Between Friends

by Amos Oz

  At the beginning of the summer, Boaz tells Osnat he’s been in a relationship with Ariella Barash for eight months and has decided that the three of them cannot go on living a lie. So, he’s made up his mind to leave Osnat and move his things to Ariella’s apartment. “You’re not a little girl anymore,” he says. “You know, Osnat, that things like this happen every day now all over the world, and on our kibbutz, too. Luckily, we don’t have children. It could have been a lot harder for us.” He’ll take his bicycle with him, but leave the radio for her. He wants the separation to be as amicable as their life together has been for all these years. He completely understands if she’s angry with him. Even though she doesn’t really have anything to be angry about: “The relationship with Ariella wasn’t meant to hurt you. Things like this just happen, that’s all.” In any case, he’s sorry. He’ll move his things out right away and leave her not only the radio, but everything else, including the albums, the embroidered pillows, and the coffee set they received as a wedding gift.

  Osnat says, “Yes.”

  “What do you mean, yes?”

  “Go,” she says, “just go.”

  Ariella Barash was a tall, slim divorcée with a slender neck, cascading hair, and laughing eyes, one of which had a slight squint. She worked in the chicken coop and was also head of the kibbutz Culture Committee, responsible for organizing holidays, ceremonies, and weddings. In addition, she was in charge of inviting lecturers for Friday nights and ordering movies for Wednesday night showings in the dining hall. She had an old cat and a young dog, almost a puppy, which lived together peaceably in her apartment. The dog was frightened of the cat and would politely give it a wide berth. The old cat would ignore the dog and walk past as if it were invisible. The two of them spent most of the day dozing in Ariella’s apartment, the cat on the sofa and the dog on the rug, indifferent to one another.

  Ariella had been married for a year to a career army officer, Ephraim, who left her for a young woman soldier. Her relationship with Boaz began when he came to her apartment one day wearing a sweaty work singlet stained with machine oil. She’d asked him to drop by to fix a dripping tap. He had on a leather belt with a metal buckle. As he bent over the tap, she stroked his sunburned back gently several times until he turned around without putting down his screwdriver and wrench. Since then he’d been sneaking into her apartment for half an hour here or an hour there, but there were those on Kibbutz Yekhat who noticed the sneaking around and did not keep that discovery to themselves. People on our kibbutz said, “What a strange pair; he hardly says a word and she never shuts up.” Roni Shindlin, the comedian, said, “The honey is eating the bear.” No one told Osnat about it, but her friends showered her with affection and found ways to remind her that she wasn’t alone, if she needed anything, the slightest thing, and so on and so forth.

  Then Boaz loaded his clothes into his bicycle basket and moved to Ariella’s apartment. He’d come back in the afternoon from his job in the garage, take off his work clothes, and go into the bathroom for his shower. From the doorway, he’d always say to her, “So, anything happen today?” And Ariella would reply in surprise: “What should’ve happened? Nothing happened. Take your shower and we’ll have coffee.”

  In her mailbox, which was on the far left side of the mailbox cabinet near the entrance to the dining hall, Ariella found a folded note in Osnat’s round, unhurried handwriting:

  Boaz always forgets to take his blood pressure pills. He needs to take them in the morning and at night before bed, and in the morning he has to take half a cholesterol pill. He shouldn’t put black pepper or a lot of salt on his salads, and he should eat low-fat cheese and no steak. He’s allowed fish and chicken, but not strongly spiced. And he shouldn’t gorge himself on sweets. Osnat.

  P.S. He should drink less black coffee.

  Ariella Barash wrote a reply to Osnat in her sharply angled, nervous handwriting and put it in her mailbox:

  Thank you. It was very decent of you to write to me. Boaz also has heartburn, but he says it’s nothing. I’ll try to do everything you ask, but he’s not easy and he couldn’t care less about his health. He couldn’t care less about lots of things. You know. Ariella B.

  Osnat wrote:

  If you don’t let him eat fried, sour, or spicy foods, he won’t have heartburn. Osnat.

  Ariella Barash replied several days later:

