A doubt raced through her, and she looked at him quickly. What did he mean by that?
They stood silent for a while.
She didn’t want that to sound the final note, especially as it would be a long time before they saw each other again, and so she said that she thought she loved him.
“I think I’m in love with you,” she said, and drew him to her.
When they had said their good-byes, she stood following him with her eyes until the forest swallowed him up. It would be two long weeks before she saw him again.
If he kept his word.
She spent one more week at the summer farm before returning to the valley. She was happy, she’d never been so happy; the thought of what had happened sent wave after wave of ecstasy through her. Its source seemed inexhaustible. And all the time her longing for him was like an ache in her body. She thought of him, and everything tightened up inside her.
Her father left for the market the day she arrived home. He was standing in the farmyard with Barak, Obal, and Tarsis when she walked up, and she was glad in a way, life on the farm was always easiest when he was absent.
But how slowly the next week passed!
By the last day there wasn’t an iota of calmness left in her. She couldn’t sit still, even though she tried to force herself to, but went restlessly about the house until she’d found yet another thing to do. She’d done the ordinary laundry long since, folded the clothes and put them away in cupboards and on shelves; she’d scrubbed the potatoes for dinner, she’d fetched the water, she’d washed the floors. After that she’d pounced on chores that were done less often, like washing carpets, tablecloths, working clothes, or wiping down walls and ceilings, or cleaning up the cellar and its cubbyholes.
Her mother realized that something was afoot. During dinner on that final day there was something sharp in her tone that wasn’t hard to penetrate, and the subsequent quarrel in the kitchen, while Barak was in the living room and Noah upstairs, was the same: her mother was angry with her, and used the old reproaches of sloppiness and inconsiderateness as a kind of pretense, because she didn’t quite know what she was cross about.
Noah felt it too. He’d come down just as she’d been going out, and emotion had filled her eyes with tears.
But she’d forgotten that the instant she closed the door behind her. She hurried up along the river, crossed the bridge, and followed the almost invisible cart track for the last bit to the place where the old house had once stood.
He wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be. She’d come early, she wanted to have some time to herself to collect her thoughts before they met.
Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea as it had originally seemed. In the first place, time passed even more slowly up here, where she was so close to him, and secondly, the idea that he might not turn up at all grew more likely with each minute that went by.
He’d wanted her, and he’d had her.
What if that was all he’d wanted?
If that was the case, what line would he use when they parted?
Make the time pass. Make the memory vanish.
I’ve got to go away for a couple of weeks.
Wasn’t that it?
If you believed all you heard, that was how it had been with the other girls he’d had. Perhaps, somewhere, he was even now smiling at the thought that she, foolish girl, sat out in the forest waiting for him at this very moment.
She didn’t know him after all.
What had made her trust him? And surrender herself to him on only their second meeting?
When her thoughts ran in this vein, she pictured his face the way it had been when they’d been climbing up that last night. Alien, and nothing to do with her at all. A man ten or even fifteen years her senior who for some reason had begun to walk at her side.
But it took no more than the silent speaking of his name, or imagining his hand on her stomach, for her yearning to smash the strangeness to pieces.
Dusk was falling when he finally arrived. She heard his footsteps long before she saw him. He’d never been there before, and she crept a little back, she wanted to see him, just as he was.
But when she did catch sight of him, she couldn’t wait any longer.
“Javan!” she whispered. “I’m up here!”
He stopped and his gaze traveled up the slope.
Whatever she did she wouldn’t run, she thought. But even that was a promise she couldn’t keep. When she emerged from the darkness, and he spoke her name, she lifted her skirt above her ankles and ran down the slope to him.
They embraced.
“How I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
He placed his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said.
He took out a small packet and held it out to her.
It was a ring.
She put it on and looked at him with a smile.
“How beautiful it is,” she said.
Javan laid his hand on her shoulder, a little awkwardly, and it was as if this robbed both of them of their spontaneity, for some time they stood on the road without really knowing what to say or do. Javan kept his hand on her shoulder, she lifted the ring to look at it again, and perhaps they became self-conscious, perhaps that was what happened, perhaps they realized they were standing there in the forest by the river, not knowing one another, alone, with nothing in common, apart from this.
She was the one who broke the uncomfortable pause.
It wasn’t that difficult.
“Come on!” she said. She brushed the hair away from her face, turned, and ran into the darkness.
She came home in the middle of the night. The house was dark and silent. She had a bite to eat in the kitchen, longed to talk to someone, and halted fleetingly outside Noah’s door, where light was coming from the crack under it, but realizing that this would do more harm than good, she went to her own room, where to her surprise she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.
The next morning her father returned. She was sitting in the kitchen, she was pleased to see him and touched by his present. A nodding tin bird! Coarsely beaten out and carelessly painted, it was no great feast for the eye, but it was a bird, it reminded her of Javan’s little performance up by the rapids, and it was a present from the market, just as Javan’s ring was.
She pushed her hand into her pocket under the table and closed her fingers round the ring.
She was going to meet him during the day this time. As before, she arrived at their rendezvous by the river well ahead of him. The daylight made them more bashful, or put them in a different mood, for all they did during the afternoon and early evening was walk. They walked down toward the houses in the village, making sure to keep out of sight the whole time; the closest they got was the old burial mound, from where Javan pointed out the house in which he’d grown up and still lived. She’d known where it was of course, but now she saw it through his eyes. Not just any garden, but the garden where he had played. Not just any window, but the window he’d slept behind all his life. Rose behind, stared out of, expectant, angry, miserable, dreamy, yearning, happy, repentant.
She’d still never seen him asleep, she thought.
They walked upriver again, this time on the other bank. He explained that one of his aunts had died that winter, she’d lived alone all her life by the fjord over the mountain, and as his two elder brothers worked for his father, her farm was his, if he wanted it. He’d been mulling it over for some months now, it wasn’t much, a house, a few acres, an old barn, but it would be his. If he said no, his younger brother would take it on, so he’d have to make up his mind soon.
What did she think?
Well, what did she think?