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    Black Box
    Black Box
    Black Box
    Ebook329 pages8 hours

    Black Box

    By Amos Oz

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Seven years after their divorce, Ilana breaks the bitter silence with a letter to Alex, a world-renowned authority on fanaticism, begging for help with their rebellious adolescent son, Boaz. One letter leads to another, and so evolves a correspondence between Ilana and Alex, Alex and Michel (Ilana's Moroccan husband), Alex and his Mephistophelian Jerusalem lawyer—a correspondence between mother and father, stepfather and stepson, father and son, each pleading his or her own case.

    The grasping, lyrical, manipulative, loving Ilana has stirred things up. Now, her former husband and her present husband have become rivals not only for her loyalty but for her son's as well.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 16, 2012
    ISBN9780547751993
    Black Box
    Author

    Amos Oz

    AMOS OZ (1939–2018) was born in Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other international honors. His work, including A Tale of Love and Darkness and In the Land of Israel, has been translated into forty-four languages. 

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    Reviews for Black Box

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Reading Asian authors; this month Holy Land. Amos Oz was born In Jerusalem in 1939. He died in 2018. Black Box is the story of Illana, a divorced woman, remarried to Michel, a Moroccan devout Hebrew. The story is told through letters and telegrams (epistolary). Illana writes a letter to her ex husband and that starts a bunch of correspondence between Illana, the ex, the son, the step son, the husband, the lawyer, the sister. I like reading Oz but I don't find him exactly easy to read. There is a whole lot of stuff to digest. The use of letters allows the reader to know each character. Boaz the son of the ex husband is wild and hard to control as might be expected in a son whose father walks away from him. Boaz is the kinsmen redeemer in the Bible and in this story, Boaz does bring the characters together. Black box is an allusion to the box in planes that help decode what happens in the event of an accident. Alex represents the soldier, the man who did his mandatory service but left Israel to go to Chicago. Michel represents the immigrant who has come to Israel and wants to buy back the land from the Arabs. He has never served in the military or killed anyone. He is religious, Alex is not. The novel is set in the mid 70s before email, phones are unreliable and letter writing allows the person to talk to themselves before they actually send the letter. I would fault the excessively long letters as being hard to maintain interest at times but was the vehicle by which the author provided the reader with the information to be an informed reader.
      Rating; Legacy 3.5 epistolary but nothing new and sometimes this doesn't work.
      plot: 4
      characters: 4, somewhat stereotyped but on purpose????
      Readability: 3 nice prose but way to lengthy letters
      Achievement: 3
      Overall rating 3.5
    • 4/5
      This book took me a lot longer to finish than I expected... it’s very complex and not an easy read at all. An epistolary novel told in notes and letters between a divorced couple, her new husband, their teenager son, and some other characters, there is a lot going on here. Religious fanaticism, Israeli issues, war, marriage, family... it’s a lot, but it’s so well written, it’s absolutely worth the work.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book. It's written in the form of letters between two former lovers, now divorced, who start writing to each other reviving their past, remembering their time together, talking about their separation with anger, nostalgia and love.
    • 3/5
      Het leuke aan een brievenroman is dat je automatisch een heel dynamisch element in een vertelling kan steken: door de verschillende perspectieven (van de briefschrijvers) kan je informatie heel geleidelijk vrijgeven zodat de lezer pas na een tijdje (in sommige gevallen zelfs nooit helemaal) het volledige beeld kan reconstrueren.
      Dat is ook in Black Box het geval, met in dit geval als extra bonus dat het om een spaak gelopen huwelijk gaat en je dus via de brieven, zoals in de zwarte doos van een vliegtuig kan nagaan, wat er misgelopen is. In essentie confronteert Oz ons met de correspondentie tussen Ilana en haar vroegere echtgenote Alec, een Israelische oorlogsheld die intussen een gevierd academicus is geworden en zich gespecialiseerd heeft in religieus fanatisme. Dat laatste heeft een aardig kantje, want Ilana is inmiddels hertrouwd met een jonge, wat armtierige maar toch ambitieuze radicaal-joodse zeloot. In de correspondentie komt ook de moeilijk opvoedbare zoon van Ilana en Alec aan het woord, net als een bijzonder cynische, ronduit racistische zakenadvocaat van Alec.
      Het is fascinerend om de interactie tussen deze personages te volgen; hun brieven gaan van smeekbeden en liefdes- of aanhankelijkheidsverklaringen, over scheldpartijen en religieuze tirades, tot perverse, achterbakse persoonlijke voorstellen. Als lezer ben je automatisch geneigd je de vraag te stellen: wie heeft er eigenlijk gelijk? of in wie kan ik me verplaatsen? Maar Oz neemt ons hier lelijk bij de neus: zo goed als al de personages hebben hun aantrekkelijke en hun afstotelijke kant; in 1 en dezelfde brief kan de stemming aardig wisselen. En zo laat Oz ons in het ongewisse; dat getuigt van vakmanschap en mensenkennis, maar als lezer voel je je toch een beetje teleurgesteld.
      Blijft de politieke boodschap die je er onvermijdelijk achter zoekt: Oz presenteert ons een niet zo fraai inzicht in de Israëlische maatschappij, waarbij opvalt dat vooral de religieus-radicalen er niet te best uitkomen.
    • 4/5
      A story woven through the correspondence of three characters. I found the structure tiring at first, when the story picks up steam less so. A balanced look at Israeli life and the heroes it makes.
    • 5/5
      One of the joys of renting a holiday cottage is exploring books left for the perusing guest. This is how I discovered Amos Oz, acknowledged by many to be Israel's finest writer. After reading, Black Box, I have no doubt about such claims. It is simply one of the most intelligent novels I have read in a long, long time; politically thought-provoking, simultaneously erotic and theological. Through communiques of letters, telegrams, and notes, we are brought into the intense triad relationship of a couple and an ex-husband trying to sort out each other's intentions and motivations, as they pertain to the state of the woman's first born son, the Zionist nation, and their own lives. Heroic and tragic, heaven and hell, love and pain, this book comes as close to perfect as one could want. It should be required reading for all fanatics, serve as an instruction manual for troubled marriages, and rise to the top of everyone else's "to be read next" list.
    • 4/5
      This was a pretty depressing book but the talent of the writer is that he drags the reader into this incredibly dysfucntional family. the story was done through letters from the characters and it was very slow and weird. I would give it two stars.