  I often ask myself, what did we do? He suppresses his feelings and mine keep changing. He tolerates my dog but can’t stand the cat. When he comes home from the garage in the afternoon, he asks me, So what happened today? Then he takes a shower, drinks some black coffee, and sits down in my armchair to read the papers. When I tried giving him tea instead of coffee, he got angry and grumbled that I should stop trying to be his mother. Then he dozes in the chair, the papers fall on the floor, and he wakes up at seven to listen to the news on the radio. He pets the dog while he listens, mumbling some indistinct words of endearment. But if the cat should jump onto his lap asking for affection, he heaves him off with such disgust that I cringe. When I asked him to fix a stuck drawer, he not only fixed the drawer, but he also took apart and reassembled two wardrobe doors that squeaked, and asked with a laugh if he should fix the floor or the roof too. I ask myself what it was about him that attracted me and sometimes still does, but I have no clear answer. Even after his shower, his nails are black with machine oil and his hands rough and scratched. And after he shaves, there’s still stubble on his chin. Maybe it’s that constant dozing of his—even when he’s awake he seems to be dozing—that tempts me to try and wake him. But I manage to wake him up for only a short while, you know how, and that doesn’t always happen either. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about you, Osnat, and despise myself and wonder if there can be any forgiveness for what I did to you. Sometimes I tell myself that maybe Osnat didn’t really care so much, maybe she didn’t love him? It’s hard to know. You might think that I actually chose to do that to you. But we don’t really have a choice. This whole business of attraction between a man and a woman seems suddenly strange and even a bit ridiculous. Do you think so too? If you had children, you and I would have suffered a lot more. And what about him? What does he actually feel? How can anybody tell? You know so well what he should and shouldn’t eat. But do you know what he feels? Or whether he feels at all? I once asked him if he has any regrets and he said, “Look, you can see for yourself that I’m here with you and not with her.” I want you to know, Osnat, that almost every night after he falls asleep, I lie awake in bed and look at the moonlight coming into our dark bedroom through the crack in the curtains and ask myself what would’ve happened if I’d been you. I’m drawn to your stillness. If only I could absorb some of that stillness. Sometimes I get up and dress and walk to the door, thinking that I’ll go to you in the middle of the night and explain it all, but what can I explain? I stand on the porch for ten minutes, look up at the clear night sky, locate the Plough, then get undressed again and go back to lying awake in bed. He’s snoring peacefully and I feel a sudden longing to be somewhere else entirely. Maybe even in your room with you. But please understand, this only happens to me at night when I’m lying awake and can’t fall asleep and don’t understand what happened or why, and I just feel such an intense closeness to you. I’d like to work in the laundry with you, for example. Just the two of us. I always carry both your short notes in my pocket and take them out to read over and over again. I want you to know how much I value every word you wrote and also, even more, how impressed I am by what you didn’t write. People on the kibbutz talk about us. They’re surprised at Boaz; they say that I just walked past, leaned down, and plucked him away from you and that he, Boaz, couldn’t care less about which apartment he goes to after work or which bed he sleeps in. Roni Shindlin winked at me near the office one day, grinned, and said, So, Mona Lisa, still waters run deep, eh? I didn’t answer him and walked away in shame. Later, at home, I cried. Sometimes at night I cry, after he falls asleep, not becau
se of him or not only because of him, but because of me and because of you. As if something bad and ugly happened to both of us that can’t be fixed. Sometimes I ask him: What, Boaz? And he says: Nothing. I’m attracted to that blankness—as if he has nothing, as if he came straight from a desert of solitude. And then—but why am I telling you this? After all, it hurts you to hear it and I don’t want to add to your pain. Just the opposite; I want to share your loneliness the way I wanted to touch his for a moment. It’s almost one in the morning now, he’s asleep, curled up in fetal position, the dog at his feet, and the cat is lying here on the table, his yellow eyes following the movement of my hand as I keep writing and writing by the light of a gooseneck lamp. I know it’s pointless, that I have to stop writing, that you won’t even read this note, which has stretched to four pages. You’ll probably tear it up and throw it away. Maybe you’ll think I’ve lost my mind, and I really have. Let’s meet and talk? Not about Boaz’s diet or the medicine he needs to take. (I really do try not to let him forget. I try, but don’t always succeed. You know that stubbornness of his, which seems like disdain but is more like indifference.) We could talk about totally different things. Like the seasons of the year, for example, or even the star-filled sky of these summer nights: I’m interested in stars and nebulas. Maybe you are too? I’m waiting for you to write a note telling me what you think, Osnat. Two words will do. I’m waiting. Ariella B.

  To this letter, which was waiting in her mailbox, Osnat chose not to reply. She read it twice, folded it up, and put it in a drawer. Now she’s standing utterly still, looking out of her window. Three kittens are by the fence: one is busy biting its paw; another is crouching or maybe dozing, but with ears pricked suspiciously, as if catching a thin sound; and the third is chasing its tail, constantly falling over and rolling softly onto its back because it’s so young. A gentle breeze is blowing, just enough to cool a cup of tea. Osnat moves away from the window and sits down on the sofa, back straight, hands on her knees, eyes closed. It’ll be evening soon and she’ll listen to light music on the radio and read a book. Then she’ll undress, fold her after-work clothes neatly, lay out tomorrow’s work clothes, shower, get into bed, and go to sleep. Her nights are dreamless now, and she wakes before the alarm clock rings. The pigeons wake her.

  Between Friends

  IN THE EARLY HOURS, the first rain of the season began to fall on the kibbutz houses, its fields and orchards. The fresh smell of damp earth and clean leaves filled the air. The rain rattled along the gutters and washed the dust off the red roofs and tin sheds. At dawn, a gentle mist enveloped the buildings, and the flowers in the gardens sparkled with beads of water. A redundant lawn sprinkler continued its sputtering. A child’s wet red tricycle stood diagonally across a path. From the treetops came the sharp, astonished cries of birds.

  The rain woke Nahum Asherov from a fitful sleep. For several moments after waking, he thought he heard tapping on the shutters as if someone had come to tell him something. He sat up in his bed and listened intently until he realized that the first rain had come. Today, he’d go there, sit Edna down, look her directly in the eyes, and speak to her. About everything. And to David Dagan, too. He couldn’t just let it pass.

