Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

What magical power made Yolek, in his way, and Rimona, perhaps in a totally different way, adopt Azariah? I wish I knew. But I don't. I am sorry. I'll stop here because it's late.

The agricultural season was at its height. The days were long and hot and the nights were short. No breeze. Harvesting was done in three shifts, at night too, by the floodlights. Soon fruit picking would begin, followed by the grape and cotton harvests. On the northern border hardly a day went by without firing. One night the kibbutz was hit by border raiders, who sabotaged the water pumps, blew up the empty tin shack in the citrus groves, and crossed back into Jordan before dawn. Nearly everyone — men, women, and children — spent an hour or two weeding and thinning the cotton plants before the regular work day began.

Azariah put in a fourteen-hour day to keep the farm machinery running. Even so, he managed to find time every evening to sit with the campers, discuss and defend kibbutz life, and sometimes lead them in song on moonlit nights.

On the fourteenth of May, our watchman shot and killed an infiltrator by the perimeter fence. On the seventeenth the barley harvest ended and the wheat harvest began. The following day the chamber quintet gave a recital in the dining hall of the neighboring kibbutz. Two days later, as evening began to fall, Yonatan Lifshitz returned. The next day he was back in the tractor shed in his work clothes as if he had never been away. He had grown a black beard, turned brown and lean as a Bedouin, and had as little to say as ever.

Chupka in person, so it was said, had collared him by a kiosk in Yerucham. "Let's go home, pal. You've caused enough trouble already," he said. "Now get into the command car." "Okay," said Yonatan, "just let me get my things." It was evening when he finally arrived at the kibbutz, reluctantly kissed his parents, reached out to touch his brother, and lugged his knapsack, rifle, windbreaker, greasy blankets, and dirty sleeping bag back to his place. While in the shower, he asked Azariah to throw his things into the overhead closet and put his rifle in the chest under the bed. When he emerged, he asked what was new. And said no more. Until Rimona arrived, when he stated, "Okay. I'm back."

"You look nice with that beard," she said. "And with that tan. And you must be hungry."

The two of them, Azariah and Yoni, slept in the living room that night, leaving the bedroom to Rimona. They continued to do so on the following nights too, Yoni on the couch and Azariah on a mattress on the floor. They moved the radio to their room so they could listen to the news.

"Tia looks fine," said Yoni one night just before falling asleep. "And you took good care of the garden too."

"I promised I would," said Azariah.

Every morning they rose early to go to the tractor shed, returning only at nightfall because there was plenty of work. Then they would shower, drink cold tea or coffee, and sometimes play a game of chess. Azariah won as a rule, though sometimes they adjourned midway. Seated at the chess table pondering a move, Yonatan, with his black beard, slightly sunken eyes, and a cast of new-found seriousness about the mouth, resembled a young scholar of proud old rabbinical stock who was studying to become a rabbi. Yolek, however, in one of his rare moments of lucidity, made a face and muttered, " Yoh. Azoy vi a vilde chayeh. " "Yes, like a wild animal." Yolek's hearing aid was gathering dust. Most of the day he would sit in the garden and at dusk they would push him in the wheelchair back into the house.

For a day or two, it seemed, he had a new pastime: Bolognesi gave him knitting lessons. Yet after completing ten or twenty rows of stitches he had had enough. Most of the time he slept. He would doze sitting up and even at bedtime he would refuse to lie down. With a throw over his knees, a drop hanging from the tip of his nose, and spittle drying in the corners of his mouth, Yolek could sit sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours a day.

On summer nights Prime Minister Eshkol would sit up long after midnight in his Jerusalem office, his secretaries gone home, the night operator dozing off by the telephone, his bodyguard on the couch by the entrance, city lights shimmering in the windows, heavy trucks growling outside. Leaning his elbows on his desk piled high with documents and letters, the Prime Minister would bury his face in his hands. At last his chauffeur would appear and politely suggest, "Excuse me, sir, perhaps we'd better go home."

"Right you are, yunger mann, " Eshkol would reply. " Geendikt. Let's go home. What more is there to do here?"

At the end of that summer Azariah and Yoni decided to make their own wine for the winter to come. Yoni hauled ten crates of muscatel grapes from the vineyard. Azariah rolled home an old barrel he found behind Bolognesi's metal shop. The two of them pressed the fruit, strained the juice, and added just the right amount of sugar. The must was left to ferment. When the time came, they siphoned the cloudy liquid from the barrel tap into empty soda bottles.

Rimona had grown heavy. Sometimes she would bump her shoulder against a door or run into a table. Frequently, when she started to ask for something, she would immediately forget what it was. Twice a week Hava would come to clean up the apartment. She did all the baking and took care of the laundry. Occasionally she would sit with them for a while after her chores were done, though she never seemed to know what to say.

In December, Anat had a firstborn son, Nimrod. Two weeks later Rimona gave birth to a daughter. Although the baby was slightly underweight, the birth itself went off without a hitch. When Azariah suggested that they call the child Na'ama, Yonatan's only response was "Why not." The baby's crib was placed in the bedroom with Rimona, and the two men continued sleeping in the living room.

The rainy season returned. It poured all day long. Since there was little to do in the tractor shed, Azariah and Yoni would rise late in the morning and stay up until late at night. They drank the wine they had made in the summer.

And so 1966 came to an end and 1967 began. Once again Rachel Stutchnik was asked to look after Yolek to give Hava more time for the children. After putting a bib over his nightgown, Rachel spoon-fed him a soft-boiled egg every morning and made sure he had some tomato juice or lukewarm tea. She helped him get to the bathroom and cleaned, washed, and shaved him every day. Yolek was near-comatose. When Hava drew up a chair to sit by him and hold his hand in hers, he probably did not even notice. A dozen times a day she would look in on her grandchild in the nursery, where she never failed to scold the housemothers and give lessons on how to do things properly. Between rains, she proudly wheeled the baby around the kibbutz.

"Just look at her, Srulik!" she would say to the kibbutz secretary. He would bend over the carriage sheepishly and say, "Yes, yes indeed. A little charmer." Hava's face would light up and continue to glow for a long time even while she sterilized bottles, boiled sheets and diapers, scrubbed floors with a mixture of soap and chlorine, and annihilated every single germ that dared make an appearance in the toilet bowl.

Oblivious to her two men, unmindful of the winter storms, Rimona would sit and nurse Na'ama. Her breasts had grown heavy, her thighs had thickened, and her eyes seemed always half-shut. Seated in the armchair she would take out her breasts, squeeze one of the nipples until it spurted, and give it to the baby to grasp. When that nipple was finished, she would give it the other. Her face, now grown rounder, shone with a soft radiance like a nimbus around a full moon. Now and then she would lift the infant to burp it. In her absorption, she often followed suit without bothering to cover her mouth.