Get off my back, Na’ama, she hisses at me, I’m not interested in stopping, I’m not interested in anything, except the drug, it’s my only reason for living, it’s my baby, it’s the only thing that makes me happy, and suddenly a wheezing nicotine laugh sprays out of her, I’m taken, see, I’m the mother of the drug, see? The laughter shakes her empty stomach under the hospital gown, it pursues me when I say good-bye to her and stand waiting for the elevator, looking back at her admiringly, almost enviously, the way she sits there, crossing one emaciated leg over the other, puffing gray smoke at the baby she will abandon tomorrow, perhaps she’s right, at this time tomorrow she’ll be lying on her filthy mattress and she’ll be the queen of the world.
Twelve
The sun I awaited so eagerly early this morning now pursues me inimically, menacing me from all the car mirrors, three glaring suns following me with three knives, not allowing me to turn right or left or back, to return to the shelter or to go home, only to drive straight on as if I have been hijacked, to a place which is exclusively mine, where there is no need to take care of anyone, and I race ahead before I can change my mind, seeing in my mind’s eye the sky shining on me through the treetops as I lie on the grass, my limbs relaxed, empty of hunger and thirst, expectation or insult.
The farther I drive the narrower the roads get and the greener the landscape becomes, even in the heart of summer there are still shining lakes of green here, orange groves examining me curiously with their eyes, I haven’t been here since my father died, and before then too my visits were few and far between, the encounter of my adulthood with my childhood always gave rise in me to a feeling of inevitable catastrophe. Whenever I came to visit him I would begin to limp, as if an old fracture in my bones had never healed properly, but today I go back gladly, because this is the only place I have left, because my father and mother are waiting for me here with lunch, sitting opposite each other at the big table, glancing anxiously at the clock on the wall, where is she, why is she late. Here I am coming home from school, their separation has not yet thrown my life into disarray, she is still imprisoned in a secret cage of dangerous ideas, sometimes she roars at night but I still don’t hear her, only the nocturnal conversations of the jackals sometimes give rise in me to an obscure fear. On this road I walk home, between the citrus groves, a black country road, bare of traffic, sometimes in the evening I walk along it barefoot, and although it’s dry and rough I can feel soft currents under the asphalt, remnants of warmth flowing toward me from the depths of the earth as I walk up the densely growing, always clouded avenue of oaks, here I would rest at the side of the road, gathering acorns, hoarding the hard fruits in their crumbling cradles.
I park the car on the old guava orchard, now covered with asphalt, trying to aim for the spot where my favorite tree once stood, the red guavas heavy with sweetness shining between its branches like lamps, and run to the house, wait for me, Mommy and Daddy, don’t start to eat without me, don’t clear the table, don’t wipe the crumbs with a cloth, here I am back from school, my notebooks neat, my textbooks clean, today I’ll look after Yotam so you can go out. How sudden it was, I didn’t suspect for a second, she seemed so happy with us, her little family, she was so beautiful at lunchtime in her checked apron with the beads of perspiration blooming on her lip. We were all in love with her, little Yotam who lived inside her dress, who cried when she moved away, I who worshiped her and imitated her every gesture, and my father who was much older than she was, and whose only wish was to please her, and they never fought and spoke quietly and politely and everything seemed wonderful, until it transpired that it wasn’t enough for her, this life, cooking boiled chicken and mashed potatoes every day, sitting at the lunch table opposite an aging man who bored her. She was still young, she wanted to live, to be an actress, to dance and sing, she didn’t want to rot in this remote village in an old house, a miserable Jewish Agency house as she called it, and now I stand before it, all the houses around have changed beyond recognition, like children who have grown up, adding rooms and stories until they are unrecognizable, and only our house cringes in its modesty and mortification. Here are the remains of our little garden, the solitary poinciana tree planted in the middle, the birthday tree I used to call it, because on my sixth birthday I ran round and round it, holding on to its rough trunk and whirling round and round until my head was spinning and all the guests merged together into one big smile full of tongues and teeth. I was holding a little handkerchief in my hand, a white handkerchief I had received from one of the neighbors, and it filled me with indescribable joy, I waved it again and again, as if I were on the deck of a ship, waving good-bye before setting out on a long voyage, whose dangers could not yet be guessed.
