The House of Lost Spirits: A Paranormal Novel

by Einat Shimshoni

  “Show respect for a man’s will.”

  I realize that I am not going to get anything out of him today, and I’m not in the mood to go and beg Oved, because, clearly, that is precisely what he wants me to do, and I don’t beg. I don’t even ask. My mother always complained of my unwillingness to use the word, ‘please,’ But, I am always suspicious of people who overuse it. When I was eight years old, friends visited my parents with their nine-year-old son. The natural expectation of me was that I play the perfect hostess and provide him with amusing entertainment while the adults settled themselves over glasses of wine and sparkling conversation on fascinating topics in the living room.

  “What’s in those cages outside?” the boy asked when a quick survey of my room did not reveal anything of interest to him.

  “Animals,” I replied. My mother thought that animals would help me develop social skills. They mainly helped me to develop fur and feather allergies.

  “Are your animals interesting?”

  “There are two bunnies, a hamster and a parrot.” I had no idea what he considered to be interesting.

  “Oof! Rabbits are worthless,” my guest remarked.

  “Bunnies,” I corrected him. “Rabbits are wild animals with grey-brown fur and have long ears. Bunnies are white.” People always make mistakes about these details. But he wasn’t listening to anything I was explaining, and went back down to the living room to ask his mother if he could go out to the yard to see the animals. He didn’t just ask, he requested. He said ‘please,’

  “Ask Irit and Avner, ‘Darling’.”

  ‘Darling’ turned to my parents. “May I go outside and play with the animals, please?”

  My mother threw ‘Darling’ a radiant smile, and replied, “The animals belong to Noga. You can ask her. I’m sure she’ll be delighted, won’t you, Noga?”

  The boy who, until that moment, had only looked askance at me as someone who was taller than me and a year older, too, now wore the face of an angel.

  “May I, please?”

  I wanted to say no. I wanted to go back up to my room and continue working quietly on my lists of animals in danger of extinction that I was busy with when ‘Darling’ arrived. (Somehow, I prefer the static catalogued versions of animals to the three-dimensional kinetic ones.) But mother’s sharp glance made it clear to me that one did not say no to a guest. Especially not after he said ‘please’ three times.

  “What do they eat?” ‘Darling’ asked when we reached the yard.

  “Pedro eats millet. It’s a kind of cereal that—”

  “Who’s Pedro?” he interrupted.

  “The parrot,” I replied, although I really didn’t want to talk to this tall, snobbish boy, who looked at everything with suspicion and jeers.

  “What a stupid name.” He giggled like kids who were never afraid that someone might laugh at them. I didn’t bother to explain that Pedro is a male Manila parrot who originates from South America, where Pedro is a common name.

  “That parrot is boring,” he said as he kicked the metal stand on which the cage hung. It made the cage swing, causing Pedro to nervously flap his wings and screech angrily.

  “What a crazy bird.” He chuckled as he kicked it again. “And what do the rabbits eat?”

  I didn’t bother to correct him again that they were bunnies. From a very young age, I have known how to recognize a lost case when I see one. I also didn’t take the trouble to mention that their names were Pierre and Jacques. I just pointed to the bowl of dry food in the corner of the cage.

  “Aren’t they supposed to nibble carrots?”

  I would have explained that they weren’t supposed to eat carrots or mixed dry cereal from the pet shop or, also, that they’re not meant to be pets and live in a closed cage to amuse bored children like him, or improve the social skills of disturbed kids like me. They’re supposed to live in nature and eat leaves, grain, and roots. But, as mentioned, I didn’t believe such explanations would do any good.

  ‘Darling,’ who was fond of kicking, didn’t wait for my response. He went back into the living room and returned about a minute later with a carrot he probably got from my mother, after once again making cynical and manipulative use of the word, ‘please.’

