by Amos Oz
"Why haven't you got any olives? I don't mean those olives from a jar, silly, those vegetarian olives. Why haven't you got any decadent olives, the sort that make you a bit tipsy? When you find some real olives, bring me some. You can even wake me up in the middle of the night." (I did find some. Years later. But I was too shy to take her olives in the middle of the night.)
When she decided the chicken pieces were brown enough, she took them out of the frying pan and laid them on a serving dish, then she washed and dried the frying pan.
"Wait a minute, Proffy," she said. "Hang on. This is only the curtain-raiser. Meanwhile, why don't you set the table?"
Then she heated some more oil in the pan and, leaving the fragrant garlic-scented chicken pieces to wait, she fried the finely-chopped onion, and while the onion turned golden and then brown in front of my staring eyes, she added the little pieces of tomato and pepper that were waiting for her on the drainboard, sprinkled some chopped parsley over it all, and mixed the ingredients together well, as she fried them. Soon my soul was in an agony of anticipation at the delightful smells, and I thought I couldn't endure another minute, another second, another breath, but Yardena laughed and told me not to touch the rolls or anything; it would be a pity to spoil your appetite, what's the matter with you, what's your hurry, contain yourself. And she put the chicken pieces back in the frying pan and rolled them around in the oil until it soaked right through to the bone, and only then did she pour the cupful of soup over them. She waited for it to boil.
Seventy-seven years of agony went past, as slow as torture, to the limit of endurance and beyond, and, further, to the point of despair, and further still till the heart sobbed, before the stock began to bubble and boil, and the oil began to splutter and spit. Yardena turned the heat down and sprinkled on some salt and a pinch of ground black pepper. Then she put the lid on the pan, leaving a small space for the tantalizing vapors to escape. While the broth was boiling she added some little cubes of potato and some even smaller cubes of hot red pepper. She waited ruthlessly until the broth evaporated, leaving behind a heavenly thick sauce enfolding the pieces of fried chicken that seemed to have grown wings and become a psalm and a dream. The whole apartment was astonished at the bevy of powerful smells wafting from the kitchen and invading every corner like frantic rioters. Such odors had not been smelled here since the building was built.
Meanwhile, aflame with desire and anticipation and pangs of hunger, swallowing back the surging saliva, I laid the table for the two of us, facing each other like Mother and Father. I decided to leave my usual place empty. As I laid the table I could see Yardena out of the corner of my eye tossing the chicken pieces in the frying pan, to remind them who they were, tasting the sauce, adjusting the seasoning, spooning it over the food, which had taken on a wonderful hue of burnished brass or old gold, and her arms, her shoulders, and her hips came alive in a kind of dance inside her dress, protected by my mother's apron, as though the chicken pieces were shaking her while she shook them.
When we had eaten our fill, we sat facing each other picking at a bunch of sweet grapes; then we devoured half a watermelon and drank coffee together even though I told Yardena honestly and bravely that I wasn't allowed coffee, especially in the evening before going to bed.
Yardena said:
"They're not here."
And she also said:
"Now for a cigarette. Just me. Not you. Find me an ashtray." But there was no ashtray, and there couldn't be one, because smoking was forbidden in our apartment. Always. Under all circumstances. Even visitors were forbidden to smoke. Father was fundamentally opposed to the very idea of smoking. He also held firmly to the view that visitors should observe the rules of the house, like a traveler in a foreign land. He supported this view with a proverb that he was fond of citing, about how to behave when in Rome. (Years later, when I visited Rome for the first time, I was astonished to discover that it was full of smokers. But when Father said Rome, he generally meant ancient Rome, not the Rome of today.)
Yardena smoked two cigarettes and drank two cups of coffee (I was given only one). While she smoked she stuck her legs out in front of her and rested her feet on my chair, which was empty this evening. I decided it was my duty to get up at once, clear the table, put the leftover food away in the icebox, and wash up. The only thing I couldn't do was to take the garbage outside, because of the curfew.
Who has ever spent a whole night alone in an apartment with a girl while outside there is a night curfew and all the streets are deserted and the whole city is bolted and barred? When you know that nobody in the world can disturb you? And a deep, wide silence hangs over the night like mist?
I stood over the kitchen sink, scouring the bottom of the frying pan with steel wool, with my back to Yardena and my soul the exact opposite (its back to the sink and the frying pan and all its being facing toward Yardena). Suddenly I said quickly, with my eyes tight closed, as if I were swallowing a pill:
"Anyway I'm sorry about what happened that time. On the roof. It won't ever happen again."
Yardena said to my back:
"Of course it will. And how! Only at least try to make it a bit less stupid than the way it was that time."
A single fly was sitting on the edge of a cup. I wished I could change places with it.
Then, still in the kitchen (Yardena used her saucer as an ashtray), she asked me to explain to her, in a nutshell, what my row with her brother was all about. Sorry, not row, rift.
