Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

Suddenly, sickened by all his lies, the white ones as well as the black, Azariah confessed to himself that he too had eaten a piece of his own cat after all.

"Someone like you, Udi," he said, "doesn't have to go hunting for the Bible in old Arab villages. Just look at yourself in a mirror and you'll see the whole Bible from Joshua to the second book of Kings. As for the Prophets, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job, though, this country still needs to wait a couple of hundred more years for them. I'm not really contradicting myself, although maybe I am just a bit, because history moves in cycles, and in zigzags too, as we were taught to run in the army, so that if you're aimed at while you're zigging, you've already zagged by the time the shot is fired, and vice versa. You see, when we went into exile, and even before that, we Jews began to hassle the world by telling everyone how to live, what they could do and what they couldn't, what was bad and what was good, until we got on everybody's nerves — just like that uncle of mine I mentioned, Manuel, the musician. He played in the Royal Philharmonic and was a professor too and such a bosom friend of King Carol's that the King felt he just had to give him a gold medal. Only right in the middle of the ceremony, Manuel began ranting like a mad prophet about all the decadence and corruption and recrucifying of Jesus each day by people who called themselves Christians. That's why the goyim hate us like poison and always will. As the Russians say, 'You can give Sergei a new suit of clothes, he'll still be the same wherever he goes.'

"It's only on the kibbutz that one sometimes sees a calmer, how can I put it, slower type of Jew. I swear I'm not trying to insult you. I mean Jews who have begun to learn the art of relaxing and the secret of sending down roots. They may be on the crude side, of course, but if you take, say, those olive trees over there, there's something crude about them too. What I'm trying to say is that we should learn to live without talking so much. If we have to talk, it should be like you, Udi, when you tell us in a few words, without preaching or promising salvations, that it's a damned nice day. Good for you, Udi! We should learn to live simply and to the point. To work hard. To be close to nature. Close, so to speak, to the rhythms of the cosmos. We should learn from those olives. We should learn from everything, the hills, the fields, the mountains, the sea, the wadis, the stars above. That's not my own idea. It's Spinoza's. In a word, we should relax."

"Then why don't you?" asked Anat, laughing as if someone had tickled her in the right place.

"I am only beginning to learn how to relax," Azariah apologized with a weak smile. "But if you mean that I should stop boring you, I'm already done talking. Or do you want me to make you laugh some more?"

"No, Azariah," said Rimona. "We want you to rest now."

With a small rock, Udi knocked over the empty canteen with a perfect pitch from twenty feet. "Come on," he said, "let's go."

Tia had finished gnawing the leftover chicken bones. They buried their garbage and shook out and folded the Arab Legion kaffiyeh. The girls plucked the stubble from each other's back.

"Who the hell's crying?" snapped Yonatan out of the blue, though no one had said a word. "It's just my goddamn allergy again. It starts up whenever anything starts growing. Azariah is right. I should go live in the desert."

"Excuse me. I said nothing of the sort."

"Maybe it was your Uncle Manuel, or whatever the hell his name was."

"Let's go!" said Azariah in a most down-to-earth manner. "My Uncle Manuel was killed, and we're out here today for a hike, not a memorial service. C'mon, let's go!"

The hikers split into two groups. Anat and Rimona went looking for mushrooms in the woods, while the men and Tia climbed the hill to poke about the ruins of the village. In no time Udi found the patterned neck of what had been a large earthenware jar and presented it to Azariah on the condition that he put an end to long speeches. "Fill it with soil and put a plate under it," he said. "I'll give you a cactus to plant in it." Azariah, in turn, gave him an old whetstone he found. A grindstone fragment that Yonatan came across had to be left for drier weather when a tractor and wagon could be used to haul it back. Suddenly, Azariah started and grabbed onto Udi's shirt.

"Watch it!" he whispered. "There's someone around here. I smell smoke."

"He's right. There's smoke coming from somewhere. I think it's from the mosque."

"Better be careful," said Azariah. "On the other hand, it could just be Bolognesi. I saw him leave the kibbutz this morning by himself."

"Hush up for a minute!"

"Or it could just be someone out for a walk. A nature lover. Or an amateur archaeologist. Or just someone wanting to be alone."

"I said be quiet! Let me listen."

But the only sound to be heard was borne on the wind from the far-off kibbutz. Its melancholy tones suggested a grave being dug. There was a rhythmic pounding, a feeble bleat, a faint clink of metal, the hoarse purring of a motor.

"The fact is," said Udi, "we don't know who might be skulking around here and we aren't armed. He could be very dangerous."

"Who?"

"That fellow. The escaped prisoner we were warned about a week ago. The strangler."

"Bolognesi?"

"Fuck Bolognesi! Yoni, instead of clearing out, maybe we should try taking him, huh?"

"Knock it off!" grumbled Yonatan. "We're not here to play cops and robbers. Let's pick up the girls and head home. It's time to call it a day."

"Why not? Don't forget, there's three of us and only one of him. It's a cinch if we're smart. The main thing's to keep him guessing. The bastard's probably asleep in the mosque."

"If I may make a suggestion."

"You may not! Calm down or you go right back to the girls. How about a little action, Yoni?"

"Why not?" said Yonatan with a shrug, as though he were giving in to a foot-stomping child.

"I'll make a dash for it first," volunteered Azariah.

"No one's dashing anywhere," Udi commanded coolly. "We're not armed. He may be. But he doesn't know that we're not or how many of us there are. Azariah, listen carefully. Don't budge from here. Pick yourself a nice big rock — that one over there will do — and wait in the corner behind the wall. Don't make a sound. If he comes running in your direction, wait till he's past you and brain him one. Is that clear?"

"Fantastic!"

"Yoni. Take the dog and cut off his retreat on the other side of the hill. I'll sneak up beside the door and holler at him to come out with his hands up like a good boy. And get this. The minute you hear me, make a racket. Get the dog to bark. Let him think we're at least two platoons."

"Fabulous!" shortled Azariah.

"If he comes out shooting, we all hit the deck and let him get away. But if he doesn't have a gun, I'll jump him from behind, and the two of you run to lend a hand. Ready? Let's go."

Why, we're brothers, thought Azariah with a proud, wild joy. We're blood brothers, and even if our blood is spilled, so what? Such is love, such is life! If we must die, die we must.

Enough, said Yonatan to himself. Enough. Who the hell cares anyway?

Far down the hillside, Anat and Rimona heard the long, savage shout. But whoever had been in the mosque was gone. There was nothing in its cold, damp, and dark interior but the embers of some smoking mossy twigs, a sour smell of urine, and a few freshly stubbed cigarette butts. Udi, poling about, managed to unearth a little tumulus of excrement that soon buzzed with green flies.

Yonatan, swept by an obscure longing, laid a pensive hand on Azariah's shoulder. "Well, that's that," he said. "Isn't it, pal?" Udi urged that they all hurry back to the kibbutz and report what they had seen to Etan R., who was in charge of security. Despite their haste, the hikers remembered to take along their mushrooms and relics, not to mention a small turtle found by Azariah after the storming of the mosque. Lovingly, secretly, he had named it Little John.