To Know a Woman (Harvest in Translation)

by Amos Oz

  In a kind of sleepy submissiveness that fell upon him suddenly, from fatigue or mental distraction, he allowed Ralph to take him to the bedroom. There, by the vague green underwater light, he saw Annemarie sleeping on her back like a baby, with her arms spread out by h£r sides and her hair spread out on the pillow. Next to her face lay a little rag doll with long eyelashes. Fascinated and exhausted Yoel stood by the bookcase watching the woman, who seemed less sexual than touchingly innocent. And as he watched he felt too tired to resist when Ralph began to undress him in a firm yet gentle, fatherly way, undoing his belt and loosening his shirt, then hurriedly unbuttoning it, releasing Yoel's chest from his undershirt, bending over and untying his shoelaces and removing the socks from the feet that Yoel obediently held out, unzipping his trousers, easing them down, pulling off the underpants too, and then, with his arm around Yoel's shoulder, like a swimming instructor leading a hesitant pupil to the water, taking him to the bed and raising the blanket and, when Yoel was lying, also on his back, next to Annemarie, who did not wake up, tenderly covering the two of them, whispering good night, and withdrawing.

  Yoel raised himself on his elbow and gazed at the face of the pretty baby in the faint watery light. Gently, lovingly he kissed her, almost without his lips touching her skin, on the corners of her closed eyes. She put her arms around him, in her sleep, and focused her fingers on the back of his neck until his hair bristled slightly. As he closed his eyes, he picked up for a moment the sound of a warning from somewhere inside himself, Careful, man, check the escape routes, and at once he replied with the words, The sea doesn't run away. With that he began to devote himself to her pleasure as though pampering an abandoned child, almost ignored his own flesh, and in this way he had his pleasure. Unril his eyes filled suddenly. Perhaps because, as he was sinking into sleep, he felt or guessed that her brother was adjusting the blanket over them.

  38

  It was not yet five o'clock when he got out of bed and dressed silently, pondering again, for some reason, what he had heard the neighbor Itamar or Eviatar say about the Biblical words shebeshiflenu and namogu, namely, that the former had a Polish sound, whereas the latter demanded to be pronounced in an indubitably Russian way. Unable to resist the temptation, he murmured softly to himself, namogu, indubitably, shebeshiflenu. But Annemarie and her brother went on sleeping, one in the double bed and the other in the armchair in front of the television, so Yoel tiptoed out without waking them. The promised rain had indeed arrived, even though it was only a gray drizzle in the darkness of the little street. Yellow puddles of mist formed around the street lamp. The dog Ironside came up and sniffed his hand, pleading for a caress, which Yoel granted him while reconstructing in his thoughts:

  Boyfriends

  breakers

  the sea.

  So youthful and pure

  rest in peace

  and they shall become one flesh.

  Just as he opened his garden gate there was a vague brightening at the end of the street; the needles of rain were illuminated by a kind of murky whiteness, and for a moment it seemed again as though the rain were not falling but rising from the ground. Yoel darted forward and clung to the window of the old Susita at the moment the delivery man opened it a narrow crack and was about to throw the newspaper. When the man, who was old, possibly a pensioner, with a thick Bulgarian accent, insisted that he wasn't paid to get out of his car and bother with mailboxes, and, anyway, to put the paper in the mailbox he'd have to switch off the engine and leave the car in gear so it wouldn't run down the slope, since the hand brake was useless, Yoel cut him short, pulled out his wallet, and placed thirty shekels in his hand, saying that at Passover he'd get another thirty, and so he put an end to the problem.

