Too much grief

Someone told me that one of my Nuremberg stories contains too much grief, it is sadness piled upon sadness. I can see what they mean: who wants to read stuff that is about grief and that's it?

The novel is like that too: the beginning is the most powerful, about the injustice and pain, the betrayals and losses. My mentor suggests that I turn it round - the past as flashbacks, seen from a place of safety. The reader is told that the people will escape. Whenever I think about it, it seems unbelievable that they did. I wonder what was special about them. Maybe it was just luck. Four members of one family each navigating across murderous currents by whatever means of salvation available. I can't do anything much today. I shall write and write and see what arises.

I have read Aharon Appelfeld's The Story of a Life (Schocken Books, NY, 2004) translated from the Hebrew by Aloma Halter. She does an excellent job of it. The novel told me something I didn't know, or only knew confusedly: the effect of the period immediately preceding the Six Day War on those who had been victims of the Second World War.

After the war broke out, my parents drove all the way from the North to the South of Israel to visit me, because 'Your mother needed to see you', said my father. I was a young soldier guarding a settlement near Gaza, my focus was on adapting to the new Israeli culture, learning Hebrew, learning about the army, everything at once, my head and my heart in a whirl. I missed childhood friends left behind in Europe. I was still a child myself. But around me, everyone was amazed that they had made the trip.

Appelfeld belonged to a club of survivors from Galicia and Eastern Europe.

 "I was called up for reserve duty., and club members vied with one another excitedly to show their support. People pushed banknotes into my pockets, and one of the less popular members (in part because of his miserliness) actually took off his gold watch, gave it to me, and said, "In my name and in the name of my family". Later I learned that this watch had belonged to his brother, who perished in Auschwitz."

 "Be Shmi U Be Shmi Mishpachti." A blessing - implying May your arm be strong and mighty against those who wish to destroy us. It must have seemed unbelievable that we might survive. I don't recall giving it a thought.

I have just realised that I was reading this book yesterday, on June 6th.It portrays the effect of war-time experiences on children with power and accuracy. No amplification. I found it very moving.

The End of the Land?

I've read David Grossman in the past - not always easily: literature, not entertainment.

Again a book about ending, about life and death.

I was given his latest book,To The End of the Land, in a small paperback edition, with a flowery cover, poppies, I think, a cheerful red. Then I spotted the book elsewhere, in the Jonathan Cape edition. It is larger, easier to read. On the black and white cover, a deep window-less aperture in a stone wall - an abandoned Arab house on the Golan Heights ? - frames the small silhouettes of a couple, a man and a woman, seen against a white sky. I bought that book, traded the other one in.


I can understand the flowers, but not forgive them. I noticed the same kitchiness on the cover of Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness: the copy I'd bought showed a young boy reclining in a field with a book, in a golden glow. As if the illustrator had been told - 'Reminiscences of boyhood' - and nothing else. Friends owned a hard-cover version by a different publisher, with a dull photo of a young boy walking by peeling walls in a city, the photo carrying a sense of menace. Much better. My copy has disappeared, someone has not returned it - I don't mind. As time passed, it offended me more and more.

In this book, the wild flowers are described exactly as the couple wander through the Galilee - the way an Israeli nature-lover would describe them. Of course the woman is a nature-lover, as well as being in Flight from a Message - (the Hebrew title).

I once worked with a client like this woman: from a war-torn country, she had somehow been exported here as a refugee, her two daughters remaining behind with her husband and his second wife. She was as they say, 'beside herself' with worry about the girls, spent her days in ceaseless walking over the hills around our town, tortured by terror about their fate, irritable and angry. In this book, Ora feels she has to leave in order to avoid/to prevent the death of her younger son. (My clients' daughters arrived safely after many months of anguish).

I've read several reviews of this book - one by a Patricia somebody, is a litany of complaints because she does not understand the culture in which the author is writing. Indeed for a non-Israeli, some work will be required - but then, Wikipedia is at your fingertips and most of the code words - names of villages, names of people - will be listed. For anyone with an Israeli connection, this book is very clear.

For those who carry Israel in their heart, the book is also painful. For I believe that when he calls it To The End of the Land, the author is showing how this may lead to the end of the dream - can Israel survive these losses?

Despite visiting Israel recently, I find that I now understood Israeli reality differently. For instance, why my brother-in-law was not keen to eat in a restaurant. The atmosphere of fear generated by suicide bombers. The soldiers' pitilessness. The Arabs' hatred. The desperate, frantic way many people live.


Some reviewers say that Ora's life appears overly narrow; I would disagree: this is what happens in moments of crisis - the only people who matter are those to whom you are very close.

Grossman does a wonderful job portraying Ora's feelings, though maybe he does go on for a little too long. The writer Avram comes to life - Ora's husband Ilan less so. There are moments which remain in the mind - the four-year old who learns about meat, the Palestinians in the school at night, and the scenes on the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. I admire the way he unwraps the story little by little, giving hints and clues and allowing links to emerge gradually, as in real life. It is satisfying to experience.

I think that this book will endure and gain weight, as time goes on and its prophetic voice emerges more strongly.

David Grossman speaks about this book here.

An autumn leaf on a dancing stream

Writing: After the work of planning and establishing structure, the book went off to a new start from a different unexpected angle, nothing to do with the plan at all. I am surprised and pleased, what is there makes sense, though I have the feeling of being bogged down at the moment. Never mind, important to keep on keeping on.

Israeli visitor, Remembrance Day for the Fallen with the Embassy and the rest of the Wellington community - her brother was a pilot who was killed, intense grief, trying to do my best. Old feeling of betrayal of Herzl's dream.

A friend came to see me and said: I have recurrent dreams where I dream that I am nothing, I have achieved nothing, my life made no difference to anyone.
She was upset.
But it is true, I said, we both laughed out loud, and that was it.
Last night, she slept without dreaming.


The usual stuff:  "Life is fleeting, an autumn leaf carried away on a dancing stream..." (Not a quote, but it might be).