Between Friends

by Amos Oz

  After the lesson, Osnat walked Martin and the stroller holding his oxygen tank back home. He was very tired, his body ached, and his breathing was so labored that he decided to forgo the half-cigarette he’d planned to smoke later that evening. Osnat was barely able to convince him to eat some yogurt; then she helped him take off his shoes and sit down on the bed, with his back leaning against several pillows, to wait for sleep that might or might not come. After playing two songs on her recorder for him, she said good night, took the dinner tray and placed it on the porch steps, then went out for her evening walk along the cypress-lined avenue. At night, she heard him coughing through the thin wall that separated their beds, but as she was putting on her robe to go and check on him, the coughing stopped and didn’t start up again until morning.

  The second Esperanto lesson was postponed because a day before it was scheduled to take place, Martin Vandenberg’s condition worsened and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and placed in an oxygen tent in the intensive care unit. During morning visiting hours, Leah Shindlin, as representative of the Health Committee, sat at his bedside, and in the afternoon, Osnat took her place. Martin’s eyes were closed most of the time. He would occasionally mumble something or smile. His eyes looked sunken and his steel-wool hair was unkempt. When spoken to, he just nodded. Several times, he managed to say some words of thanks to the women who watched over him. In the late afternoon, he complained that he didn’t have the strength to focus his thoughts. And once, when two brisk nurses came in to change his pajamas, he grinned suddenly and told them that death itself was an anarchist. “Death is not awed by status, possessions, power, or titles; we are all equal in its eyes.” The words were fragmented and indistinct, but Osnat, who was sitting beside him, understood him and felt how precious Martin was to her; she had to find a way to tell him that now. But the words didn’t come, so she merely held his warm fingers between her small, cold hands.

  Five days later, his lungs stopped absorbing the oxygen that flowed into them, and he choked to death. Osnat, who was sitting beside him, stroked his forehead lightly and closed his eyes before she went out to the phone in the corridor to call Yoav Carni and tell him. Yoav sent a van with a driver to bring Osnat back home and transport the body to the kibbutz clubhouse, where, covered with a black sheet, it remained all night until the funeral the next morning. On the bulletin board in the dining hall, Yoav hung a small notice that he’d pecked out with one finger on the office typewriter:

  Our friend Martin Vandenberg passed away this

  evening.

  The funeral will be held tomorrow morning at ten.

  If anyone knows whether Martin has any relatives, please let Yoav know as soon as possible.

  No relatives were found and only the members of Kibbutz Yekhat attended the funeral. It was a soft blue morning and the mourners were not bothered by the heat because a pleasant breeze blowing in from the west cooled their skin. The tops of the cypress trees that encircled the cemetery trembled slightly in the breeze. A swarm of butterflies fluttered in the air, bearing the smells of the fields, the orchards, and a distant fire. Fifty or sixty kibbutz members were there, all wearing their work clothes, as the funeral was taking place on a workday. They stood around the open grave and waited. There was no religious ceremony because Martin had left the Social Committee a note asking to be buried without a cantor or prayers.

  David Dagan, the teacher, said a few words in the name of all the members. He described Martin Vandenberg as an anarchist who lived his entire life according to his beliefs. “Until almost his last day,” David Dagan said, “Martin worked in the shoe repair shop as if he had taken upon himself symbolic responsibility for every step we took.”

  Then Yoav Carni, representing the secretariat, gave a short eulogy. He pointed out that Martin had been alone all his life, a survivor who had hidden in Holland during the Holocaust. “He saw with his own eyes how low human beings could sink, but still he came to us imbued with belief in people and in a future burning with the bright flame of justice. We were often surprised,” Yoav said, “at his honesty and devotion to his ideals. He was an intellectual and also a man who believed in the importance of physical labor, a man of principle and of uncompromising hard work.” Then Yoav spoke in praise of Osnat, who had tended to Martin devotedly when he was sick, and ended his speech with the hope that Martin Vandenberg and all he stood for would continue to be a source of inspiration for us all.

  After the eulogies, at Yoav’s request Osnat played one of Martin’s favorite songs on her recorder. Some of the mourners hummed quietly along with her and others just moved their lips.

  Zvi Provizor, Nahum Asherov, and Roni Shindlin, together with several other members, shoveled earth onto the cover of the coffin. The earth raised dust as it hit the coffin with a dry, hollow sound. Roni Shindlin stumbled on the mound of earth and would have fallen if David Dagan hadn’t grabbed him by the arm and steadied him. Osnat thought about the word uncompromising that Yoav had used to describe the deceased and decided she didn’t like it. Nevertheless, she had warm feelings for everyone present at the funeral, and though she didn’t know where that warmth stemmed from, she knew she would feel it for a long time to come.