    Book preview

    Black Box - Amos Oz

    title page

    Contents

    Title Page

    Contents

    Copyright

    Acknowledgment

    Epigraph

    Black Box

    About the Author

    Connect with HMH

    First Mariner Books edition 2012

    Copyright © 1987 by Amos Oz and Am Oved Publishers, Ltd., Tel Aviv

    English translation copyright © 1988 by Nicholas de Lange

    Originally published in Hebrew as Kufsah shehora.

    All rights reserved

    For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

    www.hmhco.com

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

    Oz, Amos.

    [Kufsah shehorah. English]

    Black box / Amos Oz; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with the author.

    p. cm.

    Translation of: Kufsah shehorah.

    ISBN 978-0-547-74759-0 (pbk.)

    I. Title.

    PJ5054.O9K8413 2012

    892.4'36—dc23    2012005735

    Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

    Cover photograph © Andrew Paterson

    eISBN 978-0-547-75199-3

    v2.0217

    Acknowledgment

    I am grateful to William Jovanovich and the Colorado College community for providing me with a peaceful year in which I could write the major part of this novel.

    But you, you knew the night is still and silent,

    And I alone remain alert and brood.

    I am the only victim of your weeping:

    The beast has fixed his eye on me to be his only food.

    At times I shudder suddenly and tremble,

    I wander, lost, and panic drives me wild:

    I hear you calling me from all directions,

    I feel like a blind man being tormented by a child.

    But you, you hid your face. You did not stop me,

    With pigeon’s blood and darkness in your tears,

    Entangled in the dark, remotely sobbing,

    Where memory or sense or understanding disappears.

    —From Weeping by Natan Alterman

    Dr. Alexander A. Gideon

    Political Science Department

    Midwest University

    Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.

