Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

Not that I'm looking to pick a fight with you. We've fought more than enough, you and I. Although, to fell the truth, I don't envy you. Yet maybe things would be better if I were in your place. You're too quick to give in and forgive. Whereas I'm just wicked enough to squelch this wild bacchanal once and for all. Still, I don't envy you. On the contrary, my heart goes out to you. Thank God I'm not responsible for this mess and can, biblically speaking, sit quietly beneath my grape vine and my fig tree. Something tells me, though, that deep inside you, you too are heartsick with weeping for Rachel's lost dream. For, though it dare not speak out, the heart knows that we have been hopelessly, irrevocably, eternally defeated. All is lost, Eshkol. Geendikt.

Enough beating about the bush. Time to get down to what's really on my mind — my son.

Look at it this way. No one knows better than you do that in all these years Yolek Lifshitz never toadied up to you for a single personal favor. On the contrary. Often enough I spooned you out wormwood and vinegar. During the Great Split I even published an article against you and cruelly called you a jongleur. And, more recently, during the Lavon Affair, I wrote that you, Levi Eshkol, had sold your soul to the Devil. Nor, God help me, do I take a word of it back. May He before Whom there is neither foolishness nor levity forgive us, my dearest Eshkol. The truth of the matter is that we were all jongleurs. We honestly did sell our souls. Not for filthy lucre, to be sure, or for our own worldly pleasure or comfort. We sold them, if I may say so, for the sake of heaven. And that brings me back to what I said about the thirty-six wicked men on whom the world depends. Na. I'm digressing again.

Allow me to return to my son. That is, to my elder, Yonatan. And allow me, too, to make a long story short. The boy was raised here on Kibbutz Granot with more than his share of vitamins and sunshine, yet somehow managed to grow up to be a sensitive, shy young man, a real feinshmecker. As for the rest, you can easily imagine it. A politician with high principles for a father, and for a mother—›‹, Hava. Perhaps you've met her? A shattered soul, that one, a walking hornet's nest. Incidentally, we'll all fry over a low flame in hell for what we've done to our women. All our revolutions and Utopias have been carried out on their backs. And they were the only ones who paid the full price.

On top of everything else, this young man suddenly went and fell in love with a strange, apathetic creature, one who — mind you, I write this for your eyes alone with the utmost confidence in your discretion — may even suffer from some slight mental retardation. And the two of them set up house. I must say I don't understand the first thing about modern love. And then they had some sort of gynecological tragedy. I won't go into the details. Of what help could you or I be in such matters anyway?

In a word, they have no children, no great love for each other, and apparently no real happiness together either. And now, how shall I put it, the young man is looking for some purpose in his life. That is, he's planning a long trip overseas to "find himself" or "fulfill himself" or whatever it is they call it. The Devil alone understands them. The whole thing devastated me. Why, here I was, about to lose my elder son. The boy too was lost! You can imagine that I didn't give in without a fight. I reasoned with him all I could. I tried being nice and I tried being harsh. I clung to him with every ounce of strength I had. And our strength, Eshkol, is nearly gone. You yourself know how true that is. What are we to them even now but pig-headed old men, old buzzards who have lived too long, power-hungry old tyrants? In short, the boy refuses to budge. He's determined to make some radical change in his life.

You'll want to know what stuff he's made of. Well, I'll answer that as simply as I can. He's got a good head, a good heart, and a good soul. He's missing only the spark that could set him off. Please, don't smile at this point in your usual, heartily cunning way as if to say, "Witness dismissed. What else can you expect of a doting father?" I beg you to believe that I can see my son quite objectively. That much credit you still owe me. And forgive me if I seem at the same time to be writing all this with my own heart's blood. Oh, yes, I forgot. The boy plays chess too. He's even tournament caliber. In other words, he's not just another dumb yokel.

My dear Eshkol, you're a wise man. Please don't think the worse of me for this. My hand shakes as it writes. It's a terrible thing for me to have to come to you after all these years and ask for a private kindness. To tug at your sleeve, as it were, and beg you to remember what the rabbis said about the man who saves a single soul, etc. I place my firstborn in your hands. You know his family. You know his paternity. Be so good as to find him some suitable novitiate.

I hang my head before you. Nolo contendere. We may be old men, Eshkol; we may have had our fill of being spat at and insulted; we may have committed every sin in the book; but he — I mean my son Yonatan — is no scoundrel. You have my word on that. I'll even swear to it on the Bible, if you like. The boy is no scoundrel. Far from it. He won't disappoint you. He won't try to take you for a ride or stab you in the back. It was you who once said to me, "After all, a man is only a man — and even that only rarely." Well, than, take the boy and you will not live to regret it. A man may be made out of him yet. He still hasn't been totally ruined by the ill wind that's decimated his generation.

It's nighttime now, my dear friend and old rival, and the storm is still howling outside. The elements themselves have conspired to bring the grim tidings to us. And Death is breathing down our necks. We who gave the pillars of the earth a good shaking are now being hush-a-byed like babes. The incorruptible usher has come toward us down the aisle. Already he's tapping our shoulder and requesting us, politely but firmly, to tiptoe out of the hall without much fuss. Well, then, it's time to go. Not on tiptoe, though. On the contrary, let's walk out proudly and with our heads held high — as high, that is, as your corpulent, and my decrepit, body will permit. We have nothing to be ashamed of, you and I, who in the course of our lives accomplished one or two worthwhile things that our ancestors never dreamed of. You know that's the truth as well as I.

By the way, I'm not ashamed to admit that it grieves me to think Ben-Gurion will apparently outlive us. Forgive me for being wicked to the last, but just between the two of us, what did he have that we didn't? Only that he, and he alone, was the demiurge behind the ill wind! Let that be as it may, though. I won't pick another quarrel now. I know that you still refuse to agree with me on this, and insist that we are pygmies compared to him, etc. As you wish. When I wrote in my last pamphlet (Facing the Future, 1959) that Ben-Gurion had left an indelible stamp upon our lives "for better and for worse," you even reprimanded me in public. "You should get down on your knees before him, Yolek," you said. But I won't pursue the matter any further. In the meantime you've felt his sting too, which made me both grieve for you and — why bother to deny it? — experience sweet feelings of malicious joy. Let's not argue any more about Ben-Gurion. Deep in your heart and in your gut, you old buzzard, you know as well as I do that I'm right.

Let me tell you about a curious incident. Several weeks ago a bizarre young man — a bit of a sensitive plant, and a musician and philosopher to boot — turned up at our kibbutz and asked to be allowed to stay. I had my doubts about him. Another eccentric was not exactly what we needed at the moment. On second thought, though, I decided to risk it and take him on. He is the kind of human material one doesn't see any more, a genuine dreamer and intellectual, if rather confused. In a word, he might have been one of us had he not been born in the wrong generation. "The forest's too deep for small boys and sheep," he tells me, quotes copiously from Spinoza, and suddenly stops to opine that Ben-Gurion is out of his mind. I hardly need tell you that I gave him a good dressing-down, but to myself I said, using a favorite phrase of yours, " Nu, nu! "