Three

by D. A. Mishani

  When she gets to the church, more than half an hour before Mass, she is surprised by how many people are at the English-language Mass that is held before the Polish one, and also by the strong scent of incense and the great number of candles burning near the baptism font. It’s Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week and Christ’s final entry to Jerusalem, and so the church is more crowded than usual.

  When the English Mass ends and the Filipino worshippers leave the hall, Emilia sits in her regular spot on the front pew, but the priest who comes in to hold Mass in Polish is not Tadeusz. It’s a priest whom Emilia doesn’t know, many years older than Tadeusz, taller, his skin very tanned and his hair turning white. He wears glasses. The priest tells the congregants that his name is Narcis, and his soft gaze meets Emilia’s eyes, but she doesn’t stay for the whole Mass. She gets up and goes into the priests’ room behind the hall, but Tadeusz is not there either. When she asks where he is, she is told he’s gone to spend Easter with his family in Poland. She feels almost hurt by him not telling her that he was leaving. Is he giving her a sign, even in his absence, or a confirmation that she should go if Gil wants her to? After all, he went home, too, just like she wishes to.

  But the fear in those hours is stronger.

  In the evening, when Emilia gets back, Hava is waiting for her. She tells Emilia that she talked to her husband, Meir, and it’s all right for her to take a holiday, but she wants Emilia to give her the dates as soon as possible. Emilia thanks her. Although the trip now seems unreal, she asks how much time she can have and is surprised when Hava says she doesn’t mind how many days she takes, as long as Hava knows when exactly the flight is so that she can prepare.

  Emilia doesn’t call Gil or send him a message, but he calls her that night. He apologizes for not coming to pick her up, explains that he was in unexpected meetings all day and wasn’t able to answer her or call back because there was something wrong with his phone. His voice is cold but it still reassures her, and when he asks if Hava is letting her take time off she tells him that she is.

  She still thinks she can hear doubt in his voice, or even regret, when he says, “Really? She approved your holiday? Do you know when yet?” Then he says he’ll call her back later that night.

  When he phones after midnight, Emilia is going to suggest they forget about the trip, because she can sense that he doesn’t want to do it. But then he sounds suddenly decisive, as if he’s made up his mind, and he asks for her passport number and date of birth and full name as it appears on her passport.

  And that night he books tickets.

  Over the next few days everything happens fast for Emilia, faster than she can digest, too fast to understand what is really going on.

  She spends longer hours than usual with Adina, because Hava stops coming to see them; in fact, she disappears completely after Emilia lets her know when she’s going away. Gil doesn’t call or send messages all week either, as if he’s changed his mind again, and when she calls him once he says he’s extremely busy at work. Emilia misses Tadeusz very much. Since she has to talk to someone, she considers going to visit Esther, but she decides not to because she’s afraid she won’t be able to keep her relationship with Gil and their trip a secret, and Gil has repeatedly asked her not to say anything about the trip, especially not to his mother.

  Instead she just calls Esther, but their conversation is short and disappointing. Full of silences.

  Esther sounds confused, perhaps ill. She can’t hear Emilia and hangs up on her. When Emilia calls back again, Esther can finally hear her name. Her voice is tired. She asks Emilia if she’s still working at the nursing home, and Emilia says she is.

  “Are you happy there now? Do they treat you well?”

  She tells Emilia that her Hebrew sounds better, and Emilia answers in English that it’s thanks to Nachum, thanks to his notebooks. When Esther says, “Many things were thanks to Nachum. It’s not easy for me to go on living without him,” Emilia asks herself again if she is the only one who sees him next to her all the time or if Esther does too.

  With Adina, perhaps because she knows she’ll soon get a break from caring for her, Emilia has some nice moments, like when they go out to the garden together to warm up in the afternoon sun, or at bedtime, when she holds Adina’s fingers and waits for her to fall asleep.

  When Gil texts her, he asks in Hebrew, “Is everything ready, Emilia? Are you packed?” She isn’t sure what he means and debates before writing back in Hebrew: “I’m ready.”

