Between Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

against higher education, as you know, and I don’t object to the younger generation getting academic degrees. On the contrary: someday every barn worker will have a Ph.D., why not? But never at the expense of the essential work that must be done in the fields and in the animal pens.”
    Nahum hesitated. He was still standing in his wet, worn coat, his left arm pressed to his chest to keep the book from slipping. He finally sat down without taking off his coat or cap and without releasing his grip on the book. David Dagan said, “You probably disagree, don’t you, Nahum? Has there ever been a time all these years when you didn’t disagree with me? But we’ve always remained friends.”
    Suddenly Nahum hated David Dagan’s thick, neatly trimmed mustache with its threads of gray, and his habit of interrupting and asking for just a minute to set things straight. He said, “But she’s your student.”
    “Not anymore,” David said in an authoritative voice, “and in a few months, she’ll be a soldier. Come here, Edna. Please tell your father that no one has kidnapped you.”
    Edna came into the room wearing brown cords and an oversize blue sweater. Her black hair was tied back with a light-colored ribbon. She carried a tray set with two cups of coffee, a sugar bowl, and a small jug of milk. She bent down, put the tray on the table, and stood a small distance from the two men, her arms hugging her shoulders as if here, too, she was cold, even though a kerosene heater burned with a clear blue flame. Nahum stole a quick glance at his daughter, then immediately shifted his eyes and blushed as if he had caught a glimpse of her half naked. She said, “There are biscuits, too.” Then, after a pause, still standing, she added in her soft, quiet voice, “Hello, Papa.”
    Nahum found neither anger nor rebuke in his heart, only a sharp longing for his daughter, as if she weren’t present in the room, three steps away from him, as if she had traveled to a far-off, alien place. He said timidly and with a question mark at the end of his sentence, “I came to take you home?”
    David Dagan put his hand on the nape of Edna’s neck, stroked her back, played with her hair a little, and said comfortably, “Edna is not a kettle. She’s not something you can just take and put anywhere. Right, Edna?”
    She didn’t say anything. She stood there next to the heater, her arms hugging her shoulders, ignoring David Dagan’s fingers, and stared at the rain on the window.
    Nahum looked at her. She seemed quiet and focused, as if she were thinking about other things. As if she had been distracted from contemplating the choice between these two men, both thirty years older than she. Or as if she had never contemplated the choice in the first place.
    They heard the constant sound of the rain beating against the windowpanes and rushing along the gutters. The heater glowed with a cozy fire. Occasionally, they could hear kerosene bubbling through the inner pipes of the heater.
    Why did you come here? Nahum asked himself. Did you really think you would slay the dragon and free the abducted princess? You should have stayed at home and waited until she came back. Because, really, all she did was swap a weak father figure for a strong one. And the strong figure will quickly begin to pall. She makes him coffee and takes his laundry in on Monday and returns it on Friday. She’ll probably get tired of all that. If only you hadn’t been in such a hurry to come here in this rain, if only you’d been smart enough to sit quietly at home and wait for her, sooner or later she’d have come back, either to explain herself or because the love had ended. Love is a kind of infection, possessing then releasing you.
    David said, “Hang on; just give me a minute to set things straight. You and I, Nahum, have always been connected through friendship despite our disagreements about how to run the kibbutz. And now there is another strong connection between us.