Don't Ask Me If I Love by Amos Kollek

Author:Amos Kollek
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590773697
Publisher: M. Evans & Company
Published: 2015-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

THE following morning was one of the rare occasions I went to the university for a lecture. Or rather, it wasn’t for the lecture I went. I was hoping to see Ruthi.

I stepped into the hall a few minutes after the bell rang. I closed the doors behind me and looked around. I saw her almost at once. She was sitting on one of the back benches, smartly dressed and well made-up. Her hair was done in an elegant style. She was diligently writing in her notebook.

I walked in and sat on the vacant bench beside her.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good morning.”

She looked at me and smiled briefly; then she went on Writing.

“Let’s go and sit on the lawn,” I said to her when the bell rang again forty minutes later.

“All right.”

We settled ourselves on the stone bench by the strange, gray statue by Henry Moore. Ruthi didn’t want to mess up her dress sitting on the grass. It was the best one she had with her in Jerusalem.

“It’s getting hot again,” she said, looking up at the sky.

“Yes, it’ll soon be March.”

“I love the spring.”

“How are you getting along?” I asked.

“I’m O.K.”

After a while her mouth twisted with slight bitterness and she said, “With so many young men I know dying, somehow my father’s death doesn’t affect me as much.”

She took a pair of dark glasses out of her bag and put them on.

“I know it sounds horrid, but it’s true.”

“What will you be living on?”

Through the dark glasses I couldn’t see her eyes.

“That is not a problem.”

“Please, tell me.”

“My father was a civil servant,” she said. “I have his pension, and I have a job now, here at the university.”

“Your mother is dead?”

She shook her head.

“No. They were divorced, years ago, and she married again.”

“You see her?”

She shrugged.

“Sometimes. I visit, sometimes, not too often. I don’t like her husband.”

“Look,” I said, cutting a few grass leaves with my nails and dropping them through my fingers, “if there is anything I can do, I’d like to do it.”

A smile crept over her lips.

“Thank you,” she said, “but there is really nothing. Anyway, I will probably be getting married soon, so in any case, that should settle me.”

She looked up to the sky again.

“That captain?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“O.K.,” I said. “It’s O.K. then.”

“I guess I’ve gotten used to professional patriots,” she said. “I do like you quite a lot,” she added, “but we don’t have much in common. It’s a lucky thing, probably, that we didn’t get closer.”

“O.K.,” I repeated, “but send me an invitation.”

She took her glasses off.

“I will.”

Farther away, a bell started ringing.

“Well, I have to go.”

She got up and arranged her dress properly on her hips.

“Good luck,” I said, remaining seated. “See you around.”

“So long.”

I looked after her as she walked away and then got up and went to the car, relieved. I drove home, planning to start writing the full version of the book.

When I entered the house, closing the door quietly behind me, my mother appeared in the hall, coming from the kitchen.

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