Scenes from Village Life (15 page)

When Ada mentioned her leg the boy blushed, glad that it was too dark for her to notice. But she did notice something: not his blushing but his sudden silence. Tenderly she touched his back and asked what he thought of
Mrs. Dalloway.
Kobi started talking excitedly about the book, his voice unstable and strained, as though he were confessing his feelings. He spoke for a long time about
Mrs. Dalloway
and other books, maintaining that life has meaning only if it is devoted to some idea or emotion around which everything revolves. Ada Dvash liked his elaborate diction but wondered if it was not one of the reasons he was so lonely and had apparently never had a girlfriend. He was still talking when they reached the library, which occupied the ground floor of the rear extension to the Village Hall. They went in by a side entrance. Since there was ten minutes to go before opening time, which was seven-thirty, Ada suggested making them both a cup of coffee. Kobi began by murmuring, "No, thanks, there's no need, really," but then he changed his mind and said, "Actually, why not, yes please," and asked if he could help.

THE LIBRARY WAS LIT
by bright white neon lighting. Ada switched on the air conditioning, which started with a soft gurgling sound. The library consisted of a smallish space lined with white-painted metal bookcases, and off this three parallel aisles of shelves opened, lit slightly less glaringly by the neon lighting. Near the entrance there was a desk on which were a computer, a telephone, a pile of brochures and periodicals, two piles of books and an old radio.

She disappeared from view down one of the aisles, at the end of which was a sink and the entrance to the toilet. There she filled the kettle and switched it on. While waiting for the water to boil she turned on the computer and sat Kobi next to her behind the desk. Looking down, he observed that her lemon-colored skirt ended above her knees. His face turned red again at the sight of her knees, and he laid his arms on his lap, then thought better of it and crossed them on his chest, and finally placed his hands on the desk. As she looked at him, he thought the slight squint in her left eye was giving him a wink, as though to say, "It's not so bad, Kobi. So, you're blushing again."

The water boiled. Ada Dvash made two cups of black coffee and put sugar in both without asking him. She pushed one cup toward him. She looked at his T-shirt with the words
Three Giants Festival
and wondered what sort of festival it was, and who the Three Giants were. It was twenty to eight, and no one had come into the library. At one end of the desk was a pile of five or six new books that had been acquired during the previous week. Ada showed Kobi how new acquisitions are catalogued on the computer, how the books are stamped with the library's stamp, how they are covered with strong plastic film and how a label showing the number is stuck on the spine of the book.

"From now on you're the assistant librarian," she said, adding, "Tell me, aren't you expected at home? For supper? They might be worried about you." The squint in her left eye winked affectionately.

"You haven't had supper either."

"But I always eat after I've closed the library. I grab something from the fridge and eat it in front of the TV."

"I'll walk you home when you've finished. So you don't have to walk alone in the dark."

She smiled at him and laid her warm hand on his.

"There's no need, Kobi. I only live five minutes away."

At the touch of her hand a sweet shiver ran from the back of his neck to the base of his spine. But he inferred from her words that her boyfriend, the one who drove a diesel tanker, must be waiting for her at home. And if he wasn't there already, she might be expecting him later in the evening. That was why she had said there was no need for him to walk her home. But he would follow her anyway, like a dog, to the doorstep of her house, and when she closed the door he'd stay, sitting on the steps. This time he would also shake her hand to say good night, and when her hand was inside his, he'd squeeze it lightly twice, so she'd understand. There was something wrong, twisted and despicable about a world where a diesel tanker driver has more advantages than you just because he's older. He could see the tanker driver in his mind's eye, with his thick eyebrows joined in the middle, inserting his fat fingers into the front of her blouse. This apparition made him feel lust and shame together with a desperate anger and a desire to do something to hurt her.