    Jerusalem

    5.2.76

    Dear Alec,

    If you didn’t destroy this letter the moment you recognized my handwriting on the envelope, it shows that curiosity is stronger than hatred. Or else that your hatred needs fresh fuel.

    Now you are going pale, clenching your wolfish jaws in that special way of yours, so that your lips disappear, and storming down these lines to find out what I want from you, what I dare to want from you, after seven years of total silence between us.

    What I want is that you should know that Boaz is in a bad way. And that you should help him urgently. My husband and I can’t do anything, because Boaz has broken off all contact. Like you.

    Now you can stop reading, and throw this letter straight on the fire. (For some reason I always imagine you in a long, book-lined room, sitting alone at a black desk, with white snow-covered plains stretching away beyond the window opposite. Plains without hill or tree, dazzling arid snow. And a fire blazing in the fireplace on your left, and an empty glass, and an empty bottle on the empty desk in front of you. The whole image is in black and white. You too: monkish, ascetic, haughty, and all in black and white.)

    Now you crumple up the letter, humming in a British sort of way, and shoot it accurately onto the fire: what do you care about Boaz? And, in any case, you don’t believe a word I’m saying. Here you fix your grey eyes on the flickering fire and say to yourself: She’s trying to pull a fast one again. That female won’t ever give up or let be.

    Why then am I writing to you?

    In despair, Alec. Of course, when it comes to despair, you’re a world authority. (Yes, naturally, I read—like everybody else—your book The Desperate Violence: A Study in Comparative Fanaticism.) But what I am talking about now is not your book but the substance of which your soul is fashioned: frozen despair. Arctic despair.

    Are you still reading? Feeding your hatred of us? Tasting schadenfreude like expensive whisky, in small sips? If so, I’d better stop teasing you, and concentrate on Boaz.

    The plain fact is that I haven’t the faintest idea how much you know. I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it turned out that you knew every detail, that you have instructed your lawyer, Zakheim, to send you monthly reports about our lives, that you’ve been keeping us on your radar screen all these years. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be astonished to discover that you don’t know anything at all: neither that I’ve married a man called Michael (Michel-Henri) Sommo, nor that I’ve had a daughter, nor what’s become of Boaz. It would be just like you to turn your back with one brutal gesture and cut us once and for all out of your new life.

    After you kicked us out, I took Boaz and we went to stay with my sister and her husband in their kibbutz. (We didn’t have anywhere else to go, and we didn’t have any money, either.) I lived there for six months and then I came back to Jerusalem. I worked in a bookshop. Meanwhile Boaz stayed in the kibbutz for another five years, until he was thirteen. I used to go and see him every three weeks. That’s how it was until I married Michel, and ever since then the boy has called me a whore. Just like you. He didn’t come to see us once in Jerusalem. When we told him our daughter (Madeleine Yifat) was born, he slammed the phone down.

    Then two years ago he suddenly turned up one winter’s night at one o’clock in the morning to inform me that he was through with the kibbutz, and either I send him to an agricultural high school or he’ll go and live on the streets and that’ll be the last I’ll hear from him.

    My husband woke up and told him to get out of his wet clothes, eat something, have a good wash, and go to bed, and tomorrow morning we’d talk. And the boy (even then, at thirteen and a half, he was a good bit taller and broader than Michel) replied, as though he were crushing an insect underfoot, And who are you, anyway? Who asked you? Michel chuckled and answered, I suggest you step outside, chum, calm down, change the cassette, knock on the door, and come in all over again, and this time try to act like a human being instead of a gorilla.

    Boaz turned toward the door. But I put myself between him and the doorway. I knew he wouldn’t touch me. The baby woke up and started crying, and Michel went off to change her and warm some milk for her in the kitchen. I said, All right, Boaz. You can go to agricultural school if that’s what you really want. Michel, standing there in his underwear holding the baby, who was quiet, added, Only on condition you say ‘sorry’ to your mother and ask nicely and then say ‘thank you.’ What are you, anyway, a horse? And Boaz, his face contorted with that desperate loathing and contempt he’s inherited from you, whispered to me, "And you let that thing fuck you every night? and immediately afterward he stretched his hand out and touched my hair and said, in a different voice, which wrings my heart when I remember it, But your baby’s quite pretty."