  But when he sat down in the kitchen, warming his hands on his coffee cup and poring over the newspaper, it dawned on him, as a result of connections he made between a short news item on page two and a death announcement, that the newscaster had been wrong at the end of last night's TV news. The mysterious accident had taken place, not in Taiwan, but in Bangkok. The man who had been killed and whose next of kin had been informed was not a businessman, but Yokneam Ostashinsky, known to some of his friends as Cockney and to others as the Acrobat. Yoel closed the newspaper. He folded it in half and carefully folded it in half again. He put it down on a corner of the kitchen table and took his coffee cup over to the sink, poured its contents away, rinsed it out, wiped it clean, rinsed it out again, and washed his hands too, in case they were black with ink from the newspaper. Then he dried the cup and spoon and put them both away. He left the kitchen and went to the living room, but not knowing what to do there he walked down the hall past the closed doors of the children's rooms where his mother and mother-in-law were sleeping and that of the master bedroom, and stood by the door of the study, afraid to disturb anyone. With nowhere else to go he went into the bathroom and shaved and was delighted to discover that this time there was plenty of hot water. Accordingly he stripped and got into the shower cubicle and washed his hair and soaped himself thoroughly from his ears to his toes and even stuck a soapy finger inside his anus and rubbed it, then carefully washed the finger several times. He got out and dried himself, and before dressing dipped the finger in his after-shave as an extra precaution. It was ten past six when he left the bathroom, and until six-thirty he busied himself preparing breakfast for the three women, getting out the jam and honey, slicing the bread, and even preparing a finely chopped salad dressed with oil and dried hyssop and black pepper and sprinkled with little cubes of onion and garlic. Then he put fresh coffee in the percolator and set out plates and knives and forks and teaspoons and paper napkins on the table. So he passed the time until his watch showed quarter to seven, and he called Krantz and asked him if he could borrow their second car again, because Avigail might need the car and he had to go into town today, and might even have to go out of town. Krantz said immediately: No problem. He promised that he and Odelia would be around in convoy within half an hour with their two cars and leave him, not the little Fiat, but the blue Audi, which had been serviced only two days ago and was running like a dream now. Yoel thanked Krantz and sent his regards to Odelia and remembered the moment he replaced the receiver that there was no Lisa or Avigail; they had gone to the Winter Festival on Mount Carmel the day before yesterday and wouldn't be back till tomorrow. It was all for nothing that he had set the table for four and troubled Krantz and his wife to come around in convoy. But in accordance with some stubborn logic Yoel decided, Why not? I did them a big favor yesterday, so it won't hurt them to do me a little one today. From the telephone he returned to the kitchen and removed two place settings from the table, leaving only one for himself and a second for Netta, who woke up by herself at seven o'clock, got dressed, and appeared in the kitchen, not in her baggy pants and tentlike shirt, but in her school uniform, dark-blue skirt and light-blue blouse, and at that moment she seemed to Yoel pretty, attractive, and almost womanly. As she left she asked, What's up? And he delayed replying, because he hated lying, and finally he said only: Not now. I'll explain some other time. And then apparently I'll also have to explain why Krantz and Odelia are pulling up outside now, bringing me their Audi, even though there's nothing wrong with our car. That's the trouble, Netta: once you start explaining, it shows that something's already screwed up. You'd better go now, or you'll be late. Sorry I can't take you today. Even though I'll soon have two cars at my disposal here.

  The moment the door closed behind his daughter, whom the Krantzes offered to take to school in their little Fiat on their way into town, Yoel rushed to the phone. He bumped his knee on the stool in the hall, and when he furiously kicked the stool, the telephone, which had been standing on it, fell off. It rang as it fell, and Yoel snatched the receiver, but he heard nothing. Not even the dial tone. Evidently the kick had damaged the instrument. He tried to fix it by raining blows on it from different directions, but to no avail. So he ran, panting, to the Vermonts', but as he got th
ere he remembered that he had installed an extension phone in Avigail's bedroom so the old women could phone from there. To Ralph's astonishment therefore, he mumbled, Sorry; I'll explain later. And right outside their front door he turned around and raced home and finally called the office and discovered that he needn't have rushed: Tsippy, Le Patron's secretary, had got to work "right this very second." If Yoel had called two minutes earlier she wouldn't have been there. She'd always known that there was a kind of telepathic bond between them. And anyway, ever since he'd left—But Yoel interrupted her. He had to see his brother as soon as possible. Today. This morning. Tsippy said, Wait a moment, and he waited at least four minutes before he heard her voice again. And then he had to order her to stop apologizing and tell him what she'd been told. It emerged that Teacher had dictated his reply, word for word, and instructed her to repeat the message to Yoel without changing or adding a word: There's no hurry. We cannot arrange a meeting for you in the near future.