Ada looked at him out of the corner of her eye and noticed something. She suggested they take a look around the shelves; she could show him all sorts of minor treasures, such as the writings of Eldad Rubin with corrections in his own handwriting in the margins. But before he could answer, two older women came in, one small and square-shaped, in baggy three-quarter-length shorts and hair dyed red, the other with short gray hair and protruding eyes behind thick glasses. They had brought their books back and wanted to borrow some new ones. They chatted to each other and to Ada about a new Israeli novel that the whole country was talking about. Kobi escaped down one of the aisles where, on a low shelf, he came across Virginia Woolf's
To the Lighthouse.
He stood and read a couple of pages so as not to have to listen to the conversation. But the women's voices broke in on him, and he found himself overhearing what they were saying.

"If you want to know what I think," one of them was saying, "he keeps repeating himself. He writes the same book over and over again with small changes."

"Dostoyevsky and Kafka also repeat themselves," her friend said. "So what?"

Ada remarked with a smile, "There are some subjects and motifs that a writer comes back to again and again because apparently they come from the root of his being."

When Ada said the words "the root of his being" Kobi felt something squeezing at his heart. At that moment it was clear to him that she had meant him to overhear the phrase, that she had been talking to him rather than to the women, and that she had been trying to say that both their innermost souls shared a single root. In his imagination he approached her and put his arm around her shoulders, and she rested her head on his shoulder because he was a full head taller than she. He could feel her breasts pressed against his chest, her stomach against his stomach, and then the image became so piercing that it was unbearable.

He stayed where he was for a minute or two after the women left, while his body calmed down, and said to Ada in a voice slightly deeper than usual that he would be with her in a moment. Meanwhile, she entered in the computer the books that the two women had returned and had borrowed.

Ada Dvash and Kobi sat side by side at the desk, as if he too were working in the library. The silence between them was broken only by the humming of the air conditioning and the buzzing of the neon light. They talked about Virginia Woolf, who had drowned herself at the height of the Second World War. Ada said she could not understand how anyone could commit suicide in the midst of a war. It was hard to imagine that she hadn't had an iota of a sense of involvement, or any curiosity to know how things would turn out, and which side would be victorious in that terrible war that would affect everybody in the world in one way or another. Didn't she want to know whether her own country, England, would survive or would be conquered by the Nazis?

"She was in despair," Kobi said.

"That's just what I don't understand," Ada said. "There's always at least one thing that is precious to you and that you don't want to be parted from. Even just a cat or a dog. Or your favorite armchair. The view of the garden in the rain. Or the sunset from the window."

"You're a happy person. Despair is obviously alien to you."

"No, not alien. But it doesn't attract me either."

A bespectacled woman in her twenties came into the library. She had full hips and was wearing a flowery blouse and tight-fitting jeans. She screwed up her eyes at the bright neon light, smiled at Ada and at Kobi, asked Kobi if he was going to be the deputy librarian. She wanted some help looking for material on the events of 1936–39, otherwise known as the Arab Revolt. Ada showed her sections on the history of Israel and the Middle East, and the two of them pulled out one book after another and examined the tables of contents.

Kobi went to the sink next to the toilet and washed the two coffee cups. The clock above the desk showed twenty to nine.
Another evening will go by without you revealing your feelings. This time you mustn't let the chance slip. When you're both alone again you must take her hand in your hands and look her straight in the eyes and tell her at last. But what are you going to tell her? And what if she bursts out laughing? Or if she panics and pulls her hand away? Or she might be sorry for you and press your head to her chest and stroke your hair. Like a child.
Pity seemed to him more terrifying than any rejection. It was clear to him that if she behaved as if she were sorry for him, he would not be able to stop himself from crying. There was no way he could hold back his tears. And then it would all be over, and he would run away from her into the darkness.

Meanwhile, even though the coffee cups were dry he kept on rubbing them with the dishtowel that hung on a hook next to the sink, staring as he did so at a moth that was hurling itself desperately at the neon tube.

THE BESPECTACLED WOMAN
said thank you and left, carrying five or six books on the Arab Revolt in a plastic bag. Ada entered the details of the books on the computer from the cards that lay in front of her on the desk. She explained to Kobi that she was not really allowed to lend more than two books at a time, but that this girl had to hand in an essay in ten days' time.

