Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [37]
"My father used to love sitting here on winter days next to the hot kitchen range, writing in his notebooks," Yardena said. "Now my mother and my grandmother use a little kitchenette in their wing. This one is not really used." She asked me if I was hungry and offered to put together a snack for me. I did actually feel a bit hungry, and would happily have eaten, say, a slice of bread spread with avocado, with some onion and salt on top, but the kitchen seemed so bleak, and my curiosity spurred me onward, deeper into the house, to the heart of the labyrinth. "No, thanks, maybe some other time," I said. "Why don't we press on and see what else there is."
Again I caught a hint of mockery in her eyes, as though she had plumbed the depths of my mind and discovered something that was not to my credit. "Come on, this way," she said. We took a narrow passage that led diagonally to the left into another, curved, passageway, where Yardena lit a pale light. My head was foggy and I wasn't certain I could find my own way back. Yardena seemed to enjoy leading me deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house, her bare feet moving nimbly over the cold flagstones, her long, thin body dancing as she floated along. In this passageway various items of camping equipment were stowed away: a folded tent, poles, rubber mats, ropes and a pair of sooty paraffin lamps. As if someone had been making preparations to go off and live alone in the mountains. An odor of dampness and dust hung between the thick walls. Once when I was eight or nine my father shut me up in the toolshed in the garden for an hour or two because I broke a thermometer. I can still remember the fingers of cold and darkness groping at me as I huddled like a fetus in a corner of the shed.
The curved passageway had three closed doors apart from the one we had come through. Indicating one of them, Yardena said that it led to the cellar and asked me if I wanted to go down and see it.
"You're not scared of cellars, are you?"
"No, I'm not, but if you don't mind, maybe we'll skip the cellar this time."
At once I had second thoughts, and said, "Actually, why not? I ought to take a look at the cellar, too."
Yardena reached for a flashlight hanging on the wall of the passage and pushed the door open with her bare foot. I followed, and in the semidarkness, amid capering shadows, I counted fourteen steps. The air in the cellar was chilly and damp, and Yardena's flashlight cast heavy shadows on the dark walls. "This is our cellar," said Yardena. "This is where we keep everything that there's no room for in the house. My father used to come down here sometimes on hot days like today to cool off. My grandfather used to sleep here, surrounded by barrels and packing cases, when the weather was really hot. You're not claustrophobic, are you? Are you scared of the dark? I'm not. On the contrary. Ever since I was a small girl, I have always found enclosed, dark hiding places for myself. If you do buy the house, try to persuade your clients not to make any drastic changes. At least while my grandmother is alive."
"Changes? The new owners may not want to change the house, they may want to knock it down and build a modern villa in its place." (Something stopped me saying that I was planning to demolish it myself.)
"If only I had the money," Yardena said, "I'd buy it myself. Then I'd shut it up. I certainly wouldn't come and live here. I'd buy it and shut it up and let it stay this way. That's what I'd do."
As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see that the walls of the cellar were lined with shelves full of tins and jars, of pickled gherkins, olives, jams, various sorts of preserves and other comestibles that I couldn't identify. It was as if the house were planning to withstand a lengthy siege. The floor was covered in heaps of sacks and boxes. To my right there were three or four sealed barrels that may have contained wine; I had no means of knowing. In one corner, books