by Amos Oz
His mother said:
"Soon you'll start catching flies. You should go instead and hear some lectures in the university. You should go to the swimming pool. You should see some people."
Avigail said:
"Assuming he can swim, that is."
And Netta:
"There's a cat that's had four kittens outside in the shed."
Yoel said:
"That's enough. What's going on here? Any more of this and we'll have to elect a committee."
"And what's more, you don't slep enough," said his mother.
At night, after the end of the programs on television, he would stay sprawled on the living-room sofa for a while, listening to the monotonous whistle, and watching the snowflakes on the flickering screen. Then he would go out to the garden to turn off the sprinkler, check the light on the porch, take a saucer of milk or some leftovers of chicken to the cat in the shed. Then he would stand in a corner of the lawn to watch the darkened road and look at the stars, sniffing the air, trying to picture himself without limbs in a wheelchair, and sometimes his feet took him down the street to the fence around the grove to listen to the frogs. Once he thought he heard a solitary jackal in the distance, although he allowed the possibility that it was probably nothing but a stray dog baying at the moon. Then he would return and get into his car and start the engine and drive as if he were in a dream along empty night roads as far as the monastery at Latrun, to the edge of the hills at Kafr Kassem, to the beginning of the Carmel range. He was always careful not to exceed the legal speed limit. He would sometimes pull into a gas station to fill his tank and have a short conversation with the Arab on night duty. He would crawl slowly past the highway whores and study them from a distance, the little wrinkles contracting on his face, those wrinkles that converged at the corners of his eyes and fixed a slightly mocking smile on his face even when his lips gave no hint of a smile. Tomorrow is another day, he thought as he sank at last onto his bed and decided to sleep, then suddenly leaped up to pour himself a glass of milk cold from the refrigerator. If he happened to come across his daughter sitting in the kitchen reading at four o'clock in the morning he would say to her, Good morning, young lady. And what might her ladyship be reading now? And she, after finishing the paragraph, would raise her close-cropped head and say quietly: A book. Yoel would ask: May I join you? Shall I fix us something to drink? And Netta would answer softly, almost warmly: Suit yourself. And then she would continue reading. Until a faint thud sounded outside: whereupon Yoel leaped up and tried in vain to catch the newspaper delivery boy. Who once again had thrown the paper onto the path instead of putting it in the mailbox. He did not touch the figurine in the living room again. He did not even approach the shelf of ornaments above the fireplace. As though fighting temptation. At most he would shoot it a fleeting glance from the corner of his eye, as a man sitting with a woman in a restaurant may steal a hasty glance at another woman, sitting at another table. Even though he imagined that his new reading glasses might enable him him to make something out now. Instead, he began to inspect through his black-framed glasses and also through Ivria's doctor's glasses, systematically, precisely, from very close up, the photographs of Romanesque ruins. Netta had brought these abbeys from her mother's study in Jerusalem and asked his permission to hang them here in the living room above the sofa. He had begun to suspect that there was some foreign object, perhaps an abandoned bag, perhaps the photographer's own equipment box, next to the doorway of one of the abbeys. But the object was too small for him to come to any definite conclusion. The effort made his eyes ache again. Yoel decided to study the photograph through a powerful magnifying glass someday, or perhaps have it enlarged. They could do that for him at the lab at the office; they would do it with pleasure and make a professional job of it. But he put off the decision because he could not see himself explaining to anybody what it was all about. He did not know himself.
11
Then in the middle of August, a fortnight before Netta started her final year at the local high school, there was a little surprise: Arik Krantz, the real-estate agent, dropped in one Saturday morning. He was just looking in to make sure everything was in order. He lived only five minutes away. And in fact his acquaintances, the Kramers, the owners, had asked him to stop by and take a look.
He looked around, chuckled, and said: "I can see you've had a soft landing. Looks as though everything's shipshape here already." Yoel, economical as usual, said only: "Yes. Fine." The agent wanted to know if all the systems in the house were functioning properly. "After all, you fell in love with this property at first sight, so to speak, and love like that often cools down the next morning."
"Everything's fine," said Yoel, who was dressed in an undershirt and running shorts and sandals. Looking like this, he fascinated the agent even more than on their first meeting, in June, when he had rented the house. Yoel struck him as secretive and strong. His face suggested salt, winds, strange women, loneliness, and sun. The prematurely graying hair was cut military fashion, short and well trimmed, without sideburns, with a metallic gray forelock curling up on his forehead, not flopping forward over it. Like a coil of steel wool. The wrinkles at the corners of the eyes suggested a mocking sneer that the lips did not share in. The eyes themselves were sunk, reddened, slightly closed, as though the light were too strong or because of dust and wind. In the jawline an inner power was concentrated, as though the man kept his teeth clenched. Apart from the ironic wrinkles around his eyes, the face was young and smooth, in contrast with the graying hair. The expression hardly varied whether he was speaking or silent.
The agent inquired:
"I'm not disturbing you? Can I sit down for a minute?"
