Amos Oz: Don't Call It Night

Theo touched my back with outstretched fingers: Look here, Noa, you must understand, that boy is dead. I answered in a whisper, I know. Know? Then say it. But why? Say it, Noa, so that it is in your own voice.

And we stood there waiting for it to get cold.

We got home at ten o'clock. We went back through the town, crossing the square that was completely empty by now and lashed by the wind with tattered newspapers and salvos of sharp sand. I put my arm round his wide belt and sensed the smell of old leather and sweat. We hurriedly closed all the blinds and windows against the dust storm. Theo made a fine salad with a radish cut in the form of a rosebud. He made an omelette and put out sliced bread and various cheeses on a wooden board. I made two glasses of herbal tea. We put a record on, Schubert's Mass in B Flat Major, and we sat in the kitchen till late. We did not speak. Maybe we'll hire a car and go for a trip to Galilee. We'll stay in village inns and go and see the sun rise through the dense tangle of vegetation near the sources of the Jordan. When we come home Tal can bring us the little kitten she has promised us. Theo will give her a part-time job filing in his office, until she joins the army, and meanwhile he will prepare her for her math exam. We'll buy her a pretty blouse and skirt instead of the worn jeans with the rips at the knees. I thought about the shadows we had disturbed this evening in the ruin. They might have gone down into the wadi under the cover of thick darkness, and by now they'd have got as far as the flank of Hyena Hill. Or they might have taken shelter in the wood. Or they might have sneaked back inside after we'd gone and now they'd be lying in the gloom under the crumbling wall, head on thigh, drowsing in the peace of a silent dream, far from themselves, far from pain and sorrow, listening to the gusts of the southerly wind that blows and fades and rustles again through the tops of the twisted pine trees in the garden of the ruin from where it carries on to sweep the whole of the town and gropes at the outside of the shutters we have closed. If you like, you can hear it whistle through the low bushes. If you don't, you don't have to listen. In another two and a half weeks the summer holiday will be over. Whoever has some goodwill can find goodwill everywhere. Maybe this year I'll agree to be a form teacher. Meanwhile, tonight, I'll make him give up London because I'll have a shower and go to him in the darkness.

Theo(of Planning Ltd.)

Noa Dubnow(teacher)

Malachi(Muki) Peleg(estate agent and investment consultant)

Avraham Orvieto(defence adviser or perhaps arms-dealer)

Erella Orvieto(his wife)

Immanuel Orvieto(their son, former secondary school pupil)

The Orvieto family's chimpanzee

Immanuel Orvieto's dog

Elazara Orvieto(aunt and former bank clerk)

Ron Arbel(lawyer)

Ludmir(retired employee of the electricity company, member of many committees)

Gusta Ludmir(his wife, gives private math coaching)

Larlach Ludmir(his granddaughter)

Linda Danino(clerk, divorced)

Nehemia Dubnow(retired employee of the water company)

Chuma Zamosc Bat-Am(militant vegetarian and pacifist)

Yoshiahu (Yoshku) Zamosc(born-again Jew)

Peeping Gorovoy(former champion weight-lifter of Lodz)

Ezra Zussman(poet) and his wife

Batsheva Dinur(the Mayor)

Didi Dinur(her husband, killed in the Six Day War; apparently a musician)

Batsheva's elderly mother(retired teacher)

Etam(Batsheva's grandson)

Nawwaf(who has brought olives from Galilee)

Juliaand Dr. Leo Dresdner, and Dr. Nir(the last two are dentists)

Dubi Weitzman(notary and accountant)

Yehudaand Jakki(Hollywood Photos)

Kushner(bookbinder)

Schatzberg(pharmacist)

Avram(falafel seller lately also shawarma in pitta)

Shlomo Benizri(from the Department in Beersheba)

Doris(Benizri's secretary)

Tikki(a typist)

Pudgy policeman(from the road accident at Ashkelon junction)

Martha(from Elat, apparently a drug user)

'Aatef(a Bedouin tracker)

Alharizi(formerly a house owner in Tel Kedar, now an importer of televisions in Netanya)

Natalia(immigrant, a cleaner)

Her husbandand his father(immigrants, mechanics)

Gilboa(newsagent and stationer)

Limor Gilboa(assists her father; cellist)

Pini Bozo(sells shoes)

His wifeand baby(killed)

Albert Yeshua(the soldier who killed them)

Blind Lupo(from the telephone exchange)

Anatand Ohad(a young couple)

Bialkin(sells furniture)

Gustav Marmorek(alias old Elijah)

Violetteand Madeleine(hairdressers, sisters-in-law)

Hungarian cantor

Paula Orlev(Desert Chic Fashions)

Tal Orlev(her daughter; between school and military service)

Jacques Ben Loulou(Ben Elul's Garage)

Bargeloni Bros(estate agents)

Pini Finkel(killed in the War of Independence)

Nimrod Finkel(his son, head of the Planning Agency)

Cherniak, Refidim and Arbel, Lawyers(90 Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv)

A professor and piano tuner(writing a book entitled The Essence of Judaism)

Amalia(ailing librarian)

Young man from Galway(travelling around Galilee, looking for a girl named Daphne)

String quartet(immigrants from Kiev)

Man crying in Jeep

Born in Jerusalem in 1939, AMOS OZ is the author of numerous works of fiction and essays. His international awards include the Prix Femina, the Israel Prize, and the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and his books have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Israel.