by Galia Albin
Chapter 1
Talia Schwarz eyes were fixed on a faraway spot in the distance. She seemed not to notice any of the hundreds of people standing on either side and in back of her. Her head felt dull and heavy. Her mother clutched at her elbow and her hand felt like a vise. “I’m going to scream in a minute,” she thought desperately wishing for some personal space. Overcome by nausea and cold sweat she swayed momentarily, almost falling to the ground.
A short distance from her stood Jonathan’s mother, elegantly dressed, composed and self-controlled as always. Her gray, permanent waved hair was covered by a dark blue, silk kerchief the color of pimpernel. She was wearing a severe, dark gray suit of very fine material. When a woman from the burial society, dressed in a dark robe and brandishing a pair of scissors, approached her, ready to make a tear in her jacket, the elderly lady winced and pushed her away. “Nobody will tell me what to do at my son’s funeral,” she hissed in German, and the other woman turned away from her, visibly offended.
An early August sun blazed mercilessly. People kept streaming to the gravesite in a steady flow, interrupting and resuming their hushed murmurs. The black cardboard skullcaps on the men’s heads looked crumpled and tattered. The congregation groaned in the heat; perspiration trickled down people’s faces, and they took out handkerchiefs to wipe off the pungent beads. Only Talia looked cool and distant. The circle was closing around her. She tightened the black kerchief underneath her chin, and from behind the dark sunglasses continued to stare at the spot in the distance, one of thousands of black spots that occupied her field of vision, and refused to lower her eyes to look at what she knew even without looking was lying at her feet: an open grave. The grave of Jonathan. Her husband, her beloved, the man who was her whole life was about to be put in the ground. The very thought was so heart wrenching, so impossible to contemplate, that she sank once more into blessed numbness, while the cantor droned out words that did not enter her consciousness.
Suddenly, the opaque curtain in her mind seemed to tear open; pictures paraded in front of her eyes: Jonathan climbing up the stairs of their first apartment, his tiny bachelor’s pad, tapping the merry little tune he invented on the door, ra-ta-ta-ta-tat, ra-ta-ta-ta-tat, to let her know he is coming, as if it could be anybody else. Jonathan bending over their conjugal bed, kissing her lips, her eyes, her hair, tress by tress, curl by curl. Jonathan crawling around their new house on all fours, emitting happy yelping sounds, his bony knees sliding on the marble floor, and on his back little Udi, Udi-Mudi-Budi-Dudi, as he used to call him. Jonathan wildly kissing her feet the day she told him about the second pregnancy...
More pictures flashed through her eyes. Her childhood, her teen years, her first husband, the birth of Na’ama. The pictures seemed so tangible; her first meeting with Jonathan, their first dinner, just the two of them in that elegant restaurant. Their first kiss, that took so long in coming but, when it did, was immeasurably sweet. She could almost taste his lips. A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips, but quickly disappeared. The thought of two- year-old Udi and one-year-old Michal melted her heart. Large tears started streaming underneath the dark glasses, like large drops of rain. She let the thin rivulets flow down her pale cheeks and down her neck, wetting the dress that had been cut at the collar. Her hands, helplessly, involuntarily, crumpled her handkerchief.
She started to distinguish some of the people in the faceless crowd. They stood there with inscrutable, almost menacing expressions on their faces, hiding behind dark sunglasses, their hands folded on their chests. Who are these people, she asked herself. Are they friends of Jonathan she has never met? But she knew all his friends, even those who did not like her, who did not accept her, who envied her when Jonathan chose her to be his bride. Perhaps these are distant relatives who read about Jonathan’s untimely death in the papers, his cruel, pointless death, and came to pay their respects? But her heart told her that those were neither friends nor relatives. So who can they possibly be? One of them in particular stood out; he stood in front of her, on the other side of the grave. He was not tall in stature, yet his posture bespoke authority and set him apart from the rest of the mourners. She noticed his extremely attractive features: a sculptured face, black, wavy hair, beautiful flue eyes that stared at her with almost impudent interest. Who is this man? Why is he eyeing her like this? His inquisitive stare perturbed her but, at the same time, woke her from her stupor.
