimes and weep, almost, from shame. I wrote two love poems in the black notebook that I lost in the Tel Arza wood. Perhaps it was a good thing I lost it.

  But what did Esthie know?

  Esthie knew nothing. Or knew and wondered.

  For example; once I put my hand up in a geography lesson and stated authoritatively:

  "Lake Hula is also known as Lake Soumchi." The whole classroom of course immediately roared with loud and unruly laughter. What I had said was the truth; the exact truth in fact, it's in the encyclopedia. In spite of which, our teacher, Mr. Shitrit, got confused for a moment and interrogated me furiously: "Kindly sum up the evidence by which you support your conclusion," But the class had already erupted, was shouting and screaming from every direction:

  "Sum it up, Soumchi, sum it up, Soumchi." While Mr. Shitrit swelled like a frog, grew red in the face and roared as usual:

  "Let all flesh be silent!" And then, besides: "Not a dog shall bark!"

  After five more minutes the class had quieted down again. But, almost to the end of the eighth grade, I remained Soumchi, I've no ulterior motive in telling you all this. I simply want to stress one significant detail; a note sent to me by Esthie at the end of that same lesson, which read as follows:

  You're nuts. Why do you always have to say things that get you into trouble? Stop it!

  Only then she had folded over one comer at the bottom of the note and written in it, very small: But it doesn't matter. E.

  So what did Esthie know?

  Esthie knew nothing, or perhaps she knew and wondered. As for me, in no circumstance would it have occurred to me to hide a love letter in her satchel as Elie Weingarten did in Nourit's, nor to send her a message via Ra'anana, our class matchmaker, like Tarzan Bamberger, also to Nourit. Quite the reverse: this is what I did; on every possible occasion I'd pull Esthie's plaits; time and again I stuck her beautiful white jumper to her chair with chewing gum.

  Why did I do it? Because. Why not? To show her. And I'd twist her two thin arms behind her back nearly as hard as I could, until she started calling me names and trying to scratch me, yet she never begged for mercy. That's what I did to Esthie. And worse besides. It was me who first nicknamed her Clementine (from the song that the English soldiers at the Schneller Barracks were spreading round Jerusalem those days: "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine!"—the girls in our class, surprisingly, picked it up quite gleefully, and even at Hanukah six months later, when everything was over, they were still calling Esthie Tina, which came from Clementina, which came from Clementine).

  And Esthie? She had only one word for me and she threw it in my face first thing every morning, before I had even had time to start making a nuisance of myself:

  "Louse"—or else:

  "You stink."

  Once or twice at the ten o'clock break I very nearly reduced Esthie to tears. For that I was handed punishments by Hemda, our teacher, and took them like a man, tight-lipped and uncomplaining.

  And that's how love blossomed, without notable event, until the day after the feast of Shavuot. Esthie wept on my account at
the ten o'clock break and I wept on hers at night.

  With All His Heart and Soul

  In which Uncle Zemach goes too far and I set out for the source of the River Zambezi (in the heart of Africa).

  At the feast of Shavuot, Uncle Zemach came from Tel Aviv, bringing me a bicycle as a present. As a matter of fact my birthday falls between the two festivals—of Passover and Shavuot. But in Uncle Zemach's eyes, all festivals are more or less the same, except for the Tree Planting festival which he treats with exceptional respect. He used to say, "At Hanukah we children of Israel are taught in school to be angry with the wicked Greeks. At Purim it's the Persians; at Passover we hate Egypt, at Lag B'omer, Rome. On May Day we demonstrate against England; on the Ninth of Av we fast against Babylon and Rome; on the twentieth of Tararauz, Herzl and Bialik died, while on the eleventh of Adar we must remember for all eternity what the Arabs did to Trumpedor and his companions at Tel Hai. The Tree Planting festival is the only one where we haven't quarrelled with anyone and have no griefs to remember. But it almost always rains then—it does it on purpose."