And Yoel, who was holding the electric drill with its extension lead plugged into the socket in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, said:
"Please. Sit down."
"This isn't a business call," the agent stressed. "I just dropped in to see if I could be of any help. To contribute to establishing the settlement, as they say. Call me Arik, by the way. It's like this: the landlord asked me to tell you that you can link the two air conditioners together and run them to all the bedrooms. Feel free to fix it at his expense. He was planning to do it anyway this summer and didn't manage to get it done. He also asked me to tell you that the lawn needs a lot of watering—the topsoil is thin here—but that the shrubs at the front need to be watered sparingly."
The agent's efforts to please and to establish contact with him, and perhaps the word "sparingly," brought a faint smile to Yoel's lips. He was not aware of it himself, but Krantz received it enthusiastically, exposing his gums, and reassuring Yoel emphatically:
"I truly didn't come here to bother you, Mr. Ravid. I was just passing on my way to the sea. That is, I wasn't exactly passing; the truth is I made a little detour to come and see you. It's a fantastic day today for sailing and I happen to be on my way to the sea. Well, I'm off now."
"Would you like a cup of coffee," Yoel said without a question mark. He put the drill down, as if it were a tray of refreshments, on the coffee table in front of his visitor. Who sat down gingerly in a corner of the sofa. The agent was wearing a sports shirt with the emblem of the Brazilian soccer team above his swimming trunks and gleaming white tennis shoes. Keeping his hairy legs pressed firmly together like a coy girl, he chuckled again and asked:
"How's the family? Do they feel comfortable here? Settled in OK?"
"The grannies have gone to Metullah. Milk and sugar?"
"Don't bother," said the agent. After a moment he added, daringly: "Well, all right then. Just one spoonful and a tiny drop of milk. Just enough to change the color. Call me Arik."
Yoel went to the kitchen. The agent, from where he was sitting, rapidly checked out the living room with his eyes as though searching for a vital clue. It seemed to him that nothing had changed except for three cardboard boxes standing one on top of the other in a corner near the giant philodendron. And the three photog
raphs of ruins over the sofa, which Krantz guessed must be souvenirs from Africa or somewhere. Interesting to know how he makes his living, this government employee who, according to what they say in the neighborhood, dóesn't work at all. He gives the impression of being pretty senior. Perhaps he's been suspended from his duties pending an investigation. He looks like a section head in the Ministry of Agriculture or Development, probably with an impressive history in the regular army. Something like a brigadier in the Armored Corps.
"What did you do in the army, if you don't mind my asking? You look, um, sort of familiar. Have you been in the papers ever? Or on television by any chance?" He turned toward Yoel, who entered the room at that moment, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, sugar bowl and milk pitcher, and a plate of crackers. He placed the cups on the table. All the other things remained on the tray, which he set down between them. And he sat down in an armchair.
"Lieutenant with the army advocate general," he said.
"And afterward?"
"I left the army in '63."
Almost at the last minute Krantz swallowed an additional question that was on the tip of his tongue. Instead he said, as he put milk and sugar in his coffee:
"I was just asking. Hope you don't mind. Personally I hate busybodies. No problems with the oven?"
Yoel shrugged. A shadow crossed the doorway and vanished.
"Your wife?" asked Krantz, and immediately remembered and, apologizing profusely, cautiously expressed the assumption that it must surely have been the daughter. Cute but shy? And once again he saw fit to mention his two boys, both of them soldiers in combat units, both of them were in Lebanon, barely eighteen months between them. Quite a problem. Maybe we should arrange for them to meet your daughter sometime, and see if anything develops? Suddenly he sensed that the person sitting opposite him was eying him with cold, amused curiosity, so he dropped the subject quickly and chose instead to tell Yoel that he had worked for two years when he was young as a qualified TV technician, so if the television gives you any trouble just give me a ring even in the middle of the night and I'll hurry over and put it right for you for nothing; no problem. And if you feel like joining me for a couple of hours' sailing on my boat that's moored in the fishing port in Jaffa, just let me know. Have you got my phone number? Give me a ring whenever the fancy takes you. Well, I'm off.
"Thank you," Yoel said. "I'll be less than five minutes, if you can wait."
It took the agent a few seconds to realize that Yoel was accepting his invitation. At once he was seized with enthusiasm and began to talk about the delights of sailing on a fantastic day like this. Maybe you feel like making a serious expedition? We could go and take a look at Abie Nathan's heap of junk.
Yoel attracted him and aroused a powerful desire to get closer, to make friends, to serve him devotedly, to prove to Yoel how much he could do for him, to demonstrate loyalty, and even to touch him. But the agent contained himself, stopped the pat on the shoulder that was making his fingertips itch, and said:
"Take your time. There's no hurry. The sea won't run away." And he jumped up, agile and happy, to anticipate Yoel and take the tray with the coffee things back to the kitchen himself. If Yoel had not stopped him he would have washed them.
