He thought of the last time he’d been together with Barak. It had been two days ago. They’d sat in his room. He’d been alive then. Half child, half adult.
That was the most painful thing of all. That he’d get no further. That he’d stop there.
Noah kicked at yet another pile, watched the flying sparks, thought that the fire could look after itself, turned, and went in to sleep.
If he’d begun to have second thoughts about his plan the following day, when he saw the people he was going to leave at close quarters and realized how closely tied to them he was, his resolve stiffened in the evening when his father, without warning, began to talk about the future.
Milka, Anna, and Noah had been sitting in the kitchen, the atmosphere was lighter than it had been for a long time, once they even laughed, it was the memory of Barak, the time he’d found a nestling in the hay, that made them burst out — because he’d decided he was going to try to save it, and feed it with flies, the most promising source of which was the cows, so he’d gone down and begun to swat flies against their flanks, several times a day, for the chick was greedy, until the cows had had enough of it and chased him up a tree, and he had to shout for help — but after a while Milka went to bed and brother and sister sat on alone. Noah wondered if he ought to initiate her into his plan, but decided it was unwise. The best thing was to disappear without saying a word to anyone.
Just then their father had come in. Without a word he’d sat down with them. They knew him well, they could see there was something he wanted.
“I’m fifty,” he said after a while. “I haven’t got more than ten working years in front of me, maybe fifteen, if I’m lucky and my health holds up. I’d intended that Barak should take over then. But now it will be you, Anna. When you find yourself a husband, you must move in here and run the farm.”
He spoke all the time directly to Anna. The fact that he was so obviously ignored enraged Noah, but his fury was cold and easy to control. He’ll find out, he thought.
Anna blushed beneath his eyes and looked at the table.
“I’ve already found a husband,” she said.
“Not Javan,” said her father. “Out of the question.”
“What do you know about Javan?” said Anna.
“Enough to make sure he doesn’t set foot in here as long as I’ve got a say in the matter.”
Anna jumped up and ran out. They heard her in the hallway, shortly afterwards the door slamming.
“You managed that well,” said Noah.
His father turned slowly toward him, as if only now he was aware of his presence.
He said nothing, just looked at him. There was hate in that look.
Noah was almost in tears as he got up.
“Give Anna what she wants,” he said. “Or do you want to lose her too?” He went out into the hallway, put on his boots, an extra sweater, his fur-lined jacket, opened the door and went out, crossed to the black-currant bushes that grew next to the barn wall, where he’d left a pack with the most necessary items, put it on, climbed over the fence down by the horse pasture, and entered the forest, never to return again.
Anna was the last to see him. He’d taken it for granted that she’d run up to her special place on the other side of the river, but she hadn’t. When he came out the door, she was standing under the fruit trees only a few yards from the house. She saw him go over to the barn, but didn’t know what he was doing there until he came walking past on the other side of the trees with a pack on his back.
She felt straightaway that he wasn’t setting out on one of his usual trips. She was about to call out to him, but stopped herself. If he’d wanted to say good-bye to her, he’d have done so. She had no right to force herself on him.
So that Noah wouldn’t feel she was following him, she waited a while, then went through the horse pasture, opened the gate, and walked on to the forest. She usually went to a spot half a mile farther up on the other side of the river when she wanted to be alone, but she didn’t feel like going there now as she had so many memories of the place, and Barak inhabited them all.
Wasn’t there a path somewhere here?
She lifted a branch out of her way and stepped in among the trees. It was dark, but the moon was up and giving just enough light for her to be able to glimpse the contours of the terrain about her. A bit farther on she saw that the trees opened out, and once there she found the path directly. It was tortuous, running this way and that, as if it had been blazed by a puppy. After a few hundred yards, it began to climb the spine of the wooded hill, and when she got to the top of it and all at once had a clear view of the cherubim’s flames, she sat down on a fallen tree, put her hands against the dry, rotten trunk, and swung her legs. The wind that came flowing up the hillside was warm, almost summery. Borne on it was the faint scent of river water.
She breathed in deeply a few times. She wasn’t angry anymore. Her father didn’t know Javan, he’d said what he’d said because he knew no better. And because Barak was dead.
And it was true, he wasn’t exactly a farmer.
How just thinking about him could make her so happy!
Even when her grief was at its height, and all she could do was cry, the joy was still there. Not as a feeling, or as a thought, it was more of a perception, something in the depths of her consciousness, that the whole time she just knew.
Down there she neither could nor would think about him.
But here she could.
The first time she’d noticed him had been at the harvest festival barely a year before. Four men had been standing side by side watching the dancers, and she had passed behind them thinking that perhaps they were brothers, they were all about the same height, had roughly the same build, necks and heads, were dressed in similar black suits.
Then one of them had turned his head and looked at her.
His eyes had been dark, his skin pale. He’d looked at her as if he wanted something. It wasn’t the look of someone who sees someone else for the first time, she realized, as she lowered her eyes and hurried on. It was the look of someone who knew who she was and had some business with her.
None of the others had turned. It was the single head, the single look, emphasized somehow by the anonymity of the three others.
As inconspicuously as possible she’d tried to find out who he was. “Who are those people?” she’d asked, nodding in their direction. “I can’t remember seeing them before.”
“D’you mean Javan?” said one girlfriend. “The one who’s been looking at you all evening?”
Anna began to blush.
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.
“He’s not for you,” said her other friend.
“Yes, I know,” said Anna. “I know who Javan is. It’s just I didn’t recognize him.”
But when she awoke the next day, he was on her mind. And the day after that. But she hadn’t a lot to go on, a glance, some rumors, and just as suddenly as he’d entered her thoughts, he vanished from them again.
Autumn passed, winter passed, spring came. Anna left to go up to the summer farm. Sometimes her mother and aunts stayed with her, sometimes she was alone. None of the other girls up there dared to do that. Most of the holdings had summer farms in the mountains, and in the summer boys would always be roaming. Anna knew that they sometimes went in to the girls at night, but it had never happened to her, she was Lamech’s daughter, she was left in peace, until one night her door opened too.