Amos Oz - Don't Call It Night

Linda said, almost in a whisper: We didn't make much progress today.

And Ludmir: Out of the frying pan into the fire.

Tomorrow night I'll go and talk to the police chief at his home. If I can manage to bring him round to our side, I'll try to get him to come to a special meeting with the parents' committee and the members of the Education Committee and I'll ask Batsheva too. And one weekend soon we'll have an open study day with professors, public figures, artists, we'll invite a panel of personalities from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The promise of a weekend at the Kedar Hotel will entice them to come, and the promise of well-known guests will entice the Kedar Hotel into making a nominal charge for their stay. I'll type out a concentrated fact sheet for the study day. If the public mood changes, we may be able at least to — At least to what? What's got into you, Noa?

Should I ask Theo to have a word with Batsheva privately?

In actual fact there's nobody in Tel Kedar better qualified than Theo to spearhead this initiative, to allay apprehensions, to influence public opinion. After all, over the years in Latin America he managed to plan and build vast settlement areas, industrial zones, housing schemes, new towns several times larger than Tel Kedar. Two and a half years ago he politely turned down a deputation of teachers, engineers and doctors who came one winter weekend to beg him to agree to stand for the local elections at the head of an independent slate: his qualifications, his record, his confidence-inspiring appearance, his professional expertise, his image. But Theo cut them short with the words: It's not what I want. And he closed his left eye even more, as though he were winking at me above their heads, Thank you, he said, getting to his feet, it was nice of you to ask.

Bitter and hard. Gleam in a blind eye. Or is he simply confined to an invisible wheelchair?

What about me? A bored schoolteacher starting a new chapter? Putting herself to the test? Or am I just provoking him, making a fuss to force him to wake up, if you can say that about a man who suffers from insomnia.

As we left, Muki Peleg made it clear that Linda, apparently, had virtually insisted he stay the night. Perhaps he was hoping I would be jealous. I walked Ludmir back to his immaculate shack overgrown with passiflora, behind Founders' House. On the way the old man said: That Muki is nothing more than an ill-mannered buffoon, and that Linda of his is a sentimental fool. There was once a godforsaken village at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, a village with thirty hovels and only two clocks. One belonged to the Starosta, who was the headman of the village, and the other belonged to the deacon. One day one of the clocks stopped and the other got lost. Or it may have been the other way around. The whole village was left without the time. So they sent a boy — he was nimble, literate too, beyond the mountain, to the town of Nadvornaya, to bring them back the time and reset the clock that had stopped. Well, the boy rode for half a day or more, he reached Nadvornaya, he found the clock in the railway station, he made a careful note of the right time on a piece of paper, folded the precious piece of paper, hid it in his belt and rode back to his village. Forgive me if I offended you, Noa. I'm sorry. I couldn't stay silent back there and restrain my anger at our futile prattle.

At once he embarked on a muddled apology for using the adjective "futile": he had tried to put things right and he had only made them worse, he had wanted to make peace and he had rubbed salt in the wound. Fire and brimstone is raining down on us all the time, Noa, because compassion itself is tainted with arrogance. There is Noa smoke without a fire. If you can, please forgive me. I cannot forgive myself, but you are still young. Good night to you. Pity on us all.

I got home at ten. I found Theo lying on the white rug in the living room, in undershirt and tracksuit bottoms as usual, barefoot, not reading, no television, he may have been dozing with his eyes open. He kissed me on the cheek and asked how it went and I kissed him on his bristly grey hair with its military cut and said: It was terrible. Ludmir is mad and Muki is a baby and that Linda is pathetic. So am I probably. There's nobody to work with. Insignificant. Nothing'll come of it all.

By the time I'd had a cold shower he had made us some supper, a geometric salad with radishes cut like rosebuds, cheeses and freshly sliced wholemeal bread on a wooden board, the frying pan with a cube of butter in it was waiting on the gas, and there were two eggs and a knife beside it, at the ready for the omelette-making. This is a ritual with its own invariable rules. I poured us both some mineral water. We sat down to eat opposite each other. His heavy, bare shoulders leaned against the side of the refrigerator. I was facing him and the window behind him that was full of desert stars. Theo told me that he'd been out too this evening, he'd been to see Batsheva, he just had a feeling I was going to ask him to talk to her.

I haven't asked anything of you yet. Least of all that you should go opening doors for me.

That's quite true, still, you ought to listen to me: I have the impression that, granted certain conditions, we might have a chance of getting this thing through.

We?

All right. You. I'm sorry. Even so, I think you ought to listen.

I got up in the middle of supper and shut myself in my bedroom. After a moment he knocked on the door. Noa, I'm very sorry, I only thought—

I forgave him. I went back to the table. The omelette was cold, so Theo got up, put a tea towel round his waist as an apron, and started to make me a fresh one. I told him to stop, there was no need, I wasn't hungry, we could drink some herbal tea and see if there was anything tolerable on the television tonight. We switched on, and turned off almost at once because they were broadcasting an interview with the Minister for Energy, who managed to say, Surely it is unthinkable… before we silenced him. Theo put a record on and we sat in the armchairs for a while without talking. Maybe at that moment we really did resemble each other as Muki once said about childless couples after years together. Suddenly I got up and went over to Theo, snuggled on his lap, buried my head in his shoulder and whispered, Don't talk. I remembered Tikki, the religious typist from Beersheba that I'd never seen, the one who fell in love with a basketball player and had a "Mongolian" baby by him that he refused to recognize. A live baby, I thought, so what if it's handicapped, it's alive, and just because it's handicapped it needs and deserves much more love. What was Immanuel doing all alone in the dark nurse's room on that grey winter's morning? How and why had he got there? Was he ill? Or had he slunk in to help himself to something from the medicine cabinet that he couldn't do without? How little I knew. Even now I didn't know anything. If I bumped into an addict right now, how would I be able to tell from a distance of four or five feet whether he was drugged or sleepy or simply had the flu? When Immanuel suddenly spoke and asked me, with his shy voice crossing the valley of silence in that room, whether I happened to have anything to write with, what had he really wanted? What was he after? To write something? Or was he just adrift, trying to communicate? And I pushed him away. I barricaded myself in. I failed to grasp that it was a plea for help.

Theo. Listen to me. Kushner the bookbinder wants to give us a two-week-old puppy. Don't worry. I've told him you're not interested in pets. Wait. Don't answer yet. Listen to something else, listen to this farce, Linda is in love with Muki Peleg and apparently he's already sleeping with her but he's still quite keen on me and I still love you. How about you?