  Gil is supposed to fly to Romania on Sunday morning. He will have two full days of work in Bucharest, and Emilia will join him there on Tuesday evening. Her flight leaves Tel Aviv at 4 P.M. They will spend one day in Bucharest, then fly to Riga and stay through the weekend.

  Emilia knows more or less where she will take him in Riga. The first place she wants to visit is her parents’ home, and if the music teacher who took it over from them is still living there, she will ask if they can go inside.

  They arrange for Gil to pick her up at Bucharest airport shortly before seven o’clock. If his meetings prevent him from getting there, Emilia will take a taxi to the hotel where he has booked a room, whose address Emilia copied down in her notebook.

  On Friday afternoon, while Adina sleeps, Emilia quietly takes her suitcase out of the wardrobe and puts it down in the living room. It is two days before Gil leaves and four days before she joins him. Adina wakes up, and when she sees the suitcase she asks Emilia, “Are you leaving?” Only then does Emilia realize that Hava hasn’t told her about the trip.

  She tells Adina in Hebrew, using hand gestures to simulate a plane flying, “Not leaving. I’m going on trip. I’ll come back after.” Adina nods, although Emilia isn’t sure if she understands.

  Her clothes are folded in a pile. They give off a smell of soap powder that manages to overpower the odour of sweat and dust in the old suitcase.

  The next morning, on Saturday, shortly after they wake up and while Emilia is still in her pyjamas, Hava arrives with her husband, Meir, and their two children. They wait for Emilia to help Adina get dressed, and then Hava asks the kids to take Adina downstairs for tea in the lobby. She tells Emilia to stay so that she and Meir can talk to her.

  They ask her to sit down in the living room, on the bed she has not yet had time to fold back into a sofa, and they sit opposite her on two chairs they bring in from the dining area. Emilia hasn’t even had coffee yet. They tell her they know she’s stealing money and jewellery from Adina and that she’s planning to flee the country, and that if she doesn’t give back everything she stole immediately, they’re taking her straight to the police.

  10

  Emilia watches herself open the wardrobe in Adina’s bedroom and take out her jewellery box and the little leather purse where Adina hides money. She puts the purse back and opens the jewellery box with the key and takes out a pair of pearl earrings. She doesn’t know when or how the footage that Meir shows her on his phone was recorded. The clip is silent and the only sound Emilia can hear is Hava shouting: “So you didn’t steal from her, you little bitch?! You have the gall to lie to us?!” She informs Emilia that they have other footage too.

  Meir is calmer. He gestures at Hava to stop yelling and puts his phone down on the table. He says to Emilia, “If you’d like, we can settle this between ourselves. Pay her five thousand shekels and give back all the jewellery you took, and we won’t have to get the police involved. That’ll be the easiest way.” Hava is more upset than he is, or at least that is how she looks. She objects to Meir’s offer. Even though he repeatedly asks her to lower her voice, she screams, “Five thousand? Why? How do you know she didn’t take more, the bitch? And where do you think she’s going to come up with that money? Hey?” She threatens to tell the police that Emilia was abusing her mother. Meir says, “So how much do you want her to pay? Ten thousand? If she gives you back ten thousand, will yo
u let her off? I think it’s better to settle this between us.” Then he adds, “Perhaps you want to hear her side, Hava? Let’s hear what she has to say.”

  Emilia does not have much to say. Meir listens to her. She apologizes. She cries. She vehemently denies hitting Adina. How could they accuse her of that? She sits with Adina every night, holding her hand until she falls asleep. She explains that she was only borrowing the earrings and the necklace and she’s already put them back. Everything is in the jewellery box, they can ask Adina if anything’s missing. Meir looks as if he believes her: “All right, we’ll check.” But Hava says, “You think Mum remembers what she did and didn’t have? She can’t remember anything! How exactly are we supposed to check?” Regarding the money, Emilia swears she hasn’t taken anything for months. She insists she took only a hundred shekels at most, three or four times during her first few weeks. She explains that she was renting a flat and the part-time pay wasn’t enough for rent, and that she’d promised herself she would give the money back when she could. She doesn’t tell them that she could have already paid it back but whenever she had any money in her purse she put it in the donation basket at church or bought things for Gil’s flat.

