39 Books: 2013

I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:

Real cafés are inviting, they tempt you with fresh coffee and a cake straight out of the oven, and offer the chance to spend a precious hour or two alone with yourself. 

But this promise is deceptive. Each chapter is accompanied by large reproductions of figureless cityscapes, rather like Frank Auerbach’s of London, painted by the author’s son, Meir. Overall they complement the text only by effacing themselves – "what he paints, I write", says the father. They confirm the subtitle’s claim to come from "under the light of Jerusalem". 

The text, on the other hand, comes from under the dim light in the corner of a café. It is here that Appelfeld prefers to write. 

In cafés you can sometimes hear words cold as ice, or words full of longing and a fierce loyalty. Usually there’s silence in a café, but sometimes a wave of speech will surge up, flooding the listener with painful things that have been mostly kept down, things buried deep in the soul for many years that have at last found an opening and emerged in words. 

What’s buried deep, and how it moves beneath the surface of the present, is Appelfeld’s subject. Curiously this is also Proust’s, and it was Proust, I think, who said that the best places to write are hotel rooms and railway waiting rooms. Appelfeld sketches how his writing developed over the years in various cafés. Whenever he could spare time, he would visit them, seeking a way forward. He tells of those who helped him: Kafka and SY Agnon in particular. Then a refugee from old Europe, met playing chess in Café Rehavia, introduced him to Kleist’s stories. 

As soon as I started to read them I understood: this was a writer from whom I could learn. Throughout the 1950s, I had written short stories, but wasn’t happy with them. It was clear to me that I knew neither the secret of plot development nor the power of simply stated facts. Instead of searching for a correct fact, I reach for metaphors. An excess of metaphors produces an unpleasant mist and a false sense of the poetic. The right facts, one following the next, are the driving force, the engine that moves a story along. A story, like a river, cannot stand still in one place. 

One thing that can be said of Appelfeld’s novels is that they never stand still. They move forward with what David Auerbach called "a styleless immediacy"; hence Kafka and Kleist. Sometimes, it seems indulgent, daydreamy, free of relevance to the empire. Appelfeld recalls people who criticised his work for this reason, such as Rachel Yanait:

[She] had been quarried out of touch material: the Russian revolution and the Zionist revolution. Low-key literature, writing that did not bite into the meat of life, was not to her liking. She made no effort to hide her view that … literature should have a definitive message. I listened to what she said, but in my heart I was far away. 

What comes through more than anything in A Table for One is Appelfeld’s relentless loyalty to what his heart tells him about his art. Sometimes it borders on self-absorption, sometimes self-sacrifice. Despite offers and requests, he declines to write daily columns in the newspapers, or to write explicitly about the state of Israel – though he willingly serves in its army, taking delight in using an automatic gun. But when he briefly recalls the siege of Jerusalem, Appelfeld’s true relevance is suggested: "Since then some fifty years have passed. Sometimes it seems to me that I’m still standing there, stirred by the immense light."

Appelfeld’s novels exist in such an uncertain light: a weird tranquillity with a constant threat of violence. By discussing where and how he works, we learn how he brings this to the fore in fiction. It depends on the atmosphere of the café. In his best work we’re able to appreciate Appelfeld’s claim that his work reflects "a religious attitude to life", an attitude that is really only a "seriousness and sense of obligation to art". 

On the radio and in the press people talked of miracles, of Redemption and the coming of the Messiah. These terms were beyond me. I love the mysticism of daily life, the colors and the shadows that surround me, particular spots in Jerusalem toward evening, the light that glints out from parched earth. 

I have to report that one "particular spot" is not brought to light. Appelfeld mentions the Palestinians not once. He does refer to a "huge incited mob" during the siege and a nightmare of a "horde of Arabs" when he served in the army. Otherwise, nothing. What lies unsaid between the words is, he insists, central to his artistic expression. Appelfeld does not call Israel his "homeland", as that was a word used by the Nazis. He prefers "home" alone. Perhaps there’s a Palestinian sitting in a café somewhere right now, also writing, not at home and, like Appelfeld, lucky to have survived the unsaid.