Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [13]
She bent over to tuck the bottom corners of the blanket under the mattress. Going back to the kitchen, she sliced some bread, took the butter and cheese out of the refrigerator and put the kettle on. When the water boiled, she turned on the radio that stood on the kitchen table. Three voices were arguing about the continuing crisis in agriculture, interrupting one another rudely. She turned it off and looked out of the window. Her front path was faintly lit, and above the empty street the moon floated among broken low clouds. He's got a girlfriend, she suddenly thought, that's it, that's why he forgot to come and forgot to let me know: he's found himself a girl at last, so he has no reason to come and see me anymore. The thought filled her with nearly unbearable pain. As though she had been completely emptied and only her shriveled husk continued to hurt. He hadn't actually promised to come, he had just said that he would try to catch the evening bus, and she mustn't wait for him at the stop, because if he did decide to come tonight, he would make his own way to her house, and if he didn't come tonight, he'd come sometime soon, maybe next week.
Nevertheless, Gili Steiner could not shake off the thought that Gideon had lost his way, that he had got on the wrong bus, or got off at the wrong stop, and was now probably stuck on his own in some godforsaken spot, shivering with cold at a deserted bus stop, huddled on a metal bench behind an iron railing, between a closed ticket office and a locked newsstand. And he didn't know how to reach her. It was her duty to get up and go, now, this very minute, into the darkness, to search for him and find him and bring him safely home.
Around ten o'clock Gili Steiner said to herself that Gideon would not come this evening and that there was really nothing for her to do except to warm up the fish and potatoes in the oven and eat them on her own, then go to bed and get up tomorrow before seven and go to the clinic to look after her irritating patients. She stood up, bent over, took the fish and potatoes out of the oven and threw them in the trash can. Then she switched off the electric heater, sat down in the kitchen, took off her square, frameless glasses and cried, but after a minute or two she stopped, buried the battered kangaroo in the drawer, took the laundry out of the dryer, and until almost midnight she ironed and folded everything and put it away. At midnight she undressed and got into bed. It had begun to rain in Tel Ilan, and it rained on and off all night.
Digging
1
AS THE END of his life approached, Pesach Kedem, the former Member of the Knesset, lived with his daughter, Rachel, on the edge of the village of Tel Ilan in the Manasseh Hills. He was a tall, vituperative man with a hunched back. On account of kyphosis, his head was thrust forward almost at a right angle. At eighty-six years of age, he was gnarled and sinewy, his skin reminded you of the bark of an olive tree, and his tempestuous temperament made him seem to be boiling over with strongly held ideals and opinions. All day long he pottered around the house in his slippers, wearing an undershirt and a pair of khaki trousers that were too loose on him and were held up by braces. He invariably wore a shabby black beret that came halfway down his forehead, which made him look like a tank commander put out to grass. And he never stopped grumbling: he swore at