Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

"You dozing off there, young fellow?"

"Not at all. I'm awake as hell."

"Are you from Kibbutz Granot?"

"You bet."

"How are things there?"

"Terrific. Fantastic. The magic of Chad."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. It's not important. Just some verse I happened to remember from the Bible."

"Take a look on the seat between us. Have some coffee from my thermos and go on reciting the rest of the Bible for me. You're not by any chance a wilderness buff, are you?"

"Am I? I might be. Why the hell not? Thanks for this coffee. It's damn good."

Just then, as swiftly as flame, a flash of piercing joy shot through him such as he had not felt since he was wounded in the raid on Hirbet Tawfik — a wild, exquisite joy that percolated through every cell of his body to its very nerve endings, that made him feel a sweet tremor in his knees, a warm lump in his throat, a transfixing dilation in his chest, and an allergy of tears in his eyes — for at that exact moment he understood at last where he was going, and what it was that was waiting for him, and why he had taken his gun and was heading south to that place beyond the mountains from which legend had it no one had ever come back alive, and that he would be the first to do so, not only alive but flushed with triumph. And having done the thing that he had to do because it summoned him from the depths of his soul, he would take to the skies and cross the seas. Why hadn't he done it long ago? Crossed the southeastern border all by himself, slipped past the Jordanian patrols, eluded the rapacious Bedouin of Wadi Musa, and reached the rose-red cliffs of Petra, the city half as old as time.

Wednesday, March 2, 1966, 10:13 p.m.

There was no rain today. And no wind. A clear, fine winter day. And very cold. The windows are shut tight and the electric heater is on, yet the smell of wet leaves, of wet soil permeate the air. The very smells of my childhood. Thirty-six years on this kibbutz haven't made me any less of a European. Not that I haven't bronzed in the sun and lost the sickly pallor of my father, a middling Leipzig banker. But I still suffer in the summer and feel more at home here when it rains.

I am ashamed to admit that after all these years intimate contact with ail these high-strung Russian-Polish men and women is still a strain for me.

But I have no regrets. Nearly everything I ever did in my life has been done with a clear conscience. Then what troubles me? Perhaps a vague sense of not belonging. Of homesickness. Of a sorrow that has no address. In this odd place without rivers, without forests, without churchbells. Without all those things I loved. Nevertheless, I'm perfectly capable of drawing up the most coldly objective historical, ideological, and personal balance sheets, all three of which tell me the same thing — that there is no mistake. Every one of us here can take a modest measure of pride in what we've done, in our long, dogged struggle to create out of nothing this attractive village, even if it looks as if it had been built out of blocks by an intelligent child. And in our struggle to create a better society without shedding blood and with virtually no infringement on anyone's personal freedom. Detached as I am, I approve of this achievement. We haven't done a bad job. And to some extent we have truly made better people of ourselves.

But what do we really know about ourselves? Nothing. Now, on the verge of old age, I understand even less than I thought I understood when I was young. And I don't believe anyone else understands anything any more than I do. Not the philosophers. Not the psychologists. Not even the heads of the kibbutz movement. When it comes to our own selves we know less than scientists do about the secrets of nature, or the beginnings of the cosmos, or the origins of life. Which is nothing at all.

One Saturday, when I happened to be on lunch duty with Rimona Lifshitz, she serving the food and I the drinks, I asked her out of sheer politeness whether she wasn't finding it hard going and perhaps might need some help. To which she replied with her lovely, inscrutable smile that I shouldn't feel sad because everything was looking up. Those words were almost like the touch of a warm hand. Some say she's an unusual girl. Others think her phlegmatic or far worse. For my own part, ever since that Saturday, I have made it an unwritten rule to give her a little smile each time we meet. And now, early this morning, her Yonatan disappeared without a word, leaving me with the task of finding out where he is and deciding what should be done. Where and how to start looking for him? What does a man like myself, a fifty-nine-year-old confirmed bachelor who happens to have acquired from others a modicum of trust or even respect — what do I know about such things?

Nothing. Less than that. My ignorance is total.

As it is about our youth in general. Sometimes, when I look at these young men who have been through wars, and have shot and killed and been shot at, and have plowed fields by the thousands of acres, they make me think of wrestlers lost in thought. You can't get a word out of them. At most a shrug of the shoulders. Their entire working vocabulary consists of yes, no, maybe, and what difference does it make? Inarticulate peasants? Rough-hewn warriors? Just earthen clods? Not necessarily. Sometimes, passing by late at night, you come across four or five of them sitting and singing like a pack of wolves baying at the moon. For what? Or now and then, one of them shuts himself up in the recreation hall and scrimmages savagely with the piano. Technically clumsy he may be, but you can hear the longing in it. For what? For the overcast lands of the north abandoned by his parents? For strange cities? For the sea? I have no idea. For the past nine years — ever since I stopped working in the chicken coop on doctor's orders — I've been keeping the kibbutz books, and now I've been given a new and unwelcome responsibility. Whatever made me accept it? That's a good question. I need time to solve it, though.

"Solve." How odd this verb sounds to me. We have spent our entire lives in this place, coming up with one solution after another. To the youth problem, to the Arab problem, the Diaspora problem, the elderly problem, the soil and water problem, the guard duty problem, the sex problem, the housing problem — every conceivable problem under the sun. It's as if all these years we've been painstakingly seeking to inscribe a few ingenious formulae on the waves of the sea or to make the stars line up in the sky by threes in drill formation.

And now back to today's events. It's late, and tomorrow is another day. On my own initiative, and without bothering to explain, I called off tonight's rehearsal by leaving a laconic note on the dining-hall bulletin board; I didn't think any of us was able to concentrate on music. The whole kibbutz is in an uproar. And everyone expects me to know what to do. Which is — what? The quintet will have to wait for a calmer night, when all of us are less preoccupied.

Correction: I personally need some music right now. In private. Brahms perhaps. My door is locked. I'm wearing my pajamas and over them the heavy sweater Bolognesi knit for me six or seven years ago. I've made some tea with lemon. I am jotting down a few pages in my journal. Then I'll go to bed and try to sleep. What I must do is write down the events of the day and one or two thoughts of my own. Some sixteen years ago I took it upon myself to keep a daily record of life on the kibbutz, even though I haven't the vaguest idea who on this kibbutz, or anywhere else in this world, for that matter, will take an interest in it. Who indeed?

(A somewhat theological aside. The dogs are barking, the night birds are screeching. The silence is hovering over the darkness — in the valleys, in the mountains, on the sea — mutely but insistently demanding a response from us all, man, dog, bird. And it's up to us to make ourselves understood.)