Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

"I'm sorry about that teacher," said Rimona.

"Yonatan," said Azariah, "has a sharp eye, so to speak. There's no point in pretending that I'm not excitable. Still, I'll say it again, my own governess never made pastry as good as this when I was a boy. I won't tire you now with stories about my governess, but sometime when your children are here I'll tell them all about her. Children love listening to me, especially the little ones. Maybe you know the legend of the Jewish peddler who came to a village of terrible Jew-killers and lured all their children after him with his flute until they drowned in a river. Little children would follow me through hell and high water, because I tell them the loveliest stories that are frightening but not too frightening."

"We happen," said Yonatan in a slow, sleepy voice, "not to have any children."

Azariah glanced up just as a profoundly bitter smile began to form around Rimona's lips without ever touching them. Before dying away, it momentarily reached her shaded eyes. Looking at neither of them, she said, "We had a little girl but lost her," adding, after a pause, "Whether or not it just happened, as you say, I don't know. But I'd like to know why it had to happen."

There was a silence. Yonatan rose, tall and very lean. He collected the empty coffee mugs and took them to the sink. While he was out of the room, Azariah noticed that Rimona's blond hair fell over her back and shoulders, more to the left than the right. He noticed the slender stem of her neck and the fine lines of her forehead and cheeks. She was, he thought, beautiful, and Yonatan was handsome, and he loved them both, even as he envied them. He winced to think of having pained them by mentioning children, and he felt shame and self-loathing to be almost glad to hear that they had none. I must make them happy now and always, he thought. I must get so close they'll never be able to do without me. Her pale, Christian beauty is so painful. I'll never let her know how vile I really am.

Azariah Gitlin vaguely began to hope that this girl might hurt him, do him some wrong, which she would have to make amends for. And yet he couldn't imagine how this might come about.

When Yonatan returned to the room, Azariah looked down at the floor and did not see him shut the copy of Witches and Witch Medicine that was lying open at the end of the couch. As he put it back in its place on the middle shelf, Azariah politely asked if he might smoke.

Yonatan took from his shirt pocket the pack of expensive American cigarettes that Azariah had given him that afternoon as a present and handed it to him.

"Long ago," said Azariah, "in ancient Greece, there was a philosopher who believed that the soul resides in the body like a sailor in a ship. As lovely as that image is, it must be rejected. Another Greek philosopher wrote that the soul dwells in the body like a spider in its web, which in my own humble opinion is much closer to the truth. Using the powers of observation that I developed during my long, unhappy years of wandering, I noticed a good quarter of an hour ago that someone here must like to play chess. If I may be permitted to hazard a guess, that someone is you, Yonatan, not your friend."

As Yonatan opened the board and set up the pieces, Azariah delivered himself of a few boastful remarks, only to retract them at once and apologetically point out, "A great philosopher once observed that the winner of the Olympic medal was not necessarily the fastest man in Greece but simply the fastest man in the race."

Yonatan Lifshitz and Azariah Gitlin smoked and played in silence while Rimona sat by the radio with her bag of embroidery unopened in her lap, so intensely absorbed was she in a dream of her own. Yonatan's eyes kept filling with tears that he neither wiped away nor bothered to explain to his guest. Rimona had still not removed the pine branches from the vase since she had found no flowers to replace them.

After six or seven moves, Azariah blundered. He did his best to come up with a smile, remarking that, even though the game was as good as over almost before it had begun, for him it was no more than a first probe. Yonatan suggested that they begin again.

But Azariah refused. He blamed the thunder rolls outside for his inability to concentrate and, with a kind of irritable sportsmanship, insisted on playing to the bitter end. "He who has never tasted defeat will never know that triumph is sweet."

At this Rimona pressed her embroidery to her lap and looked up at him only to notice the many tiny, agitated wrinkles that came and went around his eyes. He had already single-handedly eaten every pastry on the large plate except for a sole survivor, a last concession to good manners that he kept absentmindedly picking up and putting down again. Once he even raised it all the way to his lips before giving a last-minute start and gently replacing it. Rimona opened her bag and began to embroider.

"That man you said was killed by the bullet. If he died instantly, that means he didn't suffer. Did you say his name was Yehoshafat?"

"That's right," said Azariah. "But I'm afraid I've only made you laugh at me. I always say the opposite of what I should."

"Your move," said Yonatan.

With a sudden burst of fervor, Azariah slid his remaining bishop along a diagonal that reached nearly from one end of the board to the other.

"Not bad," said Yonatan.

"Watch out!" crowed Azariah. "I'm just warming up!"

Indeed, within the space of a few moves, after recklessly sacrificing a knight and two pawns, the young man had reversed an apparently hopeless situation and was even threatening Yonatan's king.

"Do you see that?" he asked, flushed with success. At that exact moment, however, he seemed to run out of inspiration, unnecessarily losing another pawn and the initiative. Yonatan continued to play patiently, cagily, with calculated precision. Azariah, on the other hand, kept throwing away ingeniously gained advantages and committing mistakes that would have made a beginner blush.

Rimona put down her embroidery and went to open the window to air out the smoke-filled room. Tia rose too, arched her back, and moved closer to the table, panting in short, rapid breaths, her pink tongue hanging out, her eyes glued on her master and her ears cocked forward, as if straining not to miss a word or a move. Azariah Gitlin burst out laughing. "Give me time," he said, "and I'll teach your dog to play chess. You'd be surprised at what a dog can learn. Once, when I lived in a camp for new immigrants, I taught a Yemenite's goat to dance the hora."

Rimona shut the window, returned to the couch, and said, as if continuing her thoughts out loud, that it must be sad to have to spend so many hours alone in the barber's shack. In the bottom closet, she believed, was a small, unused electric kettle that they could lend to Azariah. Before he left she would also give him some coffee and sugar and a few pieces of the pastry that he liked so much.

"Check," said Azariah. His voice was cold.

"But what good does that do?" marveled Yonatan. "I can go here or here. Or here."

"I'm just pressing home the attack," said Azariah with a nervous giggle. "Thank you, Rimona," he added. "When you're being so nice to me, how could I possibly go and hurt Yonatan's feelings by inflicting, so to speak, a defeat on him."

"Your move," said Yonatan.

"As a gesture of friendship I offer you a draw."

"Hold on there," said Yonatan. "Why don't you first take a good look at what's happening to your rook. You're in bad trouble."

"If so, it's because I lost all interest in this banal, repetitious, and, if you don't mind my saying so, boring game at least ten minutes ago." Azariah's reply was almost a singsong.

"You," said Yonatan, "have lost."

"So I have," said Azariah, trying to force a comically gay expression.