  My Uncle Zemach, they had explained to me, was Grandmother Emilia's eldest son by her first marriage, before she married Grandfather Isidore. Sometimes, when he was staying with us, Uncle Zemach would get me out of bed at half past five in the morning and incite me in a whisper to steal into the kitchen with him and cook ourselves an illicit double omelette. He would have a cheerful, even wicked gleam in his eye on those mornings, behaving just as if he and I were fellow members of some dangerous gang and only temporarily engaged in such a relatively innocent pastime as cooking ourselves illicit double omelettes. But my family generally had a very low opinion of my Uncle Zemach. Like this for instance:

  "He was a little spekulant* by the time he was fourteen in Warsaw, in the Nalevki district, and now here he is, still a spekulant in Bugrashov Street in Tel Aviv," Or:

  "He hasn't changed an atom. Even the sun can't be bothered to brown him. That's the type he is. And there's nothing whatever we can do about it."

  But I regarded that last remark as plain stupid and nasty, as well as unfair. My Uncle Zemach didn't get brown because he couldn't and that was all there was to it. Even if they'd made him a lifeguard on the beach he'd have got burnt instead of brown, turned red all over and begun to peel. This is how he was; a young man still, not tall, and so thin and pale he might have been cut out of paper. His hair was whitish, his eyes red like a rabbit's.

  And what did spekulant mean anyway? I had no idea at all. But in my own mind I translated it more or less as follows:

  That even when he lived in Warsaw, Uncle Zemach had used to wear a vest and khaki shorts down to his knees and fall fast asleep with the radio on. And he still had not changed; he still clung to his outlandish habits, wore a vest and khaki shorts down to his knees and fell asleep with the radio on. Even here, in Palestine, in Bugrashov Street, Tel Aviv. Well, I thought, what about it, so what?—what's wrong with that? And anyway, my Uncle Zemach lived in Grusenberg Street, not Bugrashov Street. And anyway, sometimes he would burst out singing very loudly in a voice that mooed and brayed and broke,

  "Oh, show me the way to go home...."

  At which they would whisper together, very worried and in Yiddish so that I wouldn't understand, but always with the word meshuggener, which I knew meant madman. But though they said this of Uncle Zemach, he struck me rather—when he burst out with this song or any other—as not at all a mad man, but simply very sad.

  And sometimes he wasn't sad either. Not at all: quite the reverse, he'd be joyous and funny. For instance, he would sit with my parents and my unmarried Aunt Edna on our balcony at dusk and discuss matters which ought not under any circumstances to have been discussed in front of children.

  Bargains and profits, building lots and swindles, shares and lirot,* scandals and adulteries in Bohemian circles. Sometimes, until they silenced him furiously, he used dirty language, "Quiet, Wetmark," they would say, "what's the matter with you, are you crazy, have you gone completely out of your mind? The boy's listening to everything and he's no baby any more."

  And the presents he would bring me. He kept on thinking up the most amazing, even outrageous, presents. Once, he brought me a Chinese stamp album that twittered when you opened it. Once, a game like Monopoly, only in Turkish. Once, a black pistol that squirted water in your enemy's face. And once he brought me a little aquarium with a pair of live fish swimming about in it, except they were not a pair, as it turned out, but both indubitably male. Another time, he brought me a dart gun ("Are you out of your mind, Wetmark? The boy's going to put someone's eye out with that thing, God forbid"). And one winter weekend I got from Uncle Zemach a Nazi bank note—no other boy in our neighborhood had anything like it ("Now, Wetmark, this time you have really gone too far"). And, on Seder night, he presented me with six white mice in a cage ("So what else are you going to bring the boy? Snakes? Bedbugs? Cockroaches, perhaps?").

  This time, Uncle Zemach marked the feast of Shavuot by riding alt the way from the Egged bus station in the Jaffa Road to the courtyard of our house on a second-hand Raleigh bicycle, complete with every accessory: it had a bell, also a lamp, also a carrier, also a reflector at the back; all it lacked was the crossbar joining the saddle to the handlebars. But, in my first overwhelming joy, I overlooked just how grave a shortcoming that was.

  Mother said: "Really, this is excessive, Zemach. The boy is still only eleven. What are you proposing to give him for his Bar Mitzva?"

  "A camel," said Uncle Zemach at once, and with an air of such total indifference, he might have prepared himself for this very question all along.

  Father said: "Would it be worth your considering at least once the effects on his education? Seriously, Zemach, where's it all leading to?"

