by Amos Oz
Deir Ajloun
IT WAS A sweltering, oppressive day. A low, dirty gray sky hunched over us as if the desert had risen up and spread out upside down above the roofs of our small houses. The air was filled with fine dust that mixed with sweat and covered foreheads and arms with a sticky layer of whitish mortar. Henia Kalisch, a widow of about fifty, went into the bathroom during the lunch break, took off her work clothes, and stood for a while under a torrent of cold water. Her lips were always tightly clenched and two bitter lines stretched from the corners of her lips to her chin. Her body was as angular and flat as a boy’s and her legs were crisscrossed with blue and pink veins. The cold water washed off the dust and refreshed her skin, but did not allay the sense of malaise. After her shower, she toweled herself brusquely, dressed again in her gray work shirt and navy-blue work trousers, then walked resolutely back to her shift in the kibbutz kitchen. That very evening she planned to talk to Yoav Carni the secretary, David Dagan the teacher, Roni and Leah Shindlin, and a few other influential members of the kibbutz in an effort to drum up support for the vote at the general meeting on Saturday night.
On the back porch of the kitchen, bathed in sweat, they sat on stools across from each other peeling vegetables and slicing them into a large pot, and Brunia said to her, “There’s no point in bringing that up at the meeting, Henia. They’ll bite your head off.”
Henia said, “But it’s good for everyone. The kibbutz’ll be able to shorten the waiting list for college.”
Brunia chuckled. “Your Yotam has no special standing here. No one does. Except for the select few.”
As she pushed away the pile of peelings and put a new crate of vegetables between them, Henia tried to sound out Brunia: “But at least you, Brunia, you’ll vote for Yotam’s request at the Saturday night meeting, won’t you? You’ll support us, right?”
“Really? And why should I vote for him? When my Zelig asked to work in the vineyard six years ago, did you support him? You all voted against him. All you hypocrites and paragons together. Then you spoke so nicely at his funeral.”
Henia said, “The pot is already full. We need to start a new one.” Then she added, “Don’t worry, Brunia. I have a very long memory, too. A very, very long memory.”
The two widows continued peeling and cutting vegetables in total silence, their knives glittering.
After work, Henia Kalisch returned to her apartment, showered with cold water again, shampooed her graying hair, and this time dressed in her after-work clothes—a beige blouse, straight cotton skirt, and lightweight sandals. She had coffee, cut two pears into slices exactly the same size and ate them slowly, washed her cup and plate, wiped them, and put them in the cupboard. The windows and shutters were closed against the blazing heat and the curtains were pulled tightly shut. The room was dark and cool, a pleasant clean smell rose from the washed floor tiles. She didn’t turn on the radio because the arrogant voices of the news announcers made her angry: They always sound as if they know everything, and the truth is that no one really knows anything. People don’t love each other anymore. At first, when the kibbutz was founded, we were all a family. True, even then there were rifts, but we were close. Every evening we’d get together and sing rousing songs and nostalgic ballads till the small hours. Afterward, we went to sleep in tents, and if anyone talked in their sleep, we all heard them. These days, everyone lives in a separate apartment and we’re at each other’s throats. On the kibbutz today, if you’re standing on your feet, everyone is just waiting for you to fall, and if you fall . . . they all rush to help you up. Brunia is a monster and the whole kibbutz is right to call her a monster.
In her mind, Henia wrote a letter to her younger brother Arthur, who’d been living in Italy for a few years now and had become rich from his business there. She didn’t know the nature of that business, but, putting two and two together, she thought it had something to do with spare parts for machines that manufactured weapons: in 1947, on the eve of the War of Independence, Arthur had been sent to Italy by the Haganah, with the consent of the kibbutz, to purchase arms for the underground and machines to manufacture light weapons for the nascent country. After the war, he stayed in Italy, and ignoring the anger of the kibbutz members and the general meeting’s condemnation, he settled down in a suburb of Milan, where he began to spin the web of his shadowy business. In 1951, he sent Henia a picture of himself with his new wife, who was fifteen years younger than he was, an Italian girl who looked soft and a bit mysterious in the photo because her thick black hair covered her eyes and she was hiding one of her cheeks with her hand. Several times, he’d sent Henia small gifts.
