Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [24]
"How about that student of yours," the old man said suddenly. "What do you think? He's an anti-Semite, isn't he?"
"What makes you say that? What has he done to you?"
"He hasn't done anything. He just doesn't like us. That's all. And why should he?"
After a moment he added:
"I don't like us much myself. There's no reason."
"Pesach, calm down. Adel lives here and works for us. That's all. He works to pay for his lodging."
"Wrong!" the old man roared. "He doesn't work for us, he works instead of us! That's why he digs under the house at night, in the foundation or in the cellar."
Then he added:
"Cross that out, please. Don't write any of this. Neither what I said against the Arab nor what I said against Tabenkin. At the end of his life Tabenkin was totally senile. Incidentally," he added, "even his name was false. The fool was so smitten with the name Tabenkin, Ta-ben-kin—three proletarian hammer blows! Like Cha-lya-pin! Like Marshal Bul-ga-nin! But in fact his original name was simply Toybenkind, Itchele Toybenkind, Itchele Pigeonson! But that little son of a pigeon wanted to be a Molotov! A Stalin! A Hebrew Lenin he wanted to be! Na, I don't give a damn about him. I won't say a word about him, for good or ill. Not a word. Abigail, make a note: Pesach Kedem is totally silent on the subject of Tabenkin. A nod is as good as a wink."
Midges, moths, mosquitoes and daddy longlegs congregated around the light on the veranda. In the distance, from the direction of the hills, orchards and vineyards, a desperate jackal howled. And opposite, in front of his hut that was lit by a feeble yellow light, Adel got up slowly from his step, stretched, wiped his mouth organ with a cloth, took a few deep breaths, as though trying to draw all the expanse of the night into his narrow chest, and went indoors. Crickets, frogs and sprinklers chirped as if in response to the distant jackal, now joined by a whole choir of jackals somewhere nearby, in the darkened wadi.
"It's getting late," Rachel said. "Maybe it's time for us to stop, too, and go indoors."
"He burrows under our house," her father said, "because he simply doesn't like us. Why should he? What for? Because of all our villainy, our cruelty, our arrogance? And our hypocrisy?"
"Who doesn't like us?"
"Him. The goy."
"Daddy, that's enough now. He's got a name. Please use it. When you talk about him you sound like the last of the anti-Semites yourself."
"The last of the anti-Semites hasn't been born yet. And never will be."
"Come to bed, Pesach."
"I don't like him either. Not one bit. I don't like all they've done to us, and to themselves. And I certainly don't like what they want to do to us. And I don't like the way he looks at us, in that hungry, mocking way. He looks at you hungrily, and he looks at me contemptuously."
"Good night. I'm going to bed."
"So what if I don't like him? Nobody likes anybody, anyway."
"Good night. Don't forget to take your pills before you go to sleep."
"Once, a long time ago, before all this, maybe here and there some people liked each other a bit. Not everyone. Not much. Not always. Just here and there, a little bit. But now? These days? Now all the hearts are dead. It's finished."
"There are mosquitoes, Daddy. Would you mind closing the door."
"Why are all the hearts dead? Maybe you know. Do you?"
12
IN THE NIGHT, at two or two-thirty, woken again by tapping, scraping and digging sounds, the old man got out of bed (he always slept in his long johns) and felt for the flashlight he had put out specially and the iron bar he had found in one of the sheds, his feet groping in the dark like blind beggars for his slippers. Giving these up in despair, he padded barefoot into the