    Then (thanks to the influence of Michel’s brother) we got Boaz into Telamim Agricultural High School. That was two years ago, at the beginning of 1974, not long after the war that you—so I was told—came back from America to take part in as commander of a tank battalion in the Sinai, before running off again. We even gave in to his request not to go and visit him. We paid the fees and kept quiet. That is to say, Michel paid. Well not exactly Michel, either.

    We did not receive so much as a single postcard from Boaz during these two years. Only alarms from the headmistress. The boy is violent. The boy got in a quarrel and smashed open the night watchman’s head. The boy disappears at night. The boy has a police record. The boy has been put on probation. The boy will have to leave the school. This boy is a monster.

    And what do you remember, Alec? The last thing you saw was a creature of eight, long and thin and sandy, like a cornstalk, standing silently for hours on end on a stool, leaning on your desk, concentrating, making model airplanes out of balsa for you from do-it-yourself booklets you brought him—a careful, disciplined, almost timid child, although even then, at the age of eight, he was capable of overcoming humiliations with a kind of silent, controlled determination. And in the meantime, like a genetic time bomb, Boaz is now sixteen, six foot three and still growing, a bitter, wild boy whose hatred and loneliness have invested him with astonishing physical strength. And this morning the thing that I have been expecting for a long time finally happened: an urgent telephone call. They have decided to throw him out of the boarding school, because he assaulted one of the women teachers. They declined to give me the details.

    Well, I went down there at once, but Boaz refused to see me. He merely sent word that he didn’t want to have anything to do with that whore. Was he talking about the teacher? Or about me? I do not know. It turned out that he had not exactly assaulted her: he had uttered some sick joke, she had given him a slap in the face, and he had instantly given her two in return. I pleaded with them to postpone the expulsion until I could make other arrangements. They took pity on me and gave me a fortnight.

    Michel says that, if I like, Boaz can stay here with us (even though the two of us and the baby live in one and a half rooms, for which we are still repaying the mortgage). But you know as well as I do that Boaz won’t agree to that. That boy loathes me. And you. So we do have something in common, you and I, after all. I’m sorry.

    There’s no chance that they’ll take him at another vocational school, either, with his police record and the probation officer on his back. I’m writing to you because I don’t know what to do. I’m writing to you even though you won’t read this, and if you do, you won’t reply. At the very best you’ll instruct your lawyer Zakheim to send me a formal letter begging to remind me that his client still denies paternity, that the blood test did not produce an unambiguous result, and that it was I who at the time adamantly opposed a tissue test. Checkmate.

    Yes, and the divorce released you of any responsibility for Boaz and any obligation toward me. I know all that by heart, Alec. I have no room for hope. I am writing to you as though I were standing at the window talking to the mountains. Or to the darkness between the stars. Despair is your field. If you like, you can treat me as a specimen.

    Are you still thirsting for vengeance? If so, I am hereby turning the other cheek. Mine, and Boaz’s too. Go ahead, hit as hard as you can.

    Yes, I will send you this letter, even though just now I put the pen down and made up my mind not to bother; after all, I’ve nothing to lose. Every way ahead is blocked. You have to realize this: even if the probation officer or the social worker manages to persuade Boaz to undergo some kind of treatment, rehabilitation, aid, a transfer to another school (and I don’t believe they’d succeed), I haven’t got the money to pay for it.

    Whereas you’ve got plenty, Alec.

    And I have no connections, whereas you can get anything fixed up with a couple of phone calls. You are strong and clever. Or at least you were seven years ago. (People have told me you’ve had two operations. They couldn’t tell me what sort.) I hope you’re all right now. I won’t say more than that, so you won’t accuse me of hypocrisy. Flattery. Bootlicking. And I won’t deny it, Alec: I’m still prepared to lick your boots as much as you like. I’ll do anything you ask of me. And I mean anything. Just so long as you rescue your son.