From then on Yoel started going to sea with Arik Krantz on Saturdays. He had known how to row from his childhood; now he learned to hoist a sail and to tack. But only rarely did he break his silence. This did not cause the agent disappointment or offense but, on the contrary, provoked an emotion resembling the infatuation that sometimes takes hold of an adolescent who falls under the spell of an older boy and longs to serve him. Unconsciously he began to imitate Yoel's habit of putting a finger between his neck and his shirt collar, and his way of taking a deep breath of sea air and holding it in his lungs before releasing it slowly through a thin crack between his lips. When they were out at sea Arik Krantz of his own accord told Yoel everything. Even about being slightly unfaithful to his wife and his methods of cheating on his income tax and postponing his reserve army service. If he sensed he was tiring Yoel, he would stop talking and play him some classical music: he had taken to bringing with him, on those days when his new friend joined him, a sophisticated battery cassette player. After a quarter of an hour or so, finding it difficult to put up with their silence and Mozart, he would set about explaining to Yoel how he could maintain the value of his money in times like these or about the classified methods by which the navy was able now to seal the coast hermetically against terrorists infiltrating by boat. The unexpected friendship excited the agent to the point that sometimes, unable to contain himself, he telephoned Yoel during the week to talk about the coming weekend.
Yoel for his part thought about the words "the sea won't run away." He found no error in them. As was his wont, he kept his side of the bargain: he enjoyed giving the agent what he wanted precisely by giving him nothing. Except his silent presence. Once as a surprise, he taught Krantz how to say to a girl "I want you" in Burmese. They would return to Jaffa harbor at three or four in the afternoon, even though Krantz secretly prayed that time would stand still or that the dry land would disappear. Then they would go home in the agent's car, and have coffee together. Yoel would say "Thanks a lot. See you." But once he said as they were parting, "Take care, Arik, on the way." Krantz treasured these words joyfully in his heart because he saw them as a small step forward. Meanwhile, of the thousand questions that aroused his curiosity he had managed to put only two or three. And he had received simple answers. He was terrified of spoiling things, of going too far, of being a nuisance, of breaking the magic spell. In this way several weeks passed, Netta started her last year at school, and the pat on the back that Krantz swore to himself every time that he would finally give his friend as they parted did not happen. It was postponed to the next meeting.
12
A few days before the start of the school year Netta's problem reappeared. Ever since the disaster in Jerusalem in February there had been no sign of it, and Yoel had almost begun to believe that Ivria might have been right after all. It happened on a Wednesday at three o'clock in the afternoon. Lisa had gone to Jerusalem that day to inspect her apartment, and Avigail was also out, having gone to listen to a guest lecture at the university.
He was standing barefoot in the front garden, which was flooded with scorching late-summer light, watering the shrubs. The neighbor across the street, a Romanian whose broad posterior put Yoel in mind of an overripe avocado, had climbed up on the roof of his house with two Arab boys who looked like students on vacation. The boys had dismantled the old television aerial and were replacing it with a new and apparently more sophisticated one. The Romanian was aiming a continuous stream of criticisms, rebukes, and suggestions at them in broken Arabic. Though Yoel imagined that they could speak better Hebrew than he could. The neighbor, an importer of wines and spirits, occasionally conversed with Yoel's mother in Romanian. Once, he had offered her a flower, and bowed to her exaggeratedly, as though in jest. At the foot of the ladder stood the Alsatian whose name Yoel knew, Ironside, stretching his neck upward and uttering suspicious broken barks that sounded almost bored. Doing his duty. A heavy truck entered the little street, reached the fence around the citrus grove that marked its end, and started to shudder backward with much panting and screeching of brakes. The exhaust fumes hung in the air, and Yoel asked himself what had become of the refrigerated truck that had belonged to Mr. Vitkin, Eviatar, Itamar. And where was the guitar that he had played Russian tunes on.
Then the summer-afternoon silence returned and enfolded the street. On the lawn, extraordinarily close to him, Yoel suddenly noticed a little bird that had buried its beak under its wing and was standing there, frozen and silent. He moved the stream of water to the next bush and the bird-statue flew away. A child ran past along the street, shouting in shrill outrage, "We said I was the cops!" Who he was shouting to Yoel could not see from where he was standing. Soon the child too disappeared, and Yoel, with one hand ho
lding the hose, bent down and with his other hand repaired a worn wall of the irrigation basin around the bush. He remembered how his wife's father, the veteran policeman Shealtiel Lublin, used to give him a broad wink and say: "When it comes to it, we all have the same secrets." This sentence always filled him with rage, almost with loathing, directed not at Shealtiel but at Ivria.
It was Lublin who had taught him how to construct irrigation basins and how to move the hose with a slight circular movement so as not to wear down the mounds of earth. He was always wreathed in gray cigar smoke. Anything connected with digestion, sex, disease, or other bodily functions always made him tell a joke. Lublin was a compulsive joke-teller. It was as though the body itself excited in him a malicious glee. And at the end of each joke he would burst into a strangled smoker's laugh that sounded like gargling.
