Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [36]
I got up and followed her through one of the doors that led into the dark, and found myself in a stone-paved passageway lined with old photographs of hills and streams. My eyes were fixed on her bare feet, which moved nimbly over the flagstones as if she were dancing in front of me. Several doors opened off this passageway, and Yardena said that even though she had grown up in the house she still had a feeling that she was in a maze, and there were corners she had not been in since she was small. She opened one of the doors and we went down five steps into a dark, winding passage lit only by a single feeble bulb. Here, there were glass-fronted cabinets filled with old books, interspersed with a collection of fossils and seashells. Yardena said, "My father loved to sit here in the early evening. He was attracted to enclosed spaces with no windows." I replied that I, too, was drawn to enclosed spaces, which retained a hint of winter even in midsummer. "In that case," said Yardena, "I've brought you to the right place."
5
FROM THE PASSAGE a creaking door gave access to a little room, simply furnished with a threadbare sofa, a brown armchair and a brown coffee table with curved legs. On the wall hung a large gray photograph of Tel Ilan, apparently taken many years ago from the top of the water tower in the middle of the village. Beside it I could see a framed certificate, but the light was too poor for me to read what it said. Yardena suggested we sit here for a bit, and I did not refuse. I sat down on the shabby sofa and Yardena sat facing me in the armchair. She crossed her legs and pulled her dress down, but it was too short to cover her knees. She said that we hadn't seen more than a small part of the house so far. The door on the left, she added, would take us back to the sitting room from which we had started our tour, while the one on the right led to the kitchen, from which we could go either to the pantry or to a corridor that led to a number of bedrooms. There were more bedrooms in another wing. There were bedrooms that no one had slept in for upward of fifty years. Her great-grandfather sometimes used to put up visitors from remote settlements who came to look at his orchards and gardens. Her grandfather used to put up visiting lecturers and performers. I eyed her round knees that just peeped out from under her dress. Yardena looked at her knees too.
I hastened to divert my gaze and looked up at her face, which wore a faint, vague smile.
I asked her why she had taken me on this tour of the house. With an air of surprise she replied, "I thought you wanted to buy it." I was on the point of answering that I wanted to buy the house in order to demolish it, so there was no point in a lengthy visit, but on second thought I held my tongue. I said, "It's such a big house for two women to live in alone." Yardena said that her mother and grandmother lived in another part of the house that looked out onto the garden at the rear, and that she also had a little room there, where she slept when she came to stay. "Are you ready to press on now? You're not too tired? There are lots more rooms, and since you're here I'd like to take the opportunity to look at them myself. I'd be scared to go on my own, but the two of us together won't be scared, will we?"
There was a hint of defiance, almost of sarcasm, in her voice as she asked if I was tired and if the two of us together would be scared. We went through the door on the right into a large, old-fashioned kitchen. A collection of different-sized pans hung from one wall, and an entire corner was taken up with an old kitchen range and a red-brick chimney. Bunches of garlic and strings of dried fruit were suspended from the ceiling. On a dark, rough-hewn table were scattered various utensils, notebooks, jars of ground spices, sardine tins, a dusty bottle of oil, a large knife, some old