Free Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz

us, in that hungry, mocking way. He looks at you hungrily, and he looks at me contemptuously."
    "Good night. I'm going to bed."
    "So what if I don't like him? Nobody likes anybody, anyway."
    "Good night. Don't forget to take your pills before you go to sleep."
    "Once, a long time ago, before all this, maybe here and there some people liked each other a bit. Not everyone. Not much. Not always. Just here and there, a little bit. But now? These days? Now all the hearts are dead. It's finished."
    "There are mosquitoes, Daddy. Would you mind closing the door."
    "Why are all the hearts dead? Maybe you know. Do you?"

12
    IN THE NIGHT , at two or two-thirty, woken again by tapping, scraping and digging sounds, the old man got out of bed (he always slept in his long johns) and felt for the flashlight he had put out specially and the iron bar he had found in one of the sheds, his feet groping in the dark like blind beggars for his slippers. Giving these up in despair, he padded barefoot into the corridor, feeling the walls and furniture with a trembling hand, his head thrust forward at its characteristic right angle. He finally found the cellar door and pulled it toward him, but the door was made to be pushed open, not pulled, and the iron bar slipped out of his grasp and fell on his foot and to the floor with a dull metallic clang that failed to wake Rachel but did silence the digging sounds.
    The old man switched on his flashlight, bent over with a groan and picked up the iron bar. His bent body cast three or four distorted shadows on the walls of the corridor, on the floor and on the kitchen door.
    He stood there for a few minutes, with the bar under his arm, one hand holding the flashlight and the other tugging on the cellar door, and strained to hear, but since the silence was deep and complete, punctuated only by the sounds of cicadas and frogs, he reconsidered and decided to go back to bed and try again the following night.
    He woke again before dawn and sat up in bed, but he did not reach for the flashlight and the bar because this time total silence filled the night. Pesach Kedem sat in bed for a while, listening attentively to the deep silence. Even the cicadas had stopped. There was only a very fine breeze stirring the tops of the cypress trees bordering the cemetery, but it was too faint for him to hear, and he curled up and fell asleep.

13
    NEXT MORNING, BEFORE going off to school, Rachel went outside to take the old man's trousers off the clothesline. Adel was waiting for her by the dovecote, with his glasses that were too small for him, his shy smile that put a dimple in his cheek, and his Van Gogh–style straw hat.
    "Rachel. Excuse me. It won't take a moment."
    "Good morning, Adel. Don't forget to straighten that crooked paving stone at the end of the path. Somebody could trip over it."
    "OK, Rachel. But I wanted to ask you what happened in the night."
    "In the night? What happened in the night?"
    "I thought maybe you knew. Do you have men working in the yard at night?"
    "Working? In the night?"
    "Didn't you hear anything? At two o'clock in the morning? Noises? Digging? You must be a very sound sleeper."
    "What sort of noises?"
    "Noises down below, Rachel."
    "You were just dreaming, Adel. Who would come and dig underneath your room in the middle of the night?"
    "I don't know. I thought maybe you would know."
    "You were dreaming. Remember to fix that paving stone today, before Pesach trips over it and has a fall."
    "I was thinking, maybe your dad walks around at night. Maybe he has trouble sleeping. Maybe he gets up, picks up a shovel, and starts digging."
    "Don't talk nonsense, Adel. No one's digging. You were dreaming."
    She walked back toward the house, carrying the laundry she had taken off the line, but the student went on standing there for a while, watching her walk away. He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt tail. Then he walked toward the cypresses in his clumsy big shoes, and coming across