Old Men at Midnight Read Online Free PDF

don’t know.”
    It is a measure of that night that I can remember going to a concert with friends, but I can’t recall anything about it. What I do remember is falling into a half-sleep and waking into the darkness of my room from a dream. My father and I were trying to rescue Noah and Jakob Daw from screeching apes.
    When he arrived at seven-thirty I was in my room, and Rachel let him into the house. I was reading and didn’t know he was there. It was nearly ten minutes later when I glanced at my watch and hurried out of the room.
    As I came down the stairs, I heard Rachel say, “Was it a big park?” and Noah’s response, “No, not like yours, but big for us.” Rachel said, “You didn’t have a zoo?” Noah said, “No zoo.” Rachel said, “Then how did you know about animals?” Noah said, “From pictures in books and synagogue.” Rachel said, “Synagogue?” Noah said, “On walls in synagogue, pictures of birds and animals. Me and my brother, we help Reb Binyomin paint.”
    “You had a brother?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was he older?”
    “We—how you say—born same time. Twins.”
    “What happened to him?”
    Noah turned away. “He not here anymore.”
    I came into the living room. They were sitting on the couch, Rachel in a pink-and-red dress and Noah in his white long-sleeved shirt and dark trousers. On his knees was his drawing of his Kralov neighborhood. Under it was another sheet of paper, which I assumed was Rachel’s drawing.
    Noah said, “I drew church and gave to Janos.”
    Rachel said, “Who is Janos?”
    “He Polish friend.”
    They were so at ease together on the couch, she leaninginto him and pointing at the drawing, elbows on his thighs, her head poking through the opening made by his hands over the paper.
    She said, “And the stone bridge. I like that.”
    Noah closed his eyes for a moment.
    I said, “Noah has a lesson now, Rachel.”
    Noah rose from the couch. Rachel grimaced. They exchanged drawings. We went upstairs.
    It was hot in the room. The floor fan quietly whirred. From the wall the pictures of my father and Jakob Daw looked across the room, and over my headboard the three stallions galloped across the empty beach at Prince Edward Island against a tranquil sea. I saw my open notebook on the desk and reached over and closed it and put it inside its drawer.
    We sat at the desk and worked on the lesson. I gave him an additional fifteen minutes to make up for the time he had spent with Rachel. I told him to go on reading and I stood up and went to the window.
    Rachel was on the lawn soaring on the swing. Long black hair, brown-eyed, quite beautiful. Her mouth a pastel contouring of the gentlest of Cupid’s bows. And the bronzed skin of her face rounding into the soft smoothness of her chin.
    Noah went on with his reading. I returned to the desk. He struggled over a pronunciation and I helped him get the word out. We were both perspiring. Tiny beads of sweat lay on his forehead. His moist cheeks, I noticed, were filling out, his face losing its angular quality, though his dark eyes still held that doleful gaze.
    Later, as we were going down the stairs, he said, “Why does family call you Ilana?”
    “My name is Ilana Davita. My friends call me Davita.”
    “Davita, this Sunday night Tisha B’Av. We cannot have lesson.”
    “Would you want to go to the park in the afternoon?”
    “I talk to my aunt.”
    He called the next day. “My aunt say okay.”
    “Good.”
    “I see you Sunday.”
    “I
will
see you Sunday.”
    “I will see you Sunday.”
    We took the train to the park. It was a grayish day, the air hot and stagnant. Leaves hung listlessly from the oak under which we sat. I listened to him read, correcting him from time to time, and after a while I closed my eyes and heard only his voice. Soft, nasal. He read on. I opened my eyes and looked around the park. Families sat about, a ball game was being played on the field, dozens of boats were on the lake.
    Later we left