Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

Now they're waking up. One is squirming, the other tossing from side to side. I'll put away my embroidery.

Good night, Efrat, good night, Mr. Bach, good night, Mrs. Bach, good night, Mr. Yehoshafat. Yours, Rimona Fogel, says do not worry because everything is for the best. Whoever is sad will be happy. There is a mercy to be found behind all this rain. The refrigerator is humming because the power is back on. We will all be good.

In the winter of 1965, Yonatan L. decided to leave his wife and the kibbutz on which he had been born and raised. He resolved to pick up and walk out and start a new life. For years on end he had been told what was right and what was wrong. He could barely grasp what those words meant. Sometimes, when he stood by himself at the window toward the close of day, to watch the sun fall, watch the deep, bitter night descend over the fields, envelop the land, like a disaster, to the end of the hills to the east, he calmly conceded that the night was right.

One evening he told his wife that he had decided to pick up and walk out. Life, he said, must go on; suppose I was killed.

He first waited for the rain to stop, for the political tension to ease, for the thunderstorms to subside, for the tractor shed to be taken over. Thus, the year '65 had passed and the year '66 had begun.

It was a long, hard winter.

Yolek Lifshitz announced at a general meeting of Kibbutz Granot that he would soon be resigning the post of secretary and that it was not too soon to start looking for a successor, perhaps Srulik the music man. Gossip had it that he was scheming to return to a position of power in the party and perhaps even to a cabinet seat. The wilder speculation was that he was cunningly counting on some crisis, factional rift, or war of succession to propel his name to the fore as a dark-horse candidate who might prevent a party split. It was Stutchnik, in fact, who stopped Yonatan Lifshitz on the path between the tractor shed and the metal shop to inquire in a cordially sly manner about his father's plans. Yoni shrugged. "Lay off, for God's sake. What the old man wants is grandchildren. So he can found a dynasty." His reply only confirmed what Stutchnik and others had already begun to suspect.

Amos, Yonatan's younger brother, a sturdy, curly-headed, keen-witted prankster who was also a champion swimmer, took part in a retaliation raid into Jordan and received a medal from his paratroop commander for bayoneting two Arab Legionnaires in hand-to-hand combat. Indeed, there was no choice that winter but to strike across the border every few weeks and punish the enemy for the murderous raiders crossing from Jordan almost nightly.

For his part, Yonatan went on waiting in silence for some turning point, some change or omen to mark the beginning of a new era. Yet the days remained all rainily alike and Rimona too. Azariah had taken to dropping in on them practically every night, frequently sleeping on their living-room couch. Yonatan thought, so what? I'll soon be gone. Besides, Rimona's not exactly a woman, and he's just a poor homeless guy. He plays the guitar and a little chess, even if he usually loses. He takes care of Tia now and then. He helps Rimona clean house every week and does the dishes. What the hell! As soon as winter is over and I'm my old self again, I can beat the crap out of him if I feel like it. In the meantime, let him be. As that poor jerk said in one of those Russian proverbs of his, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

At the Lifshitzes' the music sometimes went on until late in the night. From outside came the groans of the wind and the muffled lowing of the cows. In the living room, the blue flame of the heater flickered cheerfully. Rimona sat curled up in her armchair, her feet tucked under her, her hands pulled up in the sleeves of her nightgown, as if pregnant with her own self. Yonatan smoked with eyes closed or else built and demolished match castles on the table. Azariah, at the far end of the couch, played to all hours and now and then sang along softly.

We might as well be in a forest, thought Yonatan. I promised her a child and I've found her one. Now I can go. Etan has those two girls Smadar and Brigitte in his room by the swimming pool and doesn't give a damn what anybody says. Udi is going to bring an old Arab skeleton from Sheikh Dahr in the spring, wire it up to make a scarecrow, and tell whoever doesn't like it to fuck off. And so if the three of us, being of sound mind and body, have decided to start our own little commune, it's nobody's business but ours. Where does it say we can't? Let the rest of them talk themselves blue in the face. Let that voice from the past sneer all it wants at the joker who couldn't hit a bull. For once our heart is true and to hell with the rest. I'll be gone before long and whoever wants to file a complaint can look for me a hundred thousand miles away. To quote that jerk again, "The dogs keep barking all the night, the moon keeps quiet and shines bright."

In our little cottages amid their frost-stricken yards the alarm clocks go off at seven. Reluctantly, we rise grumbling from beneath our warm blankets to don our work clothes and battered old coats and jackets that are no longer good for anything else. Running irritably through curtains of rain, we arrive out-of-breath in the dining hall to eat our thick slices of bread spread with jam or cheese and drink our cups of greasy coffee before trudging off to work. The dining-room crew removes the remains from the sticky tables, cleans each table first with a wet rag and then a dry one, and stands the chairs upon it with their legs in the air, to mop the floor. And ye shall redeem the land, proclaims a cardboard sign on the wall, left over from Arbor Day.

On winter mornings like this, conversation is kept to a minimum. Come here. What is it. Where did you put it. I don't know. Then go look. You're in my way.

Once, long ago, there was a time when all things done here were done with devotion, even with a kind of ecstasy, sometimes with enormous self-sacrifice. But then the bold dreams came true.

Dead silence and a sleepy sadness everywhere on the kibbutz. Except for the birds screaming in the cold. Except for the forlorn barks of the dogs. Every man an island.

At eventide, beneath a drippy chinaberry tree on his way to the Jewish philosophy group in the recreation hall, Stutchnik sorrowfully unburdened his thoughts to Srulik.

"Things are going to the dogs, my friend. Why don't you open your eyes? If you're going to be our new secretary, you'll have to do something about it. For all his big talk, Yolek never got off his butt to do a damn thing around here. Everything in sight is falling apart. The kibbutz. The country. The youth. I don't want to stoop to gossip — I've avoided it all my life like the plague — but just take a look at what's going on with a certain Very Important Person's son. For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, one woman shall compass two men.

"Total anarchy! Look at what's happening with the schoolteachers or with our own steering committee. Look at the government. Were all the foundations rotten to begin with, Srulik, or is it only now, after the fact, that the dialectical contradictions we kept swept under the rug all these years have begun to emerge? You're not answering, my friend. Naturally. That's the easy way out. Soon I'll stop talking myself. One heart attack is enough for me. Not to mention my rheumatism and this whole depressing winter in general. I swear to God, Srulik, you can't look anywhere these days without getting sick to your stomach."

All the while, Srulik had been nodding sympathetically. Now and then he smiled. When Stutchnik finally paused, he put in a word of his own.

"As usual, you're slightly exaggerating. Looking through dark glasses, you might say. There's no reason to despair. We've been through worse times, and thank God we're still here. There've always been crises and always will be, but don't think for a minute we've reached the end of the road."