To America and Back

by Mordechai Landsberg

After more than a week, the photographer was sent home. Ramona was not his sole visitor now. Some parents of the past misssing warriors also were witnessing his re-arrival. He was brought back by the same Fiat car, which had taken him to hospital. Descending from the vehicle he waved his hands to the visitors, who were waiting near his apartment and shop. Doctor Priver asked the ten visitors to let him rest, and only two women were permitted to escort him and arrange his apartment: Ramona and nurse Tsipy.

  “Why has he been released so soon?” asked Mr. Mekler.

  “Sir, you forget we’re in a war: Every bed in hospital is needed for wounded warriors, who arrive every day,” said the physician, “thank God, Kaplansky has been relieved from his pains.”

  Next day Ramona prepared lunch for weak Solomon. Tears appeared in her eyes, when the recovering man asked Doctor Priver, who had visited him early in the afternoon:

  “Doc, when can I visit the Brethern Grave, where my son was buried? I mean, if it wouldn’t be too much risky… for my heart.”

  ”Oh, next week,” said the doc, “You seem just feeling well now, but we have our own method about the steps of a patient’s recover. The medical practice is, that the one who gets a heart attack has to lie in bed for three up to four weeks. You will get out of here after two and half, O’key?”

  Ramona did not escort Solomon to the graveyard. Only Mr. Weinberg was with him. In a clear morning- a taxi took them there and drove them back home. Kaplansky returned pale and tired. He lied on the sofa for half an hour, and with weak voice asked Ramona about Nahumik’s studies at school. He was just surprised to hear that her son also studies with Rabbi Aaron.

  “Oh, why does a modern boy needs that?” he asked, “You know- my son Elkano had also tried to study there, with the butcher-Rabbi. But he had left the Rabbinical clergyman very soon…He heard and told me- that Rabbi Aaron was only a practical Kosher Butcher. He had not been allowed by the Central Rabinity to be a real community Leader: I mean, a Rabbi with full allowance to wed couples or harangue to the public.” Kaplansky smiled from his own half-humoristic tale.

  “Yes, my Nahumik has told me that”, said Ramona, ”It came about because the Rabbi emigrated from Soviet Russia, when no one was allowed to do that. He was pretending mad- in order to be driven out from atheist Russia. The Israeli Rabbinate System suspected, that he might have lost practicality there. Or that some atheistic ideas were hidden in a corner of his mind, so … ”

  Ramona boiled vegetables’ soup to Solomon, and promised him to visit him every day. The old widower, Weinberg, was his ‘keeper’ in the mornings, giving him a daily white pill, (to be taken with a half glass of water, at least). At that time Ramona was busy in feeding her hens and gathering their eggs from the coops. She used to come to Kaplansky at two or three in the afternoon, and was caring – as well as Weinberg- that the photographer won’t move too much. Especially to his shop, that he wanted to re-open soon.

  Kaplansky was also eager for eating cakes, and eventually would try to request a visitor to buy and bring him one. But Ramona stood on guard and avoided him from even tasting it. However, Kaplansky had at home a ‘Laika’ automatic Camera, and he decided to take it from his drawer, set it up- connecting it to its ‘pillar’, and make it be automatically activated. So he photoed himself or Ramona or some visitors. ‘I’ll develop the film when I become healthier’- he told his visitors. They saw he was joyfully talking about his craft.

  Since Ramona’s first visit, the Photographer has wondered why should this woman bother herself and care for him. He could understand that in hospital, maybe it was because of Elkano…But the guy had passed away. She has no commitment to a man who had been the father of her sweetheart. ‘Therefore the question: Why?’- still remains. If I could only be sure, that her relation to me- her nice behavior and goodcare and fonding manner- derive from a deeper source’, so he said to himself with a queer smile,‘Then maybe I’ll believe in Providence.’

  Yes, from her manner of talking to him and her settled tone, Solomon was feeling that she had intended to know about him more and more details – as a personality with great life experience and capabilities and emotions… and even if he was an anti- religious person, he had a humanistic belief and observation…

  ‘Even about my political opinions she has already inquired’ he told himself, ‘It was in her last visit in hospital. She was interested to know many things about me; though she still endevoured not so ask much about my past marriage life, with Elkano’s mother… But I’m forty five now, and not so healthy. Who knows what would happen to me next year; and she is only thirty, maybe thirty one. I hope to return soon to my shop. She understands well that I am mentally hurt; a bereaved person can never recover… But she’s also a bereaved woman. She understands what it is. No, a son is different from a husband. Oh, Fate is laughing: A young widow with a bereaved elder man. It might be an interesting psychological case, if… O.K., we’ll very soon see how and to where it develops. No, I harness the wagon before the horses… And what does Nahumik know about his mother and my son? Surely, he had suspected something… but if I return to my recent thought- I don’t have patience now for adapting a child like him’.