  But what could he actually say to him? Or to her?

  Nahum Asherov, a widower of about fifty, was Kibbutz Yekhat’s electrician. Edna was his only remaining child after his older son, Yishai, had been killed a few years earlier in a retaliatory raid. A strong-minded young woman, black-eyed and olive-skinned, she had turned seventeen in the spring and was a senior at the kibbutz school. Every afternoon she would come from the dorm room she shared with three other girls to visit her father. She would sit across from him in an armchair, hugging her shoulders as if she were always cold. Even in summer, she would hug herself that way. She would stay with him for about an hour until dusk fell, make coffee, prepare them a plate of peeled, sliced fruit, and they would chat quietly about the news on the radio or her studies, before she left to spend the rest of the evening with her friends, or perhaps without them. Nahum didn’t know and didn’t ask about her social life, and she didn’t volunteer. He once heard something about a fleeting relationship with Dubi the lifeguard, but the rumor died down. He and his daughter never talked about themselves, except for superficial things. Edna would say, for example, “You have to go to the clinic. I don’t like that cough of yours.”

  Nahum would say, “We’ll see. Maybe next week. This week we’re installing a new generator in the brooder house at the chicken coop.”

  Sometimes they would talk about music, which they both loved. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all, but played Schubert on the old gramophone. They never spoke about the death of Edna’s mother or brother. Nor did they bring up childhood memories, or future plans. They had an unspoken agreement not to touch on feelings, nor to touch each other. Not even lightly: not a hand on a shoulder, not the brush of fingers on an arm. Standing at the door, about to leave, Edna would say, “Bye, Dad. Don’t forget to go to the clinic. I’ll come again tomorrow or the day after.” And Nahum would say, “Yes. Stop by. And take care of yourself. See you later.”

  In a few months, Edna, along with all her classmates, would be going into the army. Since she had taught herself Arabic, she would be serving in the Intelligence Corps.

  Just a few days before the first rain, Kibbutz Yekhat had been shocked when Edna Asherov packed up her clothes and belongings, left the dorm, and moved in with David Dagan, a teacher her father’s age. David Dagan was one of the kibbutz founders and leaders, an articulate, solidly built man with powerful shoulders, a short, sinewy neck, and a full, neatly trimmed mustache that was threaded with gray. He had a tendency to argue ironically and assertively in a deep voice. Almost everyone accepted his authority when it came to ideological issues, as well as to matters of daily life, mainly because he was endowed with razor-sharp logic and irresistible powers of persuasion. He would interrupt you in the middle of a sentence, put his hand warmly on your shoulder, and say firmly: Hang on; just give me a minute so we can set things straight. He was a devout Marxist, but he loved listening to cantorial music. For many years now, David Dagan had been the kibbutz history teacher. He changed lovers frequently and had six children with four different women from our kibbutz and others in the area.

  David Dagan was about fifty and Edna, who had been his student the previous year, was only seventeen. No wonder the gossip swirled wildly around Roni Shindlin’s regular table in the dining hall. Names like Abishag the Shunammite, Lolita, and Bluebeard were tossed about. Yoskeh M. said that such a disgrace shook the very foundations of the school. How could it be—a teacher and his young student? They ought to convene an immediate meeting of the Education Committee. Yoskha disagreed: After all, you can’t argue with love; anyway, we’ve always advocated free love here. And Rivka R. said: How could she do something like this to her father, after all he’s lost? Poor Nahum, he just won’t be able to bear it.

  “The entire young generation suddenly wants to go to college,” David Dagan said in his deep voice from his table in the dining hall. “No one wants to work in the fields and orchards anymore.” Then he added harshly, “We have to draw a line somewhere. Does anyone disagree?”

  Although everyone in the kibbutz felt sorry for Nahum Asherov, no one spoke up. Behind Edna’s and David Dagan’s backs, they said: It will end in tears. And they said: He is really, really out of line. He was always out of line when it came to women. And as for her, we’re simply shocked.

  Nahum said nothing. It seemed to him that everyone who passed him on the kibbutz paths wondered what he would do, or why he wasn’t doing it: Your daughter has been seduced; how can you keep silent? He tried in vain to find comfort in his progressive views of love and freedom. But sorrow, embarrassment, and shame filled his heart. Every morning he would go to his workshop, fix electric lights and cookers, replace old plugs with new ones, repair broken appliances. He would go out to the yard, a long ladder over his shoulder,
toolbox in hand, to perform his duties, such as running a new power line to the kindergarten. Morning, noon, and night he would appear in the dining hall to stand mutely in the line at the serving counter, load his meal onto a tray, and then sit down in a corner to eat, preferably in silence. He always sat in the same corner. People spoke to him gently, as if they were speaking to someone who was terminally ill, avoiding any mention or even hint of his problem, and he would answer briefly in his quiet, composed, slightly hoarse voice. To himself he said: One more day and I’ll go and talk to her. And to him, too. After all, she’s still a child.