Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

"They've spent their whole lives being right, those old folks. Whatever my father says, even if it's admitting he was wrong, comes out sounding like he's the one who's right and you're the one who's wrong because you're too young. It's only the old folks who have the strictly logical minds and the infallible intuition and all that, while you're too spoiled, or too confused, or too lazy, or too superficial to think straight. It doesn't matter if you're thirty years old. They still talk to you like a grown-up being patient with a child who's only being treated like a grown-up in order to make him feel good. You can't even ask them for the time of day without getting a whole complicated answer full of explanations for everything, point by point, A, B, c, D, and all that, and without being told that experience is the best teacher and that there's always another side to the coin. What you think makes no difference because you belong to a generation that never learned how to think. You can't get a word in edgewise. It's like being checkmated by someone who's playing both sides of the board because you have no pieces of your own, just your tender soul with your psychological problems."

"You have no pity," said Rimona.

"I," said Yonatan, "cannot stand pity."

"Except when you get some of it yourself."

"That's enough of that!" snapped Yonatan.

"All right," said Rimona.

Udi turned the conversation back to jet planes, speaking enthusiastically about the new Mirages the air force was acquiring, more than a match, he was sure, for the latest MiGs the Syrians and the Egyptians were getting from the Russians. He happened to be high up enough in the reserves to know of a fantastic plan to finish off the greaseballs with a single blow if they so much as dared raise their curly heads.

Flouncing her skirt to cover her knees, Anat jokingly scolded her husband for giving away military secrets. Azariah took offense, insisting politely but firmly that there was no reason to refrain from discussing military matters in his presence. He was not a foreign agent. In fact, as a technical sergeant in the army he had dealt with some highly confidential matters himself. Regarding secrets, for example, he could tell them some fascinating things about tank warfare and General Tal's revolutionary plans. Incidentally, it was his opinion that the old folks Yoni was so annoyed with had more brains in their pinkies than all the brash young big shots had in their heads. They had suffered in the lands of Exile, rather than being born with silver spoons in their mouths like his and Yoni's generation, which at the worst had to endure the smoke from Arab villages and kill a stray Arab now and then. No wonder the younger generation was so closed-minded and always whining. Not, he hastened to add, that he was referring to anyone present. In fact, if he was thinking of anybody, it was only himself, although on the whole he was, so to speak, talking generally. Still, he felt obliged to ask them all for forgiveness, especially Yoni, whom he might have unintentionally hurt. Nor, by the way, was he happy with the phrase "lands of Exile." He promised to find a better one.

Azariah was again bewildered by Rimona's eyes, which were resting on him poignantly, as one is sometimes watched by a house pet who remembers some primordial truth beyond all knowledge or words. The corners of her mouth smiled at him, or seemed to in his imagination, as if to say, that's enough, that's enough, little boy, which caused him to flounder even more while trying to end with a joke.

"Azariah," said Rimona. "If you feel the need to talk, you can talk and we'll listen. But don't think you have to."

"Of course not, why should I," mumbled Azariah. "I mean, if you're bored and want me to make you laugh, I can be, so to speak, very funny. It's all the same to me."

"Go ahead, then," said Udi, winking at Yonatan, who was picking burrs and clots of mud from Tia's fur.

"Okay, take a baby, for instance," Azariah proposed, spreading his arms apart the length of an infant. "Take a little baby. I mean before it's born. When it's still a twinkle in its mother's eye. Once I used to think that all the family dead, the uncles and the grandfathers and the grandmothers and the cousins and even the distant ancestors, come to say goodbye to each baby before it's born, the way you say goodbye at the station to someone going on a long trip. And I'd imagine that each one of them asked it to take something of theirs along — a pair of eyes, or the color of somebody's hair, or the shape of an ear or a foot, or a birthmark, or a forehead or chin — because each of them wanted to send some little reminder or token of their affection to relatives still living. It's as if the baby were a lucky traveler who had received permission not just to go abroad but to cross an Iron Curtain that they know they'll never be allowed to cross, which is why they load it with as much as they can so that the people in the happy land it's going to will know that they haven't forgotten. The only problem is that the baby, being, after all, a tiny thing, has a strict baggage limit. At the most, say, one feature from its uncle and its grandmother's eyes, or perhaps an unusually thick thumb. When it finally arrives at its destination all of its relatives on the other side who are excitedly waiting to kiss it and hug it start arguing right away who sent what to whom. One of them says that the chin is without a doubt Grandpa Alter's, another that the little ears that look almost glued to the head belong to the twin aunts believed to have been murdered by the Nazis in the Ponar Forest, still another that the fingers definitely come from a cousin of father's who was a well-known pianist in Bucharest during the 1920s. All of this, of course, is simply, you understand, a parable."

"A Rumanian shaggy dog story," said Udi. "One of those that never get to the punch line."

"Why don't you leave him alone?" said Yonatan. "Quiet, Tia! Just a little more beneath the ear and we're done."

"All right by me," said Udi. "Let him talk. He can go on all day. And he will, that's for sure. Myself, I'm going up to that stinking village."

"I believe," said Rimona, "that he really had the two twin aunts who were killed. And you just have to look at his fingers to see that the part about the pianist in Bucharest is true too. But please, Azariah, don't tell us any more about youself now. Some other time. Let's sit quietly for a few minutes and see what we can hear. Then whoever wants can go to Sheikh Dahr and whoever is tired can rest."

Many birds were about, but none were singing. They were talking to each other in sharp, clipped tones that were neither joyful nor peaceful but quiveringly alive as if to announce some impending danger. Behind their raucous chatter the wind whispered conspiratorially, while something blew from the ruins of the village as light as a murderer's fingers, as hushed as a rustle of silk.

Azariah noticed it too and knew that it would be only a matter of hours before the winter returned. One night in his childhood, after they had slipped out of Kiev, when they were hiding in the dark cellar of an abandoned farmhouse before the long flight to Uzbekistan, they cooked and ate a little yellow cat. It was Vassily the Russian convert to Judaism who killed it with a blow of his fist when the animal rubbed up against him to be petted. The blizzard outside and the damp within caused the fire to go out before the cat was done, and they had to eat it half raw. But crybaby Zhorzi didn't want to taste it even though he was hungry, and when Vassily said to him, "If you don't eat, you won't be big and strong like Vassily," he cried even more until Vassily finally clamped a large, red-freckled hand over his mouth and said, "If you don't shut up, Vassily will make you go fff-ff-f-t just like the cat. You know why? Because Vassily is hungry, that's why."