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

the nozzle in the tank for me and worked the pump by himself.We stopped for a meal, and afterwards he ran to the Jeep and brought me some paper tissues, he must have sensed something of my distress, or got a whiff of treachery, I can't tell you how attentive he was during that last journey. I looked at him over and over again thinking, Like a sheep being led to the slaughter. He picked up my thoughts, and throughout the journey, for nearly three hours, he sat huddled on the seat next to me with his arm round my shoulder, like a couple of childhood buddies going off together on holiday, and at first he chattered childishly, as though guessing what was in store and trying to secure a reprieve. But as we drove deeper and deeper into the forest he fell silent. He shrank down in his seat and started shivering violently and gazing at me with wide eyes just like the day we first found him in the forest, an abandoned baby looking at tis trustingly from inside a ripped tire that had been jettisoned by the roadside. I drove the Jeep with one hand and stroked his head with the other. I felt like a murderer about to plunge a knife into the back of an innocent soul, who was also dear to me. But what other way out did I have? Less than a year later Erella was killed in the Olympic hijack, but then, on that journey of abandonment, I could not possibly imagine the succession of disasters. Well, I finally reached a small clearing. I switched off the engine. There was a dreamlike silence. He climbed onto my Jap and laid his cheek on my shoulder. I told him to get down and gather me some sticks. He understood the word "sticks", but nevertheless he hesitated. Still shivering, he stayed where he was on the seat next to mine. Perhaps he didn't entirely trust me. He fixed me with a mute stare that to this day I can't find the right word for. I had to rebuke him roughly before he obeyed me and got out. As I shouted at him I was hoping that he wouldn't believe me, that he would be stubborn and refuse to go. When he was twenty yards away I started the engine, turned round quickly, stepped on the pedal and made my escape. So the last thing he heard from me was not a word of kindness or affection but a harsh reprimand. At that moment he realized that I was not playing hide-and-seek. That he had been tricked. That this was it. He chased me as hard as he could for hundreds of yards, in stooping apish bounds, with loud piercing shrieks: I have never heard such heartrending cries in my life, and I have carried wounded men on my back in wartime, and even when I could no longer see him in my side mirror desperately running after me I could still hear that shrieking receding in the distance behind me. For weeks afterwards I couldn't stop hearing it. Immanuel, who had stayed at home, maintained that he could also hear it, although that was absolutely impossible over a distance of sixty miles. But his blinking, which the doctors from Erella's clinic had not been able to do anything about, disappeared after a while and did not return even when his mother died. For a long while we all used to creep out sheepishly, at different times, to the garden gate, hoping or perhaps fearing that he might have found his way home. And if he did suddenly turn up, how could we make it up with him and would he ever forgive us? We did not open the can of sugar lumps for ages. Then when Erella was killed I put it to Immanuel that we should get another ape, but he would not hear of it and just said, Drop it. But the question is, Why did I tell you about the chimpanzee? What was the connection? Can you remember how we got on to it? What were we talking about before?
    I said that I couldn't remember. That we had been talking about something else. And again without noticing I laid a finger on his hand and at once removed it, and I said: I'm sorry, Avraham.
    Avraham Orvieto said that he wanted to ask a small favour of me. He was sorry he had told me the story. If it's not too hard, Noa,