My Michael Read Online Free PDF Page A

Terra Sancta. I said he must have shaved especially to please me.
    Michael was embarrassed. He just happened, he lied, to have bought a new razor that day. I laughed. He hesitated a moment, then decided to join in.
    In Geula Street we saw an Orthodox woman, wearing a white kerchief, open a second-floor window and squeeze half her body out as if she were about to throw herself down into the street. But she merely closed the heavy iron shutters. The hinges groaned as if with despair.
    When we passed the playground of Sarah Zeldin's kindergarten I told Michael that I worked there. Was I a strict teacher? He imagined I was. What made him think that? He didn't know what to answer. Just like a child, I said, starting to say something and not knowing how to finish. Expressing an opinion and not daring to defend it. A child.

    Michael smiled.
    From one of the yards, on the corner of Malachi Street, came the sound of cats screeching. It was a loud, hysterical shriek, followed by two strangled wails, and finally a low sob, faint and submissive, as if there were no sense, no hope.
    Michael said:
    "They're crying out in love. Did you know, Hannah, that cats are most in heat in winter, on the coldest days? When I'm married I shall keep a cat. I always wanted to have one but my father wouldn't let me. I'm an only child. Cats cry out in love because they're not bound by any constraint or convention. I imagine that a cat in heat feels as if it's been grabbed hold of by a stranger and is being squeezed to death. The pain is physical. Burning. No, I didn't learn that in geology. I was afraid you'd make fun of me talking like this. Let's go."
    I said:
    "You must have been a very spoiled child."
    "I was the hope of the family," Michael said. "I still am. My father and his four sisters, they all bet on me as if I was their racehorse and as if my university education was a steeplechase. What do you do in the morning in your kindergarten, Hannah?"
    "What a funny question. I do exactly what any other kindergarten teacher does. Last month, at Hanukah, I glued together paper tops and cut out cardboard Maccabees. Sometimes I sweep the dead leaves from the paths in the yard. Sometimes I tinkle on the piano. And I often tell the children stories, from memory, about Indians, islands, travels, submarines. When I was a child I adored the books my brother had by Jules Verne and Fenimore Cooper. I thought that if I wrestled and climbed trees and read boys' books I'd grow up to be a boy. I hated being a girl. I regarded grown-up women with loathing and disgust. Even now I sometimes long to meet a man like Michael Strogoff. Big and strong,
but at the same time quiet and reserved. He must be silent, loyal, subdued, but only controlling the spate of his inner energies with an effort. What do you mean? Of course I'm not comparing you to Michael Strogoff. Why on earth should I? Of course not."

    Michael said:
    "If we had met as children you would have sent me sprawling. I used to get knocked down by the stronger girls when I was in the lower grades. I was what you'd call a good boy: a bit lethargic, but hard-working, responsible, clean, and very honest. Nowadays I'm not at all lethargic, though."
    I told Michael about the twins. I used to wrestle with them furiously. Later on, when I was twelve, I was in love with both of them. I called them Halziz—Halil and Aziz. They were beautiful boys. A pair of strong, obedient seamen from Captain Nemo's crew. They hardly ever spoke. They either kept quiet, or else emitted guttural sounds. They didn't like words. A pair of gray-brown wolves. Alert and white-fanged. Wild and dark. Pirates. What can you know about it, little Michael?

    Then Michael told me about his mother:
    "My mother died when I was three. I remember her white hands, but I can't remember her face. There are a few photographs, but it's hard to make them out. I was brought up by my father. My father brought me up as a little Jewish socialist, with stories