My duty was to say nothing. To maintain the cloak of secrecy, even under torture. I had seen in lots of films how women extract secrets even from very strong men, like Gary Cooper, or even Douglas Fairbanks. And in Bible class Mr. Gihon said, at his wife's expense: "Samson was destroyed because he fell into the clutches of a wicked woman." You might have thought that after all the times I had seethed with rage watching films in which the men succumbed and spilled the beans to women, and something terrible always happened, the same thing definitely would not happen to me. But that night I couldn't stop myself either: it was as though another Proffy had sprouted inside me and started gushing out light-headedly, as it says in the Bible, as though suddenly all the fountains of the great deep were opened. This other Proffy started telling her everything and I could not stop him, even though I tried as hard as I could and I pleaded with him to stop, but he only shrugged and made fun of me, saying Yardena already knows anyway, she explicitly said "your Underground," Ben Hur is the traitor, and you and I are both in the clear.
This inner Proffy hid nothing from Yardena. The Underground. The split. The rocket. Mother's locked drawer and Father's Perfidious Albion slogans. The package. The temptation. The seduction. Not even Sergeant Dunlop. Was I high on some essence or drug that Yardena had slipped into the fried chicken pieces? Or her witches' brew of a sauce? Or drunk on her coffee, which was strong and harsh? That was how the lame detective was drugged in the film A Panther in the Basement. (But he was a secondary character. Naturally they failed to drug the hero himself.)
What if she's a double agent? Or suppose she's been sent by Ben Hur's special unit for Internal Security and Interrogation? (To which the inner Proffy answered mockingly: "So what? What secrets are there left to keep between a traitor and a traitress?")
Yardena said:
"That's cute."
And then she said:
"What's special about you is that whenever you describe something I can see it in front of my eyes."
And she touched me on my left shoulder, quite close to the base of my arm, and added:
"Don't be sad. Just wait quietly and don't suck up to him. Ben Hur will have to come back to you because without you, just think, who has he got left to dominate? And he simply has to dominate someone. He can't get to sleep at night without dominating somebody first. That's the trouble with dominating: once you've started you can't stop. Don't you worry, Proffy, because I don't think you'll catch it. Even though it is quite contagious. And besides—"
She stopped. She lit another cigarette and smiled, not to me but perhaps to herself, a sort of smile of inner amusement, a smile that doesn't know it exists.
"And besides what?" I dared to ask.
"Nothing. Undergrounds and all that sort of thing. Remind me what we were talking about. Weren't we talking about undergrounds?"
The right answer was: No. Because before she stopped to light her cigarette we had been talking about the urge to dominate. Despite which, I said:
"Yes. Undergrounds."
Yardena said:
"Undergrounds. Forget about undergrounds. You'd be better advised to go on peeping, only more cleverly than that time. And better still, Proffy, instead of peeping, you should learn to ask. If you know how to ask, you don't need to peep. The trouble is that there's almost no man who knows how to ask, except in the movies. That's how it is in this country, anyway. Instead of asking, either they get down on all fours and beg, or they put pressure on you, or they cheat. And that's without even mentioning vulgar gropers, who are almost the majority here. Maybe you will. One day. That is, maybe one day you will learn how to ask. In fact, even if people do sometimes go mad and die from this boy and girl and love business, it is much more likely to happen from undergrounds and all that salvation nonsense. Don't believe what you see in the movies. In real life people ask for all sorts of things, but they don't ask for them the right way. Then they stop asking and only give and take offense. In the end they get used to it all and stop bothering, and when that happens there's no more time. Life is over."
"Do you want a cushion?" I asked. "My mother likes to sit in the kitchen in the evening with a cushion behind her back."
Yardena's nearly twenty, and she still has a little-girl habit of adjusting the hem of her dress as though her knee is a baby that she has to cover up over and over again, just right, not too little so that it'll catch cold, and not too much, so that it won't have enough air to breathe.
"My brother," she said, "your friend, will never have a friend. Specially not a girlfriend. Only subjects. And women. He'll have plenty of women, because the world is awash with poor wretches who throw themselves under tyrants' feet. But he won't have a woman friend. Get me a glass of water, would you, Proffy? Not from the tap, from the icebox. Actually, I'm not thirsty. You will have women friends. And I'll tell you why. It's because whenever you're given some thing, even if it's nothing more than a roll, or a paper napkin, or a teaspoon, you behave as if you've been given a present. As if a miracle has occurred."
I didn't agree with her about everything but I decided not to argue. Except about one point, earlier in the conversation, a point I could on no account pass over in silence:
"But, Yardena, what you were saying before about undergrounds, surely without the Underground the English will never let us have the Land."
She suddenly burst out laughing, a wide-open, musical laughter that only girls who enjoy being girls have. And she tried to sweep her cigarette smoke away with her hand, as though it were a fly:
"There you go again," she said, "talking like the Voice of Fighting Zion. You aren't an underground, you and Ben Hur and what's-his-name, the other one, the little monkey. An underground is something completely different. Something awesome. Something lethal. Even when there really isn't any alternative and you have to fight, an underground is still something deadly. Besides which, these British may well pack up and go home soon. I only hope we don't regret it, regret it bitterly, when we're left here without them."
