Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

The two of them stood for several minutes by the heater to thaw out. They were so close that her shoulder grazed his arm. He was enough taller than she to look down on her rain-drenched hair falling gently over her shoulders, the left one rather than the right. Had he wished, he could have stroked it. But he stooped and turned up the flame of the heater instead.

The room was lit as usual by the reddish-brown light cast by the heavy lamp shade. Everything was in its place. Everything was neat and tidy. Rimona had even folded the newspaper and stashed it on the low shelf where it belonged. Even the floor tiles gave off a subtle scent of cleanliness. Tia lay sprawled by the heater. It would have seemed a house at perfect peace had it not been for the crying of a child from the next-door apartment.

"These walls," said Rimona.

"What's wrong?"

"They're so thin. You'd think they were made out of paper."

It seemed a meaningful kind of crying, neither a whine nor a tantrum, as if the child beyond the wall had broken some toy that he loved and knew he alone was to blame. A woman sought to soothe him. Only the tone of her voice reached Yonatan and Rimona; the words could not be made out.

When Yonatan asked Rimona if she was busy, she wanted to know why he asked. Did he want to explain something to her on the chessboard perhaps? Although they never played chess with each other, she was always willing to sit with him for half an hour or so, the pieces arranged before them on the board, while he explained various strategies: the Nimzowitsch Opening, the King's Indian Defense, the flanking versus the direct attack, the correct way to play the Queen's Gambit, the sacrifice of this or that piece for the sake of a tactical advantage. Rimona found it pleasant to listen to such things. If he cared to set up the pieces, she added, she would make coffee, fetch her embroidery, and be with him in a minute.

Although Yonatan didn't reply, Rimona went to make the coffee. Like a soldier caught in a crossfire, he spun wildly around, stepped away from the heater, and crossed over to the bookcase, where he stood with his back to the room. His eyes finally fell on an old photograph of Rimona that she had framed and placed among the books, a black-and-white snapshot of the two of them taken on a hike in the Judean Desert. He was astounded to discover that they were not alone. Behind her, in the lower right-hand corner, appeared a strange, hairy, uncouth leg in short pants and army boots. Now was the time to make his move, to say or do that crucial thing. Doing his best to steady himself, he finally managed to say, angrily, "My cigarettes. Did you by any chance see my cigarettes?"

Rimona came into the room carrying a tray with two mugs of coffee, some pastry, and a small blue Bokhara creamer.

"Why don't you sit down? You can pour the milk in our coffee while I get a fresh pack from the drawer. There's no need to be upset."

"Forget it!" snapped Yonatan. And then, bitingly, "Who the hell asked for a fresh pack? My cigarettes are over there. Look, right under your nose! On the radio. What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything. You were talking, Yoni."

"I thought you did. Maybe you started to and changed your mind. Or maybe you just meant to. Here, I'll pour'a da milk. That's how Bolognesi says it, 'pour'a.' I always feel I'm interrupting you, even when you're silent."

"How strange," said Rimona, though there was not the slightest touch of wonder in her voice.

"And maybe you'll be good enough to stop saying 'how strange' all the time. Everything seems strange' to you. There's nothing 'strange' about it. Why don't you sit down instead of wandering all over the room? Sit down!"

After she was seated before him, his eyes came to rest on the cleavage of her blouse and he thought of the rest of her — of her twelve-year-old's breasts, of the cold, dainty lines of the torso hidden beneath her clothes, of her navel like a shut sleeping eye, of her sex like some pious, genderless illustration in a facts-of-life manual for teenagers. It won't do her any good, Yonatan thought, nothing will any more, not her lovely red sweater, not her long blond hair, not even her bashful smile. The smile of a sweet little girl who's been naughty and knows that she'll be forgiven because everyone loves her and everything will be all right. Only this time she won't be forgiven and nothing will be all right. This time it's hopeless and everything is all wrong. Just look at her, that skin sagging on her neck, behind her tiny ears, underneath her adorable chin, all those places where she's drying out and cracking like weathered paint or an old shoe. It's the beginning of her old age and there's not a thing that she can do about it. Nothing can save her. The magic of Zanzibar is lost. Gone forever. The End. And I don't feel in the least bit sorry for her because no one in the world feels sorry for me. The only thing I feel sorry about is all the time that's been wasted.

"Did you forget?" asked Rimona, with a smile.

"Forget what?"

"I'm still waiting."

"Waiting?" said Yonatan in amazement. He felt a moment's panic. What could she mean? Waiting for what? Did she already know? But she couldn't possibly.

"I don't get it," he added. "Waiting for what?"

"For you to set up the chessboard, Yoni. And I'll turn on the radio. There's a Bach fugue on. I've already brought in my embroidery, and you told me not to bother about getting the cigarettes because you would, but you forgot. Don't get up. I'll do it for you."

Some minutes later they sat facing each other in the twin armchairs. Music came over the radio. Rimona hugged the coffee mug with her palms to absorb the warmth. For the last time Yonatan reviewed in his mind the words he had decided to use.

"I'm ready if you are," said Rimona.

Once, when he was on patrol and crossing the border at night into Jordan near the village of Tarkumiyya, Yonatan suddenly found himself scared to death for no good reason. The night seemed full of eyes. Among the rocks the darkness crackled with a wicked laughter. They're waiting for us. In some unaccountable way they know we're coming down this wadi tonight, and they're lying in ambush, as invisible as we are conspicuous, laughing to themselves because the trap is sprung.

A shadow passed over Rimona's brow. Through her slightly parted lips, Yonatan could make out the white tips of her teeth. He thought of expanses of white sand incandescent in the sun, blasted by the wild midday light of the Zin Desert near a bone-dry site that was marked on his map as Caravan Spring. The memory flooded him with a pain unlike any he had ever known, and the sharpness of it made him shut his eyes.

He recalled how their love began. He recalled the weeks before their marriage. The long ride by jeep through the mountains and down to the gray flatlands below. The campfire of dried branches that smoldered all night long. The sleeping bag they shared on that desert night behind the silent jeep. Her child's breasts caught in his heavy hands like two warm starlings. Her tears, her whispers. "Try not to mind it, Yoni. It's not your fault. You just go ahead and don't mind."

He thought too of how their love had ended. Three years ago at half-past-two in the morning when she said, "Look, Yoni, lots of girls are like that. You have to try not to mind."

He thought of her first pregnancy. And of the last one. Of the dead baby girl he had refused to look at in the hospital. And once more of her delicate body, that cold, exquisite slab of marble. Of his last, abasing attempts to arouse in that pale adamant some life, some pain, some injury or anger. So many days and nights, nights and days. And the distances. Her suffering that he could only imagine, and not even that. His aloneness. At three in the morning on a wide, arid sheet beneath a wide, arid ceiling with everything gleaming like the bones of a cadaver in the light of the full dead moon in the window, wide awake yet abducted by some white nightmare in a snowy polar wasteland, wide awake but alone with a corpse.