Scenes from Village Life
by
Amos Oz
Translated by Nicholas de Lange
When the unctuous stranger arrives in Tel Ilan at the start of Scenes from Village Life, he finds it:
'Stunning! ... a little bit of Provence in the State of Israel!'
But it doesn't take long to realise that Amos Oz's fictional village has more in common with Twin Peaks than with Aix-en-Provence.
On the surface, Tel Ilan is the rural idyll that the title suggests. Teachers, doctors, post mistresses, retired politicians and lovesick teenagers go about their business amidst olive groves and craft shops. But in each of these interwoven mini-stories, the characters are plagued by 'a persistent feeling that something was wrong'.
This is a world of faded glory; a community that is slowly shrivelling up. Different generations live under the same roof, oscillating between resentment and indifference. The middle aged characters already have their best years behind them. Some have been widowed, others abandoned by their husbands and wives. Their children are mostly dead or absent: some were stillborn; others have left Israel for Boston or Belgium. One lay down under his parents' bed and shot himself.
Only the Arab student who lodges in the outbuildings of one of the farms reminds us that the villagers live cheek by jowl with a very different people. Only the place names (Founders' Street, Memorial Garden) hint at the trauma on which the village is built. Only the hushed talk of aerial bombardments tells us these are people who live braced for war.
At the end, the malaise which has lurked all the way through Scenes from Village Life moves to centre stage. The eighth story is set not in Tel Ilan, but 'in a faraway place at another time'. A colonial official cowers from the locals as poisonous gases leak from the swamp. This dislocated dystopia has some disturbing parallels with Tel Ilan: children die; the young leave and the old are maimed by the toxic air.
Seen in this light, these slow-motion stories are a gripping condemnation of a society turning in on itself.
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
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