A Tale of Love and Darkness

SOMETIMES THE facts threaten the truth. I once wrote about the real reason for my grandmother's death. My grandmother Shlomit arrived in Jerusalem straight from Vilna one hot summer's day in 1933, took one startled look at the sweaty markets, the colorful stalls, the swarming side streets full of the cries of hawkers, the braying of donkeys, the bleating of goats, the squawks of pullets hung up with their legs tied together, and blood dripping from the necks of slaughtered chickens, she saw the shoulders and arms of Middle Eastern men and the strident colors of the fruit and vegetables, she saw the hills all around and the rocky slopes, and immediately pronounced her final verdict: "The Levant is full of germs."

My grandmother lived in Jerusalem for some twenty-five years, she knew hard times and a few good ones, but to her last day she found no reason to modify her verdict. They say that the day after they arrived, she ordered my grandfather, as she would every single day they lived in Jerusalem, winter and summer alike, to get up at six or six thirty every morning and to spray Flit in every corner of the apartment to drive away the germs, to spray under the bed, behind the wardrobe, and even into the storage space and between the legs of the sideboard, and then to beat all the mattresses and the bedclothes and eiderdowns. From my childhood I remember Grandpa Alexander standing on the balcony in the early morning in his vest and bedroom slippers, beating the pillows like Don Quixote attacking the wineskins, bringing the carpet beater down on them repeatedly with all the force of his wretchedness or despair.