by Amos Oz
Martin Vandenberg’s room was furnished with spartan simplicity: a bed, a table, a large curtain-covered crate to hang his clothes in, and another elongated crate on iron legs that served as a bookcase. It was filled with books in six languages on philosophy and academic research, four or five novels in German, Dutch, and Esperanto, several volumes of poetry, a number of dictionaries, and a Bible with illustrations by Gustave Doré. Hanging on the wall was a picture of Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, the language that everyone on all five continents would speak someday so that the barriers between individuals and peoples would be brought down and the world could return to the way it was before the curse of the Tower of Babel.
Osnat helped Martin to his bed and stroked his forehead gently. She left a small lamp burning at his bedside and switched off the ceiling light. Martin didn’t sleep lying down, but sitting up, his head and shoulders supported by large pillows to ease his breathing. Every night, he’d sit that way on his bed waiting for sleep, which, if it came, was brief and fragmented. Osnat placed the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, the gray stubble on Martin’s sunken cheeks jutting out from under it. She smoothed his blanket and asked if he needed anything else. From behind his mask Martin said, “No. Thank you. You’re an angel.”
Then he took off the mask and said, “Man is by nature good and generous. It’s only the injustices of society that push him into the arms of selfishness and cruelty.” Then added, “We must all become as innocent as children again.”
From where she stood at the door, Osnat replied, “Children are spoiled, cruel, selfish creatures. Just as we are.”
However, since neither of them had children, and because they didn’t want to end their evening with an argument, neither one added anything further to their disagreement but simply said good night. After she’d gone, the small lamp next to Martin’s bed continued to burn. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out from under his pillows and, taking advantage of Osnat’s departure, smoked half a cigarette, crushed the butt in an ashtray, wheezed a little, then put the oxygen mask back over his face, his breathing rapid and shallow. Leaning against the pillows, he read a book by a well-known Italian anarchist who maintained that authority and obedience to that authority are contrary to man’s nature. Then he dozed off in his semi-upright position, the transparent mask covering the bottom half of his face, the light still on. It remained burning next to his bed till morning, even though Martin believed that waste is exploitation and frugality a moral imperative. But the dark terrified him.
Osnat took the tray with her when she left, though most of the food was still on it. She put it down on the porch steps to take back to the kibbutz kitchen early the next morning on her way to work in the laundry. Then she went for a short walk along the cypress-lined avenue, which was illuminated by the garden lights. Ever since Boaz had left her to go and live with Ariella Barash, Osnat had become especially attentive to everything around her, to the words of passersby and the sounds of birds and dogs. As she walked, she thought she heard Martin choking and calling for her to come back, but she realized that it was only her imagination, because even if he were calling her, she wouldn’t have been able to hear him from that distance.
Sitting alone on a bench in the middle of the avenue of cypress trees was Grandma Slava, wearing a loose cotton dress and open sandals that showed her coarse, crooked, red toes. A widow and bereaved mother, she was feared by one and all on the kibbutz—they called her a witch and a monster because she was always telling people off and had been known to spit in the face of anyone who made her angry. Osnat said good evening and Grandma Slava asked her in a mocking, bitter tone, “So what exactly is it that makes this hot and humid evening so good?”
Back in her apartment, Osnat poured herself a glass of cold water with lemon syrup and took off her sandals. She stood barefoot at the open window and said to herself that most people seem to need more warmth and affection than others are capable of giving, and none of the kibbutz committees will ever be able to cover that deficit between supply and demand. The kibbutz, she thought, makes small changes in the social order but man’s difficult nature doesn’t change. A committee vote will never be able to eradicate envy, pettiness, or greed.
She washed her glass and placed it upside down on the drying rack, undressed, and went to bed. Only a thin wall separated her bed from Martin’s, and she knew that if he coughed or wheezed at night, she’d wake up immediately, throw on her robe, and hurry next door to help him. She was a very light sleeper; her ears registered every bark of a dog in the darkness, every shriek of a night bird, every sigh of wind in the thick bushes. But the night passed quietly, with only the sound of the night winds blowing through the ficus trees. Toward dawn, heavy dew fell on the lawns and the moonlight poured over everything, illuminating the glistening, pale silver dewdrops.