  Yoel listened and restrained himself. He asked Tsippy if they knew yet when the funeral would be. She asked him to wait again, and this time he was made to hang on even longer than the first time. Just when he was about to slam the receiver down she said to him: It hasn't been arranged yet. He asked when he should call again, but he already knew that she would not answer him without a further consultation. Finally the reply came: You should watch for the announcement in the paper. That's how you'll find out.

  When she asked him in a different voice, When are we going to see you at last? Yoel answered her softly: You'll be seeing me quite soon. He limped out favoring his injured knee, started Krantz's Audi at once, and drove straight to the office. For once he had not washed and dried their breakfast plates. He'd left everything, including the crumbs, on the kitchen table. No doubt to the astonishment of a couple of winter birds that were used to picking up the crumbs from his breakfast when he shook the tablecloth out on the lawn.

  39

  "Angry," said Tsippy, "isn't the right word. He's—what should I say?—mourning."

  "Naturally."

  "No, you don't understand: he's not mourning just for the Acrobat. He's mourning for the two of you. If I were you, Yoel, I wouldn't have come here today."

  "Tell me. What happened in Bangkok? How did it happen? Tell me."

  "Don't know."

  "Did he tell you not to say anything to me?"

  "I don't know, Yoel. Don't press me. It's not only you who finds it hard to live with."

  "Who does he blame? Me? Himself? The bastards?"

  "If I were you, Yoel, I wouldn't be here right now. Go home. Listen to me. Go."

  "Is there anyone in there with him?"

  "He doesn't want to see you. And that's putting it mildly."

  "Just let him know I'm here. Or, rather"—Yoel suddenly laid his hard fingers on her soft shoulder—"wait. Don't tell him." In four paces he had reached the inner door and entered without knocking, and as he closed it behind him asked, How did it happen?

  Teacher, portly, well groomed, with the face of a discriminating culture-consumer, his gray hair cut with precision and good taste, his fingernails carefully manicured, his plump pink cheeks smelling effeminately of after-shave, looked up at Yoel, who took care not to lower his eyes. At that instant he saw that yellow cruelty like an overfed cat's glinting in the small pupils.

  "I asked how did it happen."

  "It doesn't matter how," the man replied with a singsong Gallic lilt, which on this occasion he chose to exaggerate, as though it gave him a malicious pleasure.

  Yoel said:

  "I have a right to know."

  And the man, with no interrogative tone and with no ironic emphasis:

  "Indeed."

  "Look," said Yoel, "I have a suggestion to make."

  "Indeed," the man repeated. And he added: "It won't help, comrade. You'll never know how it happened. I shall personally see to it that you never find out. You'll just have to live with it."

  "I'll have to live with it," Yoel said. "But why me? You shouldn't have sent him. You sent him."

  "In your place."

  "I," Yoel said, fighting back the upsurge of mingled sorrow and anger, "would never have stepped into that trap. I didn't buy the whole story from the outset. That whole replay. I didn't believe it. The moment you told me that the girl was asking for me to come, letting fly all sorts of personal clues about me, I had a bad feeling. It smelled fishy. But you sent him."

  "In your place," Le Patron repeated, this time very slowly, pronouncing each word separately. "Now—" and as though by prearrangement the ancient square Bakelite telephone on his desk began to ring hoarsely and the man cautiously raised the cracked receiver and said: Yes. Then, for ten minutes or so, he sat back and listened motionlessly and without making a sound except that he twice repeated: Yes.

