The Argument at the Village Well

In a hillside village where the water came from a single well in the square, there lived two neighbours who had been arguing for eleven years. Their houses shared a wall. Their fig trees leaned over the same low fence. Their children had grown up and moved to the city. The argument, whatever it was originally about, had long since become the main thing they had in common.

Every morning, they met at the well. Every morning, they exchanged three cold sentences and returned to their houses. Every evening, they lit their lamps back-to-back through the shared wall, and each was aware of the other in the way you are aware of a splinter you have decided not to remove.

One summer, a stranger came through the village. She was a widow travelling to see her sister two valleys over. She stopped for water. She was tired and thirsty and in no hurry, and she sat on the low wall of the well and drank slowly.

The two neighbours arrived, on their separate errands, and did their usual small dance. Nod. Cold sentence. Move to opposite sides of the well. The stranger watched them with quiet interest. She was old enough that people forgave her for staring.

When both had drawn their water and were about to leave, she said, mildly, 'How long have you been fighting?'

They both froze. Then, because she was a stranger and would be gone by nightfall, and because eleven years is a long time to carry anything without setting it down, they told her. Or they tried to tell her. It quickly became clear, as they spoke, that they were telling two entirely different stories.

The first neighbour said the fight had begun when the second had cut down a branch of his fig tree without asking. The second neighbour said the fight had begun when the first had accused him of cutting down a branch he had, in fact, only trimmed, and had done so at the first neighbour's own wife's request, who had said the branch was dropping figs into their courtyard.

The wife, both of them now remembered, had died nine years ago. Neither of them had ever asked her.

The stranger listened without interrupting. When they were finished, she said, 'You have been having two different arguments for eleven years. In one of them, one of you is a thief. In the other, the other of you is a fool. Neither argument is the true story, because the true story requires the wife, and she is not here.'

The two neighbours stood at the well and did not speak. The stranger picked up her bucket and continued on her way.

That evening, the first neighbour knocked on the second's door. He carried a small basket of figs from the disputed tree. They did not apologise to each other. They were not that kind of men. But they sat on the low wall between their houses and ate figs until the sky went dark, and in the morning at the well they said good morning, and by the end of the summer they were once again the neighbours they had been before, which is to say: two old men who share a wall and mostly forgive each other for it.

Most of the fights that outlast their own beginning are like this. Somewhere, early, a person we cannot ask stepped out of the story, and we have been arguing with each other in her absence ever since, each defending a version of events that would need her to confirm it.

If you have an eleven-year argument still running in your life, the useful question is not who was right. The useful question is: who is missing from this room, and what would they say if they were here?