  The coffin was now completely covered and a small cloud of dust hovered over the new grave. Roni Shindlin said, “That’s it.” Then added, “It’s a real shame he’s gone. There aren’t many people like him left.”

  He collected the five shovels they’d used to fill the grave, loaded them on a small wheelbarrow, and turned to go. The other mourners followed him, leaving the cemetery in small groups that broke up as each person went to his place of work. David Dagan reminded Moshe that the next lesson would begin in fifteen minutes. And he left. Moshe waited two or three minutes and he too left. Osnat lingered for a while beside the small mound of earth and listened to the chirping of the birds and the rattle of a distant tractor, and she felt a sense of peace, as if this hadn’t been a funeral, but a good, satisfying conversation. A sudden desire came over her to say one or two quiet words in Esperanto, but she hadn’t had time to learn anything and she had no idea what to say.

  1

  THE STRANGER WAS not quite a stranger. Something in his appearance repelled and yet fascinated Arieh Zelnik from first glance, if it really was the first glance: he felt he remembered that face, the arms that came down nearly to the knees, but vaguely, as though from a lifetime ago.

  The man parked his car right in front of the gate. It was a dusty, beige car, with a motley patchwork of stickers on the rear window and even on the side windows: a varied collection of declarations, warnings, slogans and exclamation marks. He locked the car, rattling each door vigorously to make sure they were all properly shut. Then he patted the hood lightly once or twice, as though the car were an old horse that you tethered to the gatepost and patted affectionately to let him know he wouldn’t have long to wait. Then the man pushed the gate open and strode toward the vine-shaded front veranda. He moved in a jerky, almost painful way, as if walking on hot sand.

  From his swing seat in a corner of the veranda Arieh Zelnik could watch without being seen. He observed the uninvited guest from the moment he parked his car. But try as he might, he could not remember where or when he had come across him before. Was it on a foreign trip? In the army? At work? At university? Or even at school? The man’s face had a sly, jubilant expression, as if he had just pulled off a practical joke at someone else’s expense. Somewhere behind or beneath the stranger’s features there lurked the elusive suggestion of a familiar, disturbing face: was it someone who once harmed you, or someone to whom you yourself once did some forgotten wrong?

  Like a dream of which nine-tenths had vanished and only the tail was still visible.

  Arieh Zelnik decided not to get up to greet the newcomer but to wait for him here, on his swing seat on the front veranda.

  As the stranger hurriedly bounced and wound his way along the path that led from the gate to the veranda steps,
his little eyes darted this way and that as though he were afraid of being discovered too soon, or of being attacked by some ferocious dog that might suddenly leap out at him from the spiny bougainvillea bushes growing on either side of the path.

  The thinning flaxen hair, the turkey-wattle neck, the watery, inquisitively darting eyes, the dangling chimpanzee arms, all evoked a certain vague unease.

  From his concealed vantage point in the shade of a creeping vine, Arieh Zelnik noted that the man was large-framed but slightly flabby, as if he had just recovered from a serious illness, suggesting that he had been heavily built until quite recently, when he had begun to collapse inward and shrink inside his skin. Even his grubby beige summer jacket with its bulging pockets seemed too big for him, and hung loosely from his shoulders.

  Though it was late summer and the path was dry, the stranger paused to wipe his feet carefully on the mat at the bottom of the steps, then inspected the sole of each shoe in turn. Only once he was satisfied did he go up the steps and try the mesh screen door at the top. After tapping on it politely several times without receiving any response he finally looked around and saw the householder planted calmly on his swing seat, surrounded by large flowerpots and ferns in planters, in a corner of the veranda, in the shade of the arbor.

  The visitor smiled broadly and seemed about to bow; he cleared his throat and declared:

  “You’ve got a beautiful place here, Mr. Zelkin! Stunning! It’s a little bit of Provence in the State of Israel! Better than Provence—Tuscany! And the view! The woods! The vines! Tel Ilan is simply the loveliest village in this entire Levantine state. Very pretty! Good morning, Mr. Zelkin. I hope I’m not disturbing you, by any chance?”

  Arieh Zelnik returned the greeting drily, pointed out that his name was Zelnik, not Zelkin, and said that he was unfortunately not in the habit of buying anything from door-to-door salesmen.

  “Quite right, too!” exclaimed the other, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “How can we tell if someone is a bona fide salesman or a con man? Or, heaven forbid, a criminal who is casing the joint for some gang of burglars? But as it happens, Mr. Zelnik, I am not a salesman. I am Maftsir!”

  “Who?”

