Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

Men and women peeled off layers of clothing, rolled up sleeves, opened a top button or two of blouses or shirts. Some of the men went so far as to step out-of-doors undressed to the waist, baring dense mats of hair, fine golden fuzz, or graying curls. The honeyed light pampered winter-weary shoulders and waterlogged front yards, glanced glowingly off the tin drainpipes, fondled lawns that had wasted in the long, frosty nights, and trickled off into cisterns of shade beneath the huge cypress trees.

Most amazing were the flies and bees, now zooming everywhere. Where had they been hiding from the cold and rain all winter long? And the white butterflies — flurrying in bright hotspots of light — the snowflakes that fell on the high mountains to the east just four nights ago. Even dogs had run amuck and were racing back and forth across the lawns in crazy figure-eights. Were they trying to catch the bubbles of sunshine that, impelled by the soft sea breeze, speckled the grass, the lilac bushes, the dazzling bougainvillea, the hibiscus hedges, that caromed from puddle to window pane and from window pane to drainpipe, skittering wildly, evanescing, condensing, fissioning, fusing, and once again fragmenting brightly?

The real-as-rain smell of the earth and the wind-borne smell of the sea put a song on the lips of all, making everyone feel an urgent need to do something at once, to effect an immediate change, to paint a rusty railing, attack a clump of weeds with a hoe, prune a hedge, clear a culvert, shinny up a drainpipe to replace a cracked tile, or simply hoist a bawling infant high in the air. Or else, to forget about it all and instead collapse in a motionless heap like a lizard in the sun.

Most pleasant have you been to me, my brother Jonathan, thought Azariah, as he skipped across the puddles on his way to the Lifshitzes'. He planned to suggest a long Saturday hike, an offer they could not possibly refuse. Even if Yoni was too tired, perhaps Rimona would come. In the woods last night had she not already bandaged his wounds? But just when his dream had become too sweet to bear, he had opened his eyes only to hear his neighbor chanting in a tongue that resembled Chaldean.

"It could be a line in the movies," said Yonatan. "A husband wakes his sleeping wife in the morning, and what are the first words she says? Is that you, Yoni? Who did you think it was, Marlon Brando?"

"Yoni," said Rimona softly, "if you've finished your coffee and don't want any more, let's go outside."

Yolek Lifshitz, secretary of Kibbutz Granot, a man neither young nor well, groaned as he bent over to pull a folding chair from the small storage space between the posts supporting his house. Carefully he dusted it off, dragged it to the paved patio at the end of his garden, opened it gingerly lest he catch his fingers, suspiciously tested the strength of its canvas seat, sat himself down, and stretched out bare feet ridden by swollen, evil-looking varicose veins. Having left his glasses in his shirt pocket he had removed before stepping outside, he set aside his weekend paper, closed his eyes, and decided to concentrate on one or two matters that needed to be resolved. Time was short.

In a dream last night he had been asked by Eshkol to inform the Syrians about the flood damage without revealing its full extent. "We want them to think that things aren't so bad and that we can still take lots more punishment since time is on our side, although just between the two of us, Yolek, I'm telling you that it's urgent, in the worst possible way." No sooner had he left Eshkol's tent than Ben-Gurion, red-faced and terrible, had sprung at him from a nearby Arab well and roared in a voice as shrill as a madwoman's, "I don't want to hear another word about it! You'll shut up and kill if you have to, even with the handle of a hoe just as King Saul killed his own son!"

The cries of the birds across the blue caress of the sky were distracting. To his surprise, Yolek realized that the birds were not, as the poet Bialik had written, caroling. On the contrary, they were screaming at the top of their lungs. Especially unsettling were the complaints of pigeons coming from the roofbeams of the house. A ferocious dispute had broken out among them, and they were pursuing it in fulminous bass tones.

" Sha, sha, " Yolek muttered in Yiddish. "Why do the heathen rage? There's no need to get so excited. Ben-Gurion may be up to his old tricks again, but we're not going to let them faze us." He soon dozed off, his heavy hands on his paunch, his mouth slightly agape. The circlet of gray hair around his bald head, which in this magical light suggested a saint's halo, ruffled in the breeze. Although the pigeons kept at their tirade, the shrewd, ugly man with the face of a beadle or a sad, clever court Jew had lost at last his ironic look, wary with the age-old caution of his race. Yolek was at peace.

"He's out like a light, our Yolek," laughed Srulik the music man as he passed by in his blue sabbath shirt and neatly pressed khaki pants, a ball belonging to the neighbors' children in one hand. Hava could not stand that unctuous German accent of his, that impertinently intimate smile. Look who's shooting off his big mouth, thought she. Just who does he think he is?

"Let him sleep," she bristled. "At least one day a week let him sleep in peace. Even the head guard in a loony bin gets a day off now and then. He stays up nights worrying about all of you, so why not let him rest now?"

"By all means, by all means!" laughed Srulik, who, whatever Hava might think, was a warmhearted man. "Let the Guardian of Israel sleep all he wants."

"Very funny!" snapped Hava. She was standing by the clothesline, hanging up flannel pajamas, linens, a nightgown, and some heavy sweaters. "I just want you to know that you're taking years off his life, all of you. And when he's gone, you'll put out a memorial booklet saying that Yolek Lifshitz never knew what it meant to be tired. Well, never mind. I'm not complaining. I stopped complaining long ago. I just want you to know what you've done. All of you!"

"Really, now," replied Srulik with a patience born of affection, "it's a sin to be so cross on a morning like this, Hava'ke. Just look at the light! Just smell the air! If only I dared, I'd pick a flower to give you."

"Very funny," said Hava.

Srulik made a motion as if to toss her the ball, smiled, almost winked, thought better of it, and went his way. Bitterly, Hava watched him go, her eyes like an owl's blinded by a beam of bright light. To herself she said, " Shoyn. " Fine.

All the nights spent in bed alongside this thickening man, the smells of his illnesses, his nicotine breath, his snores in her face, the shadow of his crowded bookshelves made by the bathroom light that must never be turned off at night, his mementos on the shelves above the bed like a huge billboard announcing: I am a national figure. I have been a minister!

You are a national figure, all right, and I, Mr. Minister, have been your dust rag, your old socks beneath your long underwear. I've been your underwear too. By all means, Mr. Minister, you should work wonders, you should be a minister again, you should become President even, but I wish to God I'd been killed by those bullets of Bini's. He couldn't aim a gun to save his life, but he could play the flute, and he pastured the flock all alone by the edge of the wadi that autumn, standing so straight and so sad on that rock in his black Russian blouse with his black tousled hair, playing the flute in Ukrainian, to the sky, to the hills, until I begged him, Stop because I'll cry! He stopped because he loved me, that's why, but I cried anyway. Until that night when I saw him on that sweaty mattress through the chink in the partition, lying naked on his back and holding his tool as he held his flute, diddling it, crying, and the minister snored by my side till I woke him in a whisper and made him look at Bini squirming there before he turned over and came. That's when Mr. Minister appointed a committee to look into the matter discreetly, to let time heal all wounds, but by then I was pregnant and ever since I've been your pet bitch, ty zboju, ty morderco! Quietly you killed me, quietly you killed him, and now quietly you're killing your son, though I'll never give you the satisfaction of knowing if he's really your son or not. It's just as that fawning music man said, "Let the Guardian of Israel sleep in peace." Never mind, Hava'ke, never mind, never mind, she crooned to herself, as if to calm a child deep within.