Scenes from Village Life Page 8

  A few passersby crossed my path. Avraham Levin nodded a greeting, and one or two others stopped to exchange a few words. Here in the village we almost all know one another. Some people resent my buying up the houses in the village and selling them to outsiders, who build themselves weekend homes or holiday villas. Soon the village won't be a village anymore; it'll turn into a sort of summer resort. The older inhabitants are unhappy about this change, even though the newcomers have made the village rich and turned it from a forgotten backwater into a place bustling with life, at least on weekends. Every Saturday, lines of cars arrive in the village, and their passengers visit the boutique wineries, the art galleries, the stores selling Far Eastern furnishings, and the cheese, honey and olive stalls.

  In the hot evening twilight I reached the open square in front of the Village Hall on Founders Street, and my feet led me behind the building, to a dismal empty space where a garden had been planted, pointlessly, since no one ever comes to this forsaken spot. I stood there for a few minutes, waiting, though I had no idea whom or what I was waiting for. A dusty little statue stood there too, surrounded by yellow grass and a bed of thirsty roses, in memory of five of the founders of the village killed in an attack a hundred years ago. By the back door of the hall was a notice board advertising an unforgettable evening with three musicians the following weekend. Underneath that poster was another, from some religious missionaries, declaring that this world is merely a gloomy antechamber in which we must prepare ourselves to enter the Sanctuary. I stared at it, reflecting that I knew nothing of the Sanctuary but that I quite enjoyed the antechamber.

  While I was looking at the notice board, a woman, who a moment ago had not been there, appeared next to the statue. She looked odd and even faintly bizarre in the evening light. Had she come out of the rear entrance of the hall? Or had she come through the narrow passageway between the adjacent buildings? It seemed uncanny to me that a moment ago I was all alone here and suddenly this strange woman had materialized out of nowhere. She was not from here. She was slim and erect, with an aquiline nose and a short, solid neck, and on her head she wore a weird yellow hat covered in buckles and brooches. She was dressed in khaki like a hiker, with a red haversack over one shoulder, a water bottle attached to her belt, heavy walking shoes. She was holding a stick in one hand, and over the other arm was draped a raincoat that was definitely out of place in June. She looked as if she had stepped out of a foreign advertisement for nature walks. Not here, but in some cooler country. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her.

  The strange woman looked back at me sharply, with an almost hostile air. She stood haughtily, as if she despised me wholeheartedly or as if she were trying to say that there was no hope for me and we were both well aware of it. So piercing was her gaze that I had no choice but to look away and move off quickly in the direction of Founders Street and the front of the Village Hall. After ten or so paces I couldn't stop myself turning around. She wasn't there. The ground seemed to have opened up and swallowed her. But my mind wouldn't settle. I walked around the Village Hall and continued up Founders Street with a persistent feeling that something was wrong, that there was something I had to do, something serious and important, that it was my duty to do but that I was avoiding it.

  So I walked to The Ruin to talk right away to the widow, Batya Rubin, and perhaps also to Rosa Rubin, the old mother. After all, they had finally contacted me at the office to say that it was time for us to talk.

  3

  AS I WALKED, I thought that it was rather a pity to demolish The Ruin. It was, after all, one of the last of the original houses built by the founders more than a hundred years ago. The writer Eldad Rubin's grandfather was a well-off farmer named Gedalya Rubin, who was among the first settlers in Tel Ilan. He built himself a house with his own hands, and he planted a fruit orchard and also a successful vineyard. He was known in the village as a tightfisted, short-tempered farmer. His wife, Martha, was known in her youth as the prettiest girl in the Manasseh District. But The Ruin was so decrepit and rundown that there was no point in spending money restoring and renovating it. I was still contemplating purchasing it from the mother and the widow and selling the site for the building of a new villa. It might be possible to arrange for a commemorative plaque to be fixed to the façade of the new building, saying that on this spot once stood the home of the writer Eldad Rubin, and it was here that he wrote all his books about the horrors of the Holocaust. When I was a little boy I used to think that these horrors were still going on somehow inside the writer's house, in the cellar or in one of the back rooms.

