A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

  Within a week or two, word had gone around the kibbutz and I was becoming known as "Orna's new bull calf." She had a number of suitors, or conversational partners, in the kibbutz, but not one of them was barely sixteen and not one of them could recite poems by Natan Alter-man and Leah Goldberg by heart like me. Occasionally one of them would be lurking in the dark among the eucalyptus trees in front of her house, waiting for me to leave. Jealously I would hang around by the hedge, and I managed to see him go into the room where she had just made thick Arab coffee for me and called me "unusual," and let me smoke a cigarette with her even though I was still only a little chatterbox from class eleven. I stood there for a quarter of an hour or so, a shadowy figure in the shadows, until they turned the light out.

  ***

  Once, that autumn, I went to Orna's room at eight o'clock, but she was not there. Because the dim orange light of her lamp poured out through the drawn curtains, and because her door was not locked, I went in and lay down on the rug to wait for her. I waited for a long time, until the voices of men and women on the porches died down to be replaced by night sounds, the howling of jackals, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cows in the distance, the chuk-chuk sound of the sprinklers and choruses of frogs and crickets. Two moths were struggling between the bulb and the orange-red lampshade. The thistles in the shell-case vase cast a kind of crushed shadow on the floor tiles and the rug. The Gauguin women on the walls and Orna's own nude pencil sketches suddenly gave me a vague idea of what her body would look like naked in the shower or on this bed at night after I left, not alone, maybe with Yoav or Mendi, even though she had a husband somewhere who was a regular army officer.

  Without getting up from the rug, I raised the curtain in front ofher clothes cupboard and I saw white and colored underwear and an almost transparent peach nightgown. As I lay on my back on the rug, my fingers groped to touch this peach of hers and my other hand had to reach out for the mound in my trousers, and my eyes closed and I knew I ought to stop I must stop but not right away just a little more. Finally, right on the edge, I did stop and without taking my fingers off the peach or my hand off the mound in my trousers I opened my eyes and saw that Orna had come back without my noticing and was standing watching me at the edge of the rug, with most of her weight on her left leg so that her right hip was slightly raised and one hand rested on this hip while the other lightly stroked her shoulder under her untied hair. So she stood and looked at me with a warm, mischievous smile on her lips and a laugh in her green eyes as if to say, I know, I know that you'd like to drop dead on the spot, I know that you would be less startled if there was a burglar standing here pointing a submachine gun at you, I know that because of me you're as miserable as can be, but why should you be miserable? Look at me, I'm not at all shocked, so you should stop being miserable.

  I was so terrified and helpless that I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, so that Orna might imagine that nothing had happened, or that, if it had, it was just in a dream, in which case I was indeed guilty and disgusting, but much less than if I'd done it while I was awake.

  Orna said: I've interrupted you. She wasn't laughing when she said it, but she went on to say, I'm sorry, and then she did a complicated kind of dance with her hips and said cheerfully that no, actually she was not exactly sorry, she'd enjoyed watching me, because my face had looked pained and lit up at the same time. Then she did not say anything else, she started to unbutton her dress, from the top button to the waist, and she stood in front of me so I could watch and carry on. But how could I? I closed my eyes hard and then I blinked and then I peeped at her and her happy smile begged me not to be afraid, what's wrong, it's all right, and her firm breasts also seemed to beg me. And then she got down on her knees on the rug to my right and lifted my hand off the mound in my trousers and put her own hand there instead, and then she opened and released and a trail of hard sparks like a thick rain of meteorites ran the whole length of my body, and I closed my eyes again but not before I saw her lift up and stoop, and then she lay on top of me and bent over and took my hands and guided them, there and there, and her lips touched my forehead and they touched my closed eyes, and then she reached down and inserted all of me, and instantly several soft rolls of thunder passed through me followed at once by piercing lightning, and because the hardboard partition was so thin she had to press her hand over my mouth hard and when she thought it was over and took her fingers away to let me breathe, she had to put them back again quickly because it wasn't. And after that she laughed and stroked me like a little boy and she kissed me again on my forehead and wrapped my head in her hair and I with tears in my eyes started to give her shy kisses of gratitude on her face her hair the back of her hand, and I wanted to say something but she didn't let me and covered my mouth again with her hand until I gave up.

