Amos Oz - Don't Call It Night

Theo buys Ma'ariv and a local paper, sits down in the California, and orders a grapefruit juice. Muki Peleg invites him over to his table, which he calls the Council of Torah Sages. Theo hesitates and answers, Thanks, later maybe, and Muki adds, As the condemned man said to the hangman who offered him a cigarette while he was knotting the rope.

Theo skims the headlines. Risk of renewed hostilities. Deaf-mute divorcee from Acre burns ex-husband's mistress alive. Transport Minister walks out of ceremony in protest. Gasoline prices to rise from midnight on Saturday. Security forces prevent… In his mind's eye he follows the hasty Ashkenazi Sabbath-eve funeral cortège, which must have passed the car dump by now and reached the cemetery. First they lay the stretcher on the gravel path: like it or not, they'll have to wait for the stragglers to catch up. All the hurry was in vain: they can't begin until the last mourner gets here. The lugubrious Hungarian cantor fills his lungs with air, his face turns a furious red, and he starts to trill the prayer "O Lord Full of Compassion". He draws out the phrase, "May he repose in Paradise", he bows at, "he will face his destiny at the end of days", and the mourners say Amen. Now they push Schatzberg the pharmacist forward and tell him to repeat word for word the phrases the cantor mumbles, Magnified and sanctified, in Aramaic with an Ashkenazi accent, speedily and in our own times. Every day he disappeared but they never worried about him because he always turned up on the dot of eight o'clock at the post office, with a shy smile shining in his childlike blue eyes, the smile of a shy man who has forgotten what it was that has made him happy. The cantor begs pardon and forgiveness from the dead man if any offence has inadvertently been committed against him in the course of the preparations for the burial or the burial itself, and formally releases him from membership of any association to which he may have belonged in his lifetime. He used to come up to you in the street sometimes and bow politely, his blue eyes glowing with warmth and feeling, and address you in that soft voice of his: Forgive me, sir, would you be so kind as to inform me when Elijah is coming? That is why he was known in the town as Elijah, or sometimes as Schatzberg-the-pharmacist's Elijah.

Now the gravediggers tip the canvas, a task requiring the cooperative precision and dexterity of an operating theatre, and the sparsely bearded religious youth clasps the dead man's feet lightly and like a skilful midwife lets the wrapped body slide smoothly from the stretcher into the grave. They quickly draw away the tallit, like cutting an umbilical cord. Then they lay down five slabs of precast concrete, and set to work with spades raising a heap of earth that they mark with a rectangle made up of blocks of grey cement. On top of the mound, approximately over the deceased's noble brow, they set a metal plate inscribed not ELIJAH but GUSTAV MARMOREK RIP. The mourners wait for a couple of minutes in embarrassed silence, as if uncertain what to do next or expecting some necessary sign, then one of them stoops and lays a little stone, others follow suit, somebody makes for the gate, impatient for a smoke, and all the rest follow him, hurriedly again, it being midday on Friday, getting late. The gravedigger in charge locks the squat iron gates topped with a coil of rusty barbed wire. A few cars start up and wind their way out of sight behind the hill. Bozo the shoe-man's wife and child are buried here, in the upper section, four rows away from the soldier Albert Yeshua who, in a fit of unrequited love, killed them both with a submachine gun together with all the customers in the shop, and was killed himself ten minutes later by a single shot from a police marksman, in the middle of his forehead, between the eyes. Today's corpse has been laid to rest next to young Immanuel Orvieto from class 12C, and his aunt, who died two days after him of a cerebral hemorrhage. The boy's mother has lain for nine years now in Amsterdam. Everything is peaceful, Friday midday silence in the desert at the foot of the hill. "Wasps drone ceaselessly around a rusty, dripping faucet. And two or three birds may continue to sing there, concealed in the pine trees tested by an easterly breeze that carefully rustles them needle by needle. Immediately beyond the last graves is a steep fenced rock face that the army does not let you cross, they say behind it is a wide valley full of secret installations. Theo pays for his drink and heads back to his office. He will have another look for his Russian cleaner if her husband does not come at him with an axe. Noa will be here in a few minutes. Desert Chic Fashions, he ascertained by phone, is open till one o'clock on Fridays. In the little public gardens the blind man is still sitting with his dog, still surrounded by pigeons. Now he is pouring them some water from an army flask into a little plastic bowl. Theo has forgotten to buy the office supplies that he jotted down on a piece of paper. He'll get them next week. There's no hurry. And it also turns out that he's left his Ma'ariv, unread apart from the headlines, on the table in the California Café. He's left the local paper behind, too. Meanwhile, the simple answer is, I am sorry, sir, I have no idea when Elijah is coming or indeed if he is coming at all. I do not believe he will come. But that is not what I was asked.

SHE finally chose a light-coloured dress in a rustic, possibly Balkan, style, with a butterfly-shaped bow below the breast. She reacted to the new dress at first with girlish pleasure. In front of the mirror her shoulders and hips circled as in a dance. But after the initial joy came hesitancy. Wasn't it too folksy? Too loud? And anyway, on what sort of occasions would she ever be able to wear a thing like this? And tell me frankly, Paula, isn't it a bit like a costume for a folk-dance company? She spent more than ten minutes agonizing between the mirror and the saleswoman, who declared that the two of them, the dress and Noa, were simply made for each other like music and good wine. Almost in the same breath she promised Noa to take out the shoulder pads, shorten the back a bit, and maybe lower the bow by an inch or so.

I stood in the corner by the cash register and said nothing. I had the feeling the saleswoman was secretly mocking, behind her façade of extravagant friendliness. But I didn't get involved. I went on standing to one side, hand in pocket, trying to identify by touch under my handkerchief the keys of the car the apartment the office and the mailbox, and then I counted the coins in my purse: eight shekels and eighty-five agorot, unless the five agorot was really another shekel coin, in which case it would make nine shekels eighty in all.

About a quarter of an hour passed before she did what she had been hoping she wouldn't do, and asked me what I thought.

Turn round, I said, stand up straight. Now walk away. That's right.

Do you like it, Theo?

It's got something, I said after thinking about it, provided you feel it's right for you. If you're not sure, don't buy it.

Noa said: But it's supposed to be a present from you.

Paula Orlev hastily intervened: It can come with this belt, or with this one. Try it tied like this, on the side, or tied in the middle, either way it's absolutely charming.

Noa looked at me suddenly with a look of Don't leave me alone, as though she were sending me a hot blast from the core of life. I shivered.

Theo?

I suggested that if she was still unsure, and it was Friday afternoon now, the dress would still be here on Sunday morning. What was the hurry?

On the way out she said: What a pity. I'd have quite liked to wear it for the weekend. I let myself be steamrollered by your logical reasoning.

I said that if on Sunday the dress still didn't please her, she could look for something more suitable on one of her next trips to Beersheba or Tel Aviv. Noa told me to stop dropping hints all the time about her trips. She would travel as and when there was a need for it, and without asking me for an exit permit. And anyway, who said she needed a new dress? What was this about dresses all of a sudden? It was you who offered to buy me a dress today, Theo, but as usual you managed to spoil it with your balanced calculations, your what's the problem, what's the hurry, on the one hand this, on the other hand that, and your regular strategy of maneuvering me into the position of a capricious little girl and your hints about my trips. It's not easy with you, Theo.