Free Between Friends by Amos Oz Page B

“I’m sorry to hear it.”
    Zvi added, “There are floods in Bangladesh, too. And Rabbi Coopermintz died suddenly an hour or two ago in Jerusalem. They just announced it on the radio.”
    Yoav reached out to pat Zvi on the shoulder but withdrew his hand when he recalled that Zvi didn’t like to be touched. So he smiled at him, instead, and said affectionately, “If you should happen to hear one piece of good news, come and tell me right away. Even in the middle of the night.”
    Yoav left, and when he passed the fountain that Zvi Provizor had installed in the square in front of the dining hall, he thought that a lonely, aging bachelor had a harder time here than he would in other places because kibbutz society offered no remedies for loneliness. In fact, the very idea of a kibbutz denied the concept of loneliness.
    Now that he had taken the gun from Zvi, Yoav made his first round of the kibbutz grounds. As he walked past the old-timers’ houses, he switched off lights that were burning needlessly here and there and turned off a sprinkler someone had forgotten before going to bed. He picked up an empty sack that had been tossed near the barber’s shed, folded it carefully, and left it at the door of the produce barn.
    Lights still shone in some windows, but soon the kibbutz would be shrouded in sleep, and only he and the night guard in the children’s house would stay awake till morning. A cold wind was blowing and the pine needles whispered in reply. A faint lowing came from the cow barn. In the darkness, he made out the rows of buildings where the old-timers lived, four two-room apartments in each building, all furnished with plywood furniture, plants, floor mats, and cotton curtains. At one o’clock he had to go to the brooder house to check the temperature, and at three thirty he had to wake the dairy workers for the predawn milking. The night would pass quickly.
    Yoav enjoyed these night shifts, far removed from the daily routine full of committee discussions and members’ complaints and requests. Sometimes people much older than he would come to pour out their hearts to him, and there were all sorts of delicate social problems requiring discreet solutions, or budget concerns, relationships with outside organizations, and kibbutz representation in the various institutions of the movement. Now, at night, he could wander alone among the lean-tos and chicken coops, stroll along the length of the fence illuminated by yellow lights, sit for a while on an upturned crate near the metalwork shop, and sink into night thoughts. His night thoughts revolved around his wife, Dana, now lying in the dark, listening drowsily to the radio in the hope that it would lull her to sleep; his mind also turned to their twins, now sleeping in their beds in the children’s house. In an hour he’d stop in there and cover them. Maybe he’d also drop by his house and turn off the radio, which Dana usually neglected to do before she fell asleep. Dana didn’t like living on the kibbutz and dreamed of a private life. She’d begged him to leave many times. But Yoav was a man of principle who fought constantly to improve kibbutz life and he wouldn’t hear about leaving. Nonetheless, he knew in his heart that kibbutz life was fundamentally unjust to women, forcing them almost without exception into service jobs like cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, doing laundry, sewing, and ironing. The women here were supposed to enjoy total equality, but they were treated equally only if they acted and looked like men: they were forbidden to use makeup and had to avoid all signs of femininity. Yoav had thought about that injustice many times, had tried to come to a conclusion about it, find a remedy, but could not. Perhaps that was why he always saw himself as the guilty party in his relationship with Dana and felt constantly apologetic.
    The night was cold and clear. The croaking of frogs punctuated the silence and a dog barked somewhere far