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By Root 248 0

something light to eat at Chaimowicz's restaurant, then go back to my work, which had to be finished by that night. I was so tired that the evening light didn't seem totally clear, but somehow cloudy or dusty. It was a hot, humid summer's day in Tel Ilan. At the end of Well Street there is a wall of cypress trees behind which is a pear orchard. The sun was beginning to sink behind the cypresses on its course toward the western horizon. The sun looked tarnished at the close of this torrid June day, a grayish veil between us and it. I was walking at an average pace, neither slowly nor fast. Now and again I paused and gazed distractedly into a front yard. There were only a few people in the streets, hurrying home. At this time of day most of the village folk generally sit indoors or on their rear verandas facing their gardens, dressed in undershirts and shorts, sipping iced lemonade and leafing through the evening paper.

A few passersby crossed my path. Avraham Levin nodded a greeting, and one or two others stopped to exchange a few words. Here in the village we almost all know one another. Some people resent my buying up the houses in the village and selling them to outsiders, who build themselves weekend homes or holiday villas. Soon the village won't be a village anymore; it'll turn into a sort of summer resort. The older inhabitants are unhappy about this change, even though the newcomers have made the village rich and turned it from a forgotten backwater into a place bustling with life, at least on weekends. Every Saturday, lines of cars arrive in the village, and their passengers visit the boutique wineries, the art galleries, the stores selling Far Eastern furnishings, and the cheese, honey and olive stalls.

In the hot evening twilight I reached the open square in front of the Village Hall on Founders Street, and my feet led me behind the building, to a dismal empty space where a garden had been planted, pointlessly, since no one ever comes to this forsaken spot. I stood there for a few minutes, waiting, though I had no idea whom or what I was waiting for. A dusty little statue stood there too, surrounded by yellow grass and a bed of thirsty roses, in memory of five of the founders of the village killed in an attack a hundred years ago. By the back door of the hall was a notice board advertising an unforgettable evening with three musicians the following weekend. Underneath that poster was another, from some religious missionaries, declaring that this world is merely a gloomy antechamber in which we must prepare ourselves to enter the Sanctuary. I stared at it, reflecting that I knew nothing of the Sanctuary but that I quite enjoyed the antechamber.

While I was looking at the notice board, a woman, who a moment ago had not been there, appeared next to the statue. She looked odd and even faintly bizarre in the evening light. Had she come out of the rear entrance of the hall? Or had she come through the narrow passageway between the adjacent buildings? It seemed uncanny to me that a moment ago I was all alone here and suddenly this strange woman had materialized out of nowhere. She was not from here. She was slim and erect, with an aquiline nose and a short, solid neck, and on her head she wore a weird yellow hat covered in buckles and brooches. She was dressed in khaki like a hiker, with a red haversack over one shoulder, a water bottle attached to her belt, heavy walking shoes. She was holding a stick in one hand, and over the other arm was draped a raincoat that was definitely out of place in June. She looked as if she had stepped out of a foreign advertisement for nature walks. Not here, but in some cooler country. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her.

The strange woman looked back at me sharply, with an almost hostile air. She stood haughtily, as if she despised me wholeheartedly or as if she were trying to say that there was no hope for me and we were both well aware of it. So piercing was her gaze that I had no choice but to look away and move off quickly in the direction of Founders Street and the front of