Between Friends

by Amos Oz

  When they reached the children’s house, the electric heater was already on in the dining room and there were plates on the small tables, each filled with a slice of bread and yellow cheese, half a hard-boiled egg, tomato slices, four olives, and a small mound of cream cheese. The caregiver, Hemda, a dumpy woman wearing a white apron around her waist, made sure that the children placed their boots in a neat row by the door and hung their coats on the wall hooks above their boots. Then the parents went outside to smoke, the children ate and took their plates and cups to the sink, and the monitors wiped the tables.

  After the meal, the parents were allowed to go in and put their children to bed. The children, in flannel pajamas, gathered around the sinks, screamed and pushed each other, washed their faces and brushed their teeth, and climbed noisily into bed. The parents were given ten minutes to read them a story or sing them a lullaby, then they said good night and left. Hemda turned off the lights, except for a small one in the dining room. She stayed for several more minutes, forbade the children to whisper, ordered them to go to sleep, gave them another warning, said good night, leaving a dim light on in the shower room, turned off the electric heater, and left.

  The children waited until she was gone, then got out of bed barefoot and began to run around the bedrooms and the dining room. They hurled their muddy boots at each other, growing rowdier by the minute. The boys wrapped blankets around their heads and frightened the girls by roaring, “We’re Arabs, we’re attacking now.” The shrieking girls huddled together, and one of them, Atida, filled a bottle with water and sprayed the Arabs. The mayhem didn’t end until Eviatar, a broad-shouldered boy, suggested, “Hey, let’s go and snatch Oded’s duck.”

  Oded hadn’t gotten out of bed when the others did but, instead, lay with his face to the wall and thought about a country from the stamp collection that his father said was called the Hazarmaveth, the Courtyard of Death. The name frightened him and he thought that the courtyard of the children’s house located in the darkness right on the other side of the wall was also a hazarmaveth. He pulled the blanket over his head and hugged the rubber duck, knowing it was dangerous to fall asleep or to cry. He waited for the others to get tired and go back to bed, hoping they’d forget about him tonight. His mother was away, his father had gone to smoke with his friends at their table in the dining hall, the caregiver, Hemda, was off somewhere, and the Hazarmaveth was right there in the darkness behind the thin wall, the door wasn’t locked, and there was a wolf lurking in the woods they had to pass on the way home.

  Tadmor, Tamir, and Rina tore off his blanket and threw it on the floor, and Dalit chanted in an infuriating singsong: “Oded-pees-his-bed is out of his head.”

  Eviatar said, “Now he’ll cry.” And he said in oh, such a sweet voice to Oded, “So, cry a little for us, Oded. Just a little. We’re all asking you nicely.”

  Oded curled into himself, brought his knees up to his stomach, dropped his head down between his shoulders, and clutched his duck, which squealed weakly.

  “His duck is filthy.”

  “Let’s wash the duck.”

  “Let’s wash his peepee. His peepee’s filthy too.”

  “Give us the duck, Oded-pees-his-bed. Come on, give it to us. Be nice.”

  Eviatar tried to pull the duck from Oded’s grasp, but the boy held on to it with all his might, pressing it hard against his stomach. Tadmor and Tamir pulled at Oded’s arms and he kicked them with his bare feet, and Rina pulled at his pajamas. Tadmor and Tamir pried his fingers away from the duck, and Eviatar wrapped his hand around it, wrenched it away from Oded, and waved it in the air, dancing on one leg, chanting, “Oded’s dirty duck is out of luck. Whattya say, let’s chuck it away!”