  In the little square by the bus stop I bumped into Benny Avni, the village mayor. He was standing there with the chief engineer and a paving contractor from Netanya, talking to them about replacing the old paving stones. I was surprised to see them confabulating at this twilight hour. Benny Avni slapped me on the shoulder and said:

  "How are you doing, Mister Real Estate Agent?"

  Then he said: "You look a bit worried, Yossi." And he added: "Pop into my office when you have a moment, maybe on Friday afternoon. You and I need to have a word."

  But when I put out feelers about what we needed to have a word about, I couldn't extract the slightest hint from him.

  "Come," he said, "we'll talk, coffee's on me."

  This exchange heightened my sense of disquiet. Something that I ought to be doing, or to refrain from doing, weighed on me and clouded my thoughts, but what that thing was I could not think. So I set off for The Ruin. But I didn't go straight there. I made a slight detour, via the school and the avenue of pine trees next to it. It suddenly struck me that the strange woman who had appeared to me in that out-of-the-way garden behind the Village Hall had been trying to give me some sort of a clue, maybe a vitally important hint, which I had refused to take heed of. What was it that had scared me so? Why had I run away from her? But had I really run away? After all, when I turned back to look, she wasn't there. It was as though she had faded into the evening twilight. A thin, erect figure dressed in strange traveling gear, with a walking stick in one hand and a folded raincoat draped over her other arm. As though it were not June. She had looked to me like a hiker in the Alps. Maybe Austrian. Or Swiss. What had she been trying to say to me, and why had I felt the need to get away from her? I could find no answer to these questions, nor could I imagine what it was that Benny Avni wanted to talk to me about, or why he couldn't simply raise the matter when we had met in the little square by the bus stop, but had invited me to call on him in his office at such an odd time, on Friday afternoon.

  A smallish package wrapped in brown paper and tied with black cord was lying on a shady bench at the end of Tarpat Street. I paused and bent over to see what was written on it. There was nothing written on it. I picked it up cautiously and turned it over, but the brown paper was smooth and unmarked. After a moment's hesitation I decided not to open the package, but felt I ought to let someone know I had found it. I didn't know whom I should tell. I held it in both my hands and it seemed heavier than its size would have suggested, heavier than a package of books, as if it contained stones or metal. Now the object aroused my suspicion, and so I replaced it gently on the bench. I ought to have reported the discovery of a suspicious package to the police, but my cell phone was on my desk at the office, because I had only gone out for a short walk and didn't want to be interrupted by office business.

  Meanwhile, the last light was slowly fading, and only the afterglow of the sunset shimmered at the bottom of the road, beckoning to me, or warning me to keep away. The street was filling with deeper shadows, from the tall cypress trees and the fences surrounding the front gardens of the properties. The shadows did not stand still, but moved to and fro, as though bending down to look for something that was lost. After a few moments the streetlights came on; the shadows did not retreat, but mingled with the light breeze that was moving the treetops as if an unseen hand were stirring and blending them.

  I stopped at the broken iron gate
of The Ruin and stood there for a few minutes, inhaling the scent of the oleanders and the bitter smell of the geraniums. The house seemed to be empty, as there was no light in any of the windows or in the garden, just the sound of crickets among the thistles and frogs in the neighboring garden and the persistent barking of dogs from farther down the street. Why had I come here without phoning first to make an appointment? If I knocked on the door now, after dark, the two women would be bound to be alarmed. They might not even open the door. But perhaps they were both out—there was no light in the windows. So I decided to leave and come back another day. But while I was making up my mind, I opened the gate, which creaked ominously, crossed the dark front garden and knocked twice on the front door.

  4

  THE DOOR WAS OPENED by Yardena, the daughter of the late Eldad Rubin, a young woman of about twenty-five. Her mother and grandmother had gone to Jerusalem, and she had come from Haifa to be on her own for a few days and get on with her seminar paper on the founders of Tel Ilan. I remembered Yardena from her childhood, because once, when she was about twelve, she came to my office, sent by her father, to ask for a plan of the village. She was a bashful, fair-haired girl, with a beanstalk body and long, thin neck and delicate features that seemed full of wonderment, as though everything that happened surprised her and afforded her shy puzzlement. I had tried to engage her in a little conversation about her father, his books, the visitors who came to them from all over the country, but she would only answer yes and no, and at one point she said, "How would I know?" And so our conversation was over before it had begun. I handed her the plan of the village that her father had requested, and she thanked me and went out, leaving behind a trail of shyness and surprise, as if she had found me or my office amazing. Since then I'd bumped into her a few times at Victor Ezra's grocery store, at the council offices or at the health clinic, and each time she had smiled at me like an old friend but said little. She always left me with a sense of frustration, as though there were some conversation between us that hadn't yet taken place. Six or seven years ago she had been called up for military service, and after that, people said, she had gone off to study in Haifa.

