by Ilana Haley
On Friday, at school, the teachers are agitated, stressed from a most intense week, longing for home - so are the children, and, of course, me too. When I enter my house, I drop my purse on the couch and march straight to the mirror. Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the dumbest of them all? My face stares back at me tight and glossy - (so what if I had a little help with stretching and all?) You’re so narcissistic, whispers my other voice, after all: no one has benefited from your beauty; you didn’t even train a dog, only yourself. You pester me about my looks: What is my image today…Go away, leave me be, I shriek; I thrust my fingers into my ears and begin to cry. I don’t change my clothes, nor take my make-up off. I go to the huge window and sit in my big black chair, smoke a cigarette and gaze into the street - how pretty.
Fall gazes back at me, benevolent but gloomy; the soft maple trees stand bare and ghostly in the pallid air; birds are only a vague memory of something cheerful and soft. I watch the evening shadows shroud the world and try not to think pestering thoughts but the chatter in my brain will not cease, buzzing like millions of wasps, memories of yesteryear, when all was different and my other voice whispers to me: remember… there, among the lemon trees and vineyards, through vivid sunrises and through dew you didn’t walk in vain. My face lifted to the sky, basking in the Milky Way...of course I remember. How can I forget? But now I wish to dwell in the silence of the mind, to be shut inside a cask, carefully, peek outside to breathe for a moment the light, to smile at a child and again, dive into the silence of my mind and think, not see, expect nothing, only be; for who am I, except blood and tissues, hair, veins, and rotting cells...
But here the voice disappears, because, suddenly, through my window I see a drunk tottering in the street, his face broken into a million pieces, his hopes forgotten and dead. He sits on the low cement by my gate and with shaking hands tries to light a cigarette; it’s too windy. He spits. He curses. He takes a swig from his bottle and begins to stumble, but he steadies himself and doesn’t fall.
Teddy cautions me repeatedly not to invite strangers into the house It’s too risky, he says; you might get yourself raped. He’s aware of my weakness for the unfortunate, the miserable, the homeless... But this is a subject to be explored somewhere else. Teddy himself likes his wine strong and red. Anyway, the drunk walks away and disappears into the evening, carrying with him his shattered image.
A pretty young woman with a poodle on a velvet leash is trotting along the street; her eyes are dreamy and there is a silly smile on her lips. A young man, wearing a turned-around baseball hat, meets her. They laugh, they kiss, the hat falls, the poodle barks, but they pay it no heed. Standing under my window, their bodies adhere, and they are licking each other lustily. Beware of the undertow, I want to scream, love is not what it seems. But they vanish into the fog of delusion.
When Teddy comes home, deep evening has gathered the city into its shadows, the world calmed down. The soft maple trees have become spirits. My one and only, Teddy says, and devours me with kisses. I bury my face in the soft nook of his neck and implore him not to let me go out with Him- to keep me at home, where I am safe and warm. but Teddy is deaf to my supplications, because, of course, I only say it inside my head. I have a slash in my heart - an old, old, wound. If you open my brain you’ll see bleeding, lacerated and unhealed scars; but also the old fire that still burns in me - for there isn’t enough earth to extinguish it.
Seven o’clock: I wait. The doorbell rings. I don’t stir. Teddy glances at me, amused. I shrug my shoulders. Teddy gets up and opens the door, and who do you think is standing there, with a smile as wide as a summer night and eyes as wet as rain, if not my old knight? He looks at Teddy and me and smiles at us quietly. Are you ready doll, he asks gently; then shakes Teddy’s hand and says, Hi Ted. How good to see you. Sit down, says Teddy, Would you like a glass of wine? No thanks, he answers. Perhaps some other time.
Bye, says my Teddy, enjoy the evening, and he pats my head, as if I were his daughter, then gives me a hurried kiss. My heart doesn’t crumble; it moans, and as I walk to the door, I trip on the rug (like the drunk, remember?) and almost fall - four arms reach out and hold me, but my ears are ringing and I begin to snort. I kick the wall. No one sees, no one knows, because, it isn’t me - it’s only my ghost. I shoot a murderous look at Teddy, but he merely smiles and pinches my cheek. I am tempted to hit him, but immediately the hushed voice is there to remind me that when I met Teddy...