  His game was simple. He brought the carrot close to the side of the cage, coaxing Pierre and Jacques to come closer as he muttered, “Psst, psst, come here, you dumb rabbits,” and then he pulled the carrot away as soon as they came closer to take a bite. He found it so amusing, and I found it so sick. When he lost interest in the game, he threw the carrot down in the corner of the cage and left, but not before he took one last kick at Pedro’s cage.

  I wanted to kick him, but didn’t.

  People, who say ‘please’ just to get something they want, revolt me. So, I never say ‘please,’ especially if the person before me is really waiting for me to say it.

  But the light outside tells me that it is late afternoon, and I still have a lot of time to kill until evening. If I don’t turn out to be a more miserable coward than I already know I am, then tonight I will try again to go outside the house, and until then, I have Benny for company.

  “Okay, so tell me something about yourself,” I try.

  Benny smiles again bitterly. “What’s to tell? Everyone knows it all, don’t they? Or don’t they read newspapers nowadays?’

  I don’t want to tell him that the notices about his tragic death were sidelined in the news. It’s something that always upset my father.

  “The truth is that newspapers are beside the point now. Everything is on the net, but some stories don’t make it to the media.”

  “What do you mean by the net? What net?” he asks with a shrug and a sharp tilt of his head. Now, as I think of all the video snippets I have seen of him, these gestures look very foxlike, and I can’t help smiling. Benny seems to interpret my smile as ridiculing him, and that’s really not my intent. I’m not one of those who mock. Condescend—yes, despise—often. Become filled with disgust and revulsion—so what’s to be done. The world just asks for it, sometimes. But I don’t mock or ridicule, and I never kick people. Those who do that are the snakes and scorpions of the social jungle. They hit you with an uppercut from below, without you noticing and without prior warning, and I certainly don’t belong to that category of the species. If I continue in the metaphor of the animal kingdom, I am like an owl, a small, strange, winged creature, who tries to hide behind the image of a bird of prey, in spite of being too cowardly to wander around in the light of day, and most of the time, is busy secluding itself among the branches of distant trees.

  “The Internet. The Net. It’s a gigantic source of information that everyone can log on to from almost anywhere in the world. Forget about it, it’s not important,” I stop when I see that he doesn’t understand a word I’m saying.

  “What do you mean by everyone? Can everyone know all there is to know about everyone?”

  “Well, not quite everything. Only what’s published. The thing is that the information is more accessible and faster to reach,” I explain.

  “And is there nothing written about me on this net?” Benny asks and I find it hard to decide whether he’d prefer my response to be positive or negative.

  “There is written stuff. And there are also video clips of interviews, as well as a documentary they made about you a few years ago.” My father made me watch it, of course. The rise and fall of Israel’s Elvis.

  Benny is silent for a moment, as he tries to check whether I’m being serious or not. In the end, he asks kind of scornfully, “Was the film any good?”

  “It was okay,” I reply. What I concluded from that documentary, that suicide was his only way out, I didn’t say. But he seems satisfied enough with my response because he sinks back into his indifferent silence.

  “So, tell me?” I ask again in the hope that the information
I have supplied has earned me some good points with him.

  “Tell you, what? You just told me that you have some net where you can get all the information, so what do you want? To know what I used to eat for breakfast, and what soap I washed with?” Although he sounds angry, he sits on the carved dresser, an act that requires him to make contact with a physical object, something I have not yet seen him do. To tell the truth, he seems quite pleased with himself.

  “I’ll tell you what I know, and then, you can complete it,” I suggest and notice how he discards his cloak of indifference and grows alert, so I continue.