The faces around her were getting clearer. Talia noticed the deputy Prime Minister, members of the Cabinet and of the Knesset, influential personalities from the ruling party, tycoons, and journalist. A host of photographers clicked their cameras at the throng of mourners. She felt equally disgusted by those who tried to evade the photographers as by those who accosted them openly, in order to be seen standing next to her in tomorrow’s front pages.
Some of Jonathan’s friends were whispering in a circle they had formed. A bunch of evil-hearted brutes, Talia thought. Emanuel Maor and Dan Malhi turned sideways to talk with Michah and Ditty, who were holding hands. Uzzi Levin supported his wife, Hanny, who was crying bitterly. He was not looking at Talia, but Hanny sent her tear-filled looks, and for a moment Talia wondered why Hanny was looking so thin and haggard.
“What have they got against you? Why don’t they come to you?” her mother asked. Indeed, none of Jonathan’s circle of old friends came to Talia to hug her, to comfort her, to share her burden of sorrow. Sudden fear gripped her. She had not experienced such a crushing fear even at her father’s death. Their looks were totally devoid of compassion; they measured her coldly, distantly. In her heart she knew that her welfare and her children’s welfare meant absolutely nothing to these people. Suddenly she noticed a skinny, fair-haired woman, wearing a long, black silk dress, making her way through the throng. Talia’s eyes were drawn to the long string of pearls that dangled from the woman’s neck and swayed with every step she took. When she finally stood in front of her, Talia recognized Ann, Manfred Goldberg’s daughter. Her face was awash with tears and her frail body was shaking visibly. She hugged Talia, murmuring repeatedly, “Talinka, it wasn’t my father who did it! It wasn’t my father!” She had a forlorn, anguished look in her eyes. Talia yielded to her embrace, and the two women stood there hugging and weeping, until a tall heavy-set man left his group and approached them. It was Emauel Maor, Jonathan’s close friend. He pulled Ann’s arm rudely. “Enough with the melodrama, Ann,” he said gruffly, “you’re disgracing your father!”
Talia stood there bewildered and mystified. “What could Ann possibly mean? Why did she look so forlorn and upset?” She watched the slender woman being steered by the strong manly hand and led to the group that soon closed in on her. Surprisingly, Ann’s embrace had been a pleasant sensation, despite the heat, despite her own aversion to any human touch, including her mother’s hand when she put a shawl on her to cover her bare shoulders. “Ditty’s dress! I’ve ruined it for her!” she recalled in horror, and for a moment, her thoughts drifted, with some relief, to frivolous matters that distracted her mind for a short while. Talia had not been able to find a suitable black dress for the funeral. All of the black dresses in her closet were too elegant; they were gowns that Jonathan had brought from his travels. So Ditty brought me one of her dresses, Talia thought, no less posh and with an enormous décolletage in the back... I’m sure everybody’s talking about me... and how could I forget the tear they cut in the mourners’ clothes at the cemetery? The thought of the damaged dress bothered her, and she resolved to buy a new dress for her friend at the first opportunity.
A thud was heard. Talia roused herself from her reverie. The stretcher was being loaded down into the grave. From the corner of her eye the grave looked like an open gash in the ground. The gravediggers threw fresh dirt into the grave and quickly leveled the ground. Jonathan’s mother fainted and Talia’s mother - looking like her in-law’s clone, with her white-blue permanent and elegant, linen suit - rushed to her with a bottle of water.
Silence fell. Nobody uttered a word, only occasional sobs were heard, breaking the silence. Talia felt as if an enormous stone was lodged in her heart, pressing on it almost to the point of bursting. She closed her eyes, choking with pain. With great effort she averted her eyes and saw the rabbi, the same rabbi who had officiated at their wedding five years earlier. His eyes were full of compassion. His clear voice was heard over the persistent drone of a small airplane circling above their heads: “Jonathan, son of Yehuda Schwarz, in the name of the burial society, and in the name of all your friends and loved ones, I ask your forgiveness and pardon. If any of us has offended you in any way, if we have caused you sorrow, please forgive us, because our intentions were good and our hearts were pure. Please intercede on our behalf at the place at the place you are going...”
Once more, Talia’s eyes filled with tears. They were tears of anger and frustration. The soft shell that had sheltered her all those years had melted, and something inside her became hard and coarse. “My dear Jonathan,” she heard herself say aloud, “I ask your forgiveness in the name of all those present here, “and to herself she whispered, “My beloved, even if you forgive them, I will never forgive and I will never forget.