He came in the dark took my hand, led me a bride into the light that at first was merely a hesitating flicker, then burst and splashed a wondrous shadow.
We entered - his hand did not leave mine. He breathed my breath, as if he were inside, although I knew I’d return to the dark, I glided into the calm of his hand holding mine.
And so it is, now, Eric and I, going again into the night - so far away from that white burning beach where we first met forty years ago. Eric holds my hand and says for the thousandth and one time,
You’re so pretty doll. But I am not as quick as all that; I am still thinking of the drunkard, of Teddy, and of the love-stricken lady. He kisses me and they all fade except Teddy. I love you, He says, his voice, deep, caressing and steady-and suddenly my Teddy disappears too, and my world turns crazy –
The rest of that evening is peaches and cream, dimmed lights and pink champagne poisoned with dreams, and gray snails on a blood-red platter, slippery and slimy as the gutter.
Murmurs wafting in the smoke-drenched air, and memories of love lurking everywhere, shadow-like, touch on a starlit night. Time is bewitched. I am glowing, I am flying, but between us a wall of fog lies, and I am hateful; my body weeps.
Flutter of lips in the dark, like the flutter of moths’ wings, and from a black man, like lava from a dark mountain, erupt love songs that even God has forgotten.
Suddenly a scorching heat, a whisper, Are you with me, my love? And I know, again the time has come to part. A stony silence fills my heart.
Then, at ten, on the porch of my home, He kisses my lips in a beastly heat, and abandons me, as always (His wife is waiting.). I sit on the steps, bury my face in my hands and slowly return to myself. As I open the door, I see Teddy, still staring at the television as if enchanted, because, naturally, he takes the whole thing completely for granted. Hello, my love, he says, did you enjoy yourself? He isn’t joking, but I detect a slight tension in his eyes. I drank a lot of champagne and had a ball. Teddy laughs, his face relaxes. Give us a kiss, my love, eh, he says and slaps his knee. I go to him and sit in his lap and wrap my arms around his neck, while Eric’s gentle voice is still vibrating in my head, and the champagne is still buzzing confusion in my consciousness. But do you love me? asks Teddy, as he kisses my eyes. Enough! I’ve had it for today! So I run to my room, get the old reliable bong out from its secret place, and inhale grass until I am good and stoned. Then I shed my clothes, mumble a curse, and like a worm, squirm into bed, pull the covers over my head, thinking, what a mess; I must stop this or else ... but, what a waste - because I love them both and know that I’ll never let go of Teddy or Eric.
Chapter 5
Childhood Friends
Alpha, my childhood love, came in and said; so honey pie, how are you feeling? She was big and hearty, and filled the room with her body, white hair covering her temples. She sighed, waving a newspaper to dry drops of perspiration and cool her hot forehead. After that she sat and listened, saying nothing, but her eyes were filled with understanding and shining with affection. Love of a youth long gone: blue mornings, birds shrieking, and children playing in fields of ripening wheat, perfume of wild flowers, loads of snails after rain, smooth worms and noisy frogs, as well as creeping turtles and gray mice rushing, and giant spiders suspended from transparent silk webs, and snakes with eyes that never close, nervous chameleons and many other animals. This divine symphony was conducted by the yellow sun of childhood that paints faces, eyes and hair with gold, s
prinkling big brown freckles, like round pennies, when coins still had holes in them . . . but all this was a long time ago. Today the sun paints the kibbutz in sadness, pain and insults. My brother still carries the disappointment of that crumbling dream in his heart.
My Alpha is dead now. When I heard of her death, I sat at home for three days and howled like a wolf whose cubs have been eaten. Ah, my Alpha, I mourned! Rest in peace my love, your suffering is at an end, and only my great sorrow accompanies you to the silence we do not know.
One should be able to cry. You do it in secret. Insulted and estranged you walked heavily inside the fortress of silence you imposed upon yourself.
