Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

" Na! You're a regular saint. You needn't talk to me the way you talked to the schoolchildren at that assembly. I can do without the propaganda. My eyes are wide open, and it's time yours were too. Besides, you're crazy to be out without a hat on. Who walks around like that in the middle of winter?"

"I'm not walking around, old man. I'm on my way to our group. Just don't forget that the days you're so nostalgic for weren't always so great either. We had our share of failures and embarrassments and even scandals. You are right, though. Why are we standing in this freezing wind? Let's go see if anyone remembered to light the heater in the recreation hall. Maybe our guest lecturer has arrived. I believe he's talking about Martin Buber. Look how dark it is at four-thirty! Worse than Siberia!"

Every evening it was the custom of some members of the kibbutz to gather in various study groups or participate in meetings that deliberated at length about the budget, education, health services, housing, and acceptance of new members, seeking modest ways to make gradual improvements without rocking the boat. Still others spent the evening with their hobbies — painting, embroidering, or stamp collecting — or dropping in on their neighbors for coffee and cake and a discussion of the latest politics and gossip. There were also, however, singles and young couples who preferred staying up late while passing around a bottle, playing cards or backgammon, and telling salty jokes enlivened by old war memories.

On one such night Udi said to Etan R., "Good for them! Bravo! Why shouldn't they? Isn't the Bible full of such stories? To say nothing of our own old folks when they were young. When they weren't draining the desert or watering the swamps and all that. Life isn't a fairy tale. Yoni once said that the most colossal fraud in the world was Snow White and her seven dwarfs. I mean the lies they told us when we were little about what went on between them after she'd spaced out on that apple. So what do you want of Rimona? After all, she's just started on her second dwarf. Come to think of it, Etan, how about bringing your private harem over there one night, letting me and Anat join you, and all of us having a ball together?"

"From the minute I collared him by the cowshed the night he arrived," said Etan, "I've had a bad feeling about that dwarf. And Rimona's not quite all there either. The one I really feel sorry for is Yoni. Yoni was once a damn good fellow. Now he's turning into another Chimpanoza and walks around all day long as if he'd been conked on the head. How about a little more arak? Anyhow, if only Eshkol had any balls and weren't such an old yenta, he'd take advantage of the Egyptians being bogged down in Yemen and kick those Syrian sons-of-bitches' asses in. That'd solve the Jordan water problem once and for all. For half an hour yesterday that Azariah may have chewed my ear off with his philosophy and proverbs about Eshkol and Khrushchev and Nasser, but basically the kid is right. In fact, he'd have a good head on his shoulders if only it hadn't been screwed on wrong. A king with any brains always has a court jester, and Yolek — Stutchnik says he's next in line for the throne — has his Azariah. What makes it so tragic is that Eshkol is his own court jester. Will you listen to what a god-awful night it is out there!"

One evening when Yolek was on the mend from his illness, Hava took it upon herself to let fly.

"Why on earth don't you speak up? Why? Do something! Involve yourself! Make your voice heard! Or do you love that circus clown more than your own son? I suppose it was me who put out the welcome mat, who let him come barging into this booby hatch like some kind of wild animal. Hold it a second! Don't answer yet! I'm not finished. Why do you always interrupt me in the middle of what I'm saying? Why do you always try to gag everybody? Why must you always work out in advance your logical answers with all their pros and cons and ifs and buts before you've even heard what's being said to you? Oh, yes, you try to look tolerant. You pull that patient, politic face of yours as if you were really listening, but you're not listening at all, because you're too busy thinking of your next squelch, with its firstly and its secondly and its thirdly, and all its quotes and bon mots. For once in your life, shut up and listen, because I'm talking about Yoni's life and death, not about the future of the labor movement. And don't try to butt in, because there's no answer you can give. I already know by heart the one you're about to give me. I know your whole repertoire. If it weren't so pathetically disgusting, I'd recite the whole text of it, complete with the corny jokes and the pauses for applause. The smartest thing you can do right now is waive your sacred right of reply and shut up. As if it weren't already written all over your face, the whole shyster spiel. Oh, when it comes to that, you're a champion all right! A champion? You are God Almighty! But the fact that Yoni's life is being ruined right in front of your nose — about that, Mr. God Almighty, you couldn't care less! You never did care and you never will. If anything, it's you who planned it in cold blood. Because Yoni is a blot on your lily-white escutcheon, isn't he? Because he's too confused, and too nihilistic, and too inarticulate. While that clown you've dragged into his life is God's gift to man, a gift you'll promote bit by bit, as they say in your trade, until you can put him to your own use. And find a chance to dump Yoni. Why, if we all dropped dead tomorrow — not only Yoni but Amos, and me too — you'd carry on as usual so quick the whole world would pass out with admiration for your courage. You'd even write some heartrending piece for the papers and make political hay out of it, wouldn't you, because who could be cruel enough to attack a poor bereaved widower and his halo of grief? We'll lie rotting in our graves, and you'll be more of a martyr than ever. You'll even be able to adopt that little cockroach legally. What do you care as long as you have your spotless reputation? You, and your big fat ideas, and your place in history, and all your j'accusational speeches! A nasty, wicked old man who saw his own son being carved up in front of his eyes and never even bothered to—"

"Hava! What exactly are you getting at?"

"Shut up is what I'm getting at! For once in your life let me finish a sentence before you start a speech that lasts all night. You've made far too many speeches already. And I've heard far too many of them too. And so has your precious history. You've been preaching to it for the last fifty years without letting it get a word in edgewise or ever stopping to hear what it might have to say for itself. But this time you're going to hear me out to the end. And spare me that 'can't-you-see-I'm-deaf look of yours, because I know you'd rather not hear a word. And that "please-all-the-neighbors-will-hear-you" look too. What do I care about the damn neighbors? I wish they would hear. I wish this whole stinking kibbutz would hear, and the party, and the government, and the Knesset, and the whole United Nations! Let them! What do I care? I know I'm talking loud — that's because you're deafer than God himself, but I'm not screaming. And if I want to scream, you're not going to stop me. I'll scream until they break down the door to see if you're murdering me. That's how I'll scream if you don't shut up and let me talk for once in my life."

"Hava! Please. You can talk all you want. No one is stopping you."

"Again you're interrupting when all I'm begging you for is the chance to finish a sentence, because it's a life-and-death matter, and if you interrupt one more time, I'm taking this can of kerosene and pouring it on the floor and putting a match to it and burning down the whole house with all your precious letters from Ben-Gurion and Berl and Erlander and Richard Crossman and the King of Siam. So shut up and listen carefully to what I say because it's the last time I'll ever say anything. I'm telling you now that you have until noon tomorrow to get rid of that psychopathic pervert whom you brought here in cold blood to destroy your son's life, and had accepted by the kibbutz, and even invited to my house to talk about justice and philosophy and give his damn music recitals. Either he's out of here and out of Yoni's life on his rear end by tomorrow, or I'll do something so terrible you'll wish you'd never been born. You'll feel sorrier than you ever felt in your big fat life — even sorrier than you were after your glorious resignation from the cabinet that you're eating your heart out over to this day. And I hope you go on eating it out until there's nothing left but a shell! Ty zboju, ty morderco! "