Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

"I don't understand. What's he getting at?"

"'That there is a necessary and predetermined order to the world, and that this order—'"

"Is one big fucking mess, Azariah! What order are you talking about? Where the fuck is it? Once, in a raid against the Syrians, we knocked off a few of their soldiers. We set up an ambush for their relief force, and they walked right into it with their jeeps and armored cars like flies into a jam jar. When it was over, we took a dead one — only he wasn't just dead, his body had been blown in two exactly at the waist — and we put him in the driver's seat of a jeep with his hands on the steering wheel and a lighted cigarette in his mouth and we called it a great big joke. To this day everyone laughs when they think of it. I wonder what your Spinoza would say about that. That we were animals? Murderers? The dregs of humanity?"

"You'd be surprised, Yoni. Most likely he'd point out calmly, without even raising his voice, that you did what you did because you had no choice. And neither, by the way, had the Syrians."

"Of course he would. What else would you expect? That's exactly what the whole world has been giving us from the day before we were born, our parents and our housemothers, and our teachers, and the kibbutz, and the army, and the government, and the newspapers, and Bialik, and Herzl — the whole lot of them. All they've ever done is scream at us that we have no choice but to work and fight for our country because our backs are to the wall. And now you and your Spinoza come and tell me the same goddamn thing. Welcome to the party! And while you're at it, pour me some more whisky. Pour'a a little more'a. Thanks a lot. That'll do for now. So what else do the two of you have to propose?"

"Excuse me?"

"I asked what the two of you propose. You and your Spinoza. If there's never any choice and our backs are always to the wall, what do you propose that we do about it? If everything's so hopeless, why did he bother to write that book and why do you bother to read it like a jackass?"

"Look, Yoni. Everything isn't hopeless. That's not what Spinoza says. On the contrary. He specifically stresses the idea of human freedom. We're free to recognize Necessity and to learn to accept calmly, even lovingly, the powerful, unspoken laws underlying the inevitable."

"Hey there, Azariah!"

"What?"

"Do you really love her?"

"Now let me tell you, Yoni."

"Yes or no?"

"All right. Yes. And I love you too. Even if I am a fink."

"And you love the whole kibbutz?"

"Yes, I do."

"And this country?"

"Yes."

"And this whole fucking life? And this rotten rain that's been falling on our heads like God's own piss for half a year already?"

"Yoni, forgive me and don't be mad at me for saying this, but she'll be back soon and I think — or rather, as they say, I propose — you shouldn't drink any more because you're not used to it."

"You want to know something, Azariah baby? Let me tell you something."

"Just don't get mad at me, Yoni."

"Who the hell is mad? Now you listen to me. You're as much of an asshole as I am. And a little crazy to boot. You, Spinoza, and she are one fucked-up threesome. Come over here! Now if you'd only let me crack open your ugly puss with a good right to the jaw, believe me, it would do both of us a world of good. C'mere!"

"I'm sorry, Yoni. I've already asked your forgiveness for everything, and now I'll pack up right away and clear out of this house and out of this kibbutz for good. I'd be kicked out before long anyway. The way I always am. Because I'm just a little stinker who should be finished off, which is what they said in the army and probably say behind my back here too. And she's older than me, she's so beautiful and saintly. And I am just so much filth. Only I do believe in justice. And in the kibbutz. And in having our own country and all the rest. Please, Yoni, don't hit me!"

"I won't, pal. You needn't be afraid. I'm not a Nazi. Though you never know. It's just that you get on my nerves. See, I think there is a choice. And that I'm not up against any goddamn wall. Spinoza can go fuck himself! You know something? You honestly do deserve her. Let's shake on that, philosopher. Bottoms up! Meanwhile do me a small favor and spare us the gab. Or better still, why don't you go get two butcher knives from the kitchen and we'll see whether or not you are a real man."

"Whatever you say, Yoni. Just don't drink any more. You know I love you dearly, as they say in Russian, and I beg forgiveness for everything I've done. If you'd like me to get down on my knees — I'm down on them. If it would make you feel better, you can beat me. I'm used to it by now."

"Get back on your feet, you crucified Christ, and give me a cigarette. You're some clown, all right. Look how nervous you've made Tia. Tia, wha'sa matter? That's jus' Rimona coming back."

Rimona served tea and cake, and turned down the beds for sleep.

Bolognesi sat on his bed, his back erect. One ear was torn. His lips moved as if in prayer. Twenty years had passed since the day he beheaded his brother's fiancée with an ax. Although the details of the story were not known to the kibbutz, everyone had his own version, all equally gory and all totally contradictory. Though quiet, well-behaved, and useful, a man who had not harmed a fly since the day of his arrival, the looks of him — jaws tightly clenched like a wretch who has eaten something foul and can neither swallow nor spit it out — gave the women and children bad dreams.

For all his having become a pious Jew while in prison, his religious observance had lapsed, and he devoted himself now to the art of fine knitting for these very same children and young women of the kibbutz. He never took a day off from work, never got sick, and refused to accept any pocket money. No one from outside the kibbutz ever came to visit him, nor, except on official business, did any of its members ever drop by to see him in his shack. No one had anything more to say to him than a perfunctory "Good evening," "How are you?" "How's it going?" or "Thanks for the lovely new scarf." To which he would reply, "Why do the heath'm thank'a me when I have quiet'a my soul?"

Now on these cold winter nights Bolognesi sat by himself in his tumbledown, tarpaper shack, listening to the rain beat down on the roof. Often he had been asked to move to a small bachelor room, and each time he had mumbled a refusal, though the singles committee had voted to give him a kerosene heater, an old radio, a reproduction of Van Gogh sunflowers, an electric kettle, a black plastic cup, and a ration of instant coffee. At the moment he was busy knitting a red shawl for Anat Shneour in a bold Spanish style. The needles flew in his hands. The heater crackled on the floor. In low, monotonous tones he droned on and on, "I moan'a and make'a complaint. Horror overwhelm'a me like'a water off'a da sea. Selah. Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil."

It was pouring again. The deluge battered the tin roof and slashed at the wooden walls. Thunderclap followed thunderclap, as if a mighty tank battle were being fought in another world.

Bolognesi rose from his seat. With steps as dainty as Dresden china, he went to the window and with his prim fists beat frantically on the pane.

At ten minutes after two in the morning, Yonatan woke from a troubled sleep. A bloody, faceless corpse had been brought into the tractor shed on an army stretcher. It's your father, buddy, the corps commander said, tapping Yonatan on the shoulder. He's been hacked to death with a dagger by two-legged beasts. But my father is a sick old man, protested Yonatan, trying to talk or bargain his way out of the truth. Your father was butchered with biblical cruelty, barked the corps commander. Instead of just standing there answering back, why don't you get off your ass and try to patch him together.