The doves still chatter on the roof of your house in the mornings and each day paints a fresh wrinkle in the face of the loneliness with which you veiled your days.
Let the tears cool the burns of longing in those that death has devoured. Free your tears from metal; your roar will shatter heavens.
What am I without you? Your voice brings beauty back to me. I still hear the two of us singing Radiant Childhood.
But even then, in the light, loneliness stalked you— Also me.
After Alpha left, Dahlia, another childhood friend I loved came in. All dripping with sweat, every pimple on her face a burning beacon, and with a heart pinned to her chest she said; just a small gift, handing me tiny white muslin handkerchiefs I was certain no longer existed in the world. They were certainly not made by Kleenex. She gave me a cassette of music, touching her burning cheek against mine. An odor of spices and perspiration came from her. I couldn’t bear it, so I opened the safety pin, and with quivering fingers, took the heart and returned it carefully to her chest, saying; take care of your heart, my precious. And she laughed.
Chapter 6
Vienna
Years later, on one of my visits, my mother asked me to take her to Vienna once more. She said she would like to visit her childhood house, her school, if it still exists, to eat Mozart Kugels. Take me to Vienna one more time, she said. I asked Teddy what he thought. He said I should go with her and he would join us in four days. I wasn’t sure. We quarreled constantly, but I also knew this might be an important trip – to be alone with my mother for four days. It had never happened before, and I wasn’t a little girl any more. I was in my early forties...
Am I pretty, Mother? I asked. You’re beautiful, she laughed, and kissed my lips. For a fleeting moment she was young, bright and as full of hopes and dreams as a bride, the way she was years ago, when we were at her birthplace, in Vienna. We were there, just my mother and I, talking and laughing, without need for opiates. We lay on a soft bed covered with a plump, old eiderdown. We even walked arm in arm, just for contact. Touching and feeling each other at every moment – as if taking a break from time – And you, Mother, you were wonderful! All dreams came from you into me. The memories of my childhood, my galloping days, the photograph and the negative…the stranger and the self, you fill me with crumbling sweetness.
I kept devouring Mozart Cakes, unable to stop. I got a terrible stomach-ache. When we came to the cemetery, a world of imposing monuments and headstones, beneath which lay the crumbling, worm-eaten dead, we were unable to find Grandfather’s grave. So, we went to the graveyard office where we found a tall, skeletal man with transparent hands. One could see a map of veins and bones through his skin. On his head sprouted a few red hairs and his eyes were yellow and sunken in gray cheeks – Well, after all we were in a cemetery. Mother asked in polite German if he could help her find Schnapps grave
(This was the name of my grandfather, who had lain in the earth for many years and whose skeleton was shining white. Naturally Mother didn’t say these words. I said them inside my head).
The man placed a pair of huge glasses with a black metal frame on his nose, growled, frowned, squinted and finally opened up a large book, soon examining the millions of lines and billions of names with great self importance. While waiting, Mother’s feet became swollen out of her shoes, but she didn’t so much as groan. My belly hurt terribly and I needed to go to the lavatory, but was too shy to ask, even though I was already a big girl. The man just continued moving through the pages, with a long, thin finger that was like a dried sausage that he dipped into a green sponge in yellow water, as disgusting as vomit. Finally he spoke: Aha! Then he said something in German that I didn’t understand, but my mother’s eyes sparkled and she wasn’t grieving. It was as if it wasn’t her father at all. I became a little confused, I didn’t really understand because when I think about my father, I lose my breath. The cemetery caretaker kept telling my mother things I didn’t understand, but she listened attentively and kept repeating: Bitte Sichuan mein Herr, und Danke sehr. (You are welcome sir, and thank you.) Soon we were walking among the graves; it was terribly hot, but my mother’s feet didn’t hurt and she walked quickly and joyfully, just like she had done when she was a pioneer in Israel. The only thing missing was a blue blouse.