"It'll be nine o'clock soon, and then we'll shut the library and go home," she said.

At the sound of the words "go home," Kobi's heart started to pound in his chest as though they contained some secret promise. The next moment he crossed his legs because his body was aroused again and threatened to embarrass him. An inner voice said to him that come shame or mockery or pity he mustn't give up, he had to tell her.

"Ada, listen."

"Yes."

"Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"

"Go on."

"Have you ever loved someone with no hope that he will return your love?"

She saw at once where he was leading, and hesitated for a moment between her affection for the boy and her duty to be very careful with his feelings. And underneath these two, she also felt a vague impulse to accede.

"Yes, but it was a long time ago."

"What did you do?"

"What all girls do. I stopped eating, cried at night, started by wearing pretty, attractive clothes and then deliberately dressed drably. Until it passed. It does pass, Kobi, though at the time it seems that it'll last forever."

"But I—"

Another reader came in. This time it was a woman in her mid-seventies, shriveled and brisk, dressed in a light summer dress that was much too young for her, with silver bracelets on her skinny, tanned arms and a double row of amber beads around her neck. She greeted Ada and asked inquisitively:

"And who is this charming young man? Where did you find him?"

With a smile Ada said:

"This is my new assistant."

"I know you," the old woman said, turning to Kobi. "You're Victor Ezra the grocer's son. Are you a volunteer?"

"Yes, no, that is—"

"He's come to help me," Ada said. "He loves books."

The woman returned a novel in a foreign language and asked if she could borrow the book by the Israeli writer everyone was talking about, the one the two women who had come earlier had requested. Ada said there was a long waiting list, as there were only two copies in the library.

"Shall I put you on the list, Lisa? It'll take between a month and two months."

"Two months?" the woman said. "In that time he'll have written another book."

Ada persuaded her to make do with a novel translated from Spanish that had had good reviews, and the woman left.

"What an unpleasant woman," Kobi said. "And she's a gossip, too."

Ada did not reply. She was leafing through the book the woman had returned. Kobi felt a sudden sense of urgency that was almost more than he could bear. Here they were alone again, but in ten minutes she would say that it was closing time and the moment would be lost, this time perhaps forever. He suddenly hated the blinding white neon light, like at the dentist's, which seemed to get in the way of his telling her.

"Let's see if you can really be my assistant," Ada said. "You can record the book that Lisa has just borrowed. The one she returned, too. Let me show you how."

What does she take me for?
He felt furious.
Does she think I'm just a little child, that she'll let me play with her computer for a bit and then send me off to bed? How can she be such a dickhead? Doesn't she understand anything? Anything at all?
He felt a blind compulsion to hurt her, to bite her, crush her, pull off her big wooden earrings, to make her wake up and understand at last.

She sensed she had made a mistake. Laying a hand on his shoulder she said:

"That's enough, Kobi."

The touch of her hand on his shoulder made him dizzy, but it also made him sad, because he knew she was only trying to comfort him. He turned and, taking hold of her cheeks with both his hands under her earrings, he pulled her face around hard. Not daring to move his lips closer to hers, he simply stayed holding her for a long time, with her cheeks between his hands and his eyes fixed on her lips, which were not open but not quite closed either. There was an expression on her face he did not recognize under the harsh neon light: she didn't look hurt or offended, he thought, but sad. He held her head gently but firmly, with his lips close to hers and his whole body trembling with desire and fear. She did not resist him or try to break free from his grasp but waited. At last she spoke:

"Kobi. We'd better be going."

He let go of her face, and without taking his eyes off her he sprang up and felt for the light switch with quivering fingers. In an instant the neon light went out and darkness filled the library.
Now,
he said to himself.
If you don't tell her now you'll regret it for the whole of your life. Forever.
As well as the conflicting desire and emotion he felt a vague urge to shelter and protect her. From himself.