Scenes From Village Life - Amos Oz [63]
In the living room they were singing "Would that I were a bird, a tiny little bird, eternally wandering, with a tormented soul." The three recorders were playing without Yohai Blum's accordion. One of the recorders gave another little shriek but immediately corrected itself. Because I'd lost my place, I went to the toilet, even though I didn't need to, but it was occupied, so I climbed upstairs, where there must be another one. From the top of the stairs the singing sounded fainter, more wintry, so to speak, and though Yohai Blum's accordion had started up again there seemed to be something muted about it. Now everyone except me was singing a song by Rahel, "Why did you lie to me, faraway lights," and I stood on, enchanted and motionless, at the top of the stairs.
7
I STOOD THERE for a few minutes, unable to decide where I was headed. At the end of the upstairs hallway a single bulb gave out a weak light, just enough to cast some shapeless shadows. A few pictures hung on the walls, but in the half light they looked like vague gray patches. Several doors opened off the hallway, but they were all closed. I went back and forth a couple of times, wondering which of them to try. But I couldn't decide because I didn't know what I was looking for and I had completely forgotten why I had come upstairs. I could hear the wind outside. The rain was stronger now and was beating on the windows. Or it may have been hail. I stood in the hallway for a while longer, considering the closed doors, like a burglar wondering where the safe was hidden.
Then I cautiously opened the third door on the right. I was greeted by cold, distress and darkness. The air smelled as though the room had not been opened for a long time. I shone the flashlight inside and saw shadows of furniture that swayed and merged as my hand holding the flashlight shook. The wind and the hail battered the closed shutters. The feeble light was reflected back at me from a large mirror on the door of the wardrobe, as if someone were trying to blind me. The stale odor in the room was a smell of dust and unchanged bedclothes. It was evidently a long time since anyone had opened a door or window here. There must be cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, although I couldn't make them out. I could distinguish some pieces of furniture: a small chest of drawers, a chair, another chair. As I stood in the entrance I felt an urge to close the door behind me and lock it from the inside. My feet drew me inward, into the depths of the room. The sound of singing downstairs was fainter now, no more than a soft murmur that was lost in the roar of the wind and the clawing of the hail on the bedroom shutters. Outside, the garden must be wrapped in mist that blurred the outlines of the cypresses. There would be no living soul on Pumphouse Rise. Only the goldfish would be swimming, indifferent to the hail and the rain, in the pond that was lit from beneath by an electric beam. And the artificial waterfall would be trickling down the rockery and disturbing the surface of the water.
A big bed stood under the window, with a small bookcase on either side. There was a carpet on the floor and I took off my shoes and socks. The carpet was thick and deep, and felt soft and strange under my bare feet. I directed the beam of the flashlight at the bed and saw that it was covered with a bedspread on which