  After an hour or two she woke me and my body asked her for more, and I was full of shame and embarrassment, but she did not spare me, she whispered to me as though she was smiling, Come, take, and she whispered, Look what a little savage, and her legs were yellowy brown and there was a faint almost invisible golden down on her thighs, and after stifling my spurting cries again with her hand she pulled me to my feet and helped me button up my clothes and poured me some cold water from her earthenware jug with its white muslin cover, and stroked my head and pressed it to her breast and kissed me one last time on the tip of my nose and sent me out into the chill of the thick silence of three o'clock on an autumn morning. But when I came back the next day to say I was sorry, or to pray for a repetition of the miracle, she said: Look at him, he's as white as chalk. What's come over you, here, have a glass of water. And she sat me down on a chair and said something like: Look, there's no harm done, but from now on I want everything to be the way it was before yesterday, OK?

  It was hard for me to do what she wanted, and Orna must have felt it too, and so our poetry reading evenings accompanied by strains of Schubert, Grieg, or Brahms on the gramophone faded, and after a couple more times they stopped, and her smile settled on me only from a distance when we passed each other, a smile radiating joy, pride, and affection, not like a benefactor smiling at someone she has given something to, but more like an artist looking at a painting she has made, and even though she has moved on to other paintings, she is still satisfied with her work, proud to be reminded of it and happy to look at it again, from a distance.

  And since then I have felt good in the company of women. Like my Grandpa Alexander. And even though over the years I have learned one or two things and I have occasionally gotten my fingers burned, I still have the feeling—just as that evening in Orna's room—that women possess the keys of delight. The expression "she granted him her favors" seems right, seems to hit the mark better than others. Women's favors arouse in me not only desire and wonderment but also a childlike gratitude and a wish to bow down in reverence: I am not worthy of all these marvels; I would be grateful for a single drop, let alone this wide ocean. And always I feel like a beggar at the gate: only a woman has the power to choose whether or not to bestow.

  There may also be a vague jealousy of female sexuality: a woman is infinitely richer, gentler, more subtle, like the difference between a fiddle and a drum. Or there may be an echo of a memory from the very beginning of my life: a breast as against a knife. As soon as I came into the world, there was a woman waiting for me, and although I had caused her terrible pain, she repaid me with gentleness, and gave me her breast. The male sex, on the other hand, was already lying in wait clutching the circumcision knife.

  Orna was in her mid-thirties, more than twice my age that night. She scattered a whole river of purple, crimson, and blue and a mass of pearls before a little swine who did not know what to do with them except grab and swallow without chewing, so much I almost choked. A few months later she left her job in the kibbutz. I did not know where she went. Years later I heard that she had divorced and remarried, and for some time she had a regular column in some women's magazine. Not long ago, in
America, after a lecture and before the reception, out of a crush of people asking questions and arguing, Orna suddenly shone out at me, green-eyed, lit up, just a little bit older than she was when I was a teenager, in a light-colored dress with buttons, her eyes sparkling with her knowing, seductive, compassionate smile, the smile from that night, and as though under a magic spell I stopped in the middle of a sentence, forced my way toward her through the throng, pushing everyone out of my way, even the blank-faced old woman that Orna was pushing in a wheelchair, and I seized her, hugged her, said her name twice, and kissed her warmly on the lips. She gently disengaged herself, and without switching off that smile, which spoke of favors and which made me blush like a teenager, she pointed to the wheelchair and said in English: That's Orna. I'm her daughter. Sadly, my mother can no longer speak. She hardly recognizes people.

  59

  A WEEK OR SO before her death my mother suddenly got much better. A new sleeping pill prescribed by a new doctor worked miracles overnight. She took two pills in the evening, fell asleep fully dressed at halfpast seven on my bed, which had become her bed, and slept for almost twenty-four hours, until five o'clock the following afternoon, when she got up, took a shower, drank some tea, and must have taken another pill or two, because she fell asleep again at half past seven and slept through till the morning, and when my father got up, shaved, and squeezed two glasses of orange juice and warmed them to room temperature, Mother also got up, put on a housecoat and apron, combed her hair, and made us both a real breakfast, as she used to before she was ill, fried eggs done on both sides, salad, pots of yogurt, and slices of bread that she could cut much finer than Father's "planks of wood," as she affectionately called them.

  So there we sat once more at seven o'clock in the morning on the three wicker stools at the kitchen table with its flower-patterned oilcloth, and Mother told us a story, about a rich furrier who had lived in her hometown, Rovno, an urbane Jew who was visited by buyers from as far away as Paris and Rome because of the rare silver fox furs he had that sparkled like frost on a moonlit night.

  One fine day this furrier forswore meat and became a vegetarian. He put the whole business, with all its branches, into the hands of his father-in-law and partner. Some time later he built himself a little hut in the forest and went to live there, because he was sorry for all the thousands of foxes that his trappers had killed on his behalf. Eventually the man vanished and was never seen again. And, she said, when my sisters and I wanted to frighten each other, we used to lie on the floor in the dark and take turns telling how the formerly rich furrier now roamed naked through the forest, possibly ill with rabies, uttering bloodcurdling fox howls in the undergrowth, and if anyone was unfortunate enough to encounter the fox-man in the forest, his hair turned instantly white with terror.