  “Maftsir. Wolff Maftsir. From the law firm Lotem and Pruzhinin. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Zelnik. I have come, sir, on a matter, how should we put it, or perhaps instead of trying to describe it, we should come straight to the point. Do you mind if I sit down? It’s a rather personal affair. Not my own personal affair, heaven forbid—if it were, I would never dream of bursting in on you like this without prior notice. Although, in fact, we did try, we certainly did, we tried several times, but your telephone number is unlisted and our letters went unanswered. Which is why we decided to try our luck with an unannounced visit, and we are very sorry for the intrusion. This is definitely not our usual practice, to intrude on the privacy of others, especially when they happen to reside in the most beautiful spot in the whole country. One way or another, as we have already remarked, this is on no account just our own personal business. No, no. By no means. In fact, quite the opposite: it concerns, how can we put it tactfully, it concerns your own personal affairs, sir. Your own personal affairs, not just ours. To be more precise, it relates to your family. Or perhaps rather to your family in a general sense, and more specifically to one particular member of your family. Would you object to us sitting and chatting for a few minutes? I promise you I’ll do my best to ensure that the whole matter does not take up more than ten minutes of your time. Although, in fact, it’s entirely up to you, Mr. Zelkin.”

  “Zelnik,” Arieh said.

  And then he said, “Sit down.”

  “Not here, over there,” he added.

  Because the fat man, or the formerly fat man, had first settled himself on the double swing seat, right next to his host, thigh to thigh. A cloud of thick smells clung to his body, smells of digestion, socks, talcum powder and armpits. A faint odor of pungent after-shave overlay the blend. Arieh Zelnik was suddenly reminded of his father, who had also covered his body odor with the pungent aroma of after-shave.

  As soon as he was told to move, the visitor rose, swaying slightly, his simian arms holding his knees, apologized and deposited his posterior, garbed in trousers that were too big for him, at the indicated spot, on a wooden bench across the garden table. It was a rustic bench, made of roughly planed planks rather like railway ties. It was important to Arieh that his sick mother should not catch sight of this visitor, not even of his back, not even of his silhouette outlined against the arbor, which was why he had seated him in a place that was not visible from the window. As for his unctuous, cantorial voice, her deafness would protect her from that.

  2

  IT WAS THREE YEARS since Arieh Zelnik’s wife, Na’ama, had gone off to visit her best friend Thelma Grant in San Diego and not come back. She had not written to say explicitly that she was leaving him, but had begun by hinting obliquely that she was not returning for a while. Six months later she had written: “I’m still staying with Thelma.” And subsequently: “No need to go on waiting for me. I’m working with Thelma in a rejuvenation studio.” And in another letter: “Thelma and I get on well together, we have the same karma.” And another time: “Our spiritual guide thinks that we shouldn’t give each other up. You’ll be fine. You’re not angry, are you?”

  Their married daughter, Hilla, wrote from Boston: “Daddy, please, don’t put pressure on Mummy. That’s my advice. Get yourself a new life.”

  And because he had long since lost contact with their elder child, their son Eldad, and he had no close friends outside the family, he had decided a year ago to get rid of his flat on Mount Carmel and move in with his mother in the old house in Tel Ilan, to live on the rent from two flats he owned in Haifa and devote himself to his hobby.

  So he had taken his daughter’s advice and got himself a new life.

  As a young man, Arieh Zelnik had served with the naval commandos. From his early childhood, he had feared no danger, no foe, no heights. But with the passage of the years he had come to dread the darkness of an empty house. That was why he had finally chosen to come back to live with his mother in the old house where he had been born and raised, on the edge of this village, Tel Ilan. His mother, Rosalia, an old lady of ninety, was deaf, very bent, and taciturn. Most of the time she let him take care of the household chores without making any demands or suggestions. Occasionally, the thought occurred to Arieh Zelnik that his mother might fall ill, or become so infirm that she could not manage without constant care, and that he would be forced to feed her, to wash her and to change her diapers. He might have to employ a nurse, and then the calm of the household would be shattered and his life would be exposed to the gaze of outsiders. And sometimes he even, or almost, looked forward to his mother’s imminent decline, so that he would be rationally and emotionally justified in transferring her to a suitable institution and he would be left in sole occupancy of the house. He would be free to get a beautiful new wife. Or, instead of finding a wife, he could play host to a string of young girls. He could even knock down some internal walls and renovate the house. A new life would begin for him.

  But in the meantime the two of them, mother and son, went on living together calmly and silently in the gloomy old house. A cleaner came every morning, bringing the shopping from a list he had given her. She tidied, cleaned and cooked, and after serving mother and son their midday meal she silently went on her way. The mother spent most of the day sitting in her room reading old books, while Arieh Zelnik listened to the radio in his own room or built model aircraft out of balsa wood.

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  About the Author

  Born in Jerusalem in 1939, AMOS OZ is the author of numerous works of fiction and essays. His international awards include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, and the Fr
ankfurt Peace Prize, and his books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Israel.