Where the Jackals Howl

by Amos Oz

  For many years Jephthah dwelled in the mountains of the desert, and even when he was surrounded by tumultuous throngs of men he was always alone. One day the elders of Israel came down to ask him to fight for them against the Ammonites. They gathered up the hems of their robes because of the dust of the desert and went down on their knees before the wild man. Jephthah stood facing them, listening in silence, and he surveyed their broken pride as though it were a wound. Sorrow suddenly took hold of him, not sorrow for the elders, perhaps not sorrow at all, but something resembling gentleness, and gently he said to them:

  “The son of a whore will be your leader.”

  And voicelessly the elders echoed:

  “Our leader.”

  All this took place in the desert, outside the land of the Ammonites, outside the land of Israel, deep in the silence amid shifting surroundings: sand, mist, low scrub, white mountains, and black boulders.

  Jephthah defeated Ammon, returned to his father’s estate, and fulfilled his vow. He was certain that he was being confronted with a test, a test that he would withstand. As soon as he had bound his daughter he would be told: Lay not thine hand upon the girl.

  Afterward he returned to the desert.

  He had loved Pitdah and trusted the night sounds that filled the desert every night. Jephthah the Gileadite died in the mountains in the place which is called the Land of Tob. Some men are born and come into the world to see with their own eyes the light of day and the light of night and to call the light light. But sometimes a man comes and traverses the length of his days in gloom and at his death he leaves behind him a trail of foam and rage. At Jephthah’s death his father dug a grave and over it he said:

  “He judged Israel for six years by the grace of God.”

  And then he added:

  “The grace of God is vanity.”

  For four days every year, the daughters of Israel go to the mountains to lament Pitdah daughter of Jephthah. An old blind man follows them at a distance. The dry desert winds snatch the tears from among his wrinkles. But all the winds cannot take away the salt, and it dries, scorching, on the old man’s cheeks. To the mountains go the daughters of Israel to send forth their wailing to the desert, lands of fox and asp and hyena, wide expanses eaten by white light. Bitter-hearted men, wanderers of the Land of Tob, hear their weeping in the night and respond from the distance with a bitter song.

  2

  THE PLACE of Jephthah’s birth was at the edge of the land. The estate of Gilead the Gileadite was at the far end of the tribe’s patrimony. Here the desert licked at the sown land, and sometimes it would penetrate into the orchards and touch both men and cattle. In the morning, as soon as the sun burst over the eastern mountains, it would begin to scorch the whole land. At midday it fell like blazing hail and smote everything with outpoured wrath. At the end of the day the sun descended westward to burn the mountain heights to the west. The boulders changed color and took on from a distance the semblance of desperate movement, as though they were being roasted alive.

  But at night the land was calm. Cool breezes spread over it gently, like a caress. Dew covered the boulders. The night breeze was merciful. This mercy was transitory, and yet it returned ever and again, like the cycle of birth and death, like wind and water, alternating hatred and longing, a shadow that came and went.

  Gilead the Gileadite, the lord of the estate, was a tall, broad man. The sun had scorched the skin of his face. He strove with all his might to subdue his spirit, but even so he was a tyrant. His words always left his mouth reproachfully or in a venomous whisper, as though whenever he spoke he had to silence other voices. If he laid his strong rough hand on the head of one of his sons, on the neck of his horse, or on a woman’s hips, they knew without looking that it was Gilead. Sometimes he would touch an inanimate object, not because he wished to say or do anything, but because he was smitten with doubts: the substantiality of all things suddenly filled him with wonder. And sometimes he sought to handle things that cannot be touched—sounds, longings, smells. When night came Gilead would sometimes say suddenly: Night has come. Such words are surely unnecessary. In the evening he would summon his household priest to read to him from a holy book, and he would shrink and listen. Even in trivial matters he would turn to God and ask for the birth of a bull calf or the repair of cracked earthenware pitchers. At times he would laugh for no reason at all.

