Amos Oz - Where the Jackals Howl

He went out to wash in the icy water of the faucet that stood twenty yards downhill from the shack. An alarmed night watchman hurried over to see what was going on. “Don’t worry, Felix,” Abrasha said. “It’s only the revolution leaving you for a while.” They exchanged some more banter in earnest tones, and then, in a more lighthearted voice, some serious remarks. At a quarter past, Abrasha went back to the shack, and Batya, who had followed him out in her nightdress, went inside with him again. Standing there shivering, she saw by the light of the kerosene lamp how carelessly he had shaved in his haste and the dark: he had cut himself in some places and left dark bristles in others. She stroked his cheeks and tried to wipe away the blood and dew. He was a big, warm boy, and when he began to hum the proud, sad song of the Spanish freedom-fighters deep in his chest, it suddenly occurred to Batya that he was very dear and that she must not stand in his way, because he knew where he was going and she knew nothing at all. Felix said, “Be seeing you,” and added in Yiddish, “Be well, Abrasha.” Then he vanished. She kissed Abrasha on his chest and neck, and he drew her to him and said, “There, there.” Then the child woke up and started to cry in a voice that was almost effaced by the illness. Batya picked her up, and Abrasha touched them both with his large hands and said, “There, there, what’s the trouble.”

The van honked, and Abrasha said cheerfully, “Here goes. I’m off.”

From the doorway he added, “Don’t worry about me. Good-bye.”

She soothed the child and put her back in the cot. Then she put out the lamp and stood alone at the window, watching the night paling and the mountaintops beginning to show in the east. Suddenly she was glad that Abrasha had cleared the cobweb from the corner of the shack but had not managed to kill the spider. She went back to bed and lay trembling, because she knew that Abrasha would never come back, and that the forces of reaction would win the war.

7

THE FISH in the aquarium had eaten all the flies and were floating in the clear space. Perhaps they were hankering after more tidbits. They explored the dense weeds and pecked at the arch of the hollow stone, darting suspiciously toward one another to see if one of them had managed to snatch a morsel and if there was anything left of it.

Only when the last crumbs were finished did the fish begin to sink toward the bottom of the tank. Slowly, with deliberate unconcern, they rubbed their silver bellies on the sand, raising tiny mushroom clouds. Fish are not subject to the laws of contradiction: they are cold and alive. Their movements are dreamy, like drowsy savagery.

Just before midnight, when the storm had begun to blow up, the widow had awakened and shuffled to the bathroom in her worn bedroom slippers. Then she made herself some tea and said in a loud, cracked voice, “I told you not to be crazy.” Clutching the glass of tea, she wandered around the room and finally settled in the armchair facing the aquarium, after switching on the light in the water. Then, as the storm gathered strength and battered the shutters and the trees, she watched the fish waking up.

As usual, the silverfish were the first to respond to the light. They rose gently from their haunts in the thick weeds and propelled themselves up toward the surface with short sharp thrusts of their fins. A single black molly made the rounds of its shoal, as if rousing them all for a journey. In no time at all the whole army was drawn up in formation and setting out.

At one o’clock an old shack next to the cobbler’s hut collapsed. The storm banged the tin roof against the walls, and the air howled and whistled. At the same moment the red swordfish woke up and ranged themselves behind their leader, a giant with a sharp black sword. It was not the collapse of the shack that had awakened the swordfish. Their cousins the green swordfish had weighed anchor and gently set sail into the forest, as if bent on capturing the clearing abandoned by the silverfish. Only the solitary fighting-fish, the lord of the tank, still slept in his home among the corals. He had responded to the sudden light with a shudder of disgust. The zebra fish played a childish game of tag around the sleeping monarch.

The last to come back to life were the guppies, the dregs of the aquarium, an inflamed rabble roaming restlessly hither and thither in search of crumbs. Slow snails crawled on the plants and on the glass walls of the tank, helping to keep them clean. The widow sat all night watching the aquarium, holding the empty glass, conjuring the fish to move from place to place, calling them after the Spanish towns: Malaga, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid, Cordova. While outside the clashing winds sliced the crowns off the stately palm trees and broke the spines of the cypresses.

She put her feet up on the ebony card table, a present from Martin and Ditza Zlotkin. She thought about Zen Buddhism, humility, civil war, the final battle where there would be nothing to lose, a thunderbolt from the blue. She fought back exhaustion and despair and rehearsed the unanswerable arguments she would use when the time came. All the while her eyes strayed to another world, and her lips whispered: There, there, quiet now.

Toward dawn, when the wind had died away and we were going out to assess the damage, the old woman fell into a half-sleep full of curses and aching joints. Then she got up, made a fresh glass of tea, and began to chase flies all over the room with an agility that belied her years. In her heart she knew that Abramek Bart would definitely come today, and that he would use his promise as an excuse. She saw the plaster fall from the ceiling as the pole fell and broke some of the roof tiles. The real movement was completely noiseless. Without a sound the monarch arose and began to steer himself toward the hollow stone. As he reached the arched tunnel he stopped and froze. He took on a total stillness. The stillness of the water. The immobility of the light. The silence of the hollow stone.

8

HAD IT not been for Ditza, Batya Pinski would have married Felix in the early nineteen-forties.

It was about two years after the awful news had come from Madrid. Once again a final war was being waged in Europe, and on the wall of the dining hall there hung a map covered with arrows, and a collection of heartening slogans and news clippings. Ditza must have been four or five. Batya had got over the disaster and had taken on a new bloom, which was having a disturbing effect on certain people’s emotions. She always dressed in black, like a Spanish widow. And when she spoke to men, their nostrils flared as if they had caught a whiff of wine. Every morning, on her way to the sewing room, she walked, erect and slender, past the men working in the farmyard. Occasionally one of those tunes came back to her, and she would sing with a bitter sadness that made the other sewing women exchange glances and whisper, “Uh-huh, there she goes again.”

Felix was biding his time. He helped Batya over her minor difficulties and even concerned himself with the development of Ditza’s personality. Later, when he had submitted to the desires of the party and exchanged the cowsheds for political office, he made a habit of bringing Ditza little surprises from the big city. He also treated the widow with extreme respect, as if she were suffering from an incurable illness and it was his task to ease somewhat her last days. He would let himself into her room in the middle of the morning and wash the floor, secreting chocolates in unlikely places for her to discover later. Or put up metal coat hooks, bought out of his expense allowance, to replace the broken wooden ones. And he would supply her with carefully selected books: pleasant books, with never a hint of loss or loneliness, Russian novels about the development of Siberia, the five-year plan, change of heart achieved through education.