Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

I'll dust the floor and the bookcase. I'll make myself some coffee too. They're both so sound asleep. So weak and good. Without spears or antelopes. And the funniest part is that I'd like to put them both together in the double bed and sleep out here on the couch by myself. Or else be between them at night. Touching them both.

It was an Arbor Day without any planting of trees or festivities. Just the rain coming down all day. And the wind sweeping in from the mountains to bend the cypresses in the garden. Letting out a long wail as if it were thirsty and wanted to come inside.

If she cries at night, I'll gentle her so that she doesn't wake them. I'll take her and lay her on my stomach with her bottle. Somewhere I read that the mother's heartbeat soothes the baby to sleep. Because it remembers it from the womb, the rhythm of the heart. In Namibia you're born to the rhythm of tom-toms.

I have a little cat and its name is Efrat. A sleepy little cat and that's that.

Once I read that Bach had ten or twenty children and that they all lived in a little red-brick house in Germany. Don't be sad, Mrs. Bach may have said to him, you'll see it will all be all right. And he said, yes, yes, though he hardly ever believed her, and helped fetch the coal and tend the fire and wash the dirty diapers and sing the sick baby to sleep. But sometimes when he was up late at night with a German rain falling outside, the spear and the antelope got to him too. He wanted a hug. Or a touch. Or a word. None of which Mrs. Bach could have given him even if she tried. His mother, he wanted his mother to come. To take him down from the cross. To wash the blood from his wounds. And what came instead? The usual. Another war. More bloodshed.

The water is boiling again. I'll make them tea with lemon and honey in the big thermos. And fill the little one too. They'll have it to drink tonight when their throats hurt. How dark that rain is in that dark window!

When I was little we planted trees on Arbor Day. Once I even planted a little black rubber ball in our garden. It didn't take root and neither did the trees.

I am Rimona Lifshitz. I am Rimona Fogel. This is my daughter Efrat. This is my husband Yoni. This is my friend Zaro.

I left work early today to take care of my two sick men. Lipa fixed the boiler in the laundry that was broken when he was sick. Now he's all better. He told me a joke in Yiddish. After I showered, I put my hair up so they could see my long neck. But then I thought, it's nicer when it's loose and tumbling down.

No, they're not waking up. One's curled up like a fetus in Healthy Pregnancy, and the other just turned over and groaned. He's on his back like the crucified Bach in the jacket picture on the St. Matthew Passion, his arms spread wide and his hands balled into fists. Who gave me a cyclamen pressed between the pages of his pass book. Who wants to go to the tundra, to the taiga, to hunt for the whales that the newspaper said will soon be extinct. And to leave me with Efrat and Azariah. And with Tia. While we all wait for him.

That's why I'll change from this bathrobe. To look my best.

Whoever wakes can have juice and cake or else bread and sour cream. And have his temperature taken. And an aspirin. Zaro will play his guitar. Or else the three of us will play a game if we want.

Yoni's game will be to pretend he's a brave sailor hunting for whales or for desert islands in the South Seas. Far away at home I have to wait for him and trust him. In the end he'll come back with a bullet wound in his shoulder and be written up again in the paper. And he'll want to make violent love right away. And I'll say yes.

With Zaro it's mother and child. And because he's so shy, it will be up to me to help him without his knowing that I am. From the first caress to the last little yelp, I'll teach him not to hurry like a sneak thief because he isn't stealing a thing and there's nothing to be afraid of.

What I did for Azariah today was to wash and press his shirt and his gabardine slacks that got all muddy from our hike. And what I did for Yoni was to take his torn boot to the shoe shop and have Yashek fix it. So that it won't annoy him any more or laugh at him.

You can see the clearing in the jungle on the banks of a blue river just as it says in The Blue Nile. Efrat's crawling on all fours, the golden sand around her warm and clean. And the moonlight swaddles her with silver webs. From the empty depths behind her comes soft music. And African women in the whitest of white clothes are singing songs without words to their children in a language they call Amharic. And plucking hollow reeds from a shallow spot in the waters of the blue, blue Nile. And among them, dressed in white too, is Yehoshafat the teacher, who was hit in the head by a bullet while playing a tom-tom with the most delicate touch.

Blue-blue, blue-blue goes the heart. Blue-blue, blue-blue, in Africa there lived a gnu. Hush, little baby, don't you cry, lu lu lu lu lu, you'll see your daddy by and by, lu lu lu lu lu. Gnus, leopards, giraffes, lions, ostriches, hush, go to sleep, don't cry. Don't be sad, says Mr. Yehoshafat, it's wrong to expect new things all the time, new antelopes, new spears, new wanderings, new wars. Whoever is tired will rest. And whoever has rested will listen. And whoever has listened will know that it's a rainy night out. And that beneath the rain the wet earth lies quietly. And that beneath the wet earth the strong rocks are sleeping, the rocks on which light never shines. And that up above the clouds, up above the air, all is quiet too, the quiet between the stars. And that beyond the last star is the last quiet of all. What do they want from us? Not to disturb, not to make noise because nothing untoward will happen if we keep still.

Vassily the convert did not mean to harm Mr. Yehoshafat with the pistol he had cleaned and oiled. Now he has come to ask for love and forgiveness because his intentions were good. He gave me a pressed cyclamen. And a little English book from India about karmic suffering and astral light.

They are both asleep now. One hardly talks because it makes him sad to be like all the others, and one talks all the time because it makes him sad to be different. I accept them.

All that night after our hike when the power was off, he kept on playing and singing. He didn't dare stop out of fear we might say, thank you, good night. Until finally I said to him, let's go to bed now, Zaro, you can play some more tomorrow.

Never mind, Yoni said, he can sleep right here on the couch. Yoni, Zaro, I said, off to bed with you both. And because there were no lights, I lit a candle in the corner of the kitchen and another by the radio. Yoni fell asleep in his clothes on our bed, and I was left with the boy.

Excuse me, I said, I'm getting undressed and going to sleep. He was frightened and begged me in a whisper to forgive him for being so vile. But you're not, I said, you're good. Don't be sad.

He turned his face to the wall and lay all night wide awake on the couch, hating himself for something he wasn't to blame for. I couldn't sleep either. And when it was almost morning, the thunder and lightning woke Yoni, and Tia wanted to go out. So Yoni got up and saw me sitting in my nightgown, thinking. You're crazy, he said. Then Tia scratched to come back in. And Yoni went to open the door while Zaro lay there without moving, almost without breathing, that's how scared and embarrassed he was. And Yoni grabbed me by the shoulders and took me and threw me on the bed like a sack and did it to me all clumsy and wrong and so mean that it hurt. Yoni, I whispered, stop, he's awake, he can hear, don't do this to him. Fuck him, whispered Yoni, what do I care? This is it because tomorrow I'll be gone. How can you go when you're sick? Just look how you're burning with fever. Tomorrow I'm taking off, you crazy woman. If you want that crazy nut, I don't care. He's all yours, enjoy him, I've had it. Yoni, can't you even see that you love him a little yourself? But I'm sleeping, Rimona. You can get up and go to him dripping with my sperm, what the hell do I care? Fuck it all! So I went to him dripping and sat down on the floor by his side and said I had come to sing to him. Then I put my hand on his cheek and it was burning too. Don't talk now, child, give me your hand and see what I have, don't say a word. Until a dirty light came through the slats of the blinds and Arbor Day began. I took a hot shower, dressed slowly in the shower stall, and went to work in the laundry. When I came home, the two of them were down with a high fever. I gave them aspirin and tea and covered them and put them to sleep. Black women by the blue Nile will change Efrat's diaper.