  Oded gritted his teeth, fighting not to cry, but his eyes welled and snot ran from his nose onto his mouth and chin. He got out of bed barefoot and tried to attack Eviatar, who was a lot taller and stronger. Eviatar pretended to be afraid and waved the duck high over Oded’s head, passing it straight to Tamir, who passed it to Rina, who passed it to Tadmor. Oded, suddenly filled with the despair and fury of the weak, gathered momentum and charged Eviatar as hard as he could, smashing into his stomach and almost knocking him down. The girls, Dalit and Rina, squealed with delight. Eviatar straightened up, pushed Oded away, and punched him hard in the nose. When Oded was finally lying on the floor sobbing, Dalit said, “Let’s get him some water,” and Tadmor said, “Stop it. That’s enough. What’s wrong with you? Leave him alone.” But Eviatar went to the dining room, took a pair of scissors out of the drawer, cut off the rubber duck’s head, and went back to the bedroom, the duck’s body in his right hand, its head in his left. He bent over Oded, who was still lying on the floor, and laughed. “Choose, Oded,” he said. “You can choose.”

  Oded got to his feet, pushed his way through the children crowded around him, ran blindly to the door, opened it, and bolted straight out into the darkness of the Hazarmaveth that lay beyond the children’s house. He ran barefoot in the mud, shaking all over in his pajamas from cold and fear, ran and hopped, like a hunted rabbit, completely soaked by the rain that dripped from his hair down his cheeks and mixed with his tears; he passed blocks of dark buildings, crossed through the darkness of the small grove near the dining hall, heard the thudding of the black wolf’s paws pursuing him, felt its breath on the back of his neck, ran faster as the rain grew stronger, the wind beat against his face, and he stumbled and fell onto his knees in a puddle, stood up wet and covered in mud, and ran on alone in the darkness between one streetlamp and the next, ran and wept in small, rapid sobs, ran, his ears frozen and stinging, ran until he reached his parents’ house where he dropped onto the steps, afraid to go inside, afraid they’d be angry with him and return him to the children’s house; and there, on the steps, his little body curled up and frozen and shaking, his father found him crying soundlessly when he came back from the evening’s gossip session in the dining hall.

  Roni took his son in his arms, carried him inside, removed the wet pajamas, and cleaned off the mud and mucus with a washcloth, then rubbed his frozen body with a large, coarse towel to warm him. He swathed the boy in a warm blanket and turned on the heater while Oded recounted what had happened in the children’s house. Roni told him to wait beside the heater and bolted out into the rain, running, panting, burning with rage, as he raced up the hill.

  When he reached the children’s house, his shoes heavy with mud, he saw the night guard, Berta Brom, who tried to tell him something, but he didn’t hear and didn’t want to hear. Blind and deaf with despair and fury, he burst into Oded’s room, turned on the light, bent over and yanked a gentle, quiet boy named Yair from under his blanket, stood him on his bed, and slapped his face savagely over and over again until the boy’s nose began to bleed and his head banged against the wall with the force of the blows, as Roni shouted in a rasping voice, “This is nothing! Nothing! I will kill anyone who touches Oded again!”

  Berta, the night guard in the children’s house, grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him off the child, who flopped onto the bed, his sobs thin and piercing, and said again, “You’ve gone crazy, Roni, completely crazy.” Roni punched her in the chest, then ran outside and dashed through the mud and rain back to his son.

  Father and son slept with their arms around each other all night on the sofa that opened into a double bed, and in the morning, they stayed in the apartment. Roni didn’t go to work and he didn’t take Oded to the children’s house; he spread jam on a slice of bread and warmed a cup of cocoa. At eight thirty in the morning, Yoav, the kibbutz secretary, appeared grim-faced at the door and curtly informed Roni that he was expected in the kibbutz office at exactly five o’clock the next afternoon for a personal interview at a joint meeting of the Social and Preschool Education Committees.

  At lunch, Roni’s friends sat at the gossip table without him and talked about what the entire kibbutz had been talking about since morning. They speculated about what Roni would say if someone else had
done those things. You can never know, they said, such a quiet guy with a sense of humor, and look at what he’s capable of. At three in the afternoon, Leah appeared, having been summoned by phone from her course. Before going home, she stopped at the children’s house and left warm underwear, clean clothes, and boots for the boy. Tight-lipped, a cigarette burning between her fingers, she informed Roni that after what had happened, she and she alone would be in charge of Oded, and, what’s more, she had decided that, for the boy’s own good, he would return to the children’s house that night.

