Amos Oz - Panther in the Basement

"Why haven't you got any olives? I don't mean those olives from a jar, silly, those vegetarian olives. Why haven't you got any decadent olives, the sort that make you a bit tipsy? When you find some real olives, bring me some. You can even wake me up in the middle of the night." (I did find some. Years later. But I was too shy to take her olives in the middle of the night.)

When she decided the chicken pieces were brown enough, she took them out of the frying pan and laid them on a serving dish, then she washed and dried the frying pan.

"Wait a minute, Proffy," she said. "Hang on. This is only the curtain-raiser. Meanwhile, why don't you set the table?"

Then she heated some more oil in the pan and, leaving the fragrant garlic-scented chicken pieces to wait, she fried the finely-chopped onion, and while the onion turned golden and then brown in front of my staring eyes, she added the little pieces of tomato and pepper that were waiting for her on the drainboard, sprinkled some chopped parsley over it all, and mixed the ingredients together well, as she fried them. Soon my soul was in an agony of anticipation at the delightful smells, and I thought I couldn't endure another minute, another second, another breath, but Yardena laughed and told me not to touch the rolls or anything; it would be a pity to spoil your appetite, what's the matter with you, what's your hurry, contain yourself. And she put the chicken pieces back in the frying pan and rolled them around in the oil until it soaked right through to the bone, and only then did she pour the cupful of soup over them. She waited for it to boil.

Seventy-seven years of agony went past, as slow as torture, to the limit of endurance and beyond, and, further, to the point of despair, and further still till the heart sobbed, before the stock began to bubble and boil, and the oil began to splutter and spit. Yardena turned the heat down and sprinkled on some salt and a pinch of ground black pepper. Then she put the lid on the pan, leaving a small space for the tantalizing vapors to escape. While the broth was boiling she added some little cubes of potato and some even smaller cubes of hot red pepper. She waited ruthlessly until the broth evaporated, leaving behind a heavenly thick sauce enfolding the pieces of fried chicken that seemed to have grown wings and become a psalm and a dream. The whole apartment was astonished at the bevy of powerful smells wafting from the kitchen and invading every corner like frantic rioters. Such odors had not been smelled here since the building was built.

Meanwhile, aflame with desire and anticipation and pangs of hunger, swallowing back the surging saliva, I laid the table for the two of us, facing each other like Mother and Father. I decided to leave my usual place empty. As I laid the table I could see Yardena out of the corner of my eye tossing the chicken pieces in the frying pan, to remind them who they were, tasting the sauce, adjusting the seasoning, spooning it over the food, which had taken on a wonderful hue of burnished brass or old gold, and her arms, her shoulders, and her hips came alive in a kind of dance inside her dress, protected by my mother's apron, as though the chicken pieces were shaking her while she shook them.

When we had eaten our fill, we sat facing each other picking at a bunch of sweet grapes; then we devoured half a watermelon and drank coffee together even though I told Yardena honestly and bravely that I wasn't allowed coffee, especially in the evening before going to bed.

Yardena said:

"They're not here."

And she also said:

"Now for a cigarette. Just me. Not you. Find me an ashtray." But there was no ashtray, and there couldn't be one, because smoking was forbidden in our apartment. Always. Under all circumstances. Even visitors were forbidden to smoke. Father was fundamentally opposed to the very idea of smoking. He also held firmly to the view that visitors should observe the rules of the house, like a traveler in a foreign land. He supported this view with a proverb that he was fond of citing, about how to behave when in Rome. (Years later, when I visited Rome for the first time, I was astonished to discover that it was full of smokers. But when Father said Rome, he generally meant ancient Rome, not the Rome of today.)

Yardena smoked two cigarettes and drank two cups of coffee (I was given only one). While she smoked she stuck her legs out in front of her and rested her feet on my chair, which was empty this evening. I decided it was my duty to get up at once, clear the table, put the leftover food away in the icebox, and wash up. The only thing I couldn't do was to take the garbage outside, because of the curfew.

Who has ever spent a whole night alone in an apartment with a girl while outside there is a night curfew and all the streets are deserted and the whole city is bolted and barred? When you know that nobody in the world can disturb you? And a deep, wide silence hangs over the night like mist?

I stood over the kitchen sink, scouring the bottom of the frying pan with steel wool, with my back to Yardena and my soul the exact opposite (its back to the sink and the frying pan and all its being facing toward Yardena). Suddenly I said quickly, with my eyes tight closed, as if I were swallowing a pill:

"Anyway I'm sorry about what happened that time. On the roof. It won't ever happen again."

Yardena said to my back:

"Of course it will. And how! Only at least try to make it a bit less stupid than the way it was that time."

A single fly was sitting on the edge of a cup. I wished I could change places with it.

Then, still in the kitchen (Yardena used her saucer as an ashtray), she asked me to explain to her, in a nutshell, what my row with her brother was all about. Sorry, not row, rift.

My duty was to say nothing. To maintain the cloak of secrecy, even under torture. I had seen in lots of films how women extract secrets even from very strong men, like Gary Cooper, or even Douglas Fairbanks. And in Bible class Mr. Gihon said, at his wife's expense: "Samson was destroyed because he fell into the clutches of a wicked woman." You might have thought that after all the times I had seethed with rage watching films in which the men succumbed and spilled the beans to women, and something terrible always happened, the same thing definitely would not happen to me. But that night I couldn't stop myself either: it was as though another Proffy had sprouted inside me and started gushing out light-headedly, as it says in the Bible, as though suddenly all the fountains of the great deep were opened. This other Proffy started telling her everything and I could not stop him, even though I tried as hard as I could and I pleaded with him to stop, but he only shrugged and made fun of me, saying Yardena already knows anyway, she explicitly said "your Underground," Ben Hur is the traitor, and you and I are both in the clear.

This inner Proffy hid nothing from Yardena. The Underground. The split. The rocket. Mother's locked drawer and Father's Perfidious Albion slogans. The package. The temptation. The seduction. Not even Sergeant Dunlop. Was I high on some essence or drug that Yardena had slipped into the fried chicken pieces? Or her witches' brew of a sauce? Or drunk on her coffee, which was strong and harsh? That was how the lame detective was drugged in the film A Panther in the Basement. (But he was a secondary character. Naturally they failed to drug the hero himself.)

What if she's a double agent? Or suppose she's been sent by Ben Hur's special unit for Internal Security and Interrogation? (To which the inner Proffy answered mockingly: "So what? What secrets are there left to keep between a traitor and a traitress?")

Yardena said:

"That's cute."

And then she said:

"What's special about you is that whenever you describe something I can see it in front of my eyes."