Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [59]
Meanwhile, the whole group had begun to sing Sabbath Eve songs: "The sun on the treetops no longer is seen," "In Ginosar Valley the Sabbath comes down," "Peace be with you, angels of peace." As I joined in, a pleasant warmth spread through my body, as though I had been drinking wine. I looked around the room, trying to work out who had called my name, but everyone was busy singing. Some sang shrilly, others deeply, and some had beatific smiles on their lips. Dalia Levin, the hostess, held her body with her arms as if hugging herself. Yohai Blum began to play his accordion and the three women accompanied him on the recorder. One of them let out a loud, discordant note, but she quickly corrected herself and played on in tune.
After the Sabbath songs, it was time for four or five pioneer songs about the Galilee and the Kinneret, followed by some songs about winter and rain, since rain was still beating on the windows and occasional rolls of thunder shook the panes, and the lights stuttered because of the storm.
Avraham Levin sat, as usual, on a stool by the door leading to the kitchen. He was not confident of his voice, so he did not join in the singing but sat listening with his eyes closed, as if it were his task to pick up any wrong note. From time to time he tiptoed out to the kitchen to check on the soups and quiches that were being kept warm for the buffet supper to be served during the break. Then he would check the stove and sit down again, with bowed head, on his stool, and close his eyes once more.
4
THEN DALIA SILENCED us all. "Now," she said, "Almoslino will sing us a solo." Almoslino, the big, heavy man with his glasses on a black cord around his neck, got to his feet and sang "Laugh, oh laugh at all my dreams." He was endowed with a deep, warm bass voice, and when he got to the line "Never have I lost faith in people," it sounded as though he were in pain, singing to us from the depths of his soul and expressing through the words of the song some new, heart-wrenching thought that none of us had ever heard before.
As the applause died down, Edna and Yoel Rieback stood up, this pair of dentists who looked like twins, with their short gray hair, pursed lips and the ironic lines that had become etched around their mouths. They sang a duet, "Spread your wings, O evening," and as they sang, their voices intertwined like a pair of dancers clinging to each other. They followed this with "Enfold me under your wing." I reflected that if in this song Bialik, our national poet, asks what love is, who are we, those of us who are not poets, to boast of knowing the answer to this question? Edna and Yoel Rieback finished singing and bowed together to left and right, and we all applauded.
There was a short pause because Rachel Franco and Arieh Zelnik arrived late, and while they were taking off their coats they announced that, according to the news on the radio, air force planes had bombed enemy targets and returned safely to their base. Yohai Blum put his accordion down and said, "At last." Gili Steiner answered him angrily that it was nothing to celebrate; violence only begot more violence, and vengeance pursued vengeance. Yossi Sasson, the tall, bearded real estate agent, said mockingly:
"So what are you suggesting, Gili? That we do nothing? Turn the other cheek?"
"A normal government," Almoslino intervened in his deep bass voice, "should act calmly and rationally in such situations, whereas ours, as usual, has a knee-jerk and superficial response..."
Just then Dalia Levin, our hostess, suggested that instead of arguing about politics we should get on with the singing, which was why we were all there.
Arieh Zelnik had removed his coat by now. He could not find a chair, so he sat down on the rug at the Riebacks' feet, while Rachel Franco pulled up a stool she found near the coat hooks in the hall and sat down just outside the open door, so as not to add to the crush in the room and because she had to leave in an hour to check on her old father, whom she had left alone at home. I wanted to say something