  “You grew up in Haifa, the only child of Holocaust survivors. Alcoholic father, rotten financial situation, lousy neighborhood, no bright future to look forward to. And then the good fairy knocked at your door when an American film director came to shoot a failed Western in the scenery of Eilat, and was looking for a good-looking face to put in one of the scenes. Although the film failed at the box office, the director really liked your face and your deep voice, and invited you to appear in another movie of his. So, you took a chance on him, mostly because he helped rescue you from your life, and that was a smart bet, when afterward, that same director brought Rambo into the world. You became a star, but not like Sylvester Stallone. You went for musicals, a less successful gamble because, after the ’60’s, no one took any interest in musicals. And then, you got into debt, came home to Israel, and took loans from the wrong people. You got into trouble with the tax authorities, and when they caught up with you, you gave them names of the wrong people, who got very angry at you. Arrests, inquiries, a scandal about money you stole from your mother’s pension fund. A trial followed with a sentence of two years in prison. In the end, you understood that you were finished and instead of going to prison, you swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle-full of cognac.”

  I have never thought in depth about where the expression ‘sharp-tongued’ comes from, except that in my ninth grade school report “sharp-tongued and introverted,” was written in the remarks section. The restaurant owner I waitressed for last year for six days until he fired me, warmly suggested that I restrain my razor-like tongue, just as the private piano teacher refused to continue teaching me after four months of mutual suffering, when I was eleven years old. But, as soon as I see the expression on Benny’s face, I understand the full meaning of the remark. He looked as though he had just been hit by a hara-kiri attack from me. Perhaps, this is my animal of prey inclination.

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” I try to make amends, a little too late, for what I have done. Benny rises from the dresser and brushes the matter off as unimportant with a wave of his arm, and does not even glance in my direction as he walks to the front door.

  “What do you have to apologize for? You’re just repeating what everyone says.”

  It’s not that I think I am a unique type of unicorn or something like it, but there are times when I really don’t want to be on everyone’s side. He was already at the door when he turned to me with lowered eyes and asked, “What about my mother? Is there anything about her on this net of yours?”

  I would lie to him, if only I knew which lie he prefers to hear. The owl may be a bird of prey, but it’s not the kind that enjoys picking at rotting carcasses.

  “No, I didn’t see anything written about her.” Benny nods to himself and looks at me.

  “And what about Michael?”

  I don’t have a clue who Michael is. Apparently, Benny understands that by himself and lets out a breath. It is uncertain whether he exhales to express pain or relief. He returns to his place, sits on his escritoire and hangs his head.

  “So, perhaps simply tell me the story from your angle,” I suggest in another attempt to atone for the hurtful remarks I threw his way. Benny keeps silent for a while, and finally laughs bitterly.

  “You know; the others never did that. No one ever said to me, ‘Come, Benny, tell your story as you see it.’ It never interested them.”

  I didn’t know who Benny was referring to, but I kept quiet and allowed him to continue,

  “To be honest, you know, I never really thought about how I viewed matters. My job was to see them as they appear to others. I am only an actor. Believe me, it’s easier when someone else writes the dialogue. That way, you can speak freely. In the movies, I always turn out to be smarter than I am, even when I play the part of the fool.” He smiled to himself, but the grin disappeared immediately.

  “I actually thought of myself as a real actor. I didn’t just think it. I was convinced. That’s the way dreams are. Whoever thought it could really happen to someone like me? That’s what I loved about the movies; I could pretend I was really an actor. But it wasn’t the truth. Finally, it ended because it was never true.”

  During the tour of the house Benny gave me on my first morning in the house, I already discovered that he could be very talkative when he felt like it, and although I don’t understand what he is trying to say now, I allow him to continue telling his story.

  “It all happened by chance,” he continues in a surprised tone, as if, to this day he isn’t certain how it happened, “it was really by accident. We were sitting with the gang at Menashe’s café on the Carmel beach in the afternoon, after work at the summer vacation job we had at the harbor when I had no intention of going back to school afterward. Anyway, they hardly agreed to let me continue, they said I would never graduate. Menashe was playing Elvis Presley cassettes. I think it was ‘Bossa Nova Baby,’ and just as I always did, I started singing with the cassette, and imitating Elvis. Suddenly, an American approached me and told me he had work for me. Do you know who it was?”

  I know, but don’t reply. This is Benny’s moment, and I prefer not to interfere.

