Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [25]
The old man switched on his flashlight, bent over with a groan and picked up the iron bar. His bent body cast three or four distorted shadows on the walls of the corridor, on the floor and on the kitchen door.
He stood there for a few minutes, with the bar under his arm, one hand holding the flashlight and the other tugging on the cellar door, and strained to hear, but since the silence was deep and complete, punctuated only by the sounds of cicadas and frogs, he reconsidered and decided to go back to bed and try again the following night.
He woke again before dawn and sat up in bed, but he did not reach for the flashlight and the bar because this time total silence filled the night. Pesach Kedem sat in bed for a while, listening attentively to the deep silence. Even the cicadas had stopped. There was only a very fine breeze stirring the tops of the cypress trees bordering the cemetery, but it was too faint for him to hear, and he curled up and fell asleep.
13
NEXT MORNING, BEFORE going off to school, Rachel went outside to take the old man's trousers off the clothesline. Adel was waiting for her by the dovecote, with his glasses that were too small for him, his shy smile that put a dimple in his cheek, and his Van Gogh–style straw hat.
"Rachel. Excuse me. It won't take a moment."
"Good morning, Adel. Don't forget to straighten that crooked paving stone at the end of the path. Somebody could trip over it."
"OK, Rachel. But I wanted to ask you what happened in the night."
"In the night? What happened in the night?"
"I thought maybe you knew. Do you have men working in the yard at night?"
"Working? In the night?"
"Didn't you hear anything? At two o'clock in the morning? Noises? Digging? You must be a very sound sleeper."
"What sort of noises?"
"Noises down below, Rachel."
"You were just dreaming, Adel. Who would come and dig underneath your room in the middle of the night?"
"I don't know. I thought maybe you would know."
"You were dreaming. Remember to fix that paving stone today, before Pesach trips over it and has a fall."
"I was thinking, maybe your dad walks around at night. Maybe he has trouble sleeping. Maybe he gets up, picks up a shovel, and starts digging."
"Don't talk nonsense, Adel. No one's digging. You were dreaming."
She walked back toward the house, carrying the laundry she had taken off the line, but the student went on standing there for a while, watching her walk away. He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt tail. Then he walked toward the cypresses in his clumsy big shoes, and coming across one of Rachel's cats, he bent down and spoke a few sentences to it, in Arabic, respectfully, as though the two of them now had to shoulder a new, serious responsibility.
14
THE SCHOOL YEAR was coming to an end. The summer was getting hotter. The pale blue light turned at midday to a dazzling white glare that hung over the houses and oppressed the gardens and orchards, the red-hot tin huts and closed wooden shutters. A hot, dry wind blew from the hills. The inhabitants of the village stayed indoors during the day and only came out onto their verandas and terraces at dusk. The evenings were warm and humid. Rachel and her father slept with their windows and shutters open. Distant barking in the night stirred bands of jackals to bitter wailing from the direction of the wadi. Sounds of far-off shooting came from beyond the hills. Choirs of cicadas and frogs loaded the night air with a dull, monotonous weight. At midnight Adel went and turned off the sprinklers. Because the heat stopped him sleeping, he sat on his step and smoked a few more cigarettes in the dark.
Sometimes