38

 

Among the many complaints, rebukes, and accusations I have heard over the last years concerning my opinions and behavior, my personality, and the bitter fate I impose upon the characters in my books, there are some that relate to my garden. First, about its shape: my garden is neither neatly organized nor well kept and, as I have already divulged, is dry for many days of the year. Second, the essence of my employment there is regarded by those who claim to have my best interests at heart as nothing but a distraction from my real work. I have even heard them use the word “procrastinator”—meaning that in their opinion the garden provides me with reasons to delay the really important tasks and to waste time on what they define as nonsense.

In my defense, I must say that there are seasons in which the gardener must drop everything and go out to his garden, even if he is in charge of an emergency room or happens to be the prime minister and definitely if he is a mere writer of tales. When the poppy capsules turn yellow, the protagonists of my stories can wait. The seeds must be gathered before they fall. And when weeds blossom, they must be cut or pulled out before they have time to produce unwanted seeds that will sprout next year. I am punctilious in this regard, but privately I admit that, here and there, I see justification in what the slanderers and ridiculers say, because I often get up from my desk for gardening jobs that are not so very urgent.

For example, I might suddenly feel the need to check whether the small-flowered pancratium has begun blooming. At first I repress the impulse, but it quickly becomes so bothersome that I realize if I don’t go out into the garden to inspect it, I won’t be able to concentrate on my writing. This is why—out of concern for my work—I go out to these flowers, but on the way I notice a few weeds that need pulling, and as I stoop over them, I see a tiny hyacinth squill that has sprouted prematurely, because a nearby irrigation pipe turned its world upside down and confused it. Since it is not supposed to be there, I go to my toolbox to fetch a spade, see the power scythe next to it, remember that I need to buy a wire cutter, and drive off to the store. I admit: things like this have happened more than once.

Another claim of those who have appointed themselves my educators, foremen, or even my guardians is that I have become ridiculous, pathetic even, when I describe the garden and narrate what goes on there, writing about it as I do now, for example, or showing it, or—worse still—displaying photos of it to people who have no interest in the flowering times of crocuses and the best way to store poppy seeds; nor any interest in my musings about the importance of identifying plants and a knowledge of nature in general, the connection to our homeland, the beauty of the gladioli, the wisdom of the squills, and so forth.

I have already witnessed a few impersonations of myself that were actually quite good, crawling on all fours, sniffing the air, saying “Agrostemma” six times in one sentence, skipping between the hyssop and savory when the morning zephyr blows through the monocotyledon dress I wove myself on an organic loom, like Mrs. Leo Hunter in Dickens’s Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, who gets dressed in the costume of Minerva and recites her own “Ode to an Expiring Frog.”

But all this ridicule only arouses compassion within me. I hear and see those stiff-necked types and know that it is only jealousy and self-righteousness speaking from their throats while I adhere to my beliefs. So let them go their way and I’ll go mine.

And what exactly is this way? Well now, Hillel the Elder described these feelings in words more beautiful than I am capable of, expressing them more succinctly than I could ever hope to do: “To the place that my heart loves, there my feet lead me.” Regretfully, I dare not apply this to everything, nor am I able to do so, but I always let my feet lead me to my beloved garden, even if sometimes I appear ridiculous, even very ridiculous.

Fortunately, I am the only one to witness my greatest moments of embarrassment and ludicrousness. For example, once I found myself at ten o’clock in the morning lying under my desk instead of sitting at it. To be more precise: lying on my stomach, one hand groping in the dark under the drawers. What was I looking for there? Not an important note that had fallen, or a beloved pen that had rolled under the desk, but two brownish-purple cyclamen seeds, each less than a tenth of an inch in size.

How did these two seeds get under my table? That morning I moved some cyclamen seeds that had been drying in a bowl to a jar where they would await planting, and two of them fell to the floor and rolled under the table. From every logical angle, horticultural or financial, I shouldn’t have done anything at all. I already had plenty of seeds from that year; in my plant trays, hundreds of baby cyclamens were growing from last year’s seeds; and in the garden itself, hundreds of mature cyclamens resided, grown from seeds planted over the years. In other words, I could certainly handle the loss of two seeds. The true gardener, however, is not measured by economic calculations but by his devotion to and love for his protégées. Consequently, I quickly lie down under the table in order to look for the lost seeds.

