A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

Author:Amos Oz [Oz, Amos]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

From my early childhood on I was the victim of a thorough, protracted brainwashing: Uncle Joseph's temple of books in Talpiot, Father's strait-jacket of books in our apartment in Kerem Avraham, my mother's refuge of books, Grandpa Alexander's poems, our neighbor Mr. Zarchi's novels, my father's index cards and word play, and even Saul Tcherni-khowsky's pungent hug, and Mr. Agnon, who cast several shadows at once, with his currants.

But the truth is that secretly I turned my back on the card I had pinned to the door of my room. For several years I dreamed only of growing up and escaping from these warrens of books and becoming a fireman. The fire and water, the uniform, the heroism, the shiny silver helmet, the wail of the siren, and the stares of the girls and the flashing lights, the panic in the street, the thunderous charge of the red engine, leaving a trail of terror in its wake.

And then the ladders, the hose uncoiling endlessly, the glow of the flames reflected like gushing blood in the red of the engine, and finally, the climax, the girl or woman carried unconscious on the shoulder of her gallant rescuer, the self-sacrificing devotion to duty, the scorched skin, eyelashes, and hair, the infernal suffocating smoke. And then immediately afterward—the praise, the rivers of tearful love from dizzy women swooning toward you in admiration and gratitude, and above all the fairest of them all, the one you bravely rescued from the flames with the tender strength of your own arms.

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