Two weeks ago, Arthur wrote to her saying that he was going to ask Yotam to come and study mechanical engineering at the Milan Polytechnic Institute. He could live with him and Lucia, they had a large home, and he, Arthur, would pay the boy’s tuition and all his living expenses for his four years at the Institute. Tell them on the kibbutz, Arthur wrote, that I’m saving them a lot of money, or they would have to pay Yotam’s tuition and living expenses when it’s his turn to go to college. With the money I save them, they can send someone else to college. And I’ll invite you too, Henia, to come and visit us once or twice a year.
Once, when Yotam was about six, Uncle Arthur came for a visit, on a Haganah motorcycle, and took him for a ride around the kibbutz. How surprised and envious the other children were when they saw him sitting pressed up against his uncle’s strong body, which gave off a pungent, pleasing smell of pipe tobacco when he held him high in the air and said, “Grow up, grow older, be a soldier.”
Yotam was short, tanned and muscular, broad and sturdy, and his roundish head was topped with hair clipped almost to the roots. He had large, very strong hands. He wasn’t good-looking, and when he was spoken to, a faint expression of wonder spread across his face, as if all the words directed at him surprised or frightened him. A missing front tooth, along with his wrestler’s body, made him look belligerent. But contrary to his appearance, Yotam was a shy young man who spoke little, though from time to time he would suddenly come out with a strange, sweeping statement. On the kibbutz, we called him a philosopher because he once emerged from his silence to claim that man has the basic nature of a freakish animal. Another time, at dinner in the kibbutz dining hall, he said that there were more similarities than differences among humans, animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Roni Shindlin’s response to that, given behind Yotam’s back, was that Yotam Kalisch himself really did bear a slight resemblance to a box or a packing crate.
Yotam had been discharged from the army about six months before his Uncle Arthur’s letter and went to work in the orchards. He wasn’t an outstanding worker; there was a certain languor about him. But his coworkers were impressed by his great physical strength and his willingness to work overtime when necessary. When Uncle Arthur’s letter arrived from Italy, Yotam delayed for two or three days, then finally said to his mother in a low voice, as if admitting guilt for some crime, “Yes, but only if the kibbutz agrees.”
Henia said, “It’ll be hard to get a majority at the meeting. There’ll be a lot of jealousy and resentment.”
Roni Shindlin said to his regular tablemates in the dining hall, “What a shame that rich uncles in Italy are in such short supply these days. It wouldn’t hurt if we each had one. Then we could send all the young people to college at his expense. Problem solved.”
And David Dagan, the teacher, said to Henia that he would oppose Yotam’s request for three reasons. First, on principle, every young man and woman has to work on the kibbutz for at least three years after the army and only then can the possibility of college be considered. Otherwise, there won’t be anyone left here to milk the cows. Second, such gifts from rich relatives strike a serious blow against the principle of equality. Third, the young people who leave to attend college should study something that will benefit our society and our enterprises here on the kibbutz. What do we need a mechanical engineer for? We have two mechanic
s working in the garage and they’re doing just fine without a certified professor there.
Henia tried in vain to soften David Dagan, citing young people’s innate right to self-fulfillment. David Dagan chuckled and said, “Self-fulfillment, self-fulfillment, it’s nothing but self-indulgence. Just give me a minute so we can set things straight: either every one of us, without exception, gives an eight-hour workday six days a week or there’ll be no kibbutz here at all.”
That evening, Henia went to see Yoav Carni, the secretary, in his apartment and told him that she had to put all her cards on the table: if the kibbutz meeting on Saturday night didn’t let Yotam accept his Uncle Arthur’s invitation to go to college in Italy, there was a chance he might go anyway, without their permission. “Do you really want to lose him? Don’t any of you care at all?” This ultimatum was entirely Henia’s idea because Yotam had, of course, told her the opposite, that he would accept Uncle Arthur’s invitation only if the kibbutz agreed.