  So Yoel turned and walked over to the only window. Through which he could see a thick, almost porridgelike, gray-green sea, framed by two tall buildings. He remembered that it was less than a year ago that he had been thrilled by the prospect of inheriting this office when Teacher moved out to his colony of nature-loving philosophers in Upper Galilee. In his mind he sketched again that pleasing little scenario. He invites Ivria here on the pretext of consulting her about redecorating the room. Changing the furniture. Fixing up the gloomy office, which is beginning to look shabby. He sits her down there, facing him, on the chair he himself was occupying a moment ago. Just like a child amazing his mother after years of gray mediocrity. You see, from this Spartan office your husband controls a service that is considered by some to be the most efficient in the world. And now the time has come to change the prehistoric desk flanked by two metal file cabinets, to get rid of the coffee table and those ridiculous wicker chairs. What do you think, my dear? Maybe we should replace this bric-a-brac with a push-button telephone with automatic memory. Throw out the tattered curtains. Should we or shouldn't we leave the views of the walls of Jerusalem by Litvinowsky and the alley in Safed by Rubin hanging there as a reminder of bygone days? Do you see any point in keeping the National Fund collection box with its inscription "Bring Redemption to the Land," and its map of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba dotted with flyspecks indicating the tracts of land purchased by the Jews up to 1947? What shall we keep, Ivria, and what shall we throw out forever? And all of a sudden, as though with a faint quivering in the loins heralding the renewal of desire, it occurred to Yoel that it still wasn't too late. That in fact the Acrobat's death had brought him closer to his goal. That if he wanted it and if he calculated carefully, if he thought out his moves without making any mistakes, a year or two from now he would be able to invite Netta here on the pretext of asking her advice about redecorating the room, to sit her down precisely there, facing him across the desk, and explain to her modestly: You could describe your father as a sort of nightwatchman.

  When he thought of Netta he was hit by the sharp, blinding realization that it was thanks to her that his life had been saved. That it was she who had not let him go to Bangkok this time, even though in his heart of hearts he had longed to go. That if it had not been for her obstinacy, her capricious intuition, the alarm raised by the sixth sense that came from her lunar-astral illness, he would be lying now in place of Yokneam Ostashinsky in the sealed lead coffin, perhaps in the hold of a Lufthansa jumbo jet making its way at this moment from the Far East over Pakistan or Kazakhstan in the dark toward Frankfurt and from there to Ben-Gurion Airport and from there to that rocky cemetery in Jerusalem, to the catarrhal voice of Nakdimon Lublin drawling the memorial prayer with comical mistakes in the Aramaic words. Thanks to Netta alone he had been saved from making that journey. From the seductive webs that woman had woven for him. And from the fate that the rotund, cruel man whom he sometimes, for purposes of emergency communication, called his brother had reserved for him. Now here he was, saying, "Yes. Thank you," putting the receiver down, and turning to Yoel and resuming his sentence at the precise point at which he had broken it off ten minu
tes earlier, when his shabby telephone had croaked:

  "...it's all over. And I must ask you to leave."

  "Just a minute," said Yoel, running his finger as usual between his neck and his shirt collar. "I said I have got a suggestion to make."

  "Thank you," said Le Patron. "It's too late."

  "I'm offering"—Yoel chose to ignore the insult—"to go to Bangkok to find out what happened. Tomorrow. Even tonight."

  "Thank you," said the man, "but we have all we need." In his accent, which was still more marked, Yoel thought he detected a trace of mockery. Or restrained anger. Or maybe just impatience. He spoke with a coquettish emphasis that sounded like a parody of a French immigrant. He stood up and concluded:

  "Don't forget to tell my beloved Netta to call me at home about the matter she and I have been discussing."

  "Wait a moment," said Yoel. "I also wanted to let you know that I'm prepared to consider returning to work now. Maybe on a part-time basis. Let's say in Operations Analysis. Or in Training."

  "I've already told you, we have all we need."

  "Or even in Archives. I don't mind. I think I can still be of some use."

  In less than two minutes, when Yoel had left Le Patron's office and was walking along the corridor whose stained walls had finally been soundproofed and covered with cheap imitation-wood sheeting, he suddenly recalled the Acrobat's mocking voice telling him here not long ago that curiosity killed the cat. So he stepped into Tsippy's office and said only: "Excuse me a minute; I'll explain later," and he grabbed the intercom on her desk and, almost in a whisper, asked the man on the other side of the wall, "Tell me, Yirmiyahu, what have I done?"