The pigeons woke Osnat before six, as usual, and she showered, dressed, knocked on Martin’s door to see how he was, picked up yesterday’s tray, and went to work in the laundry. Martin got out of bed and dressed slowly, panting from the effort as he bent to put on his shoes. After drinking some water, he set out for the shoe repair shop, pushing his small oxygen tank in the old stroller the Health Committee had allocated to him. He walked slowly, dragging his feet, because he found it hard to breathe, especially going uphill. Near the electrician’s workshop he met Nahum Asherov, the electrician, and the two men spoke for a while about politics and Ben Gurion’s government. Nahum said that the government was provoking the whole world with its retaliatory raids, and Martin replied that all governments, without exception, were completely unnecessary and our government was doubly unnecessary because the Jews had already shown the world how a people can exist and even thrive spiritually and socially for thousands of years without any government at all. As he spoke, Martin lit half a cigarette, but didn’t inhale more than twice because he began to choke. He put it out and returned the butt to his pocket. Nahum Asherov said, “Don’t smoke, Martin. You shouldn’t smoke.”
“We shouldn’t tell others what they should or shouldn’t do,” Martin replied. “We were all born free, but we shackle each other with our very own hands.”
“We have to look out for each other,” Nahum said, with a sigh.
A smile crossed Martin’s sunken lips. “So be it, Nahum. You definitely have to tell me not to smoke and I definitely have to smoke. Each of us does what he’s meant to do. So be it.”
In the shoe repair shed, sitting on a wicker stool and surrounded by the pungent odors of leather, polish, and glue, Martin placed the oxygen tank on a crate beside him and pulled the mask over his face. Then, holding a cobbler’s sharp knife in his fist, he cut out a precise left sole along the line he had drawn in pencil earlier on a sheet of leather. A small bottle of lukewarm water stood on the floor in front of him, and every now and then he lowered the mask slightly and took two or three sips. Work, he said to himself, returns us to the simplicity and purity of our early childhood. An old Spanish melody, the anthem of the Republican soldiers from the days of the Spanish Civil War, came to his mind and Martin hummed it softly.
A little after eight in the morning, Yoav Carni, the kibbutz secretary, came in and said, “I’m here to bother you for a few minutes. We need to talk.”
Martin said, “Sit down, young man.” Then he moved the oxygen tank from the crate to the floor at his feet and added, “There aren’t too many places to sit here. Sit on the crate.”
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 sl
ide 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.”
Zvi thanked them both and said that the trouble was some youngsters here who take shortcuts through the lawns right after they’ve been watered and ruin them. As he said that, Moshe Yashar came in and asked politely if the lesson was only for kibbutz members or could high school students also join. Martin Vandenberg said, “We have no borders or
limits. We are against borders in principle.”
Martin coughed and began the lesson with a short explanation: “When all human beings speak the same language, there will be no more wars because their common language will prevent misunderstanding among individuals and peoples.” Zvi Provizor remarked that the German Jews spoke the same language as the Germans, but that didn’t prevent the Germans from hunting them down and murdering them. Moshe Yashar raised his hand timidly and when Martin called on him, he pointed out that Cain and Abel probably spoke the same language, too. Martin asked him why, if that was true, he’d come there to learn Esperanto. The boy didn’t answer immediately. Finally, he mumbled submissively that learning Esperanto might help him learn other languages later on.
Martin smoked half a cigarette, wheezed, coughed deeply again, and explained that Esperanto has no more than about eight thousand root words, and all the necessary vocabulary is derived from these. The roots themselves are taken from Greek and from Latin languages. There are exactly sixteen grammatical rules, with no irregularities or exceptions. At the end of the first lesson, which went on for twenty-five minutes, Martin taught his students how to say the first verse of Genesis in Esperanto: En la komenco Dio kreis la ĉielon kaj la teron. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Zvi Provizor, who in his free time still translated works by the Polish writer Iwaszkiewicz into Hebrew, thought for a moment, then said that Esperanto really did seem easy and logical and sounded a bit like Spanish to him. Moshe Yashar wrote everything down in his notebook. Martin said that imprecise words poison relations between people everywhere, and that’s why clear, accurate words can heal those relationships, but only if they are the right words spoken in a language that all people can understand. Moshe Yashar said nothing, but thought that the sorrow in the world was born long before words. And when Martin used the phrase “no compromises,” it occurred to Moshe that even Martin’s decision to smoke the occasional half-cigarette and not a whole one was actually a compromise.
