Amos Oz - Where the Jackals Howl

The old woman held the envelope to her nose. She sniffed it for a moment with her eyes closed. Her mouth hung open, revealing gaps in her teeth. A small drop hung between her nose and upper lip, where a slight mustache had begun to grow during these bad years. Then she put the letter back in the envelope, and the envelope in her pocket. Now she was exhausted and must rest in the armchair. She did not need to rest for long. It was enough for her to doze for a minute or two. A stray surviving fly began to buzz, and already she was up and ready for the chase.

Years before, Abrasha would come and bite. Love and hate. He would burst and collapse on her, and at once he would be distracted, not here, not with her.

For months before his departure the tune was always on his lips, sung in a Russian bass, shamelessly out of tune. She recalled the tune, the anthem of the Spanish freedom-fighters, full of longing, wildness, and revolt. It had swept their bare room up into the maelstrom of teeming forces as he enumerated the bleeding Spanish towns that had fallen to the enemies of mankind, counting them off one by one on his fingers. Their outlandish names conveyed to Batya a resonance of unbridled lechery. In her heart of hearts she disliked Spain and wished it no good; after all, that was where our ancestors had been burned at the stake and banished. But she held her peace. Abrasha enlarged on the implications of the struggle, expounding its dialectical significance and its place in the final battle that was being engaged all over Europe. He considered all wars as a snare and a delusion; civil wars were the only ones worth dying in. She liked to listen to all this, even though she could not and did not want to understand. It was only when he reached the climax of his speech — describing the iron laws of history and averring that the collapse of reaction would come like a thunderbolt from the blue — that she suddenly grasped what he was talking about, because she could see the thunderbolt itself in his eyes.

And suddenly he was tired of her. Perhaps he had seen the tortured look on her face, perhaps he had had a momentary glimpse of her own desires. Then he would sit down at the table, propping up his large square head with his massive elbows, and immerse himself in the newspaper, abstractedly eating one olive after another and arranging the pits in a neat pile.

5

THE KETTLE whistles fiercely as it passes boiling point. Batya Pinski gets up and makes herself some tea. Since the storm died down, at about four o’clock in the morning, she has been drinking glass after glass of tea. She has still not been out to inspect the damage. She has not even tried to open the shutters. She sits behind her drawn curtains and imagines the damage in all its details. What is there to see? It is all there before her eyes: shattered roofs, trampled flower beds, torn trees, dead cows, Felix, plumbers, electricians, experts, and talkers. All boring. Today will be devoted to the fish, until the premonition is confirmed and Abramek Bart arrives. She always relies unhesitatingly on her premonitions. One can always know things in advance, if only one really and truly tries and is not afraid of what may emerge. Abramek will come today to see the havoc. He will come because he won’t be able to contain his curiosity. But he won’t want to come just like that, like the other good-for-nothings who collect wherever there’s been a disaster. He will find some excuse. And then he’ll suddenly remember his promise to Batya, to come and rummage in and sort through Abrasha’s papers. It’s half past eight now. He will be here by two or three. There is still time. Still plenty of time to get dressed, do my hair, and get the room tidy. And to make something nice to serve him. Plenty of time now to sit down in the armchair and drink my tea quietly.

She sat down in the armchair opposite the sideboard, under the chandelier. On the floor was a thick Persian carpet, and by her side an ebony card table. All these beautiful objects would shock Abrasha if he were to come back. On the other hand, if he had come back twenty years before, he would have risen high up the ladder of the party and the movement; he would have left all those Felixes and Abrameks behind, and by now he’d be an ambassador or a minister, and she would be surrounded by even nicer furnishings. But he made up his mind to go and die for the Spaniards, and the furnishings were bought for her by Martin Zlotkin, her son-in-law. After he married Ditza he brought all the presents, then took his young bride away with him to Zurich, where he now managed a division of his father’s bank, with branches on three continents. Ditza ran a Zen study group, and every month she sent a letter with a mimeographed leaflet in German preaching humility and peace of mind. Grandchildren were out of the question, because Martin hated children and Ditza herself called him “our big baby.” Once a year they came to visit and contributed handsomely to various charities. Here in the kibbutz they had donated a library of books on socialist theory in memory of Abrasha Pinski. Martin himself, however, regarded socialism the same way he regarded horse-drawn carriages: very pretty and diverting, but out of place in this day and age, when there were other, more urgent problems.

6

ON THE eve of Abrasha’s departure Ditza was taken ill with pneumonia. She was two at the time; blonde, temperamental, and sickly. Her illness distracted Batya from Abrasha’s departure. She spent the whole day arguing with the nurses and pedagogues and by evening they had given in and allowed the sick child to be transferred in her cot from the nursery to her parents’ room in one of the shabby huts. The doctor arrived from the neighboring settlement in a mule cart, prescribed various medicines, and instructed her to keep the temperature of the room high. Meanwhile Abrasha packed some khaki shirts, a pair of shoes, some underwear, and a few Russian and Hebrew books into a knapsack and added some cans of sardines. In the evening, fired with the spirit, he stood by his daughter’s cot and sang her two songs, his voice trembling with emotional fervor. He even showed Batya the latest lines dividing the workers from their oppressors on a wall map of Spain. He enumerated the towns: Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Granada, Valencia, Valladolid, Seville. Batya half-heard him; she wanted to shout, What’s the matter with you, madman, don’t go away, stay, live; and she also wanted to shout, I hope you die. But she said nothing. She pursed her lips like an old witch. And she had never since lost that expression. She recalled that last evening as if it had been re-enacted every night for twenty-three years. Sometimes the fish moved across the picture, but they did not obscure it: their paths wound in and out of its lines, bestowing upon it an air of strange, desolate enchantment, as though the widow were confronted not by things that had happened a long time previously, but by things that were about to happen but could still be prevented. She must concentrate hard and not make a single mistake. This very day Abramek Bart will step into this room, all unawares, and then I shall have him in my power.

The cheap alarm clock started ringing at three o’clock. He got out of bed and lit the kerosene lamp. She followed him, slender and barefoot, and said, “It’s not morning yet.” Abrasha put his finger to his lips and whispered, “Sssh. The child.” Secretly she prayed that the child would wake up and scream its head off. He discovered a cobweb in the corner of the shack and stood on tiptoe to wipe it away. The spider managed to escape and hide between the boards of the low ceiling. Abrasha whispered to her: “In a month or two, when we’ve won, I’ll come back and bring you a souvenir from Spain. I’ll bring something for Ditza, too. Now, don’t make me late; the van’s leaving for Haifa at half past three.”