  Hava raises her voice again: “Now you’re arguing with us?” She turns to Meir: “She can explain all this to the police, not to me. And it’s a good thing we took most of the money out of there, otherwise who knows how much she’d have left.” Meir speaks again: “Don’t argue with her, Emilia, I’m asking you. You’re not in a position to argue with her. Pay her back seven thousand five hundred shekels by tomorrow and we’ll part on good terms. I’ll make sure she doesn’t go to the police, okay? I’m telling you, I’m on your side and I don’t want anyone to get in trouble, okay? Hava, are you listening? She’ll pay you seven thousand five hundred and we’ll put it to rest. Meanwhile, leave us your passport and everything you have here, and you’ll get it all back when you bring the money—or from the police. It’s your choice.”

  When Emilia leaves the nursing home for the last time, it’s a little after 11 A.M. The lobby is full of caregivers and elderly people and relatives, and Emilia thinks they must all know what happened in the room on the seventh floor a few minutes ago, even though none of them can know and no one, including the receptionist, pays attention as she walks out of the lift and quickly crosses the hall to the sliding glass doors.

  Emilia’s belongings remain in Adina’s flat. She had to give her passport and papers to Hava and Meir. She carries some clothes in her plastic bag. The long leather purse is there too. She wears her grey jeans and grey T-shirt and covers her eyes with the red sunglasses. Her denim jacket was also left behind.

  Emilia walks from Bat Yam to the church in Jaffa, the same route she has taken many times. The walk seems longer. Slower. The day is bright and the sun is blazing. Everyone she comes across stares at her. She doesn’t know where she will sleep that night or how she will get the money that Meir and Hava are demanding. She doesn’t have the strength to go on living. She thinks of going back to the home when it gets dark and asking one of the caregivers to let her sleep there. She just wants to leave Israel and go home. She is afraid that if she tells Gil what happened, he will think she was stealing money from him, too, and perhaps from Esther and Nachum, even though she had never even considered doing that. She doesn’t dare enter the church; instead she sits outside on a bench in the square full of tourists. Tadeusz will not come because he’s with his family in Poland, and that is for the best because she could not have looked him in the eye after what has happened. Her skin burns with fear and shame. For what she has done—there is no forgiveness and never will be.

  Gil calls her in the early evening, as if he knew she needed to talk to him. He can hear in her voice that something has gone wrong even before she says she cannot join him.

  “But what happened, Emilia? Can you tell me?” Emilia doesn’t answer. When he repeats the question she starts to sob. She cannot stop.

  She tells him that Hava is accusing her of stealing money and jewellery and that she had to hand over her papers. That they asked her for money she does not have, and that if she doesn’t get it to them by the next afternoon they will take her to the police. Gil listens quietly. He asks where she is and with who. When he offers to come to her place, there is no point in lying to him any more. She tells him that she has nowhere to sleep and no one other than he can help her. He asks if he can phone her back in a few minutes, and he calls after more than half an hour.