  The rain had stopped, but the sky was still heavy with low clouds and a cold, damp wind had been gusting in from the west. The room filled with a cloud of cigarette smoke. At seven thirty in the evening, Leah bundled Oded into his coat, pulled his green boots firmly on his feet, and said, “Come on, Oded. You’re going to bed. They won’t bother you anymore.” And she added, “No more running wild for them. Starting tonight, the night guard will do her job properly.”

  They went out, leaving Roni alone in the apartment. He lit a cigarette and stood at the window, his back to the room, his face to the darkness outside. Leah returned at nine and didn’t say a word to him. She sat down on her wicker armchair, smoked, and read her education magazine. At ten, Roni said, “I’m going out for a walk. To see how he is.”

  Leah said quietly, “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Roni hesitated, then gave in because he no longer trusted himself.

  At ten thirty they turned off the radio, emptied the ashtray, opened the sofa, and made up the double bed. They lay under their separate blankets because tomorrow they had to get up for work before six again. Outside, the rain had resumed and the wind blew the stubborn ficus tree branch against the shutters. Roni lay on his back for a while, his open eyes staring at the ceiling. For a moment, he imagined that he heard a faint whistling in the darkness. He sat up in bed and listened hard, but he could hear only rain and wind and the branch brushing against the shutters. Then he fell asleep.

  At Night

  IN FEBRUARY, IT WAS Yoav Carni’s turn to be night guard for a week, from Saturday to Friday. He had been Kibbutz Yekhat’s first baby, and the founders, including his parents, were very proud when, years later, he was elected to be secretary, the first person to hold that post who was actually born on the kibbutz. Most of his friends were tanned, muscular, and sturdy, while Yoav was gangly and slightly stooped, pale and big-eared, carelessly shaved, absent-minded, and contemplative. He looked like a Talmudic scholar. His head always jutted forward as if he were examining the path before him, his gaze usually fixed beyond the shoulder of the person he was speaking to. He managed kibbutz matters with delicacy and tact. He never raised his voice or banged on the table, but the members knew that he was honest, quietly persistent, and good-natured. He, for his part, was almost ashamed of his good nature and always tried to appear scrupulous, strict, and zealously adherent to kibbutz principles. If you asked him for an easier job or fewer work hours, he would answer gravely that such things were absolutely out of the question here and that we must always abide by our principles. But he would immediately begin a discreet search for a loophole, a way around the rules, in order to help you.

  A few minutes before eleven at night, Yoav pulled on his boots and dressed warmly in his heavy, worn-out army jacket and a wool hat that covered his ears; then he went to the duty night guard, Zvi Provizor, to take over the rifle. Zvi, the gardener, said sadly to the secretary, “Did you hear, Yoav? Minnesota is having its worst snowstorm in forty years. Eighteen dead and ten missing so far.”

  Yoav said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  Zvi added, “There are floods in Bangladesh, too. And Rabbi Coopermintz died suddenly an hour or two ago in Jerusalem. They just announced it on the radio.”

  Yoav reached out to pat Zvi on the shoulder but withdrew his hand when he recalled that Zvi didn’t like to be touched. So he smiled at him, instead, and said affectionately, “If you should happen to hear one piece of good news, come and tell me right away. Even in the middle of the night.”

  Yoav left, and when he passed the fountain that Zvi Provizor had installed in the square in front of the dining hall, he thought that a lonely, aging bachelor had a harder time here than he would in other places because kibbutz society offered no remedies for loneliness. In fact, the very idea of a kibbutz denied the concept of loneliness.

  Now that he had taken the gun from Zvi, Yoav made his first round of the kibbutz grounds. As he walked past the old-timers’ houses, he switched off lights that were burning needlessly here and there and turned off a sprinkler someone had forgotten before going to bed. He picked up an empty sack that had been tossed near the barber’s shed, folded it carefully, and left it at the door of the produce barn.