    If I had any brains, I’d cross out your son and write Boaz, so as not to infuriate you. But how can I cross out the plain truth? You are his father. And as for my brains, didn’t you make up your mind a long time ago that I’m a total moron?

    I’ll make you an offer. I’m prepared to admit in writing, in the presence of a notary, if you like, that Boaz is the son of anyone you want me to say. My self-respect was killed long ago. I’ll sign any bit of paper your lawyer puts in front of me if, in return, you agree to give Boaz first aid. Let’s call it humanitarian assistance. Let’s call it an act of kindness to a totally strange child.

    It’s true; when I stop writing and conjure him up, I stand by these words: Boaz is a strange child. No, not a child. A strange man. He calls me a whore. You he calls a dog. Michel, little pimp. He calls himself (even on official documents) by my maiden name, Boaz Brandstetter. And the school we had to pull strings to get him into, at his own request, he calls Devil’s Island.

    Now I’ll tell you something you can use against me. My in-laws in Paris send us a little money each month to keep him in this boarding school, even though they have never set eyes on Boaz and he has probably never so much as heard of their existence. And they are not at all well-off (they’re immigrants from Algeria), and they have, besides Michel, five more children and eight grandchildren, in France and Israel.

    Listen, Alec: I’m not going to write a word about what happened in the past. Apart from one thing, something I’ll never forget, even though you’ll probably wonder how on earth I know about it. Two months before our divorce, Boaz was taken to Shaarei Zedek Hospital with a kidney infection. And there were complications. You went without my knowledge to Dr. Blumenthal to find out whether, if necessary, an adult could donate a kidney to an eight-year-old child. You were planning to give him one of your own kidneys. And you warned the doctor that you would make only one condition: that I (and the child) should never know. And I didn’t until I made friends with Dr. Adorno, Blumenthal’s assistant, the young doctor you were planning to sue for criminal negligence over Boaz’s treatment.

    If you are still reading, at this moment you’re probably going even whiter, snatching up your lighter with a gesture of strangled violence and putting the flame to your lips (because your pipe isn’t there) and saying to yourself all over again: Of course. Dr. Adorno. Who else? And if you haven’t destroyed the letter already, this is the moment when you destroy it. And me and Boaz too.

    And then Boaz got better and then you kicked us out of your house, your name, and your life. You never donated any kidney. But I do believe that you seriously intended to. Because everything about you is serious. That much I will grant you—you are serious.

    Flattering you again? If you want, I plead guilty. Flattering. Bootlicking. Going down on my knees in front of you and hitting my forehead on the ground. Like the good old days.

    Because I’ve got nothing to lose and I don’t mind begging. I’ll do whatever you command. Only don’t take too long, because in a fortnight they throw him out on the street. And the street is out there waiting for him.

    After all, nothing in the world is beyond you. Unleash that monster of yours, your lawyer. Maybe with some string pulling they’ll take him into the naval college. (Boaz has a strange attraction to the sea; he has had ever since he was a small child. Do you remember, Alec, in Ashkelon, the summer of the Six-Day War? The whirlpool? Those fishermen? The raft?)

    And one last thing, before I seal this letter: I’ll even sleep with you if you want. When you want. And any way you want. (My husband knows about this letter and even agreed that I should write it—apart from the last sentence. So now if you feel like destroying me, you can simply photocopy the letter, underline the last sentence with your red pencil, and send it to my husband. It’ll work like a charm. I admit it: I was lying when I wrote earlier that I have nothing to lose.)

    And so, Alec, we are now all completely at your mercy. Even my little daughter. And you can do anything you like to us.

    Ilana (Sommo)

    Mrs. Halina Brandstetter-Sommo

    No. 7 Tarnaz Street

    Jerusalem, Israel

    London

    18.2.76

    EXPRESS

    Dear Madam,

    Your letter of the 5th inst. was forwarded to me only yesterday from the United States. I shall refer to only a small part of the matters you chose to raise therein.

