Judas

by Amos Oz

  Then came winter. Low clouds lay above the ornamental trees. Thick mud lined the fields and orchards, and the fruit pickers and field hands went to work in the factory. Gray rain fell endlessly. At night, the gutters rattled noisily and a cold wind seeped through cracks in the shutters. Zvi Provizor sat up every night listening to all the news broadcasts, and in the breaks between them, he’d bend over his table and by the light of his gooseneck lamp translate into Hebrew a few lines of Iwaszkiewicz’s anguish-filled novel. The pencil drawing that Luna had given him—two cypress trees and a bench—hung above his bed. The trees looked melancholy; the bench was empty. At ten thirty he’d wrap something around himself and go out on the porch to look at the low-lying clouds and the deserted concrete paths, their wet surface gleaming in the yellow glow of the streetlight. If there was a pause between downpours, he would take a brief nocturnal stroll to see how the plants on Luna’s porch were doing. Fallen leaves had already covered the step, and Zvi thought that he could detect the light scent of soap or shampoo drifting from inside the locked room. He would wander along the empty paths for a while, rain dripping from the tree branches onto his uncovered head, then go back to his room and listen in darkness, his open eyes blinking, to the final news reports of the day. Early one morning, when everything was still blanketed in wet, frozen darkness, he stopped a dairy worker on his way to milk the cows and informed him sadly:

  “Did you hear? The King of Norway died last night. Cancer. Of the liver.”

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  About the Author and Translator

  AMOS OZ is the recipient of the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other international honors. His work has been translated into forty-four languages. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

  NICHOLAS DE LANGE is a professor emeritus of Hebrew and Jewish studies at the University of Cambridge and has translated sixteen earlier books by Amos Oz. He has also published numerous works on Judaism and related subjects.

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