Soumchi by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online Page A

threw a quick glance at me as she came in, then went straight over to where her father, Engineer Inbar, was sitting. I might have been yesterday's newspapers left lying on the sofa; or else I stopped there every evening on my way to the land of Obangi-Shari; there was nothing whatever in it.
    "Did you go to Jericho today?" Esthie asked her father.
    "I did."
    "Did you buy me what I asked?"
    "I didn't."
    "It was too expensive?"
    "That's right."
    "Will you look again for me when you're in Bethlehem next?"
    "Yes."
    "And was it you brought him here?"
    "Yes."
    "What's it all about then? What's up with him?"
    (I still didn't merit one word, one glance from Esthie. So I kept silent.)
    "His parents are away and he lost his key. Exactly the same thing happened to me when I was a student in Berlin. We bumped into each other on Geula Street and I suggested he come to us. Mama has already given him something to eat. He can spend the night on the sofa in the living room, or else on the camp bed, in your room. It's up to you."
    Now, all at once, suddenly, Esthie turned towards me. But still without looking at me directly.
    "Do you want to sleep in my room? Will you promise to tell me crazy stories before we go to sleep?"
    "Don't mind," muttered my lips, quite of their own volition because I was still too stunned.
    "What did he say?" Esthie asked her father a little anxiously. "Perhaps you heard what he said?"
    "It seemed to me," answered Engineer Inbar, "it seemed to me that he was still weighing up the possibilities."
    "Weighing-schneighing." Esthie laughed. "O.K., that's it, let him sleep in here, in the living room and be done with it. Good night."
    "But Esthie," I succeeded in saying at last, if still in a whisper only. "But Esthie..."
    "Good night," said Esthie, and went out past me in her cotton elephant pyjamas, the smell of her damp hair lingering behind her. "Good night, Daddy."
    And from outside, in the passage, she said, "Good. My room then. I don't mind."
    Who ever, before, saw a girl's room, late, towards bedtime, when the only light burns beside her bed? Oh yes, even a girl's room has walls and windows, a floor and a ceiling, furniture and a door. That's a fact. And yet, for all that, it feels like a foreign country, utterly other and strange, its inhabitants not like us in any way. For instance: there are no cartridge cases on the windowsill, no muddy gym shoes buried under the bed. No piles of rope, metal, horseshoes, dusty books, pistol caps, padlocks and India rubber bands; no spinning tops, no strips of film. Nor are there subversive pamphlets from the Underground hidden between the cupboard and the wall and, presumably, no dirty pictures concealed among the pages of her geography book. And there aren't, wouldn't ever be, in a girl's room, any empty beer cans, cats' skulls, screwdrivers, nails, springs and cogs and hands from dismantled watches, penknife blades, or drawings of blazing battleships pinned up along the wall.
    On the contrary.
    In Esthie's room, the light was almost a color in itself; warm, russet-colored light, from the bedside lamp under its red raffia lampshade. Drawn across its two windows were the blue curtains that I'd seen a thousand times from the other side, and never dreamed I'd see from this, all the days of my life. On the floor was a small mat made of plaited straw. There was a white cupboard with two brown drawers in it, and, in the shadowy gap between wall and cupboard, a small, very tidy desk on which I could see Esthie's school books, pencils and paint-box. A low bed, already turned down for sleep, stood between the two windows; a folded counterpane, the color of red wine, at its head. Another camp bed had been placed ready for me, as close as possible to the door.
    In one comer, on a stool covered with a cloth, there nestled a tall jug filled with pine branches and a stork made out of a pine cone and chips of colored wood. There were two more chairs in the room. One of them I could scarcely