To be more precise: At first I got up from my chair and stooped over the approximate spot where the seeds had fallen—and saw nothing. Then I got down on my knees and peeked under the table—not a thing. I lay on my stomach—still nothing. I reached out with one hand and groped about in the darkness—gurnisht. I lay there, and while part of my brain processed the subtable information that the tips of my fingers transmitted to me, a different part of the brain busied itself with this question: Had I completely lost my mind?

I admitted then and I admit now, I had no answer to this question. Those good souls I mentioned earlier certainly had the answers, and they told me so on sundry occasions. I was well aware of the ridicule that such situations aroused, but I knew exactly why I was lying on the floor looking for two cyclamen seeds under the table: not because I would miss them, but because they were in distress. I was not the only one—at this point, the seeds also understood that they had fallen not to the ground but to a hard floor, not under a radiant sun or a sky that gathers rain clouds, but under a table and a ceiling.

I imagined how bad they felt with the knowledge that their fate was sealed. They would be unable to sprout, put down roots, grow and blossom, or raise a new generation of cyclamens. A person must be heartless not to help seeds in such distress, all the more if he grows cyclamens, and the seeds are those he gathered in order to sow and grow in his own garden.

In several of my books, I attempted to describe human emotion: love and revenge, anger and longing, hatred, disappointment, yearning and mourning, satisfaction, lust, grief and happiness. Except that all this failed to prepare me for describing in words the emotions of a cyclamen seed experiencing such disaster. With regard to my own emotions on this point—this lying-down point, to be precise—I can testify to feelings of compassion and guilt, and a wish to lend a hand. I therefore got up off the floor and opened the drawer where my trusty headlamp should have been, but as usual it was not there. I searched until I found it on one of the shelves in the library, I flicked the switch—and nothing happened.

For a moment, I entertained the possibility of going to the corner store in the nearby village to buy new batteries for the flashlight, but the voice of reason prevailed. I decided I had done more than enough, and that there was a limit to the effort a person should make in such a situation, even if he grows and loves wildflowers, particularly cyclamens. The two seeds could go to hell and I would go back to my work. This is exactly what I did: I went back to my chair, sat down, stared hard at the computer screen, drew my fingers close to the keyboard, and a quarter of an hour later realized that as long as those two seeds were crying out for my help under the table—I would get no work done.

Fortunately, I remembered the headlamp in my car that I use on hikes. I fetched it, strapped it to my forehead, reverted to my previous position on the floor, and switched it on. I could not see the seeds, but while lying there I certainly saw myself and realized there are situations in which it is better for a person to be alone, particularly if someone else might see him. But because I was already lying there, and the headlamp was working, and in any event I already knew that I was out of line, I searched and groped and shone the light until I found those two seeds and returned them to their friends in the jar, and I was happy. Perhaps even happier than the seeds themselves.

Since I’m in a confessional mood, I will reveal another secret: when no one is listening, I am in the habit of simulating, in a loud voice, monologues and dialogues of animals, plants, and even inanimate objects—like conversations between socks that have returned from trips abroad with socks that were left behind in the drawer, or the cries of a cucumber when I peel it with a sharp knife.

Now, in the precise voice of a cyclamen seed and with a perfect imitation of its accent, I said, “Where were you? We were worried about you…” and “We thought we’d never see you again…,” and I answered, “Nah, we went exploring, because later we’re going to put down roots and it’ll be too late…” and I decided that perhaps I am not as crazy as some people, myself included, think I am.

An idea then popped into my head that I should keep the two seeds apart from the others and that I should plant them in their own pot, so that I would know that these were the two cyclamens I found and saved the day they fell under my writing desk. For a moment I considered hitting myself over the head for my own foolishness, but I calmed down, because it was as clear to me as three times three that a few years from now, when I go outside to see the cyclamens I sowed this year blooming in the garden, those two will say to me, “Thank you,” and I will hear them, I will know it is them, and I will answer, “It was my pleasure.”