    This morning I spoke on the telephone with an acquaintance in Israel. Following this conversation the headmistress of your son’s school telephoned me on her own initiative. It was agreed between us that the expulsion is canceled and his record will simply carry a warning. If, nevertheless, your son prefers—as is vaguely hinted in your letter—to transfer to a cadet school, I have reasonable grounds for supposing that that can be arranged (via my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim). Mr. Zakheim will also convey to you a check in the sum of two thousand dollars (in Israeli pounds and in your husband’s name). Your husband will be asked to acknowledge in writing receipt of this sum as a gift to you on account of hardship, and not in any sense as a precedent or as an admission of any obligation on our part. Your husband will also be required to give an assurance that no further appeals will be forthcoming from you in the future (I hope that his indigent and very extended family in Paris is not planning to follow your example and demand pecuniary favors from me). Over the remaining contents of your letter, including the gross lies, the gross contradictions, and the simple common, or garden, grossness, I shall pass in silence.

    [Signed] A. A. Gideon

    P.S. I am retaining your letter.

    Dr. Alexander A. Gideon

    London School of Economics

    London, England

    Jerusalem

    27.2.76

    Dear Alec,

    As you know, last week we signed on the dotted line and received the money from your lawyer. But now Boaz has left his school and he has been working for several days in the central market in Tel Aviv with a wholesale greengrocer who is married to one of Michel’s cousins. It was Michel who fixed him up with the job, at Boaz’s request.

    This is how it happened: After the headmistress told Boaz the news that he was not going to be expelled, but only cautioned, the boy simply picked up his kit bag and disappeared. Michel got in touch with the police (he has some relations there), and they informed us that they were holding the kid in custody in Abu Kabir for possession of stolen goods. A friend of Michel’s brother, who has a senior position in the Tel Aviv police, had a word with Boaz’s probation officer on our behalf. After some complications we got him out on bail.

    We used part of your money for this. I know that was not what you had in mind when you gave it to us, but we simply don’t have any other money: Michel is merely a nonqualified French teacher in a religious state school, and his salary after deduction of our mortgage payments is barely enough to feed us. And there is also our little girl (Madeleine Yifat, almost three).

    I must tell you that Boaz hasn’t the faintest idea where the money for his bail came from. If he had been told, I think he would have spat on the money, the probation officer, and Michel. As it was, to start with he flatly refused to be released and asked to be left alone.

    Michel went to Abu Kabir without me. His brother’s friend (the police officer) arranged for him and Boaz to be alone together in the office at the police station, so they could talk privately. Michel said to him, Look, maybe you’ve somehow forgotten who I am. I’m Michael Sommo and I’m told that behind my back you call me your mother’s pimp. You can say it right to my face if it’ll help you let off steam. And then I could come back at you and tell you you’re off your rocker. And we could stand here swearing at each other all day, and you wouldn’t win, because I can curse you in French and in Arabic and you can barely manage Hebrew. So when you run out of swearwords, what then? Maybe better you should get your breath back, calm down, and make me a list, what exactly it is you want from life. And then I’ll tell you what your mother and I can give. And then we’ll see—perhaps we can strike a deal.

    Boaz replied that he didn’t want anything at all from life, and the last thing he wanted was to have all sorts of people coming along asking him what he wanted from life.

    At this point Michel, who has never had it easy, did just the right thing. He simply got up to go and said to Boaz, Well, if that’s the way it is, the best of luck, chum. As far as I’m concerned, they can put you in an institution for the mentally retarded or the educationally subnormal, and that’s that. I’m off.

    Boaz tried to argue; he said to Michel, So what? I’ll murder someone and run away. But Michel just turned around in the doorway and answered quietly: Look here, honey child. I’m not your mother and I’m not your father and I’m not your anything, so don’t go putting on a show for me, ’cause what do I care about you? Just make your mind up in the next sixty seconds if you want to leave here on bail, yes or no. For all I care, you can murder whoever you like. Only, if you can, just try to miss. Good-bye.

