FICTION
Amos Oz
BLACK BOX
Dear Alec,
From Zikhron I tra,\eled on to Haifa. A strong, strange
smell, a heady mixture of pine resin and Lysol, pervaded the
sanatorium on Mount Carmel. From time to time the moan of a
ship's siren floated up from the harbor. Trains hooted and fell silent.
The gardens lay in rustic tranquillity shrouded in gentle sunlight. A
couple of old women were dozing on a bench, shoulder resting on
shoulder, like a pair of stuffed birds. An Arab male nurse who was
pushing a patient in a wheelchair slowed as I passed and eyed me
lasciviously. From a corner of the garden rose the croaking of frogs .
.And in an arbor of thick vines I finally found your father, sitting
alone at a white-painted metal ta:ble., with his shock of prophetic
white hair waving slightly in the breeze, his unkempt Tolstoyan
beard flowing down over a stained dn::ssing gown, his face brown
and shriveled like a dried fig, with a teaspoon in his hand and a cake
on a plate and a half-finished glass of yogurt on the table in front of
him. The blue eyes sailing away toward the blue of the sea. His
deep, calm breathing stirring the spray of oleander that he was fan–
ning himself with.
When I pronounced his name he deigned to turn, and look at
me. He rose slowly, majestically, from his seat and bowed to me
twice. I held out a bunch of chrysanthemums I had bought at the
Central Bus Station. He handed me his oleander spray, drew the
chrysanthemums to his chest , carefully inserted one of them into the
buttonhole of his dressing gown, and unhesitatingly planted the rest
ofthe bunch in his yogurt glass . He called me Madame Rovina, and
thanked me for finding the time to come to his funeral and even
bringing flowers .
Editor's Note: This is excerpted from
Black Box
by Amos Oz. Copyright
to
1987 by
Amos Oz and
Am
Oved Publishers, Ltd., Tel Aviv. English translation copyright
to
1988
by
Nicholas de Lange . To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
