Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

She cleared the table, wiped it, and left the room to do the dishes. At that very moment, the front door opened again and another visitor walked in.

Sunday, March 6, 1966, 10:30 p.m.

Where should 1 begin this evening? Perhaps 1 ought to mention that sometime between yesterday and this morning I got over my grippe entirely. And that today was my first official day as secretary. I still can't help feeling slightly ridiculous each time I write down, I am secretary of Kibbutz Granot. Although I missed the general meeting last night that elected me almost unanimously, it wasn't just my fever that kept me from putting on a coat, making an appearance, and saying quite simply, Comrades, I'm truly sorry, I've thought the whole thing over and come to ask you to withdraw my candidacy. I'm not the right man for the office.

Well, now that the position is mine, I'll have to stick it out and try to do my modest best. At the moment Hava Lifshitz is asleep here — in the next room, of course. She's been sedated by the doctor, and I shall have to look after her, as I will look after the whole kibbutz. How strange to think of a woman in my bed! Just writing it makes me want to stifle a laugh, like a schoolboy. Someone might get ideas. I, of course, shall sleep on a mattress in this room. I've arranged for our nurse, Rachel Stutchnik, to sleep at Yolek's place. The doctor is worried by his EKG and his blood pressure, but Yolek is still adamant about not going to the hospital. Tomorrow it will have to be decided whether he must be taken there against his will. Will have to be decided? What a shock to weigh those words. After all, the responsibility is now mine. Tomorrow I shall drag him to the hospital whether he likes it or not.

What a confused, troublesome turn of events, not to say what a wildly grotesque one. But in point of fact, most situations seem grotesque to me, whereas nothing ever seems fantastic. Anything, I'm convinced, is possible. There is nothing human beings are incapable of.

Perhaps if I try to write it all down as it happened, something may yet become clear to me. I'll try, as usual, to be as straightforward as possible.

At 3:30 this morning I woke up in a sweat from all the aspirin I took Saturday night. My grippe was gone, though I still felt weak and dizzy. By the light of the reading lamp I put a bookmark in my Donald Griffin, which had fallen on the blanket beside me, put the book on the night table, donned Bolognesi's old sweater and my bathrobe, turned on the electric heater, and sat there for a moment thinking that on just such a winter morning as this Death may come for me as I'm pulling on my trousers or making my bed. For that matter, it could even come this very moment so that my life would stop without my having managed to understand a thing. What a pity! After thirty years of playing my flute, the two of us haven't experienced even one moment of total harmony, much less ecstasy. After twenty-five years of loving P., I still haven't given her so much as a hint. I'm still alone, and she has four grandchildren. Yes, it will probably be on a morning like this that I'll keel over right here and die.

And so I made myself a glass of tea with honey and lemon and took it to the east window to await the first light. Something inside kept telling me that Yonatan was in trouble but unharmed, that Rimona was pregnant, and that the father could be either of them. What made me so sure? But then, who'd ask an inner voice for logical demonstrations at four o'clock in the morning?

Far off in the darkness a cow lowed. Something moved outside the window, perhaps Tia, patiently snuffling among the hibiscus bushes, exploring the thicket of bougainvillea, pushing on into the honeysuckle arbor deep in the garden and vanishing there. I moved the electric heater closer because I was having a slight chill, then returned to the window. A light, grayish rain coursed down the pane against which my forehead was pressed for a good ten minutes. A freight train hooted in the west. Roosters crowed from the far end of the kibbutz. How desolate this garden looks on a winter day before sunrise. The puddles of muddy water. The sopping wet garden table, its chairs upended on it, their legs in the air. The thick-fallen leaves of the grape vine. The dripping of the pines in the fog as in some Chinese painting. And not a living soul.

By six or six-fifteen the light had become a bit stronger, although the sky was still overcast. The refrigerator yielded up some yogurt that Hava had left for me yesterday, which I ate with crackers. Then I made the bed and shaved. Meanwhile the water had boiled again and I made myself more tea. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed for another day or two, but I didn't think twice about it this morning. By seven I was already in Yolek's office, answering the backlog of letters from the ministry of agriculture, from the regional planning council, from the central bureau of the kibbutz movement. Trying to put the place in a little order, I threw out the old newspapers in the drawers of Yolek's desk and came across an old pocket flashlight that I stuck in my pants pocket for some reason. Next I had a look at the minutes of last night's general meeting. (One-hundred-seventeen members were apparently convinced I would make a good secretary. Three were not. Nine could not make up their minds. How did P. vote?)

By now the kibbutz was fully awake. Etan R. drove by the office window on a tractor, pulling a wagonful of fodder to the cowshed. Friend Stutchnik trudged wearily by in the other direction on his way back from the night milking, his boots heavy with mud.

Suddenly Hava burst into the office. Had I gone out of my mind? A man with a hundred-and-four fever running out naked in the middle of the night to go to work! What was wrong with me? Where were my brains?

I asked her to join me for a glass of tea and let me explain her errors one by one. In the first place, it was not the middle of the night, but half-past-seven in the morning. Second, my fever was gone, and I didn't feel all that bad. Third, I hadn't gone out naked, but fully clothed. And besides, I had walked, not run. I had work to do, though my brains for it, I agreed, left much to be desired.

"So tell me, Srulik, you must like it here, sitting like a big shot at Yolek's desk in his swivel chair and going through all his papers. It's not such a bad life after all, is it, now."

Her eyes flashed. She was convinced she had found my weak point. I wasn't a saint, after all. I had my little human frailty, and it could be mounted on a pin in one of her albums and used against me should the occasion arise.

"How is he?" I asked. "How did he spend the night?"

"He's a monster!" she snapped. "Can you imagine? The very first thing this morning he wanted me to get Rimona and her sewer rat to keep him company. And I'm going to do it. Why not? Let them put on a show, all three of them. The skunk can strum, the moron can dance, and the murderer can give the curtain speech. Let them enjoy themselves because I'm taking my toothbrush and my pajamas and getting out of there. Today."

"And where will you go, may I ask?"

"I'll move in with you. Will you take me/"

Her face was as puckered as an infant's. She was close to tears.

"Will you?"

God in heaven, I thought. But I said yes.

"You're a magnificent man, Srulik. Humanly speaking, I mean. I didn't sleep a wink all night. I was thinking of you and Yoni. If there's anyone in this whole world besides me who really wants him back and is trying to save him, it's you. The rest of them are all murderers. They'd just as soon never see him again. Don't argue with me. Instead of arguing, I want you to make an announcement to the press this morning. I want you to lie. You can say that his wife has been committed to a mental hospital. Or that his father is critically ill. A white lie, that one. Or better yet, announce that his father has died and that he's being pleaded with to come for the funeral. That ought to bring him back. And don't forget to have it broadcast on the radio too."