A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [297]
As for me, I took it all with humility, because I knew that the process of getting Jerusalem out of my system rightly entailed suffering, the pangs of rebirth. I considered the practical jokes and the humiliation justified not because I was suffering from some inferiority complex but because I really was inferior. They, those solidly built boys scorched by dust and sun and those proud-walking girls, were the salt of the earth, the lords of creation. As handsome as demigods, as beautiful as the nights in Canaan.
All except for me.
No one was taken in by my suntan: they all knew perfectly well—I knew it myself—that even when my skin was finally tanned a deep brown, I would still be pale on the inside. Though I forced myself to learn how to lay irrigation hoses in the hayfields, drive a tractor, hit the target in the rifle range with the old Czech rifle, I had still not managed to change my spots: through all the camouflage nets I covered myself with you could still see that weak, soft-hearted, loquacious town boy, who fantasized and made up all sorts of strange stories that could never have happened and didn't interest anyone here.
Whereas they seemed to me glorious: those big boys who could score a goal from twenty yards with their left foot, wring a chicken's neck without batting an eyelid, break into the stores at night to pilfer provisions for a midnight feast, and those bold girls who could do a twenty-mile hike carrying a sixty-five-pound pack on their backs and still have enough energy left afterward to dance late into the night with their blue skirts whirling as though the force of gravity had been suspended in their honor, then sit in a circle with us till dawn and sing to us under the starry sky, sing heartrending songs in rounds and canons, sing leaning back to back, sing while radiating an innocent glow that swept you off your feet precisely because it was so innocent, so heavenly, as pure as the angelic choirs.
Yes, indeed: I knew my place. Don't get too big for your boots. Don't get ideas above your station. Don't stick your nose into what's meant for your betters. True, all people are born equal, that is the fundamental principle of kibbutz life, but the field of love belongs to the realm of nature, not to the Egalitarianism Committee. And the field of love belongs to mighty cedars, not to little weeds.
Still, even a cat may look at a king, as the proverb says. So I looked at them all day long, and in bed at night too, when my eyes were closed, I never stopped looking at them, those tousled beauties. And I especially looked at the girls. How I looked. I fixed my feverish eyes on them. Even in my sleep I turned my wistful calf's eyes on them helplessly. Not that I nursed any false hopes: I knew they were not meant for me. Those boys were magnificent stags, and I was a miserable worm. The girls were graceful gazelles, and I was a stray jackal howling behind the fence. And among them—the clapper in the bell—was Nily.
Every one of those girls was as radiant as the sun. Every single one. But Nily—she was always surrounded by a trembling circle of joy. Nily always sang as she walked, on the path, on the lawn, in the wood, between the flower beds, she sang to herself as she walked. And even when she walked without singing, she looked as though she