  ‘Gott In Himmel’(God in sky)- Kaplansky added to himself – ‘the town in which I was born – Katovitce, is not so far from Ramona’s native town. Our whole meeting story is a crossing point of events. Like the whole universe that was created in the type we know it, had been by ‘joint natural events’, occasional events, taking very many milliards of years. I have read it in the book about the ‘Nature and Creation of the Universe’. It says about the creation of life – that from time to time, occasionally, a small deviation from the existing norm or shape of some creature, would cause a new type to develop, that hasn’t existed before. So with chemical reactions, that some of them appear by rear chance. Scientific people know better than myself how to describe all that in detail.’ On her next visit to Kaplansky’s house, Ramona discerned some albums with his photographs on the table. Weinberg brought that from the Photographing Shop. Many weddings and parties and Shows were seen there, and also extensions and ‘improvements’ made – from bad originals. “I was asked,” said Kaplansky- “to make an old lady younger, or got other such joking tasks. But that’s the job of a photographer, who wishes to get paid and live”.

  When Mr. Weinberg came to visit him again, he was bringing soda powder.

  Ramona heard from him, that a spoon of that powder would be good for Solomon. Whenever he may feel a pressure in his chest, she should put this into a cup of water and even mix it with some suger. After drinking that liquid, Solomon will hiccough, what will release his chest’s pain.

  Ramona remained alone with Solomon. ‘Maybe this is the due moment,’ she told herself, ‘to announce that I have loved Elkano very much, and… that I am not going to abort his baby, which is in my womb. At first I hesitated to decide that, until I have come to know Solomon… It’s already the third month, that I have no sign of menstruation! I’m going to keep the embrio. I love it already, knowing that Elkano would have kissed me fervently for that… I don’t demand anything- but I’ll tell Solomon. I don’t know what to do if he would say he doesn’t know what has happened… I must talk to him delicately. That he won’t get into panic. Because – God forbid – what if he suspects that the embrio is from another man’s sperm at all, and I trick him?… No. I won’t tell him yet about this pregnancy. Maybe the mentruation will soon reappear: It has been long delayed, because of all the tension and excitement around. Yes, maybe I am quite in panic. Recently I don’t sleep well. I refuse to admit it. My eyes are burning. My self-balance is not as it seems from outside to be. I am troubled by bad thoughts…Or maybe what bothers me- are my visits in Kaplansky’s apartment. I try to style what I’ll tell him when he recovers and permitted to get back to work. I must mention to him, that his son’s seed is inside me… From the news about the death of the horse – he was not too excited. He had beenn in hospital and I d
iscovered to him that Nahumik was coming to feed the horse. The boy had liked to do it, as he was riding it almost every day. I added that he certainly had known that the horse was dear to Nahumik, it was like a connecting wire to Elkano’s memory…

  I can’t prevent from further arrivals in Solomon’s home, she added to herself. I can find thousand arguments against that –but I would fail. I am simply attracted by this man. Nahumik has already paid attention to that. For that reason he repeatedly said, that Solomon had been ‘making and faking’ some photos of the missing soldiers. In the boy’s view- it was not important what had been Solomon’s reason for that. Maybe he had a good intention: to plant hope in the parents of those missing soldiers… After the war I’ll take care to try and repair my son’s erroneous views about some topics and events of our life.

  I am feeling that my attraction to- and taking care of – Solomon … are not only due to my mad love or deep sadness regarding Elkano. It’s a separate subject, standing alone: I begin to love this mature suffering man. And I know he is a strong, and will get out of his illness. Every evening – when I leave him alone at home, and he reminds me that I have to go, I have a feeling that I should continue. If not the hens, that I have to take care of, I would come also in the mornings…Why suddenly I recollect of a sentence that I had said to myself, when the overwhelming news about my husband’s death has arrived? “If I could only take care of him , and see him dying in my hands. Then I would have felt better.’ It’s a futility, what I’m telling myself… And I couldn’t have taken care of Elkano. He was killed – who knows how and where. Just exploded and burnt, without becoming ‘injured’. Dead at once. His flesh and blood and bones and brain were mixed with his comrades limbs, and that was all ; Oh God!

  I feel that Solomon is viewing life and death from a similar standpoint to mine. Who knows. I still postpone my ‘very serious talk’ to him – and I feel that very soon he will tell me, that I am ‘the best thing that happened to him’ for a long time.

  CHAPTER 24