  Now she was standing in front of me at the entrance to this shuttered house, a graceful, fragile-looking young woman in a plain cotton frock, with loose, flowing hair, wearing white socks with her sandals like a schoolgirl. I lowered my eyes and looked only at her sandals. "Your mother called me," I said, "and asked me to come by to talk about the future of the house."

  That was when Yardena told me that her mother and grandmother had gone to Jerusalem for a few days and she was alone in the house, but she invited me in, though it was no good talking to her about the future of the house. I made up my mind to thank her, take my leave and come back another day, but my feet followed her into the house of their own accord. I entered the large room I remembered from my childhood, that high-ceilinged room from which various doors opened onto side rooms and steps led down to the cellar. The room was lit by a faint golden light filtered by metal lampshades fixed close to the ceiling. Two of the walls were lined with shelves laden with books, while the east wall still carried a large map of the Mediterranean lands. The map had begun to turn yellow and its edges were tattered. There was something old and dense in the room, a faint smell of things that had not been aired, or maybe it wasn't a smell but the golden light catching tiny specks of dust that shimmered in a diagonal column above the dark dining table flanked by eight straight-backed dining chairs.

  Yardena sat me down in an old mauve-colored armchair and asked me what I would like to eat.

  "Please don't go to any trouble," I said, "I don't want to disturb you. I'll just sit and rest for a few minutes and I'll come back another time, when your mother and your grandmother are at home."

  Yardena insisted that I ought to have something to drink. "It's so hot today, and you walked here," she said. As she left the room I looked at her long legs with their little-girl sandals and white socks. Her dark blue dress just skimmed her knees. There was a deep silence in the house, as though it had already been sold and vacated forever. An old-fashioned wall clock ticked above the sofa, and outside a dog was barking in the distance, but no breeze stirred the tops of the cypresses that surrounded the house on all sides. A full moon was visible in the east window. The dark patches on the surface of the moon looked darker than usual.

  When Yardena returned I noticed that she had removed her sandals and socks and was now barefoot. She was holding a black glass tray on which were a single glass, a bottle of cold water and a plate of dates, plums and cherries. The bottle was beaded with icy perspiration, and the glass had a thin blue line running round it. She put the tray down in front of me, leaned over and filled the glass with water up to the blue line. As she bent over I caught a glimpse of the mounds of her breasts and the cleft between them. Her breasts were small and firm, and for a moment I thought they looked like the fruit she had served me. I took five or six sips and touched the fruit with my fingers but I didn't take any, though the plums were also covered in condensation, or droplets of water from washing, and looked tasty and tempting. I told Yardena that I could remember her father and that I recalled this room from my childhood, and almost nothing in it had changed. She said that her father had loved this house, where he had been born and raised and where he had written all his books, but that her mother wanted to leave and live in the city. She found the silence oppressive. Apparently her grandmother would be put into a home and the house would be sold. It was her mother's business. If she was asked for her opinion, she might say that the sale should be postponed so long as her grandmother was alive. But on the other hand, you could understand her mother's point of view: why should she stay on here, now that she had retired from her job as a biology teacher in the school? She was alone here all the time with the old lady, who was getting hard of hearing.

  "Would you like to see the house? Shall I give you a tour? There are so many rooms. This house was built without any rhyme or reason," Yardena said. "As if the architect got carried away, and built whatever rooms and passages he had a mind to. In fact he wasn't an architect at all: my great-grandfather built the main part of the house and every few years he added a new wing, and then my grandfather came along and built more extensions and more rooms."

  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, w
hile 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 nuts and various spreads and condiments. An illustrated calendar hanging on the wall was clearly many years old.