  The sun is setting, evening is falling. Emilia’s skin burns a little less, and the fear inside her has abated somewhat while she waited for Gil to phone. He says everything is going to be fine. He promises to help. He asks her to do exactly what he says. He wants her to take a bus and go to his flat. She debates taking a taxi but doesn’t want anyone to see her or talk to her, and on the bus it’s easier to hide. The bus is almost empty on a Saturday night, and Emilia sits on the seat nearest the back door, next to the window. She remembers her first bus ride to Gil’s office, and seeing Tadeusz on the bus, perhaps at the station where she just got on, and how he’d stood without anyone offering him a seat. The ride goes quickly and no one sits next to her. When she gets off she knows she must go straight and then right. Gil’s address is written in her notebook, which she left at Adina’s, but Emilia remembers the way and recognizes the building. She doesn’t turn on the light when she enters the building and walks up the steps in the dark, but when she stops outside his door, on the second floor, the stairwell light comes on, even though no other door opens or shuts and no one else goes up or down. She knocks twice and there is no answer, so she takes the key out of the fuse-box cupboard and goes in, as he told her to. The minute she enters she wants to lie down and shut her eyes. She is grateful for this place. She doesn’t hear the door open and shut, perhaps because she nodded off, she simply feels his soft hand on her shoulder and sees him above her. In his other hand he holds a glass of water.

  Afterwards they sit together at the dining table with the embroidered tablecloth Emilia had bought and the wicker basket from her old flat.

  Gil waits for Emilia to recover, then instructs her to tell him exactly what happened. He asks her lots of question, and she answers. He asks if she took money from Adina and she swears she took no more than a few hundred shekels, and only in the first few weeks of working there, and that since she started working for him she hasn’t taken even a shekel. She borrowed jewellery two or three times, when she went out with Gil in the evenings, and immediately put them back in the box. She can’t explain why she took money from Adina because she has no explanation. She knows it’s not because of the money but for other reasons, and the fact is, she never stole from Nachum and Esther. Gil says he believes her, but then he asks if she took something she shouldn’t have taken from his flat, too, and she says never, and she swears she didn’t take anything from Nachum and Esther either. Gil says quietly that he’s not asking about his parents but about this flat—is she positive she never took something she shouldn’t have? He strokes her hand to calm her nerves. He says he believes her and that he will help her. He asks if she told Meir and Hava who she’s supposed to go to Riga with. He wants to call them to clarify that she wasn’t planning to flee but is supposed to go away with him, and when she says she didn’t tell them about him he says he will introduce himself. “Anyway, whatever you did, they’re not allowed to take your passport and certainly not to blackmail you like this,” he says, “Let me talk to them and I promise they’ll sing a different tune when they know they’re talking with a lawyer.” Then he offers to make her a cup of tea and asks if she wants to have a shower. He goes to his bedroom to call Meir and Hava, but first he assures her, “Everything is going to work out, Emilia, I promise. You’re not alone.”

  Emilia says she’s sorry about the trip, and Gil smiles and says, “It’s no big deal, Emilia. There’ll be other opportunities.”

  As she stands
under the stream of hot water in the shower she thinks about Nachum and shuts her eyes tight. From the shame and the sorrow. From the gratitude. She saw him in the living room earlier, when she walked into the flat in the dark, before Gil arrived, and she realized he was there for her. Since the day he died he had not left her.

  When Emilia walks out of the bathroom, wearing the clothes she brought in the plastic bag, Gil says he’s spoken with Hava and everything is going to be okay. He will settle the payment and they promised not to go to the police and to give her back her papers. Emilia asks how much money she will have to pay and Gil repeats that everything will be okay. He will pay them back, he doesn’t want to say how much, but less than the seven thousand five hundred they were demanding. “You have nothing to worry about,” he says, “everything will be behind us. Tomorrow.”

  He asks her to drink the tea he made while she was in the shower.

  The tea tastes odd, too sweet, and it’s gone cold, but Emilia drinks it all because she hasn’t had anything to eat or drink all day. Gil walks her to his bedroom and she lies down, dizzy from exhaustion and from the overbearing heat. He sits next to her, watching her, the way she used to sit on Adina’s bed and wait for her to fall asleep. The blinds are slightly open and light from the building across the way filters through, and in the dim light she sees Gil’s face just before she falls asleep. He doesn’t touch her. He sits next to her and she hears his voice. She thinks he is asking her something about Orna but she isn’t sure because her mind is foggy. She remembers that she sometimes wondered what it would be like to wake up here, but she never imagined she would feel so good.