“Will the driver have enough gas to get back?” Moses asks Manuel, who this time is taking his chances with air pollution.
“He is a veteran and reliable driver; Mother can always depend on him. He is from the area, and if he gets lost there’ll always be a roadside inn where he can get directions.”
“I haven’t seen any roadside inn so far.”
“That’s because they’re dark. Country people go to bed early, but don’t worry, if you rouse them they get up right away.”
Before long they indeed arrive at a darkened inn, and only after exiting the cab does Moses see the dim light within. By the side of the building stands a large carriage, its shafts resting on the ground, the unharnessed horses grazing nearby in a patch of soft grass. They enter a small dining hall with pots and pans hanging on the walls. In the middle is a large table, lit by oil lamps, surrounded by about ten men and women, laughing, enjoying food and drink; their colorful clothes seem like costumes. “Who are these people?” marvels Moses. “They are traveling actors,” says Doña Elvira, greeting them.
The actors recognize her and make room for her and her companions. The innkeeper, a big-bellied Spaniard, greets the cabdriver warmly and pours the visitors wine in yellow ceramic cups. But Moses refuses any drink and ignores the platters of food that arrive at the table. Ever since the failed municipality cellar scene, he has, in effect, taken a vow of fasting. His eyes again take in the driver, now outside the cab, a short, chubby man, happy and content, loved and accepted by all, eating and drinking and laughing. Suddenly Moses thinks that he knows this character, that he ran into him in the distant past, but where and when? Can it be that the driver was once an actor in some film, or did he envision him when he read some old novel?
He doesn’t ask Doña Elvira, who is engaged in cheerful conversation with the actors. Manuel urges him to eat. “We have far to go,” he says, “you will die of hunger.” But Moses resists. “No, thank you,” he says, “even if I lose some weight there will still be more than enough of me left, maybe too much.”
When they return to the cab they find the night has grown brighter. The moon risen in the east floods the skies with magical milky light. “How can it be that not far from the capital city we are in such an empty, deserted landscape?” asks Moses. “So it only seems,” answers Doña Elvira. “Many people live here, but the darkness conceals them from your sight.”
It is near midnight when the black box arrives at an old farmhouse. A large dog greets them enthusiastically and jumps on the driver, whom he apparently knows or who might be his master. A country woman holding an oil lamp emerges out from the ground floor and bows to them deeply, and from behind her peek boys and girls of various ages. The driver hugs them all and picks them up. It would seem, says Moses to himself, not all the locals go to bed early. He looks at the cameraman carrying his gear from the cab, and thinks, A fine young man. He is desperate to take pictures of the inn and the actors and the carriage and the grazing horses, but he respects my orders.
The driver leads them to the rear of the farmhouse, and on the way they pass a stable where stand a horse and a mule, like old friends, snorting at a shared trough apparently stocked insufficiently, since the horse is gaunt, a skeleton of a horse.
In a rear building, near wooden stairs that appear singed by fire, are the scorched remnants of books in leather bindings. Moses trembles with all his being: It seems I have reached a very important place.
From the upper floor comes a man of about fifty, tall, as gaunt as the horse in the stable. His face is long, his eyes are sad, a tiny beard sprouts from his chin. It’s really him. Tears fill the director’s eyes. The knight is alive. His books were burned but he didn’t die at the end of the story. Sancho Panza saved his master from deadly sanity and moved him to his house in the country, to his family and children, so he would no longer be alone in his delusions and frustrations.
The knight warmly welcomes the director and cameraman and their companions and takes them into a big room where on one wall hang an ancient helmet and spear, bent and dented over many years in battles, but gleaming with reality.
Toledano takes from his pack the old camera inherited from his father and measures the light with a meter.
Does this young man see what is going on here? Moses asks himself. Has he ever read the wonderful book? Today you can’t rely on anyone’s education.
His head is spinning, he feels his face is flushed, and Doña Elvira and Manuel are happy to see the eyes of the veteran director brimming with tears.
The two are chatting with the skinny man, and the Spanish they speak sounds different now, softer, less jarring, similar to the language he heard in his childhood in Jerusalem among the Sephardic Jews who lived there for many generations.
The chivalrous man, though he has probably not left this village for many years, is not taken by surprise at the request of the foreigner who has come from far away and scornfully refuses the payment offered by Manuel. He has no need of any payment. Even if they fill the trough to overflowing, the horse will never get fat.
He opens another door and escorts his guests into an inner room, and amid the shadows cast by the oil lamp appears a stout country woman sitting up in bed. It is hard to tell how old she is or if she is still nursing.
Toledano sets up his tripod and camera; this time he clearly needs to make do with the light of the oil lamp, for not only this house, but the whole area is without electricity, and the Israeli extension cord will be of no help.