We walked among the graves; there, in straight never-ending lines they were, and under huge trees and many colored flowers. From a naked blue-gray sky a merciless sun seemed to beat down, as buckets of sweat poured out of my body. My unwavering mother however, continued walking among the graves like a soldier marching to war. It took quite some time before we finally found my grandfather’s grave, and my heart fell. The tomb was so pitiful I almost started to laugh. Mother apologized, saying there wasn’t enough money to find something finer, but it did not matter; I do not care about graves; they are just an illusion… I didn’t even visit my father’s grave on the kibbutz, up there on the Rocky Hill, under the pines and cypress trees…But, I am repeating myself and straying from the subject –
What is the subject? Oh, yes… graves in Vienna:
Unable to hold nature’s demands in anymore, I told my Mother I needed to go to the bathroom. Instantly wide-eyed, she stared at me as if seeing me from a great distance and then, she suddenly laughed a crazy laugh. Not really crazy, yet crazy... For a moment she became a naughty little girl with eyes shining in the sun, even though it was a Nazi sun. She said: Go on! Find yourself a place far away from grandfather’s grave… over there! Raising her hand and pointing, her lips were pursed in distaste: Over there, on the other side, where the non-Jews are buried. What? I asked; behind a headstone? Mother just laughed, insisting, no one will ever know. And I thought to myself: Troublemaker! So uncivilized. I know it isn’t nice. But quite honestly, no-one seemed to care. No one was there. So off I went and found the largest and most beautiful monument on the non-Jewish side, laughing to myself all the time, I kept remembering an infantile joke about Hershel from Ostropol… but I am certainly not going to tell that one here. After all as Mother says, There’s a limit to everything. The problem is that I was never sure where or what the limit is. Well, never mind. Limits are far too complicated a subject.
I did what I needed to do and then I couldn’t find my mother. Everything around me had become weird and spooky. Now I seemed to be walking among those grand graves in the company of Grandfather Schnap, with his black capote and bony hands. I almost spoke to him, badly wanting to know what it was like to be dead, but in the end I realized that everyone has his or her own experience. In any case, who says he would have answered? Nevertheless it was an amusing, indeed very strange, experience. My mother was so very happy, lovely and youthful that I felt I hardly knew her. But she really loved me, even more than loved me... there in Vienna of all places. I’d never seen her like that, didn’t know she could be so wonderful. And wherever we went they said, Gr. Gott! (May God greet you!) It was an everyday greeting more often uttered with tight lips and a sour heart, than any other way. I also said Gr. Gott, with zipped lips and clenched teeth and, like a witch, I straightened my back, lifted my head and clicked my heels, like a real Nazi from the war. My mother said, that it wasn’t nice behavior, and that I was impossible (people always tell me I’m impossible, I’m used to it), and didn’t
know how to behave, but nothing helped. I’d had enough of those nauseating Nazis, so I made fun of them wherever we went. Oh, these were the happiest days I remember. I wished it had lasted forever. Four days later, Teddy joined us and the harmony was disrupted.
Chapter 7
Stay a While
Back In Boston, it is early morning. I go to make coffee. A cloudy morning fills the kitchen window. It’s very quiet around me, as if all the people have died and the world is mine alone. Within the rising of the sun, I see all of you, my dearest friends, passing through my life, pausing for a moment, smiling, caressing, promising and then vanishing. Then you reappear, follow me for a while before disappearing again, as if I were a pathway or a door. You enter my world, but you do not stay. Even so, I am inside you as you are inside me. Morning fades away and you forget that I’m here. This is my life still clinging to you – and letting go. I tell myself: There is not much time left. You pass beneath the columns of my spirit, come up, stay a moment, hold me.
Again I gaze through my window at the sky, of a pearly color now. Teddy is still asleep. Yesterday evening he went for a radio interview concerning his jazz CD. He was nervous and not particularly friendly. As for me, I was still so self-absorbed I forgot to ask how it went, what he did and what he said. My spirit was dead to the world when he returned. From his perspective, he very much wanted to love and be close, to make love, but I couldn’t be with him. Leaving Teddy alone with his experience and disappointment, again I’d folded myself away deep inside in a place of utter solitude, letting sleep gather me up.