These words seemed to me dangerously irresponsible. In some way they resembled Sergeant Dunlop's remark that the Arabs were the weaker side and soon they'd become the new Jews. What was the connection between what Yardena was saying and his opinion about the Arabs? None at all. And yet there was a connection. I was furious with myself for not being able to see what the connection was and with Yardena for saying things that were better left unsaid. Maybe it was my duty to tell some responsible adult about these thoughts? Father, perhaps? To warn them, so that those who needed to know would be aware that Yardena was a bit frivolous.
Even if I did decide to report what she had said, I mustn't arouse her suspicions.
I said:
"I have a different opinion. We must drive the British out of the Land by force."
"We will," said Yardena, "but not tonight. Just look at the time; it's nearly a quarter to eleven, and, tell me, are you a sound sleeper?"
This question struck me as strange, and even a little suspicious. I replied cautiously:
"Yes. No. It depends."
"Well tonight you'd better sleep soundly. And if you do happen to wake up, you can turn your light on and read till the morning for all I care. But don't you dare leave your room, because on the stroke of midnight if there's a moon I turn into a wolf, or more precisely a vampire, and I've already gobbled up a hundred kids like you. So, whatever you do, don't you open your door in the night. Promise."
I promised. On my word of honor. But my suspicions deepened. I decided I must try not to fall asleep. And I thought it definitely wouldn't be difficult, because of the coffee I had drunk and the smell of smoke everywhere in the apartment and what Yardena had said about my strong side and other strange things.
In the hallway, after I had washed and before saying good night, she reached out suddenly and touched me on the head. Her hand was neither soft nor hard, quite different from my mother's. She ruffled my hair for a moment and said: "Listen very carefully, Proffy. That sergeant you told me about. He sounds really nice, he may even happen to be fond of children, but I don't think you're in any danger, because he's an inhibited man. At least that's the way he comes across from your description. And by the way, since you're called Proffy, which is short for Professor, why don't you start being a professor instead of a spy or a general? Half the world are spies and generals. Not you. You're a word-child. Good night. And I'll tell you what I found really nice: that you washed all the dishes without my asking. Ben Hur does the washing-up only if he's bribed."
twenty-one
But why did I lock my bedroom door on the inside that night? Even now, more than forty years later, I don't know. I know even less now than I did at the time. (There are all manners and degrees of not knowing. Just as a window can be not just open or shut, but half open, or one part can be open and the rest shut, or it can be open just a crack, or covered with a shutter on the outside and a thick curtain on the inside, or even fastened shut with nails.)
I locked my door and undressed with a firm resolve not to think the faintest thought about Yardena on the other side of the wall, who might be getting undressed at this very moment just like me, undoing one smooth round button after another down the front of her light sleeveless dress, and I made up my mind simply not to think about those buttons, not the top ones near her throat nor the bottom ones near her knees.
I switched on my bedside lamp and started looking at a book, but it was a little hard for me to concentrate. ("Instead of peeping, you should learn to ask." What had she meant by that? And "You're a word-child"! How come? Hadn't she noticed that I was a panther in a basement?)
I put the book down and turned off the light, because it was almost midnight, but, instead of sleep, thoughts came, and to drive them away I switched on the light again and picked up the book. It didn't help.
That night was deep and wide. Not a cricket's chirp disturbed the curfew. Not a shot was heard. Little by little the submarines in the book turned into submarines made of fog, sailing slowly among banks of drifting fog. The sea was soft and warm. Then I was a mountain child building himself a hut from lumps of fog in the mountains, and suddenly there was a sort of nibbling or sawing at the edge of the hut, as though a stranded whale was scratching himself on the sandy sea bottom. I tried to silence it and I woke up to a sound of shshsh, and opening my eyes I found that I had fallen asleep with my light on and that the shushing sound from the dream had not stopped.
In a flash I sat up in bed, as alert and wary as a robber. Th
ere were no death throes, no whale; this was the scratching in the night that I had been waiting for all that summer. A very light but urgent, persistent scratching. It was definitely coming from the entrance, from our front door. It was an injured Underground fighter, who might be dripping blood. We must dress his wound and lay him down in the kitchen on the spare mattress and he must be on his way just before day dawns. What about Father? Mother? Are they asleep? Can't they hear the urgent scratching at the door? Should I wake them? Or open the door myself? They're not here. They're away. There's Yardena, and I promised her on my word of honor not to leave my room. And I remembered how once, when I was nearly ten, she cleaned and dressed a wound I had and I was sorry the other knee wasn't cut, too.
Then came the sound of footsteps, running barefoot along the hallway. The thud of the bolt and the turning of the key in the lock. Whispers. And more footsteps. Rapid low conversation, from the direction of the kitchen now. The scrape of a match on a matchbox. A short rush of water from the tap. And other sounds that it was not easy to identify from where I was, in my bed. Then there was total velvety silence again. Had it all been just a dream? Or was it my duty to get up, break my promise, and go and find out what was going on?