Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [35]
That was when Yardena told me that her mother and grandmother had gone to Jerusalem for a few days and she was alone in the house, but she invited me in, though it was no good talking to her about the future of the house. I made up my mind to thank her, take my leave and come back another day, but my feet followed her into the house of their own accord. I entered the large room I remembered from my childhood, that high-ceilinged room from which various doors opened onto side rooms and steps led down to the cellar. The room was lit by a faint golden light filtered by metal lampshades fixed close to the ceiling. Two of the walls were lined with shelves laden with books, while the east wall still carried a large map of the Mediterranean lands. The map had begun to turn yellow and its edges were tattered. There was something old and dense in the room, a faint smell of things that had not been aired, or maybe it wasn't a smell but the golden light catching tiny specks of dust that shimmered in a diagonal column above the dark dining table flanked by eight straight-backed dining chairs.
Yardena sat me down in an old mauve-colored armchair and asked me what I would like to eat.
"Please don't go to any trouble," I said, "I don't want to disturb you. I'll just sit and rest for a few minutes and I'll come back another time, when your mother and your grandmother are at home."
Yardena insisted that I ought to have something to drink. "It's so hot today, and you walked here," she said. As she left the room I looked at her long legs with their little-girl sandals and white socks. Her dark blue dress just skimmed her knees. There was a deep silence in the house, as though it had already been sold and vacated forever. An old-fashioned wall clock ticked above the sofa, and outside a dog was barking in the distance, but no breeze stirred the tops of the cypresses that surrounded the house on all sides. A full moon was visible in the east window. The dark patches on the surface of the moon looked darker than usual.
When Yardena returned I noticed that she had removed her sandals and socks and was now barefoot. She was holding a black glass tray on which were a single glass, a bottle of cold water and a plate of dates, plums and cherries. The bottle was beaded with icy perspiration, and the glass had a thin blue line running round it. She put the tray down in front of me, leaned over and filled the glass with water up to the blue line. As she bent over I caught a glimpse of the mounds of her breasts and the cleft between them. Her breasts were small and firm, and for a moment I thought they looked like the fruit she had served me. I took five or six sips and touched the fruit with my fingers but I didn't take any, though the plums were also covered in condensation, or droplets of water from washing, and looked tasty and tempting. I told Yardena that I could remember her father and that I recalled this room from my childhood, and almost nothing in it had changed. She said that her father had loved this house, where he had been born and raised and where he had written all his books, but that her mother wanted to leave and live in the city. She found the silence oppressive. Apparently her grandmother would be put into a home and the house would be sold. It was her mother's business. If she was asked for her opinion, she might say that the sale should be postponed so long as her grandmother was alive. But on the other hand, you could understand her mother's point of view: why should she stay on here, now that she had retired from her job as a biology teacher in the school? She was alone here all the time with the old lady, who was getting hard of hearing.
"Would you like to see the house? Shall I give you a tour? There are so many rooms. This house was built without any rhyme or reason," Yardena said. "As if the architect got carried away, and built whatever rooms and passages he had a mind to. In fact he wasn't an