  Lights still shone in some windows, but soon the kibbutz would be shrouded in sleep, and only he and the night guard in the children’s house would stay awake till morning. A cold wind was blowing and the pine needles whispered in reply. A faint lowing came from the cow barn. In the darkness, he made out the rows of buildings where the old-timers lived, four two-room apartments in each building, all furnished with plywood furniture, plants, floor mats, and cotton curtains. At one o’clock he had to go to the brooder house to check the temperature, and at three thirty he had to wake the dairy workers for the predawn milking. The night would pass quickly.

  Yoav enjoyed these night shifts, far removed from the daily routine full of committee discussions and members’ complaints and requests. Sometimes people much older than he would come to pour out their hearts to him, and there were all sorts of delicate social problems requiring discreet solutions, or budget concerns, relationships with outside organizations, and kibbutz representation in the various institutions of the movement. Now, at night, he could wander alone among the lean-tos and chicken coops, stroll along the length of the fence illuminated by yellow lights, sit for a while on an upturned crate near the metalwork shop, and sink into night thoughts. His night thoughts revolved around his wife, Dana, now lying in the dark, listening drowsily to the radio in the hope that it would lull her to sleep; his mind also turned to their twins, now sleeping in their beds in the children’s house. In an hour he’d stop in there and cover them. Maybe he’d also drop by his house and turn off the radio, which Dana usually neglected to do before she fell asleep. Dana didn’t like living on the kibbutz and dreamed of a private life. She’d begged him to leave many times. But Yoav was a man of principle who fought constantly to improve kibbutz life and he wouldn’t hear about leaving. Nonetheless, he knew in his heart that kibbutz life was fundamentally unjust to women, forcing them almost without exception into service jobs like cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, doing laundry, sewing, and ironing. The women here were supposed to enjoy total equality, but they were treated equally only if they acted and looked like men: they were forbidden to use makeup and had to avoid all signs of femininity. Yoav had thought about that injustice many times, had tried to come to a conclusion about it, find a remedy, but could not. Perhaps that was why he always saw himself as the guilty party in his relationship with Dana and felt constantly apologetic.

  The night was cold and clear. The croaking of frogs punctuated the silence and a dog barked somewhere far off. When Yoav looked up, he saw a mass of low clouds gathering above his head and said to himself that all the things we think are important really aren’t, and he had no time to think about the things that really are. His whole life was going by and he had never contemplated the big, simple truths: loneliness and longing, desire and death. The silence was deep and wide, broken occasionally by the cries of jackals, and Yoav was filled with gratitude both for that silence and for the cries of the jackals. He didn’t believe in God, but in moments of solitude and silence such as this, Yoav felt that someone was waiting for him day and night, waiting silently and patiently, soundlessly and utterly still, and would wait for him always.

  As he walked slowly between the cold-storage room and t
he fertilizer shed, the rifle slung over his shoulder, he saw a thin silhouette between the shadows of the walls and suddenly a figure wearing a coat blocked his path. A woman’s voice, deep, pleasant, slightly husky, said, “Don’t be frightened, Yoav. It’s just me. Nina. I’ve been waiting for you to pass by here. I knew you would. I have to ask you something.”

  Yoav drew back, then focused his eyes in the darkness, pulled Nina by the arm to the nearby streetlamp, and asked worriedly if she was cold and how long she’d been waiting there alone. Nina was a young woman known on the kibbutz for her strong, unwavering opinions. She had green eyes, long lashes, and thin, finely sculpted lips. Her forehead shone in the dark and her blond hair was cropped short.

  “Tell me what you would do, Yoav, if you had to live every day and sleep every night of your whole life with someone who repulses you. Has repulsed you for years. The things he says, his smell, his jokes, his scratching, his hiccups, his coughing, his snoring, his nose-picking. Everything. What would you do?”

  Yoav put his hand on her arm and said, “Tell me exactly what happened, Nina.”

  In the light of the streetlamp, he saw that her face was pale and tense, but her tired green eyes, looking straight into his, held not a single tear. She clenched her lips and said, “Nothing happened. He even argues with the announcer on the radio.” Then she said, “I can’t take it anymore.”