Under the birthday tree I now stretch out, its branches divide the sky into blue bits, swaying like seaweed, changing ceaselessly. How I loved to lie here in the dark, the clamor of the house like a reassuring buzz in the background and me under the tree, listening to the singing of the clouds, a soft dim choir high above me, a song without sorrow or gladness, without meetings or partings, we go past you, they’d sing, but we’ll be here after you, we’ll never be born, we’ll never die, we’ll never remember anything, we’ll never forget. They climb on top of each other, they stretch their languid arms, they lie luxuriously on the bed of the sky, they swallow the moon and immediately vomit it up whole, unharmed it escapes their grip, they join together and immediately part again, spreading out fearlessly over the kingdom of heaven, changing shape, conjuring valleys and hills, bays and snowy peaks. Nearly every evening I would go out into the garden, even in winter, lie down on the lawn and stare into the depths of the sky, at the immeasurably fascinating events taking place there, over which I had no control, as if I ever had any control over what happened here, on earth, in the little Jewish Agency house, and gradually peace of mind would descend on me, a magical, marvelous peace, unrelated to anything that had happened that day or would happen the next day, this was apparently that infinite consciousness, that naked, radiant simplicity, and now that I remember it I call it to come back to me, I try to coax it, to tempt it, but what do I have to offer it, and how can I trust it, if precisely at the moment of my greatest need it stopped coming, it left that house just like my mother did, at the same time on the same day. Again I try to remember the things I was told this morning, relax, she said, learn from the clouds and the sky, connect to the calm inside you, how tempting it sounds, if only I could, but there is no calm inside me, Zohara, on the contrary, sometimes it seems to me that there is more calm in the world spinning round me than there is inside me.
Ashamed I stand opposite the locked door of my home, someone bought it years ago but they never lived in it, and until its rooms are peopled our heartbreak will remain there, treading on the shaky tiles, fingering the mark of the barometer on the wall, the rage of the abandoned house, and I follow its footsteps from outside, circling the house where my childhood lived. Here the red plum tree stood and next to it the yellow plum tree, husband and wife we called them, because in the course of the years they joined together, and the tips of their branches intertwined until we could not tell them apart, and only in the summer, when the fruit ripened, did we know which branch belonged to the red tree and which to the yellow, and we would climb them, straining and stretching to pick the warm fruit, and let it melt in our mouths like candy, and here, opposite the window of our room, the giant acacia tree once stood, which shone in the spring like the sun, strewing our dreams with gold. Here’s the east porch, opposite the blue mountains threaded together like a necklace of sapphires, here my father would sit in the afternoons in short khaki pants, leaning back with his legs crossed, chewing black grapes and predicting the weather, the lenses of his glasses glittering gleefully, and I would sit at his feet on these steps, my arms full of kittens. They would suddenly appear as if out of nowhere in the depths of the bushes, frisking among the ferns, their tails dancing between the light and shade, and I would lie in wait fo
r them on the steps, anticipating their first leaps into the world, tempting them with saucers of cream, sniffing warm, milky fur. Here’s the west porch, where the pigeons lived, cooing and gurgling under the roof tiles, soiling the porch floor with their droppings, and my mother would yell, get rid of those pigeons with their germs before they make us all sick, and my father would gaze helplessly at the nests, torn between his pity for the pigeons and his wish to please my mother. Sometimes he would pluck up the courage to pull down a nest or two, though he’d secretly transfer the eggs to another and so never succeeded in getting rid of the pigeons, but after she left, on his first night without her, he fell furiously on the nests and tore them down, together with their eggs and fledgelings, it was a proper pogrom, and the news must have spread throughout the pigeon population, because they never dared to return, and even now, nearly thirty years later, there isn’t a pigeon to be seen on the porch.
Strangely enough, although nobody lives here the lawn is still fresh and green, like a grave secretly tended by devoted admirers, yes, this was the grave of the rest of his life, wandering through his emptied rooms, lamenting her leaving without anger, as if he agreed with her, as if he would have done the same thing if he had been in her place. I always thought that if she had left him for another man it would have been easier for him than the way she did leave him, for all the other men in the world, she offered him no focus for his anger, which was weak in any case, so that he remained defeated in a battle in which he never took part, what did he have to do with wars, all he wanted was peace and order, a quiet life without any surprises, even the weather never took him by surprise, but she did surprise him, she of all people, who had been so happy when he rescued her from her poor, hardworking, hard-hearted parents, from the two little brothers she had been forced to bring up, happy to have a home of her own, a husband of her own and later children of her own, who would have believed that it wouldn’t be enough for her.
Immediately after she left a procession of women came marching down the narrow path, broad-hipped, no longer young women who tried to convince him that it would be enough for them, but he only wanted his wayward girl, all other women seemed dull and boring to him, just like him, and he didn’t want himself, but her, and he was ready to take her back the minute she said the word, but she didn’t say the word, even though nothing worked out for her, not the singing or the dancing or the acting, she wasn’t young enough, or attractive enough, it turned out that only in his eyes was she a star, but amazingly enough she didn’t break, she held her head high in her failure, surveying the ruins of her life with satisfaction, as if this was her great achievement, to have dared and failed. For years I meant to ask her how she coped with the disappointment of her failure, and after paying such a high price too, but now she is completely different, so quickly did her beauty fade, her dreams vanish, that she appears to have turned into another woman entirely, and it seems that this bony old crone with the broad clay face knows nothing about that young woman who broke my life in half, and there would be no point in troubling her with ancient rumors.
Again I pass their bedroom window, trying to peek through the slats of the closed shutters, to push aside the curtain of hibiscus swooning in the heat, and I want to shake the wooden shutters until they open their parched mouths and tell me what happened there inside their bedroom, the smallest room in the house, with the pullout bed, she sleeping on the big, high one and him on the low, narrow one that was pushed under her bed in the morning so they would have space to move in the tiny room. Helplessly I stand before the secrets of the shutters, this room has always given rise in me to an obscure sense of oppression, a nagging pain in my throat, and suddenly I hear a howl coming from inside it, and my jaw drops in astonishment, it’s impossible, nobody lives here, how did some poor creature get inside, and how will it get out, when all the shutters are closed and the doors are locked, and I walk round the house again, trying to peep inside and not seeing a thing, and again I hear a cat hissing in the bedroom, and I’m sure that it’s my fault, that I am the one who left a kitten there many years ago, a kitten which by some miracle has managed to survive to this day, and now it’s begging me with the remnants of its strength to rescue it, and in my panic I run away again, propelling myself down the narrow path, my hand rummaging in my bag, where are my keys, all I want to do is get into the car and get out of here, why did I come here in the first place, nobody needs me here, they need me at home now, Noga must be worried stiff, why haven’t I come home from work yet, it’s already late, and he’s scolding her instead of reassuring her, and the thought of the two of them alone in the house without me weighs on me all the way home.
A hot, pungent smell of frying onions greets me as I hurry up the stairs, my muscles hurting as if I’ve run all the way, the neighbor across the landing again with her enviable cooking, but no, the smell is bursting out of our kitchen, combined with a sight that for the past weeks I have seen only in my imagination, Udi stirring the pan with a big wooden spoon, he always looks so reluctant when he’s doing something in the kitchen, standing on one leg with the other foot resting on it, wearing underpants and a torn blue tee-shirt, which I’ve been nagging him for years to get rid of, but he refuses, and rightly, he looks like a boy in it, young and thin, suddenly he looks much younger than me, he looks healthy, the ancient medicine of the East has saved him in the twinkling of an eye. Noga is standing next to him bowed over the marble counter, cutting up tomatoes, her lips pouting with effort, everything is hard for her, not to drop the tomato, not to cut her finger, but her eyes are wide with happiness, and I look at them in astonishment, as if I have landed by mistake in another family, the similarity to my frequent fantasies is stunning and paralyzing, almost insulting, and instead of being delighted I feel superfluous, what’s going on here, I come flying back to them with my heart in my mouth, and it turns out that they get along much better without me.
You came too early, Mommy, we’re making a surprise for you, Noga complains happily, and I go up to him and peep into the pan, something’s burning, Udi, I say, bits of blackened garlic are floating around between the still hard wedges of onion, how many times have I tried to explain to him that you only add the garlic when the onion turns yellow, but he refuses to listen, clinging to the belief that his stubbornness will prevail and that the garlic will adapt itself to him, like me, like Noga, and when I see the blackened crumbs I fill with rage, he never learns anything, stirring the blazing pan, standing like a stork on one leg, and instead of admitting his mistake he begins scolding Noga, blaming someone else as usual. What’s happening with the tomatoes, how long does it take you, can’t you see that everything’s about to burn? And she meekly offers him the watery slices, and I can’t stop myself, Udi, the onion isn’t done and the garlic’s already burnt to a frazzle, how many times have I told you to put the garlic in after the onions and not to fry them together from the beginning.
He shrinks as if he has received a blow, the pan shakes in his hand as he lifts it, in a minute he’ll brandish it like a tennis racket and hurl it to the floor with the whole greasy mess, and I quickly take a step backward, dragging Noga behind me, but he only bangs it down on the leaping flame and yells at me, so you cook if you’re such an expert, I’m sick of listening to your moaning, nothing I do is good enough for you, and already he’s back in the bedroom, slamming the door behind him, and I run after him, in a hurry to cover his words with mine.
You’re simply impossible, that’s what you are, you’re incapable of hearing one word of criticism, I yell, what did I say, all I said was that you should put the onion in before the garlic, is it worth ruining everything for that? And he’s already in bed, pulling the blanket over his face, I ruined it? His voice is crushed under the blanket, I ruined it? At last I feel a bit better and I try to give you a surprise, to prepare a meal with Noga, and you come in with that tense face of yours and instead of being happy that I’m capable of standing on my feet at all, you’re annoyed because I did
n’t put the onion in before the garlic? Anyone would think I’d committed a crime, you should try to look at yourself from outside occasionally, you think you’re a big saint and everyone persecutes you, but let me tell you that the reality is completely different!
I look sadly at the blanket covering him, black and red checks filtering his words, they’re right, those checks, why was it so urgent for me to teach him to cook now of all times, the first day he got out of bed, and I bend down to placate him, but then a shout comes from the kitchen, Mommy, something’s burning, and I charge back to see the flames licking the sides of the pan, everything’s burnt, now even I can’t tell the difference between the onion and the garlic.
Husband and Wife Page 17