Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [55]
The diesel tanker was not waiting for her outside her house, and she knew she would be alone tonight. At home she was greeted by two hungry cats that got under her feet and rubbed themselves against her legs. She spoke to them aloud, scolded them, lavished affection on them, gave them food and put water in their drinking bowls. Then she went to the toilet, and washed her face and neck and combed her hair. She switched on the TV in the middle of a program about the melting of the polar ice cap and the destruction of the Arctic ecosystem. She buttered a slice of bread, spread cream cheese on it, sliced a tomato, cooked an omelet and made herself a cup of tea. Then she settled in the armchair in front of the destruction of the Arctic ecosystem on the TV, sipped her tea and hardly noticed that her cheeks were covered in tears. And when she did become aware of it, she went on eating and drinking and staring at the TV, and merely wiped her cheeks a few times. The tears did not stop but she felt better, and she said to herself the words she had meant to say to Kobi: "Never mind, don't be scared, you're fine, everything's fine now." She got up, still in tears, picked up one of the cats and sat down again. At a quarter to eleven she stood up, closed the shutters and switched off most of the lights.
6
KOBI EZRA WANDERED around the streets of the village. Twice he passed the Village Hall and the grocer's shop from which his family made a living. He entered the Memorial Garden and sat down on a bench that was already damp with dew. He wondered what she thought of him now and why she hadn't slapped his cheeks as he deserved. Suddenly he waved his arm and slapped his own face so hard that his teeth hurt, his ears rang and his left eye was bloodshot. Shame filled his body like some revolting viscous matter.
Two boys his own age, Elad and Shahar, passed his bench without noticing him. He curled up and hid his head between his knees. "They soon saw she was lying," Shahar was saying. "Nobody believed her for a second." "But it was a white lie," Elad replied; "I mean it was a justifiable lie." They moved on, their shoes crunching on the gravel. What he had done tonight would never be wiped out, Kobi thought. Even when many years had passed and his life had taken him to places that he could not imagine. Even if he went to the big city to look for a prostitute, as he had often imagined doing. Nothing would eradicate the shame of what he had done tonight. He could have gone on chatting with her in the library and not turned out the lights. And even if he had lost his senses and turned out the lights, he could have used the cover of darkness to express his feelings. Everybody said that words were his strong point. He could have used words. He could have quoted some lines from a love poem by Bialik or Yehuda Amichai. He could have confessed that he wrote poems himself. He could have recited one that he had written about her. On the other hand, he thought, she was also partly to blame, because she had behaved toward him the whole evening like an older woman with a child, or a teacher with a pupil. She pretended that I wait for her opposite the post office and walk her to the library just like that, for no particular reason. The fact is that she knew the truth and just pretended to spare my feelings. If only she hadn't, if only she had asked me about my feelings, however