  My father, who intensely disliked this kind of story, made a face and said:

  "I'm sorry, what is that supposed to be? An allegory? A superstition? Some kind of bubbe-meiseh?" But he was so pleased to see Mother looking so much better that he added with a dismissive wave of his hand:

  "Never mind."

  Mother hurried us along so my father would not be late for work and I would not be late for school. At the door, as my father was putting his galoshes on over his shoes and I was getting into my boots, I suddenly let out a long, bloodcurdling howl, which made him jump and shiver with fear, and when he recovered himself, he was just about to hit me when Mother interposed herself between us, pressed me to her breast, and calmed us both down, saying, "That was all because of me. I'm sorry." That was the last time she hugged me.

  We left home at about half past seven, Father and I, not saying a word because he was still angry with me over the rabid fox howl. At the front gate he turned left toward Terra Sancta Building and I turned right toward Tachkemoni School.

  When I got home from school, I found Mother dressed up in her light skirt with two rows of buttons and her navy jumper. She looked pretty and girlish. Her face looked well, as though all the months of illness had vanished overnight. She told me to put my school satchel down and keep my coat on, she put her coat on too, she had a surprise for me:

  "We're not going to have lunch at home today. I've decided to take the two men in my life out to a restaurant for lunch. But your father doesn't know anything about it yet. Shall we surprise him? Let's go for a walk in town, and then we'll go to Terra Sancta Building and drag him out of there by force, like a blinking moth out of a heap of book dust, and then we'll all go and eat somewhere that I'm not even going to tell you, so that you'll have some suspense too."

  I didn't recognize my mother. Her voice was not her usual voice, it was solemn and loud, as though she were speaking a part in a school play; it was full of light and warmth when she said, "Let's go for a walk," but it shook a little at the words "blinking moth" and "book dust"; for an instant it made me feel a vague fear, which gave way at once to happiness at the surprise, at Mother's cheerfulness, at the joy of her return to us.

  My parents hardly ever ate out, although we often met up with their friends in cafés on Jaffa Road or King George Street.

  Once, in 1950 or 1951, when the three of us were staying with the aunts in Tel Aviv, on the last day, literally just before we left for Jerusalem, Father uncharacteristically declared himself to be "Baron Rothschild for the day" and invited everybody, my mother's two sisters with their respective husbands and only sons, out to lunch at Hamozeg Restaurant on Ben Yehuda Street, at the corner of Sholem Aleichem Street. A table was laid for the nine of us. Father sat at the head, between his two sisters-in-law, and seated us in such a way that neither sister sat next to her husband and none of us children sat between his parents: as though he had made up his mind to shuffle all the cards. Uncle Tzvi and Uncle Buma were slightly suspicious, as they could not understand what he was up to, and firmly refused to join him in a glass of beer, as they were not used to drinking. They chose not to speak, and left the floor to my father, who apparently felt that the most urgent and exciting topic must be the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been found in the Judaean desert. So he embarked on a detailed lecture that lasted right through the soup and the main course about the significance of the scrolls that had been found in some caves near Qumran and the possibility that more and more priceless hidden treasures were waiting to be discovered among the ravines in the desert. Eventually Mother, who was sitting between Uncle Tzvi and Uncle Buma, remarked softly:

  "Perhaps that's enough for now, Arieh?"

  Father understood and left off, and for the rest of the meal the conversation broke up into separate conversations. My older cousin Yigal asked if he could take my younger cousin Ephraim to the nearby beach. After a few more minutes I also decided I had had enough of the company of the grown-ups and left Hamozeg Restaurant to look for the beach.

  But who could have imagined that Mother would suddenly decide to take us out for lunch? We had become so accustomed to seeing her sitting day and night staring at the window and not moving. Only a few days earlier I had given up my bedroom for her and run away from her silence to sleep with Father in the double sofa bed. She looked so beautiful and elegant in her navy jersey and light skirt, in her nylon stockings with a seam at the back and her high-heeled shoes, that strange men turned around to look at her. She carried her raincoat over one arm, and linked the other arm in mine as we walked along:

  "You'll be my cavalier today."

  And as though she had adopted Father's normal role as well, she added:

  "A cavalier is a knight: cheval is a horse in French, and chevalier is a horseman or knight."

  Then she said:

  "There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tyrant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And r
emember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation."