Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

What qualm now kept him from taking one last glance at the place where he had been born and raised? At the commune his parents had built on a godforsaken rocky hill and turned into a demi-Eden snuggled by greenery and woods? Nearly all its members were asleep. Let them sleep. In kibbutzim everywhere, dear comrades were still in bed — virtuous housemothers, balding, goodnatured organizers, middle-aged field hands, chicken growers, gardeners, shepherds, men and women from a thousand remote shtetls who had come here to turn all things upside down, themselves included, and build a new world. And elsewhere, too, all over this country. How gentle they all are when they sleep. Like my former wife, who was always gentle because she was never awake.

The best thing about sleep is that it allows everyone to be off by himself at last, a million miles away from all others, even the sleeper at his side. No committees to attend, no jobs to be done, no pressing calls to duty, no challenges to be met. The law that demands you love your neighbor is suspended. Everyone is secure in a world of his own. Those in need of love get just as much as they require. Those who need to be left alone are left alone. Those who deserve to be worried, regretful, or punished are punished and will toss for it. The oldest, most arthritic, hemorrhoid-ridden geezer with a stroke or two to his debit is free to be a young cavalier again or even momma's little boy. Whoever craves pleasure is rewarded, and those who crave pain may suffer without ceasing. The sky's the limit. If you want your past back, you can have it. If you long for a place you've already been or have never been able to visit, you're transported in a trice, all expenses paid. If you're frightened of death, you get it in small doses every night to build up your resistance. If you want a war, you get one de luxe. If you pine for the dead, just whistle, and they'll appear.

In fact, maybe I should go back right now, wake up Azariah, and shout out, hey, pal, I've got the answer to the question your Spinoza and his Right Honorable Hugo Buxhall and all your head-in-the-cloud philosophers have been asking forever — the one about is there any justice in the world and where can you find it? Top of the morning, Azariah, get up! And you too, Rimona, put the kettle on! Because I've been up and around, and, lo and behold, I've found justice. It's all in our dreams. Justice for everybody, more than enough to go around, to each according to his abilities and needs, the land of the true kibbutz. Not even a general can tell me what to do in my sleep because he can't tell himself what to do in his. He sleeps like a pussycat, without bars, without stripes, without medals, blanketed in his private justice. So go to sleep, comrades, if you want justice, because that's the only way you'll ever get it.

As for me, I intend to stay up all by myself and have fun. Because I'm not looking for justice. I'm looking for life — which is the exact opposite. I've slept my fill, and now I stay awake. I'm through with crazy old men, with their looniness, with their dreams. I'm through with their wacky Utopias and their creeping justice. Let them sleep all they want, bless their souls. I'm awake as I can be and about to get on board a vessel of my own.

It was only then that Yonatan turned to take one last look at the place he had once called home. The perimeter lights had gone out. The kibbutz seemed to float on a cushion of milky gray mist — the water tower twined with green ivy, the hayrack, the cowshed, the teenagers' and children's houses, the spires of the cypress trees around the white dining hall, the little red-roofed cottages with their blinds still shut, the hillside above the swimming pool, the basketball court, the sheep pen, the old guardhouse, the auxiliary shacks.

Yonatan's sleepy, bloodshot eyes narrowed, like those of a small animal sensing the approach of hunters. Stop it. Stop it. Don't fall into it, pal. It's a trap. The cunning of nets fine as a spider's. Just because I sat singing here on this lawn all night long, propped against a friend or a girl. Just because here I was loved and kissed and scolded and taught to drive a cow and a tractor. Just because here good people live who will come to my aid if any harm befalls me, who, even if I steal or commit murder, even if I were a quadruple amputee, would take turns standing watch in the jail or hospital to guard me day and night. Don't fall into it, pal. The posse is already hot on your heels and you've not yet flown the coop.

How many minutes have passed? I'm still stuck here. What if someone sees me? The light on those hills is strange — blue, pink, and gray all at once. And nothing's coming but that freight train traveling south, its engine bleating for dear life. Those barking dogs inside the fence must think I'm the enemy. I am. One burst, tak-tak-tak, and they've had it.

But something was coming down the road. A truck. An old Dodge. And stopping. The driver was a portly, middle-aged man with cherubic cheeks and amiably glittering glasses.

"Hop in, young fellow. Where to?"

"It doesn't matter. Anywhere will do."

"But which way are you heading?"

"More or less south."

"Good! Just shut the door tight. Slam it. And press down that button next to you. Maybe you got hit with a reserve call-up, eh?"

"You could say that."

"Okay, okay, I'm not asking you to give away any secrets. Might you be a paratrooper?"

"Something like that. In reconnaissance."

"And you've got some little operation in the works, huh?"

"I couldn't tell you. Maybe. Why not?"

"Did you say you were heading south?"

"More or less."

"Right you are! You don't have to tell me a thing. Why risk it? Although let me tell you, I've been a Labor Party member for twenty years and a regional defense head for two, and I know how to button my lip. I also happen to know secrets I bet you've never dreamed of. That was south you said?"

"If it isn't going out of your way."

"May I ask your final destination?"

"I have no idea."

"Listen here, young fellow. Secrecy, shmecrecy, that's all very well, but there's a limit. Back in the days of the underground, there used to be a joke about Sha'ul Avigur, who was a big shot in the Haganah and a great stickler for security. Once, when his driver came to pick him up — would you mind wiping the windshield a little? That's the ticket, thank you — Avigur said to him, 'Step on it, I'm in a hurry!' 'Where to?' asked the driver. 'Sorry, that's confidential,' answered Avigur and wouldn't say another word. Maybe you've already heard this one. Never mind. As long as the bastards get it in the balls, and then some, and you all come home safe and sound. I don't mind telling you we get a big bang out of you boys today when we compare you with what we were then. What we paraded around and sounded off about at the top of our lungs, you do with your little pinky and no fuss. Moshe Dayan couldn't have put it any better when he said that all our operations in the underground didn't amount to what one squad in the regular army can do today. God bless you all! Maybe you'll at least agree to tell me where you want to be let off?"

"The farther south, the better."

"Eilat? Ethiopia? Capetown? Don't mind me. I'm only joking. Couldn't you whisper into just one of my ears where you're going to let them have it tonight? I promise to forget it instantly."

Yonatan smiled and said nothing. The blue of the sky that grew deeper by the minute, the low hills about to turn verdant, the soft light of the wheat fields with their promised ears of grain, the secretive light of the citrus groves, the bare light of the orchards, the flocks of sheep with their shepherds in khaki and visored caps — peaceful and lovely the country lay before him, sprinkled with white villages, crisscrossed by footpaths through the fields, embraced by the shadows of mountains, cooled by the chill sea breeze — lovely and yearning for his feet to tread on. We have to love and to forgive, thought Yonatan. We have to be good. And if I leave all this, let it be without forgetting and without the fear of the nets of longing. Only where to, goddamn it? Where am I running to?