  I did not wait for Uncle Zemach's reply. Nor did it matter to me in the least where things were leading. Crazy with pride and joy, I was galloping my bicycle to my private place behind the house. And there, where no one could see me, I kissed its handlebars, then kissed the back of my own hands again and again and, in a whisper as loud as a shout, chanted: "Lord God Almighty, Lord God Almighty, LORD GOD ALMIGHTY." And, afterwards, in a deep, wild groan that broke from the depths of my being: "HI—MA—LA—YA."

  And after that, I leaned the bicycle against a tree and leaped high into the air. It was only when I calmed down a little that I noticed Father. He stood in a window above my head and watched in unbroken silence until I had quite finished. Then he said:

  "All right. So be it. All I beg is that we should make a little agreement between us. You may ride your new bicycle for up to an hour and a half each day. No more. You'll ride always on the right-hand side, whether there is traffic in the street or not. And you will remain always, exclusively, within the boundaries set by the following streets: Malachi, Zephania, Zachariah, Ovadia and Amos. You will not enter Geula Street, because it is too full of the comings and goings of the British drivers from the Schneller Barracks; whether they are intoxicated or the enemies of Israel, or both, is immaterial. And at all intersections you will kindly, please, use your intelligence a little."

  "On the wings of eagles," said Uncle Zemach.

  And Mother added: "Yes, but carefully."

  I said: "Fine, good-bye." But when I had gone a little way from them, added: "It will be all right." And went out into the street.

  How they stared at me then, the boys of our neighborhood; classmates, big boys, little boys alike. I watched them too, but sideways, so that they wouldn't notice it, and saw envy, mockery and malice there. But what did I care? Very slowly and deliberately I walked in front of them, not riding my bicycle, but pushing it, one-handed, along the pavement, right under their noses, wearing on my face meanwhile a thoughtful, even smug, expression, as if to ask:

  "What's all the fuss about? It's just a Raleigh bicycle. Of course you can do exactly as you like. You can burst on the spot if you like, but it's your own lookout. It's got absolutely nothing to d
o with me."

  Indeed, Elie Weingarten could not keep silence any longer. He opened his mouth and said, very coolly, like a scientist identifying some unusual lizard just discovered in a field:

  "Just look at this. They've gone and bought Soumchi a girl's bike, without a crossbar."

  "Perhaps they'll buy him a party frock next," said Bar-Kochba Sochobolski. He did not even bother to look at me, nor cease tossing deftly, up and down, two silver coins at once.

  "A pink hair ribbon would suit Soumchi very well"—this was the voice of Tarzan Bamberger. "And he and Esthie can be best friends." (Bar-Kochba again.) "Except Esthie wears a bra already and Soumchi doesn't need one yet." (Elie Weingarten, the skunk.)

  That was it. Enough, I decided. More than enough. Finish.

  I did not start calling them names or set about breaking their bones one by one. Instead I made them the same rude gesture with my left thumb that Uncle Zemach made whenever the name of the British Foreign Minister, Bevin, was mentioned, turned around instantly and rode off on my bicycle down Zephania Street.

  Let them say anything they liked.

  Let them burst in a million pieces.

  Why should I care?

  Besides, on principle, I never pick a fight with boys weaker than myself. And, besides, what was all this about Esthie suddenly? What made them think of Esthie? Right then. It was still daylight. I would set off here and now on my bicycle for faraway places, head south on the Katamon and Talpiot Road, and on farther, via Bethlehem, Hebron and Beersheva, via the Negev and Sinai deserts, towards the heart of Africa and the source of the River Zambezi, there to brave alone a mob of bloodthirsty savages.

  But I had barely reached the end of Zephania Street when I began to ask myself: Why do they hate me so, those bastards? And knew, suddenly, in my heart of hearts thai it was my fault just as much as theirs. I felt an instant sense of relief. After all, an ability to show mercy even to his worst enemy is the mark of a great and noble soul. No power in all the world, no possible obstacle could deter such a man from traveling to the farthest frontiers of unknown lands. I would go now to consult Aldo, I decided, and afterwards, this very day and without more ado, would continue on my journey to Africa.