Don't Call It Night by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online

Anyway, what was the point, now? As he said this he looked up from the tablecloth and offered me his bright smile that rose quickly from the depth of his blue eyes in his wrinkled brown face and then at once withdrew and sank back, like the head that was lowered again. I laid my lingers on his hand without meaning to, like touching rough soil, and at once I reconsidered and withdrew them, almost unable to refrain from apologizing for touching him without permission.
    He said, you see, it's like this, then he thought better of it and said: It doesn't matter. I was so embarrassed that I asked: Are you short of deserts in Africa then, in the part where you live? I immediately regretted the question, which seemed at once foolish, rude and indirectly critical of him, when I had no right to criticize. Avraham Orvieto ordered us each a mineral water to wash away the sticky taste of the sweet iced coffee and said: Deserts in Africa. Well, the fact is that in the part of Africa where I work there really aren't any deserts. On the contrary. It's dense forest. If you've got another few minutes I'll tell you a little story. Well, I'll
try to
anyhow. During our early years in Nigeria we rented a colonial house that belonged to an English doctor: No, not in Lagos, but in a small town on the edge of the forest. The town wasn't much bigger than Tel Kedar, only very poor. A dilapidated British post office, a generator, a police station, a church, a score of wretched shops, and a few hundred huts made of mud or branches. Immanuel was only three. He was a dreamy boy in a tartan tam-o'-shanter, who blinked whenever anyone spoke to him. Erella, his mother, my wife, had a full-time job as a pediatrician in an immunization centre, a sort of clinic, that had been set up by the Mission in a nearby town. She had always dreamed of being a doctor in the tropics. Albert Schweitzer had conquered her imagination. And I was away travelling most of the time. The house was looked after by maids, one of them Italian, and a young local gardener. In the yard there were goats, dogs, some hens, a whole menagerie, there was even a schizoid parrot that I'll tell you about another time. In fact, there's nothing to tell. We also adopted a baby chimpanzee that we had discovered one weekend in the forest, apparently lost, or an orphan. It was Immanuel who noticed him, peering at us with heartrending eyes from a discarded tire by the roadside. He targeted us at once. It's a known phenomenon, I think it's called imprinting, but I'm not an expert. That ape became a little member of our family. We were so taken by him that we would compete to see whose arms he would go to sleep in. Immanuel fed him at first with canned milk from a bottle with a teat. When Erella sang a lullaby to Immanuel the baby ape would wrap himself up in a tiny blanket. In time he learned to set the table, hang out the washing and take it down when it was dry, and even to stroke the cat until he made it purr. He was particularly good at ingratiating himself. Kisses, caresses, embraces, there was no limit to his thirst for receiving and giving signs of affection. Much more than us, perhaps because he felt he had to maintain and intensify the physical contact between us. Although in fact it is rather hard to tell. He was such an emotional creature that he could tell or sniff when one of us was sad or lonely or hurt, and would outdo himself to entertain us: hewould put on little parodies, Erella making herself up in the mirror, Immanuel staring and blinking, me at war with the telephone, the gardener bullying the cook. We laughed till the tears came. And Immanuel was inseparable from him. They ate from the same plate and played with the same toys. Once he saved Immanuel from being bitten by a venomous snake, but that's another story. Another time he presented Erella with a magnificent scarf that he had stolen from somewhere and we never discovered to whom we should return it. Whenever we went to visit