THE THING THAT HATH BEEN
After the rains, after the fog and the hail, a bright clear
Saturday suddenly broke on Jerusalem. Early in the morning the
surviving birds started to chatter excitedly among themselves about
the new state of affairs. Aunt Natalia, who had come to Jerusalem to
take my mother's place, gathered the breakfast dishes into the sink
and told Father to get out of the kitchen, to forget his worries and re–
lax outside in the sun. She was a tough, cheery woman, with the
manners of a pioneer.
In
the good old days she had worked on road–
building and in the stone quarries in the mountains of Galilee. Then
she had succumbed to pneumonia and a wild infatuation for a well–
known poet, but neither of these afflictions had broken her spirit. Af–
ter she recovered she ran a workers' canteen in one of the settlements
in Sharon. S4e had a broad, sunburnt face with a constant expres–
sion of idealism blended with brisk affection. At that time, in
February
1947,
my mother was staying in a Health Service
sanatorium, recovering from attacks of migraine and the rigors of
life in general. Everyone was talking about a decisive national effort,
a fateful test facing the Hebrew community in the near future.
Meanwhile Father immersed himself in his research; his manner at
that time was mild and distracted , as though he were constantly
afraid of a dazzling light or distastefully loud noise. He said:
"If
you need any help ... "
And Aunt Natalia:
"Don't talk nonsense , Professor. Better you should take a book
and go and sit outside in the sun, you're as white as a sheet. And the
child can play in the yard or on the balcony, anywhere except under
my feet, and
I'll
quickly
fix
something for lunch and then we'll all go
for a walk. Who knows when we'll have another Saturday like this in
the middle of the winter. Get along with you."
The morning light was a dense blue and every bit of metal re–
flected a hazy glow as if it were honey. A Saturday between the rains
when one could look back to the lights of the festival of Hanukkah
and forward to the spring celebrations of Tu Bishvat, when in the
distance one could see the Mediterranean on one side and on the
other the mountains of Moab beyond the Dead Sea, the minarets of
Ramallah and the Arab villages on the mountainside , the coastal
