A Tale of Love and Darkness

OUT IN THE arbor there was a group of five or six girls in their mid-teens. I gave them a wide berth. Then some rowdy boys sauntered past me. A young couple were strolling under the trees, deep in whispered conversation but not touching each other. At the other end of the orchard, near the corner of the wall, around the rough trunk of a leafy mulberry tree, someone had erected a kind of bench without legs, and here a pale-faced girl was sitting with her knees together. Her hair and eyelashes were black, her neck was slim, her shoulders were frail, and her bobbed hair fell over a brow that seemed to me to be illuminated from within by a light of curiosity and joy. She was dressed in a cream blouse under a long navy blue dress with broad straps... on the lapel of her blouse she wore an ivory brooch that reminded me of one that belonged to my Grandma Shlomit.

At first sight this girl seemed to be my age, but from the slight curve of her blouse and the unchildlike look of curiosity and also of warning in her eyes as they met mine (for an instant, before my eyes looked away), she must have been two or three years older, perhaps eleven or twelve. Still, I managed to see that her eyebrows were rather thick and joined in the middle, in contrast with the delicacy of her other features. There was a little child at her feet, a curly-haired boy of about three who may have been her brother; he was kneeling on the ground and was absorbed in picking up fallen leaves and arranging them in a circle.