Don't Call It Night by Amos Oz

plastic slide with a sandbox at the bottom. In stylish concrete containers among the Indian beech trees a few petunias struggle to survive. Blind Lupo is resting on one of the benches, his face to the strong sun. He is surrounded by pigeons, some of which are perching on his shoulders. His pointed stick is secured like an anchor in a crack between two paving stones. Back in Bulgaria, they say, he had a high-ranking post in the secret service. Here in Tel Kedar he works nights in the telephone exchange, seeing the keys and switches with his fingertips. Every morning he sits in this little park, harnessed to his grey dog, staring straight at the sun and scattering maize for the pigeons that flock around him even before he reaches the bench. Sometimes one of them trusts him enough to settle on his knees and let him stroke its feathers. When he stands up he occasionally bumps into his dog and mumbles politely, Sorry.
    An engaged couple, Anat and Ohad, are standing in Mr. Bialkin's furniture shop. They are looking for an upholstery fabric that will suit the three-piece suite and co-exist with the curtains, but their tastes differ: whatever he likes she finds repulsive, and whatever she likes reminds him of a whorehouse for Polish officers. She asks venomously where he has acquired his experience, and he beats a hasty retreat, Look what a state we're in, quarrelling over nothing. Anat replies that it is not a quarrel but a difference of opinion, and that's perfectly normal. Ohad suggests a compromise: Let's go to Beersheba after the weekend, there's a much better choice there. But that's exactly what I said in the first place, she crows triumphantly, and you wouldn't hear of it. Mr. Bialkin intervenes gently: Maybe the lady would like to take a look through the catalogue, and if there is anything that meets with her favour I shall fetch it on Tuesday from Tel Aviv, God willing. Ohad, for his part, corrects her: I don't deny that you suggested it, but you were the one who said let's try Bialkin first, and if we don't find it there ... His fiancée cuts in: I don't deny that I said it, but don't you deny that you agreed. The young man concedes her point, but asks her to remember that he had certain reservations. Reservations, she says, have you become a lawyer all of a sudden? Next thing you'll be filing an appeal.
    When they have left the shop Bialkin says: That's how it is these days. They eat their hearts out and they die. And what can I do for you, Mr. Théo? A rocking chair? A wooden one? No, I haven't got anything like that. I've got a TV chair that can rock. Nobody makes the old rocking chairs any more. Theo thanks him and leaves. He had an idea the opening song of the
Kindertotenlieder
was called "Once More the Sun", but he is not certain. Might as well ask Noa to check it in the school library, she spends such hours there.
    At the Entebbe falafel stand a Bedouin in his fifties is buying shawarma in pitta. The shawarma is a new venture, and Avram is happily explaining to the Bedouin that it's still trying out. If it goes well, in a couple of weeks' time we'll try grilled shish kebab. Meanwhile a haughty white cat with tail erect prances past Kushner's bitch, who had a litter of pups a couple of days ago. The bitch chooses to feign sleep, but opens one eye a slit to observe the extent of the insolence. Cat and bitch alike behave as though the whole situation were beneath their dignity. Old Kushner says to Theo: What's up, we never see you these days. Theo's left eye shrinks as though peering through a microscope and he replies that nothing's changed. If you'd like to have one of the puppies, Kushner says, but Theo interrupts him sharply from under his authoritative moustache: No thanks. Quite unnecessary.
    At a quarter past eleven a small funeral cortège passes by the lights, only a handful of mourners, mainly elderly Ashkenazim. From his invariable stool in the doorway of Bozo Shoes, Pini Bozo asks who has died and how, and