“This is the place, this is the source,” Moses says, and he takes off his overcoat, his jacket, and then his shirt and undershirt, and he allows the elderly Doña Elvira to place the robe on him but doesn’t invite anyone to tie his hands.
“How is this?” he asks the cameraman. “Are you ready?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Which camera do you want to start with?”
“My father’s old camera. Only film can get the nuance, digital’s not an option.”
“Then let’s begin.”
“Yes,” says Toledano, “but pay attention, Moses, I’m opening the aperture to the max and widening the lens, but you have to hold still, freeze in place, otherwise we won’t get a picture out of this, only mush.”
Moses approaches the country woman, who sits in her bed, and with his own hands he takes off her blouse and exposes her breasts. Though this is a country woman whose face is coarse and witless, she radiates a true and simple light. And Moses says to her in Hebrew, “I know who you are, you are Dulcinea, you are the fantasy, in person, the knight captured in the end.” And facing a massive breast bisected by a bluish vein, he thrusts his hands behind him and declares that only the Knight of the Sorrowful Face may bind them.
A fragrant breeze blows through the window. Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Moses asks himself. If Dulcinea can feed me, it means she has borne the knight a child and the fantasy of his love is not merely the fruit of imagination. The director brings his lips to the big brown nipple, and though this is a country breast, a magnificent breast, he is unsure whether he will find it soft or hard. The woman smiles and squeezes her breast, and between his lips Moses feels a first drop of milk.
The milk is warm—strong sweetish mother’s milk with a mysterious taste, a hint perhaps of a country dish consumed by the woman. Well, then, this is the fantasy. The inspiration I craved has returned, he muses with joy, I am drinking it straight into the chambers of my heart, against the reality that strangles us. My heart is intact, my daughter checked it not long ago. If so, this is my true retrospective, a retrospective meant from the start only for me.
HAIFA, 2008–2010
Second Candle
1.
THIS, SAYS YA’ARI, holding his wife tight, is where we have to part, and with a pang of misgiving he hands her the passport, after checking that all the other necessary items are tucked into the plastic envelope—boarding pass for the connecting flight, return ticket to Israel, and her medical in
surance certificate, to which he has taped two of her blood-pressure pills. Here, I’ve put everything important together in one place. All you have to do is look after your passport. And again he warns his wife not to be tempted during the long layover to leave the airport and go into the city. This time, don’t forget, you’re on your own, I’m not at your side, and our “ambassador” is no longer an ambassador, so if you get into trouble...
“Why get into trouble?” she protests. “I remember the city being close to the airport, and I’ve got more than six hours between flights.”
“First of all, the city is not that close, and second, why bother? We were there three years ago and saw everything worth seeing. No, please don’t scare me just as you’re leaving. You haven’t slept well the past few nights, and the flight is long and tiring. Set yourself up in that nice cafeteria where we parked ourselves the last time, put up your feet and give the swelling in your ankles a chance to go down, and let the time pass quietly. You can read that novel you just bought...”
“Nice cafeteria? What are you talking about? It’s a depressing place. So why for your peace of mind I should be cooped up there for six hours?”
“Because it’s Africa, Daniela, not Europe. Nothing is solid or clear-cut there. You could easily get lost or lose track of time.”
“And I remember empty roads ... not much traffic...”
“Exactly, the traffic is spotty and disorganized there. So without even realizing, you could miss your connection, and then what do we do with you? I beg of you, don’t add to my worries ... this whole trip is distressing and frightening as it is.”
“Really, that’s too much.”
“Only because I love you too much.”
“Love, or control? We really do need to decide at some point.”
“Love in control,” her husband says, smiling sadly, summarizing his life as he embraces her. In three years she’ll be sixty. Since her older sister died more than a year ago, her blood pressure has gone up a bit and she has grown scattered and dreamy, but her womanliness continues to attract and fascinate him as much as she did when they first met. Yesterday, in honor of the trip, she had her hair cropped and dyed amber, and her youthful look makes him feel proud.
And so they stand, the man and his wife by the departure gate. It’s Hanukkah. From the center of the glass dome, radiant in the reddish dawn, a grand menorah dangles over the terminal, and the light of its first candle flickers as if it were a real flame.
“So...,” he thinks to add, “in the end you managed to avoid me ... We didn’t make love and I didn’t get to relax before your departure.”
“Shh, shh....” She presses a finger to his lips, smiling uneasily at passersby. “Careful ... people can hear you, so you’d better be honest, you also didn’t try too hard in the past week.”
“Not so,” says the husband, bitterly defending his manhood. “I wanted to, but I was no match for you. You can’t escape your responsibility. And don’t add insult to injury: promise me you won’t go into the city. Why is six hours such a big deal to you?”
A twinkle in the traveler’s pretty eyes. The connection between the lost lovemaking and the layover in Nairobi has taken her by surprise.
