Amos Oz - Between Friends

Yoav sat down and Martin apologized for not having any coffee to offer him. Yoav thanked him and said that there was no need for coffee. Martin thought Yoav was an honest, dedicated, and modest young man, but like the others of his generation, he had no clearly defined worldview. They were all good men, Martin believed, all decent and ready to take on hard work of any kind, but none of them was passionate, none of them was boiling over with outrage at social injustice. Now that leadership had passed from the pioneering founders to Yoav and his friends, the kibbutz was doomed to slide slowly into the petty bourgeoisie. And the women, of course, would be the catalyst for that process. In another twenty or thirty years, kibbutzim would become nothing more than well-kept garden communities populated by homeowners driven by material pleasures.

Yoav said, “It’s like this. Lately, some members have come to me about you. And the Health Committee sent Leah Shindlin to talk to me. The doctor told her that you must absolutely not work in the shop anymore, and we all agree with him. This shed is airless and stifling and the smells of the leather and the glue are definitely bad for your health. The entire kibbutz thinks that you’ve worked enough, Martin. It’s time for you to rest now.”

Martin removed the oxygen mask, took a crumpled half-cigarette out of his pocket, lit it with a trembling hand, inhaled, and choked.

“And who will work in the shop? You, maybe?”

“We’ve already found a temporary replacement for you. There’s a shoemaker from Romania who lives in the new immigrant camp nearby. He’s unemployed. Morally speaking, Martin, we really should give him a job here and provide him with the means to support his family.”

“Another paid employee? Another nail in the coffin of the principle of self-reliance?”

“Only until we find a member who can replace you.”

Martin crushed the cigarette carefully on the top of his shoemaker’s bench, shook off the black ash, and put the butt in his shirt pocket, coughed and wheezed, but didn’t put the oxygen mask back on. A sarcastic look came over his gray-stubbled face.

“And what about me?” he said with a half-smile. “I’m finished? Kaput? Ready for the trash heap?”

“You,” Yoav said, putting his hand on Martin’s shoulder, “you can come to the office and work with me an hour or two every morning. Organize the papers. We’ve decided that from now on, we’re keeping all the documents that come to the secretary’s office. Not exactly an archive, but something like it. Let’s call it the seed of a future archive. You’ll file the material in the office. Far from the suffocating air of this shed.”

Martin Vandenberg picked up a dusty work shoe with a torn sole, carefully placed it upside down on the last, spread thick, acrid-smelling glue on the inside of the sole, took a few small nails from a box on his bench, and attached the sole to the shoe with five or six short, accurate blows of a small hammer.

“How can you suddenly throw a man out of work against his will only because his health is failing?” Martin said in a low voice as if he were talking to himself and not to Yoav. “Such a Darwinistic crime is unthinkable here.”

“We’re just worried about you, Martin. We all want what’s best for you. And the decision is actually the doctor’s, not ours.”

Martin Vandenberg did not reply to that. There was a small, pedal-operated sewing machine on his left, and he used it to sew a torn sandal. He ran the needle over the strap twice, then reinforced the spot he’d sewn with a small metal staple and put the repaired sandal on the shelf behind him. Yoav Carni stood up, gently moved the oxygen tank back onto the crate he’d been sitting on, and said hesitantly, “There’s no rush. Just think about it, Martin. We’re begging you to consider our suggestion. Or more accurately, our request. Remember that all of us here only want what’s best for you. And organizing the archive in the office for an hour or two every morning is also work. After all, don’t forget that it’s the prerogative of the kibbutz institutions to move a member from one job to another when they see fit.”

As he was leaving, Yoav repeated hesitantly, “Don’t be in a hurry to give us your answer. Think about it for a day or two. Rationally.”

Martin Vandenberg didn’t think about Yoav’s suggestion; nor did he give his answer a day or two later or a month later. His breathing grew worse, but he didn’t give up his half a cigarette. To Osnat, who brought him a covered plate and a covered cup from the dining hall every evening, he said, “Man is basically good and generous and decent. It’s the environment that corrupts us.”

Osnat said, “But what is the environment if not other people?”

Martin said, “During the war, I hid from the Nazis, Osnat, but I saw them close up a few times. Simple men, not at all monsters, a bit infantile, noisy, liked to joke around, played the piano, fed the small cats, but they’d been brainwashed. And that brainwashing was the only reason they did terrible things even though they themselves weren’t terrible. They’d been ruined. Corrupt ideas had ruined them.”

Osnat said nothing. She thought there was much more cruelty in the world than compassion and sometimes even compassion was a form of cruelty. Then she played three or four tunes on her recorder, said good night, and took the tray with the supper that Martin had barely touched. She thought that cruelty was deeply ingrained in all of us, and even Martin had some measure of it in him, at least toward himself. But she found no point in disagreeing with him because he was happy in his beliefs and because he had probably never deliberately harmed anyone. Osnat knew that Martin was ill and declining. She’d spoken to the doctor, who told her that his condition would not improve and when breathing became impossible for him, they’d have to move him to the hospital. Leah Shindlin, on behalf of the Health Committee, suggested that they allocate four hours a week to Osnat from her work schedule to take care of Martin, but Osnat said that she took care of him anyway out of friendship, and there was no need for compensation. The evening hours she spent with the sick man, their brief conversations, his gratitude, the world of ideals and thought he opened to her — she treasured them all and trembled at the idea that their relationship might end soon.

Osnat hung an announcement written in Martin’s spiky handwriting on the bulletin board at the entrance to the dining hall:

To the interested: Every Wednesday between six and seven in the evening, a beginners’ course in Esperanto, taught by Martin V., will be held in the social club.

Esperanto is a new, easy language aimed at uniting all of humanity and becoming the second language of all people. Its grammar is simple and logical, it has no exceptions, and you can begin speaking and writing it after only a few lessons. Those of you who are interested can write your names at the bottom of this page.

Three people signed up: the first was Osnat herself, followed by Zvi Provizor and finally the high school junior, Moshe Yashar. On Wednesday, Martin pushed his oxygen tank as he shuffled along to the social club to teach his first Esperanto lesson. Osnat walked with him and tried to take his arm gently, but he pulled away from her and insisted on making his own way. He dragged his feet, stopped from time to time, short of breath on the upward slopes, but he was determined, and reached the club some ten minutes early. He sat down to wait for his students and smoked half a cigarette, breathed through his oxygen mask, browsed the evening papers briefly, and found only savagery and ugliness in them, along with a heaped dose of brainwashing. Osnat poured him a cup of tea from the samovar that stood in the corner, and Martin placed his thick, gnarled fingers on the back of her left hand for a moment. Her hand was delicate and long-fingered, and the band of paler skin where her wedding ring had been before she took it off, when Boaz left her, was still visible. She pulled her hand out from under his and placed it on top. They sat that way in silence for a few moments, her fingers covering his, with their blue, oxygen-deprived nails, until the door opened and Zvi Provizor entered. He mumbled good evening and sat down in a corner next to the radio, his back rounded, his sunburned, furrowed face bent toward his knees, and waited silently. Martin complimented him on the kibbutz garden and Osnat added, “I especially love the grape trellises and the fountain you built in the dining-hall square. You’ve made Kibbutz Yekhat a lovely place to stroll through.”