Scenes from Village Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

nights that were left before his mother came to fetch him. Gideon made no mention of his nightmare. That night he insisted on sleeping in his own room, merely asking her to leave his door open and the light on in the hallway. At two o'clock in the morning he crawled into her bed, trembling, and slept in her arms. She lay awake, breathing in the smell of the gentle shampoo she had washed his hair with the previous evening, knowing that a deep, wordless bond tied them to each other forever, and that she loved this child more than she had loved any other being in the world, and more than she would ever love anyone else.

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    THERE WAS NOT another living soul to be seen in the village, apart from the alley cats gathered around the trash cans. The anxious voice of the TV newscaster made its way through the shuttered windows. In the distance, a dog barked as if under orders to shatter the peace of the village. Gili Steiner, still wrapped in the overcoat Mirkin had given her, tripped hurriedly past Synagogue Square and along Olive Street, and unhesitatingly took the shortcut across the darkened pinewood in the Memorial Garden. A night bird screeched out of the darkness, followed by the guttural croaking of frogs from the pond. She felt certain now that Gideon was sitting waiting for her in the dark on the steps in front of her locked front door. But then how could the coat she was now wearing have been left in Mirkin's bus? Perhaps she was wearing a stranger's coat after all. She began walking even faster. Gideon must be sitting there wearing his own coat, wondering what had happened to her. As she came out of the little wood, she was startled to see a figure sitting bolt upright, motionless, collar turned up, on a bench in the garden. After a moment's hesitation she boldly decided to get closer to have a look. It was merely a fallen branch, lying slantwise across the bench.
    By the time Gili Steiner got home it was close to nine o'clock. She switched on the light in the entrance hall, turned off the water heater and hurried to check for messages on the phone and also on her cell, which she had forgotten on the kitchen table. No messages, though somebody had rung and hung up. Gili rang Gideon's cell, but a recorded voice told her that the person she was calling was not available. She therefore made up her mind to swallow her pride and phone her sister in Tel Aviv to find out if Gideon had actually left or if he had decided to cancel the trip without telling her. The phone rang repeatedly, but there was no reply apart from the answering machine inviting her to leave a message after the beep. She decided not to leave a message, because she could not think of anything to say: if Gideon had got lost and was on his way now, having hitched a lift or taken a taxi, there was no point in alarming his mother. And if he had decided to stay at home, he would surely have told her. Or he might have thought it wasn't important enough to ring her about tonight, in which case he would ring her at work tomorrow morning. But maybe his condition had deteriorated and he had had to go back to the hospital? Maybe his temperature had shot up, the infection had recurred? At once she made up her mind to ignore her sister's veto and go to visit him in the hospital after work tomorrow. She would go to the staff room and have a word with the head of department. She would ask to be allowed to look at the results of his tests and form her own opinion.
    Gili took off the overcoat and looked at it under the kitchen light. The color was about right, but the collar seemed slightly different. She spread the coat out on the table, sat down on one of the two kitchen chairs and examined it carefully. The meal she had prepared for them, baked fish with baked potatoes, was ready to be reheated in the oven. She decided to wait for Gideon, and in the meantime switched on a little electric heater whose coils made soft popping sounds as they warmed up. She sat motionless for a