    And when Boaz said, Hang on, Michel knew at once that the boy blinked first. Michel knows this game better than any of us, because he has seen life most of the time from the underneath, and suffering has made him into a human diamond—hard and fascinating (yes, in bed too, if you must know). Boaz said to him: If you really don’t care about me, why did you come all the way from Jerusalem to bail me out? And Michel laughed from the doorway and said, Okay, two points to you. The fact is I actually came to see close up what sort of a genius your mother had; maybe there’s some potential in the daughter she had by me, as well. Are you coming or aren’t you?

    And that’s how it happened that Michel got him freed with your money and invited him to a kosher Chinese restaurant that’s opened recently in Tel Aviv and they went to see a movie together (anyone sitting behind them might have got the idea that Boaz was the father and Michel the son). That night Michel came back to Jerusalem and told me the whole story, and meanwhile Boaz was already fixed up with the wholesale greengrocer from the market in Carlebach Street, the one who’s married to Michel’s cousin. Because that’s what Boaz told him he wanted: to work and earn money and not be dependent on anyone. So Michel answered him then and there, without consulting me: Yes, I like that, and I’ll fix it up for you this very evening right here in Tel Aviv. And he did.

    Boaz is staying now at the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv: one of the people in charge there is married to a girl who studied with Michel in Paris back in the fifties. And Boaz is rather attracted by the Planetarium. No, not by the stars, but by the telescopes and by optics.

    I am writing this to you with all the details about Boaz with Michel’s consent. He says that since you gave the money, we owe it to you to let you know what we’re doing with it. And I think you’ll read this letter several times over. I think you also read my first letter several times. And I enjoy thinking about the fury I’ve caused you with these two letters. Being furious makes you masculine and attractive, but also childlike and almost moving: you start to waste an enormous amount of physical effort on fragile objects like pen, pipe, glasses. Not to smash them but to master yourself and to shift them two inches to the right or an inch to the left. This waste is something I treasure, and I enjoy imagining it taking place now, as you read my letter, there in your black-and-white room, between the fire and the snow. If you have some woman who sleeps with you, I admit that at this moment I am jealous of her. Jealous even of what you are doing to the pipe, the pen, the glasses, my pages between your strong fingers.

    To return to Boaz: I’m writing to you as I promised Michel I would. When we get the bail money back, the whole sum you presented to us will go into a savings account in your son’s name. If he decides to study, we’ll finance his studies with this money. If he wants to rent himself a room in Tel Aviv or here in Jerusalem, despite his young age, we’ll rent him one with your money. We won’t take anything from you for ourselves.

    If you agree to all this, you don’t have to answer me. If not, let us know as soon as possible, before we’ve used the money, and we’ll return it to your lawyer and manage without it (even though our financial situation is pretty bad).

    One more request:

    Either destroy this letter and the previous one, or—if you have decided to use them—do it now, right away, don’t keep dithering. Every day that goes by and every night is another hill and another valley that death has captured from us. Time is passing, Alec, and both of us are fading.

    And another thing: You wrote to me that you responded to the lies and contradictions in my letter with silent contempt. Your silence, Alec, and your contempt too make me suddenly fearful. Have you really not found in all these years, in all your travels, anyone who could offer you a single crumb of gentleness? I’m sorry for you, Alec. What a terrible business: I’m the one who did wrong, and you and your son are paying the full penalty. If you like, scrub out your son and write Boaz. If you like, scrub out the whole lot. As far as I’m concerned, don’t hesitate, just do anything that’ll relieve your suffering.

    Ilana

    Mr. Michel-Henri Sommo

    No. 7 Tarnaz Street

    Jerusalem, Israel

    Geneva

    7.3.1976

    REGISTERED POST

    Dear Sir,

    With your knowledge—and, as she herself claims, with your encouragement—your wife has recently seen fit to send me two long and rather perplexing letters which do her no credit. If I have succeeded in penetrating her vague language, there are indications that her second letter is also intended to hint to me about your pecuniary shortcomings. And I will wager that you, sir, are the puppet-master who lurks behind her demands.

    Circumstances make it possible for me (without any special sacrifice on my part) to come to your assistance once again. I have instructed my lawyer, Mr. Zakheim, to transfer to your bank account an additional contribution of five thousand dollars (in your name, in Israeli pounds). If this does not suffice, either, I must

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