  “It was Ted Kotcheff,” he exclaims victoriously. “The Hollywood director. Just think that if I hadn’t stopped at Menashe, or if Menashe had played some other music, my whole life would have looked different.”

  Benny grows silent for a minute. Perhaps he is trying to imagine how his life would have turned out if not for Menashe, the cassette, and Ted Kotcheff’s decision to visit the beach promenade in Haifa.

  “From there, everything happened so quickly,” Benny continues. “I didn’t manage to understand what was happening to me, and I already had an air ticket to America in my hand, to Hollywood. So, I flew. Who would have turned it down, ha? Of course, I grabbed it.” There is something apologetic in his voice, but I don’t know to whom it is directed. Only after he leaves the room, I notice that I still don’t know who Michael is.

  ***

  On the few occasions that Benny’s father was sober, he would pick up his old accordion and play on the verandah of their public housing apartment with his long fingers and accompany himself singing. He would sing verses of prayers from the synagogue and songs of minstrels that rolled off his tongue in a heavy Polish accent. The tenement apartments were dark and tiny, and the tenants spent most of their lives on the verandahs. Whenever his father began to play, enthusiastic cries of encouragement would come from the other verandahs. There were some who added their voices to the singing, and others who applauded. Zevik Unger from the floor above joined in on his mouth organ. Benny loved these evenings, not because he loved the old songs, but because at these moments, everything was perfect. The heavy silences that characterized the family disappeared, as did the shadows that followed his father everywhere, and were the spirits of the members of his family who were left “there.” Even the thick fumes of alcohol evaporated in the air and dispersed with the sounds of the accordion. Most of all, Benny loved the shouting from Mrs. Esther Romem, the renowned pedagogue and promoter of the Hebrew language,

  “Why don’t you sing something in Hebrew?”

  And his father would answer her with, “When your pop composers learn to write songs with soul.” It was accompanied by the cheers of the audience on the verandahs,
which was, perhaps, fond of pop music, but not of Esther Romem.

  Perhaps, that was why he began playing and singing when he was young. Not on the accordion, but the guitar, and not the songs of troubadours, but the repertoire of singers and bands that he heard at the cafes along the Carmel beach, and the nightclubs of Ramleh. He would imitate their simple and melodious accent that was smooth and without jarring consonants that stuck in his throat. As hard as he found it to admit the fact, he often noticed his resemblance to his father. Like his father, he also escaped to the adoration of the audience to flee the shadows that darkened his life. He also enjoyed responding to applause and fake love rather than to those who truly loved him. He disparagingly supported those who preferred Irving Berlin to Elvis and the Beatles, and just like his father, he died with a bottle of cognac in his hand.

  It didn’t have to be like that; it could have been different. Without making any effort, Benny enjoyed opportunities his father never received. He achieved success without having time to notice it. His mother had always said that it takes hard work to attain success. She warned him that wiling away his time in nightclubs would not lead him anywhere, and that the fate of slackers is bitter and sad, but reality proved she was mistaken. His parents slaved from dawn to dusk and saw no compensation for their work. All they got were back pains, callouses, and humiliation. Their parents also received nothing in return for their labor and persistence, and were later sent to their death in the gas chambers. But Benny, of all people, who put no effort into his studies and showed no signs of diligence, whose teachers often reprimanded him for wasting his talents, was fortunate enough to have success knock at his door.

  It was not easy to leave his parents. Each of them reacted characteristically. His father grew silent, went out and got drunk, and his mother wept.

  “What do we have to do with the likes of them?” she asked. “Why do you go and join the gentiles, when at long last, we have our own country?” But Benny saw no use in the country that all it had to offer him was a tenement apartment and employment as a laborer. Benny wanted more than that. But he never worked to achieve more, although, when opportunity came his way, he had no intention of turning it down. His friends encouraged him enthusiastically, the neighbors raised a doubtful eyebrow, and Esther Romem gossiped about empty-headed youths chasing after illusions in foreign lands instead of building their country and homeland.