The English Teacher Read Free Page A

it was only then that Rachel noticed something a trained eye like hers should have seen long before. No dust. No dust on the spine of the book that he had touched recently. She turned on the desk lamp and pulled out the book, a volume of an encyclopedia, and saw the box that her father had hidden behind it.

    S HE READ THE LE TTERS THAT E HUD had sent her father. Her mistake blew up in her face. Everything now took on a different shape. Fragments of memory, excerpts from phone conversations. His ostentatious lack of interest in her cover stories, in the lies that she recited to him as if she’d learned them by heart.
    A new feeling was coming over her. Not anger. It was too late to be angry. Not sorrow either. She was too sad to let a new sorrow into her life. Even the sense of grievance, the knowledge that they had spoken to her father behind her back, she deferred for another time.
    Suddenly, clearly, she knew that she wanted no more of this. No more lies, no more cover stories, no more perfectly crafted tales piled high, like fortified walls built to separate her from the world; shewanted to let the outside world
in
, to let it touch her in a real way. She longed to uncover herself at long last, expose herself, until the truth seared her.
    The small fire in the garden didn’t attract attention, and it may be assumed that no one on the train passing close to the fence took notice of the slim woman sitting on a swing, watching papers burn.

CHAPTER TWO

Israel, Two Days Later
    T HE PHONE RANG. E H UD COUNTED THREE rings and waited for the answering machine to ask the caller to leave a message. Only then would he decide whether to carry on tending the bushes that he had neglected recently or go into the house and answer whoever was daring to call him before six in the morning. The old machine kicked in but the anonymous caller didn’t say anything and hung up. Ehud shrugged and resumed trimming the recalcitrant branches. His back was hurting, and he reminded himself it was time to pick up the prescriptions from the pharmacy and not neglect the exercises and the diet.
    If it’s important they’ll try again, he thought, then turned the words over in his head and knew why he was thinking
they
and not he or she. Only
they
were in the habit of making contact at any hour and in any place, and they always expected him to follow standard procedure—lift the receiver after the third ring and hang up immediately and pick up when they call again only after the fifth ring. But allof that had come to an end many years ago, and it was only back pain and a troublesome bladder that kept him awake at night.
    All the same, he came inside, to be closer, to be ready next time. He washed his hands and watched the mud submit to the water and swirl around the sink and then disappear. The clock on the wall told him it was coffee time. Rina, who rejoiced in his retirement, used to tell him to leave the plants in peace and let them enjoy a little tranquility. But Rina isn’t here, and his sons are far away. His work recedes further from him, the phone no longer rings, and Ehud tries to convince himself that he’s content.
    Since his wife died he has made a point of going out every day to the little garden at the back of the house and working there until breakfast. The habit became a duty, the duty became a pleasure, an intermission, and a time to remember the things he loved. The flowers bloomed in their turn, the vegetation flourished, and life went on in its own way. His grandchildren used to frolic on the lawn, and Ehud loved to hear from his daughters-in-law how gifted a gardener he was, and he waited in vain for his sons to offer their help. The garden was green throughout the year. He would sit beside the bushes with the breakfast tray and watch the insects at work, the shadows that the sun pulls from one side to the other as it moves, the changing colors of the chameleon. Ehud kept quiet when he saw him lying in