Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

Yonatan stood up. His hairy hand groped for the light switch. When he found it at last and turned on the light, he blinked for a moment, frightened, or perhaps amazed, by the strange circuit connecting his will, the white switch on the wall, the yellow light on the ceiling. He sat down again and turned toward his wife.

"You're falling asleep."

"I'm embroidering," she replied. "By springtime we'll have a nice new tablecloth."

"Why didn't you turn on the light?"

"I saw that you were thinking and I didn't want to disturb you."

"It's only a quarter to five," said Yonatan, "and we have to turn on the lights. As in Scandinavia. Or in that taiga or tundra we learned about in school. Do you remember the taiga, the tundra, Rimona?"

"Are they in Russia?" asked Rimona carefully.

"Nonsense," said Yonatan. "They go all around the Arctic Circle. In Siberia. In Scandinavia. Even in Canada. Did you read this week that whales are becoming extinct?"

"You told me about it. I didn't bother reading because it's nicer when you tell me."

"Now look at the heater!" said Yonatan angrily. "It's going out already. Rain or no rain, I must get the kerosene before it starts smoking."

Rimona, her back softly curved against her chair, kept her eyes on her embroidery like a diligent schoolgirl at her homework.

"Take the flashlight."

Yonatan picked it up and left in silence. Then he came back, filled the heater tank, and went to wash his hands, but the engine-oil stains around his nails refused to come off.

"You got all wet," said Rimona gently.

"Never mind," said Yonatan. "It's all right. I wore my old brown jacket as you told me to. Don't worry about me so much."

With Tia fast asleep at his feet, he spread the latest issue of Chessworld on the table and concentrated so hard trying to solve a difficult problem that he forgot about the cigarette he was holding until an ash fell on its pages. As he relit the cigarette, a wave of tiny tremors ran through Tia's fur from head to tail. Her ears stiffened momentarily, then dropped again. But Rimona kept her peace. So fragile was the silence between them that now and then the tick of the bulky tin alarm clock reached him from the bedroom.

Rimona had narrow hips, small, firm breasts, and long hands and fingers. From the rear, her thin, clean lines made her look like a girl at the onset of puberty, like a well-bred product of a finishing school, one who had been taught to stand erect, never to wriggle her behind, to sit ramrod-straight with her knees kept together, and always to do dutifully just what she was told. On the rare occasions when Rimona lifted her long hair to wear it in a high bun, baring the light nap on her neck, Yonatan would beg her to let it down again, for the nakedness of it was so naked that it shamed him. Nearly always her dark, widely set eyes had a veiled look. So did her lips, which, chill and shaded, reflected an imperturbable calm. Not even when she spoke, not even when she smiled, did it vanish. And, in any event, she smiled infrequently, the smile beginning not on, but around, those lips and spreading slowly, hesitantly to the corners of her eyes. It always made her seem like a little girl who has just been shown something that little girls are not supposed to see.

Yonatan was sure that Rimona was unaffected by most of what she saw and heard. I might as well be living with some expensive painting, he thought angrily, or with a governess training me to be forever content. To banish such thoughts, he would resort to the words "my wife." This is my wife, he would whisper to himself. This is Rimona, my wife. This is my wife, Rimona. But the words "my wife" seemed to belong elsewhere — to families of long standing, to the movies, to houses full of children, bedrooms, kitchens, and maids — not to Rimona, who cared about nothing, unless perhaps tribal amulets from Swaziland, and that only when half-asleep, because at heart all things were the same to her. My wife. She has my old brown jacket on the brain again and now it's wet. "Listen. Rimona. Maybe enough is enough."

"Yes. I'm almost done. I've taken it out in the shoulders. Would you like to try it on?"

"No way. I've already told you a thousand times that rag should be thrown into the garbage. Or given to that Italian."

"Fine."

"What's fine?"

"Give it to the Italian."

"So why did you spend the whole evening working on it?"

"I was mending it."

"Why the hell did you have to mend it when I kept telling you I'd never wear it?"

"You saw yourself. It was torn in two places."

After the ten o'clock news Yonatan stepped out on the little porch to smoke a last cigarette. By its small, round glow he could see how light, and yet how persistent, the rain was. He liked to feel the cold against his skin and inhale the damp smell of saturated earth. It was too dark to see the ground. He stood there waiting, knowing not for what. He felt sorry for his brother Amos, who might be with his buddies on this awful night setting up an ambush for Arab infiltrators behind the rocks at the mouth of some wadi near the border. He felt sorry, too, for the baby stillborn to Rimona at the end of the summer. No one had ever told them what had been done with her. Yet somewhere out there in that darkness, in the thick mud, lay the little body whose curious stirrings deep in her mother's womb he had felt with the flat of his palm only five months before. Again there came the sound of muffled barking from afar; where, if not from the ruins of Sheikh Dahr? Suddenly he knew what had happened: the end of his cigarette had dropped to the floor. The magic of Chad, he exclaimed, much to his own surprise. He bent down to pick up the flickering butt, cast it into the rain, breathed deeply as its tiny glow was extinguished, murmured okay, okay, and stepped back inside the house.

Rimona locked the door behind him, drew the curtains, and stood between the couch and the bookcase like a mechanical doll whose spring has unwound.

"Is that it?" she asked, then added with a half-smile, "Yes. All right."

To which Yonatan replied, "Yes. That's it. Let's go to bed now."

"Now," she repeated.

He couldn't tell if her response was meant to be a promise, a question, an expression of surprise, or maybe just consent.

"In the end I never talked to Shimon. Never went to see Udi about the accounts either."

"So you didn't," said Rimona, "don't let it bother you. You'll go tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow the weather will clear."

In their double bed, each curled in a separate heavy winter blanket, Rimona by the wall and Yonatan nearer the window, they shut out the pelting of the storm with late music on the radio and spoke in whispers.

"Yoni, on Thursday you have an appointment with the dentist. Don't forget."

"I won't."

"It'll start clearing tomorrow. It's been mining for three straight days now."

"Yes."

"Yoni, listen."

"What?"

"The thunder! And the wind is so strong. The window panes are rattling."

"Yes. But don't worry."

"I'm not worried. I just feel sorry for the birds. Should I turn off the radio?"

"Yes. And go to sleep. It's almost eleven, and I have to be up at six-thirty."

"I'm not worried."

"Go to sleep, Rimona. We're not out in the storm."

"No. We're at home."

"Then try to fall asleep. I'm tired. Good night."

"But I can't fall asleep. You always fall asleep right away, but I don't."

"What's the matter, Rimona."

"I'm worried."

"Then don't be. That's enough. Go to sleep. Good night."

The two of them lay still in the dark with open eyes, not touching. She knew that he wasn't asleep, and he knew that she knew. Outside, low clouds were swept eastward toward the mountains that kept their own peace, massive and congealed, belonging only to themselves, yet to themselves strangers.