  All these things inspired great fear in his servants. Whenever loud hoarse laughter burst from him in the fields at midday in midsummer, the slaves laughed with him out of fear. Or sometimes in the night Gilead was suddenly overcome by a cold hatred of the cold starlight, and he would shout aloud and assemble all the men and women in the courtyard. Before their eyes he would stoop and pick up a large stone, and his eyes shone white in the dark as though he meant to hurl the stone and fell a man. Then slowly and painfully, as though the breath were being squeezed out of him, he would bend and replace the stone in the dust of the courtyard, as gently as if he were placing glass on glass, taking great care not to hurt the stone or the dust or the silence of the night, for the nights in that place were quiet, and any sounds that passed through them were like dark shadows moving silently beneath the surface of the waters.

  Gilead’s wife was the offspring of priests and merchants, and her name was Nehushtah daughter of Zebulun. She was white as chalk and timorous. In her youth in her father’s house, she had known dreams and darkness. She was passionately fond of small objects, little creatures, buttons and butterflies, earrings, morning dew, apple blossom, cat’s-paws, soft lamb’s wool, slivers of light shimmering in water.

  Gilead took Nehushtah to wife because he thought he detected in her signs of an inner thirst which nothing in the world could ever quench or assuage. Whenever she said, “Look, a stone,” or “Look at that valley,” she seemed to be saying, “Come, come.” He yearned to touch this thirst the way a man may suddenly ache to feel some idea or desire with his very fingertips. And Nehushtah followed after Gilead because she saw in him sorrow and strength.

  Nehushtah longed to dissolve his strength and penetrate his sorrow and at the same time submit to them. However, Gilead and Nehushtah were unable to do all these things to each other because, after all, body and soul are no more than body and soul, and living men and women are not able to plumb their depths. A few months after she arrived at Mizpeh of Gilead she was already in the habit of standing alone at the window pleading with her eyes, hoping that across the wilderness and the mountains she might descry the plains of black earth from which she had been brought here to the desert. In the evenings she said to him:

  “When will you take me.”

  And Gilead would answer:

  “But I have already taken you.”

  “When shall we ride away from here.”

  “All places are the same.”

  “But I cannot endure any more.”

  “Who can. Bring me wine and apples and leave me, go to your room or sit at the window if you like; just stop staring into the darkness like that.”

  After years went by, after she had given birth to Jamin, Jemuel, and Azur, Nehushtah fell ill and seemed to be in the grip of a sensuous decay. She was already white as chalk, and her skin grew ever finer. She hated the desert that blew in at the window of her room all day long and at night whispered to her, “Lost lost,” and she also hated the savage songs of the shepherds and the lowing of the beasts in the courtyard and in her dreams. Sometimes she called her husband a dead man and her children orphans. And sometimes she would say of herself, Surely I, too, have long been dead, and she would sit for three days at the window without tasting food or water. The place was very remote, and from the window she could see by day only sand dunes and mountains and at night stars and darkness.

  Three sons did Nehushtah daughter of Zebulun bear to Gilead the Gileadite: Jamin, Jemuel, and Azur. She was white and her skin grew ever finer. She could not endure the man’s moods. If she complained and wept, Gilead would raise his vo
ice and shout and dash the pitcher of wine to clattering smithereens. If she sat silently at the window stroking the cat or playing with earrings and brooches on her lap, Gilead would stand and watch and laugh hoarsely, exuding a shaggy smell. At times he would take pity on her and say:

  “Perhaps the king will hear of your sorrow. Perhaps he will send chariots and horses to take you to him. Perhaps today or tomorrow torches will appear in the distance and the outrunners will arrive.”

  And Nehushtah would say:

  “There is no king. There are no outrunners. Why should anyone run. There is nothing.”