Yoav Carni asked, “Why did you come here, Henia? Why doesn’t Yotam himself come to talk to me?”
“You know Yotam. He’s a boy who keeps things close. Introverted. He has inhibitions.”
“If he’s brave enough to go to college in Italy without knowing the language and without friends, he should have enough courage to come here himself and not send his mother.”
“I’ll tell him to come and see you.”
“Okay, good. But I’m afraid he won’t hear from me what he wants to hear. I’m against private initiatives and private funds in the life of the kibbutz. Yotam has to wait his turn, and when it comes, the Higher Education Committee, along with him, will decide where and how he goes to college and what he studies. When the time comes, if his uncle wants to help pay expenses, we’ll discuss it and take a vote. That’s our way. Those are the rules. But tell him to come and see me and I promise to listen to him and then explain these things patiently. Yotam is a sensitive, intelligent young man and I’m sure he’ll understand our position and withdraw his request of his own free will.”
The faint, oppressive smell of plants sweating in the blistering heat lay over the kibbutz lands. The hot, dusty air was stagnant. The ficus and pine trees, the myrtle bushes, the bougainvillea and ligustrum shrubs, the lawns and rose beds—all breathed heavily in the darkness under the dense, blazing mass. A gust of arid air mixed with the smell of scorched thorns blew down from the hilltop ruins of the abandoned Arab village of Deir Ajloun. Perhaps distant fires were still burning there. At nine at night, without knocking, Henia walked into Yotam’s room, which was in one of the sheds in the discharged soldiers’ housing area, and told him that the meeting on Saturday night was probably going to reject his request. They’d most likely decide to tell Uncle Arthur that if he wanted to support the education of Kibbutz Yekhat’s youth, he was invited to contribute to the kibbutz college fund.
“They’re fanatics, all of them,” Henia said. “They’re jealous. Resentful.”
Yotam said, “Okay.” Then added, “Thank you.” After a brief silence, he said, “You shouldn’t have spoken to them, Mother. It’s too bad you did. Mechanical engineering isn’t really for me, anyway.”
The night was still gravid and dusty. The thick, inert desert air pressed down on everything. Mosquitoes buzzed around them and two or three moths slammed into the naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling. The tin roof radiated the heat of the day into the room and no coolness came in at the open window. Yotam’s room was furnished with an iron bedstead, a wooden table painted green, a curtain-covered crate used as a closet, a straw floor mat, and two wicker stools. An electric fan stood in a corner of the room, stirring the air to no avail. Visible through the window were the hills that concealed the ruins of Deir Ajloun. Both mother and son were bathed in sweat. The stubble on Yotam’s head, his muscular shoulders, his tanned, broad back in a blue singlet, and his missing front tooth lent him an air of coiled violence he didn’t possess. His almost unnaturally large hands rested heavily on his naked knees. He sat on the unmade bed and his mother on one of the stools. Yotam offered her cold water from the jug that stood under the window, but Henia refused with a dismissive wave of her hand, as if she were swatting a fly.
“Go and talk to Yoav. I don’t think anything will come of it, I’ve already spoken to him, but you should try anyway.”
“I won’t talk to Yoav, Mother. There’s no point. They’ll never let me go.” After a brief silence, he added, “I’d like to travel to Italy. Or maybe not to Italy in particular. Just somewhere. But mechanical engineering is not for me.”
“But you want to go to college, don’t you? And Arthur is offering to pay for it.”
“What I want, more or less, is not to live here for a few months. Maybe a year. Maybe two. Then we’ll see.”
“You want to leave the kibbutz?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t say leave. I said travel. We’ll see. I only know that I need to go away, at least for a while.”
“Do you even remember Arthur?”
