Abortion and the single woman as literary tropes in the works of Amos Oz — Page 10:
46 Sitting in a Tel-Aviv cafe, Eliezer first notices Tova as a consequence of her ghastly coughing and spitting. Getting up to help her, he strikes up a conversation with this erratic and unpredictable woman. Immediately, she reveals her age, as if to affirm our suspicion that we are indeed dealing with a spinster: "I'm not a girl [. . .]. I am a woman, thirty three years old” (138). Although a poet and a career women, Oz avoids any meaningful exposition of her writing or work, instead choosing to demean her artistic creativity, denuding her of any redeeming attributes. He truncates the beauty in poetic composition by claiming that it is merely a vapid technique which does not involve or demand any inspiration. In fact, Tova likens her work in the advertising industry to that of prostitution: “Tova said that the commercials she draws seem to her like a form of prostitution” (153).
47 Moreover, the sinew-wrenching physical agony that Tova suffers as a result of her smoking is focused upon obsessively and deliberately, so much so that it becomes one of the nodal points of the story, and serves to debase the character and bring to the fore her rebarbative nature. Thus, the narrator often ruptures the flow of events to report her vomiting and sickly face. Also, he admits, that his attraction for her stems from a disfigurement that he finds seductive (a stump in her left finger): "The sight of the defective hand aroused me again. This time it was sharp and explicit" (155). Later, he reveals his true motive in prolonging the encounter with her: "I had a few free hours [. . .] I wanted a little adventure. And that was what happened” (159). The allure in the freakish quotient proffered by this vacuous and miserable artist, and single woman, stands as a metaphor for the other unwed female characters to grace Oz's pages.
48 Not surprisingly, Tova instantly falls in love with Eliezer, a development which is in harmony with the paradigm the author appears to be utilizing for this proverbial single woman. At first she asks him if he is married; and immediately afterwards confesses her love for him, "You're cute [. . .] you know, I love you” (152). The narrator then interpolates another description of his rugged masculinity in order to explain Tova’s immediate attraction: "Her behaviour is not logical. I have to justify it [. . .]. I am tall, with wide shoulders my features are regarded as very masculine" (154). Walking towards the beach they meet an acquaintance of Tova, whom informs that Eliezer is her new lover, and on the beach she repeats her earlier declaration of love for him. Overcome by her excitement at finding a man, she without hesitation, proposes a marriage, which Eliezer immediately dismisses: “I don’t know I said. It’s too early. And besides, you are sick, you are coughing” (152).
49 Faced with another refusal, Tova begins to cry and in a fit of wheezing and coughing vomits on his clothes- a reaction that symbolises her fragile psychic state and sexual frustration. Without saying a further word, Eliezer flees her company, and cleans himself at the showers. The final passage depicting Tova sees a dejected and pathetic figure:
She cried, quietly. Her voice could not be heard, and her face twisted as the face of a big, ugly baby [. . .]. Suddenly Tova's throat soured and her mouth widened. She bent down and vomited. She vomited, unwaveringly, with energy, in loud wild hiccups. She vomited enthusiastically, eyes closed, and dirtied my clothes. Afterwards, she wiped her mouth with a crumbled handkerchief, clasped in her defective hand (156).
50 Ultimately, Tova is accorded the same misfortune that awaits every spinster at the denouement- abandonment by the man she seeks. Through her antics, Tova is positioned to function as the prototypical old maid — starved for a man, as clearly evinced by her anserine suggestion of marriage to a stranger and by her efforts to snare Eliezer, who she has been yearning for, with repeated revelations of love.