Soumchi by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online Page B

take my eyes off. But the bedside lamp bestowed its quiet light on everything alike. Russet-colored light. You are in a girl's room, I thought. In Esthie's room, I thought. And you just sit and don't say anything because you are just a great big dummy. That sums it up, Soumchi, absolutely sums it up. Which thought is not going to help me find the right words for starting a conversation. With much agony, I managed to squeeze out the following sentence, more or less:
    "My room, at home, is quite different from this."
    Esthie said, "Of course. But now you're here, not there."
    "Yes," I said, because it was true.
    "What do you keep staring at all the time?" asked Esthie.
    "Nothing in particular," I said. "I'm just sitting here ... just sitting. Not looking at anything in particular." That, of course, was a lie. I could scarcely take my eyes off the arms of the second chair on which she'd laid the beloved white jumper, the very same jumper that, at school, I'd stuck time and again to the seat of her chair with chewing gum. Oh, God, I thought. Oh, God, why did you make me such an idiot? Why was I ever bom? At this moment it would be better not to exist. Not anywhere. Not anywhere at all, except perhaps in the Himalaya mountains or the land of Obangi-Shari, and even there they don't need such an idiot as me.
    And so it was, after scraping those few words together, I sat dumb again on the folding bed in Esthie's room, my right hand still gripped tightly round my pencil sharpener and sweating a little in my pocket.
    Esthie said, "Perhaps, after all, you'd rather sleep in the living room."
    "It doesn't matter," I whispered.
    "What doesn't matter?"
    "Nothing. Really."
    "O.K. If that's what you want. I'm getting into bed now and I'm going to turn round to the wall until you've got yourself quite settled."
    But I did not think of settling myself quite. Still fully dressed in my very short gym shorts and Hasmonean T-shirt, I lay under the light blanket, taking nothing off but my gym shoes, which I threw as deep as possible beneath the bed.
    "That's it. All clear."
    "If you want, now you can tell me about the mutiny of the great Mahdi in the Sudan, just like you did to Ra'anana and Nourit and all the rest of them the day Mr, Shitrit was ill and we had two free periods."
    "But you didn't want to listen then."
    "But now is not then. It's now," Esthie pointed out quite correctly.
    "And if you didn't listen to the story, how do you know that it was about the rebellion of the Mahdi in the Sudan?"
    "I do know. Generally I know everything."
    "Everything?"
    "Everything about you. Perhaps even the things you think I don't know."
    "But there's one thing you don't know and I won't ever tell you," I said, very quickly, in one breath and with my face to the wall and my back to Esthie.
    "I do know."
    "You don't."
    "Yes."
    "No."
    "Yes."
    "Then tell me and we'll see."
    "No."
    "That means you're only saying you know. You don't know anything."
    "I know. And how."
    "Then tell me. Now. And I swear I'll tell you if you're right."
    "You won't tell,"
    "I swear I'll tell."
    "Good then. It's this. That you love some girl in our class."
    "That's rubbish. Absolutely,"
    "And you wrote her a love poem."
    "You're nuts. You're mad. Stop it!"
    "In a black notebook."
    I would steal a thermometer from the medicine cabinet, I decided there and then. And I would break it. And, at the ten o'clock break, I'd let the mercury run out and mix a little of it with Aldo's cocoa and a little with Goel Germanski's. So that they'd die. And also Bar-Kochba's and Elie's and Tarzan Bamberger's. So that they'll all be dead, once and for all.
    Esthie repeated:
    "In a little black notebook. Love poems. And also poems about how you'd run away with this girl to the Himalaya mountains, or some place in Africa—I forget the name."
    "Shut up, Esthie, Or I'll throttle you. This minute here. That's enough,"
    "Don't you love her any more?"
    "But it's all lies, Esthie. It's all lies invented by