“No. Almost not at all. I remember that he liked to tell jokes all the time. I remember pipe smoke. And that he once brought me skates as a gift and the Education Committee decided that they would belong to all the kids in my class. And I know, too, that the whole kibbutz has been angry with him since he refused to come back here and decided to stay in Italy.”
Henia said, “Your brother Gideon finished the army, worked quietly for three years in the fodder fields, got married, had a child and waited his turn, and then the kibbutz sent him to study agriculture at the Ruppin Institute. But you won’t wait. You can leave now and you will leave now. What do you care what the general meeting decides? You’ll come back here an engineer and they can all eat their hearts out. Or maybe you won’t come back.”
“I can’t take it here anymore, Mother. Arthur invited me and I want to go. But only if the general meeting agrees. And no mechanical engineering.”
Henia said, “They won’t agree. The air is full of spite.”
The sour smell of rotten, fermenting orange peel and the stench of cow dung coming from the direction of the barn filled the room. A malicious mosquito buzzed piercingly next to Henia’s ear. She slapped herself hard in a vain attempt to squash it. Finally she said, “You don’t know what you want yourself. Go to the office tomorrow and talk to Yoav Carni. Yoav is a sympathetic person. Maybe together you’ll find some kind of compromise.”
Yotam didn’t want to talk to the secretary. In fact, he didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not his mother either. What he wanted was to go out for a walk. Several times, in the early evening, he’d wandered alone among the ruins of Deir Ajloun for almost an hour. He went into the destroyed mosque and the dynamited sheikh’s house but found nothing there because he didn’t know what he was looking for, so, shoulders hunched, he walked back to the kibbutz. He had a vague desire now to return and examine the ruins, as if something were buried there under the avalanche of rocks or in the darkness of the blocked well, a simple answer. But what the question was, he didn’t know.
Some people on our kibbutz thought that Yotam Kalisch was hopelessly in love with Nina Sirota, who was five or six years older than he was and had separated from her husband several months earlier. When she left her apartment and moved into a room the Apartment Committee allocated to her at the far end of Housing Area 3, Yotam went there one day after work in the orchards and, without saying a word, turned the soil in her new garden with a pitchfork. More than once, we saw him linger at the door to the dining hall till she came out, then follow her along the kibbutz paths until his courage failed him and he turned onto a side path and walked away. He almost never dared to talk to her but sometimes went to the carpentry shop in the evening and made small wooden toys for her children. In his huge hands, the toys looked like miniatures. When a notice was hung on the bulletin board at the dining-hall entrance calling for members to sign up for special work on Saturdays, we noticed that Yotam waited for Nina to sign up, then put his
name down for work on the same Saturday she had chosen. But when they were actually working together, he almost never spoke to her. Only once did he summon the courage to ask her among the rows of vines, “Is the heat bothering you, Nina?” And she replied with a smile, “No, everything’s fine, thank you.”
She was always pleased to see him, and when they met on the path, she asked how he was, how his mother was, and what was new in the orchards. Actually, it wasn’t just Yotam she was pleased to see. She was cordial to everyone on the kibbutz, even the children. There was always an air of pleasant warmth about her when, with a smile, she’d say the most ordinary words to you, such as good evening, how are you, what’s new?
Roni Shindlin said, “Here we go again. Another broken heart. The caterpillar has fallen in love with the butterfly.”
Nina was appreciated for her confident opinions and her willingness to go up against the prevailing view. She had introduced a subversive element of restlessness at the general meetings, and it seemed that the secretary, Yoav Carni, supported her on one issue or another, to the great chagrin of the conservatives. Working on her own in the apiary, she had continued to make it a profitable branch of Kibbutz Yekhat. At the kibbutz meetings, she often fought for her view that the men had to take on a larger part of the service work in the kitchen, laundry, and children’s house so that the women would be free to go out and work in the fields. When she left her husband, Avner Sirota, some people said, “That girl only knows how to break things.” Others said, “That girl has decided to be head of the opposition on Kibbutz Yekhat.” And still others said, “Who does she think she is?”