  At these words Gilead would be filled with compassion for her and terrible anger at himself and at what he had done to her, and he would beat his chest with his fists and curse himself and his memory. In the midst of his compassion he would suddenly despise her, or himself and his compassion for her, and he would shut himself up and hide his face. For many days she would not see him, and then one night toward the dawn, when she had despaired of him, he would come and throw himself upon her in love. In his love-making he would purse his lips like a man straining to break an iron chain with his bare hands.

  He was a moody and hopeless man. At night, if the torchlight fell on his face it looked like one of the masks with which the pagan priests covered their faces. It may happen that a man traverses all the days of his life like an exile in a strange land to which he did not choose to come and from which he cannot escape.

  In the winter Gilead was filled with melancholy. He would lie on his back for a day or a week with his eyes fixed on the arched ceiling, staring blankly and seeing nothing. Then Nehushtah would sometimes enter his bedchamber and fondle him with her pale fingers as if he were one of her pet animals. Her lips were as white as a sickness, and he yielded his body to them as a weary traveler yields himself to a harlot in a wayside inn. And upon both of them there was silence.

  But when mounting vigor roused his body against him, Nehushtah took refuge in her innermost chamber, and Gilead would storm into the women’s quarters to relieve on the maidservants the pressure of the boiling venom. All night long the quarters were alive with wet sounds and low tremulous moaning and the squeals of the maids, until the dawn, when Gilead would burst forth and rudely awaken the household priest. Cowering at his feet, he would sob: Unclean, unclean. Then, with the tears still wet on his face, he would knock the priest flat on his back with a punch, and out he would rush to saddle his horse and gallop away into the eastern hills.

  In the women’s quarters there was a little Ammonite concubine named Pitdah daughter of Eitam, whom the Gileadites had snatched in the course of one of their raids on the Ammonite settlements beyond the desert. Pitdah was a strong, slender girl whose eyes were shaded by thick lashes. If she directed her green-eyed gaze at her lord’s lips or at his chest, if she stood facing him in the courtyard with her fingertips fluttering over her belly, he would tremble and curse the little servantgirl. Bellowing aloud, he would clasp both her hands in one of his and bite her lips until the two of them screamed together. Her hips were never still, and even when she came and stood at the stable door to inhale the smell of horses’ sweat, they seemed to be dancing to a secret inner rhythm. Fire and ice sparkled green in the pupils of her eyes. And she always walked barefoot.

  In time it transpired that the Ammonite woman practiced sorcery. This was disclosed by her rivals, who had seen her at night brewing herbs in the night with a gleam in her eye. Pitdah called to the dead at night and summoned them to her, because she had been dedicated from her childhood as a priestess of Milcom the god of Ammon. The trees in the orchard rustled secretively in the darkness and the doors of the house shrieked in the wind. She worked her magic in the cellars at night and the brew bubbled and boiled and the woman’s shadow quivered and flickered over rotting saddles and casks of wine, on wooden threshing sledges and iron chains.

  When her doings came to light, Gilead ordered her to be given a leather flask of water and sent away into the desert to the dead to whom she called at night, for it is written: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  But at first light the lord saddled his horse and rode out and brought her home. He cursed her gods and struck her face with the back of his rough hand.

  Pitdah blew in his face and cursed him and his people and his God. A hot green sparkle glinted in the pupil of her eye.

  Suddenly they both laughed and went inside. The door closed behind them while outside the horses neighed.

  Gilead’s wife Nehushtah urged her three sons against the Ammonite woman because she could endure no more. She rose from her bed and stood at the window in her white robe, with her back to the room and her sons and her face to the desert, and she whispered to them, You see your mother dying before your eyes and you are silent: do not be silent.

  But Jamin and Jemuel feared their father and would not raise a finger.

  Only Azur, the youngest of her sons, hearkened to her and plotted against the Ammonite servantgirl. This Azur devoted all his days to the dogs of the estate. He it was who fed and watered them, taught them tricks, and trained them to go straight for the throat. In Mizpeh of Gilead they said of him: That Azur understands the dogs’ tongue and can howl or bark in the dark like one of them. Azur had a small gray wolf cub that ate from his dish and drank from his cup, and both of them had sharp white teeth.

