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Show the slack, the sudden release of weight, I knew Talma had leaned out to grab the shipment. I did not look up. I kept my eyes on the ground as I raised one heavy load after another; did not look up but could feel Talma's dark eyes on me as I worked with the rope, and Chaim's cold stare on the bucket, steering it through the air as though it did not carry rock and mud at all, but a great holy weight of gold and silver. "You two work so well together," I heard him say, "a real professional team." Talma said nothing, but I could feel her receive the load of the bucket. Go back, I wanted to yell out from the bottom of the pit, it's not too late. Just go back to them. But I said nothing; there were only a few buckets left. When I had hooked the last one I looked up. Chaim's glasses were brightly opaque in the sunlight, and his teeth were obscenely white. I started the bucket up and it rose slowly: twenty feet against the soil canvas, the earthen wall, then into the Jerusalem blue sky streaked with jet trails. Up to Talma and Talma's face. Her face . . . I look at her face and see the unrelenting smile there, and I notice her nostrils, slightly flared, aware with an animal's instinct of what is happening, what is about to happen, long before I am. But it is her eyes I study: large dark eyes which dominate her face, eyes which try to read me as she watches the bucket rise, appear before her, then stop; eyes which try to hold me as she leans, reaches out over the deep pit until her hand has the bucket, she is gripping it tightly, she has the bucket but her eyes, her |