  One day at the beginning of autumn, when Gilead had gone away to another field, Azur set his dogs on Pitdah the Ammonite concubine. He stood in the shade of the house and let out a guttural growl when Pitdah went past, and the dogs, with the wolf cub in their midst, darted from the dungheap and almost tore her apart.

  At nightfall Gilead returned home and gave his son Azur over to a cruel slave, shriveled and shorn, to take him out to the desert, as shall be done to a murderer.

  In the night the wild beasts howled, their eyes gleaming yellow in the darkness beyond the stockade.

  This time, too, Gilead set out on horseback at the end of the night and brought his son back. He struck and cursed his son just as he had struck and cursed his concubine.

  After these things it came to pass that the Ammonite woman cast a spell upon the boy Azur: for forty days he howled and barked and could not speak a word.

  Upon her lord Pitdah also cast a dark spirit, because he had spared Azur and she did not forgive him this pardon. A brooding gloom fell on the master of the house which only lifted when he consumed large draughts of wine.

  When Pitdah bore Jephthah, Gilead the Gileadite shut himself up in the cellar of the house for four days and five nights. All through these nights he clinked cup on cup, drained them both, and filled them again. On the fifth night he collapsed on the ground. In his dream he saw a black horseman with a lance of black fire, mounted on a black horse, while a floating woman who was neither Pitdah nor Nehushtah but a stranger held the reins; horse and rider followed her silently. Gilead did not forget this dream, because he believed, like some other men, that dreams are sent to us from that place from which man comes and to which he returns through his death.

  When the child Jephthah grew old enough to leave the women’s quarters and walk about in the courtyard, he learned to hide from his father. He would shelter in a haystack until the heavy man had passed and his sinister footsteps had receded, so that he should not find him. Until Gilead disappeared the infant would chew straw or hay or his own finger and whisper to himself: Quiet, quiet.

  If the child was so absorbed in his dreams that it was too late for him to hide, Gilead the Gileadite would catch him and wave him aloft between his frightening hands and moo at him, and he smelled sweaty and shaggy, so that the child howled with pain and fear and planted his tiny teeth in his father’s shoulder in a vain effort to free himself from the powerful grasp.

  3

  JEPHTHAH WAS born facing the desert. The estate of Gilead the Gileadite was the last of all the tribe’s patrimony. At its fringe began the desert, and beyond the desert was the land of the Ammonites.
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br />   Gilead the Gileadite possessed flocks of sheep, and he also had fields and vineyards whose margins were yellowed by the desert. The house was surrounded by a high stone wall. The house itself was also built of black volcanic stone. An ancient vine sprawled over its walls. On summer days people seemed to come and go through a thicket of vines; the foliage was so dense that the stone walls of the house could not be seen in summer.

  Toward morning sheep bells could be heard, and the shepherds’ pipes spread vague enchantments, the water whispered quietly in the irrigation channels, and a gray light shone in the wells. There was calm toward morning over all Gilead’s estate.

  Within the calm rippled a suppressed yearning. The shade of large trees concealed chilly twilight.

  But every night dark, impassive shepherds guarded the farmstead against bears and nomads and Ammonite marauders. All night long torches flamed on the rooftop and a pack of lean hounds lurked in the darkness of the orchards. The household priest flitted like a dark shadow along the fences in the night, conjuring evil spirits.

  From his earliest childhood Jephthah knew all the sounds of the night. He knew them in his blood, sounds of wind and wolf and bird of prey, and human sounds disguised as wind and fox and bird.

  Beyond the fence lived another world, which silently yearned by day and night to raze the house to the ground, gnawing slyly and with infinite patience, like a stream slowly eating away at its banks. It was unimaginably soft and quiet, softer than a mist, quieter than a breeze, and yet ever-present: powerful and invisible.