“All right,” she hedges. “We’ll see ... I’ll try ... just stop looking for reasons to worry. If I’ve gone thirty-seven years without getting lost, you won’t lose me this time either, and next week we’ll treat ourselves to what we missed. What do you think, I’m not frustrated too? That I lack desire, the real thing?”
And before he has a chance to respond, she pulls him forcefully toward her, plants a kiss on his forehead, and disappears through the glass door. It’s only for seven days, but it has been years since she left the country without him, and he is not only anxious but also amazed that she was able to get what she wanted. The two of them made a family visit to Africa three years ago, and most of today’s route he knows well, but until she arrives, late at night after two flights, at her brother-in-law’s in Morogoro, she will have plenty of dreamy and absent-minded hours alone.
OUTSIDE, IT’S STILL dark. The reddish dawn reflected in the terminal’s glass dome was, it turns out, an optical illusion. He feels a first twinge of longing as he spots a scarf left behind on the backseat. True, he can look forward in her absence to freedom and control of his daily routine, but her surprising declaration of “real desire” revives the itch of missed opportunity.
Despite the very early hour, he knows there’s no point in going home. He won’t climb back into the big empty bed and get some rest but will instead be seduced by the dirty dishes left for the cleaning lady and then seek out other needless chores. For a moment he considers paying a morning visit to his father, but the Filipinos are displeased when he descends on them during the old man’s ablutions. Therefore he quickly drives past his childhood home and heads for the south of the city, to the engineering design firm he inherited from his father.
The treetops tossing in the morning wind bring to mind a complaint that landed on his desk several weeks before. So he changes course and heads west toward the sea, to the recently erected Pinsker Tower. He presses the remote control to lift the parking gate and descends carefully into the belly of the building.
The thirty-story tower was completed by the end of summer, yet even at this early hour he sees very few cars parked in the gloomy cavern of the underground lot. Apartment sales must be slow; meanwhile, the building’s small population of residents has already banded together to protest defects in its construction. The first winter storms brought the latest grievance: an insufferable roaring, whistling, and rumbling in the shafts of the elevators designed by Ya’ari’s company, which also supervised their installation.
Indeed, as soon as he pushes open the heavy fire door separating the garage from the elevator landing, a wild wailing assaults him, as though he’d walked onto the runway of a military airfield. The previous week, one of the firm’s engineers had been sent to investigate the phenomenon and had returned mystified. Are the winds being sucked in from the car park? Or are they invading from the roof? Are the anxious whistles the result of some flaw between the elevators and their counterweights, or perhaps a crack has opened in the rear stairwell and from there the shaft sucks the winds from the outside? It is conceivable that the wind came in by a less direct route, through one of the vacant apartments. A few days earlier the elevator manufacturer had seen fit to dispatch to the tower a technician specializing in the diagnosis of acoustic disturbances, but at that moment the winter retreated and folded its winds, and the silence prevented the sensitive woman from forming an opinion.
The children are afraid to ride alone in the elevators when the winds are blowing wildly, complained the head of the tenants’ committee yesterday, following the resumption of the winter storms—having been provided with Ya’ari’s cell phone number by the construction company and encouraged to call him directly. Babies are bursting into tears upon entering the elevator. Tears? Hard to believe, Ya’ari thinks, picturing his two little grandchildren. Can it be that bad? But he did not try to make light of the complaint nor to shirk responsibility. His professional reputation and that of his people are precious to him, and he has promised that if the noises persist, he himself will come to tilt his ear to the winds.
And so, at dawn, he keeps his word. Focused and alert, he stands silently facing the four elevators—each of which is currently stopping at a different floor of the tower—bringing his seasoned intuition to bear on the violent wailing of the winds. Finally he calls for one. The closest descends and opens its doors. He sends it one flight up, then presses the button again to see if a more distant cab responds or if the first one returns after concluding its upward mission. Yes, the control panel is properly programmed: the faraway elevators stay put and the nearest one comes back. There is no superfluous movement between floors; energy is being properly conserved.
Now he enters the car and with the master key detaches it from the group system and bends
it to his will. This way he can navigate its movements from floor to floor and try to identify the point where the wind flows in. He crouches against the rear wall mirror, leaning on his own reflection, and as the elevator slowly climbs he listens to the howling outside the steel cage. Here the roaring he heard underground is muted, a growl of stifled fury that at certain floors shifts into mournful sobbing. Without question, within this shaft that was meant to be completely sealed off from the outside world swirl uninvited spirits. But are they also breaking into the cars? Have his elevators let him down? For Ya’ari, over the objections of the engineers at his firm who preferred Finnish or Chinese elevators—which might actually have proven, bottom line, to be cheaper—had for once insisted on using an Israeli model.
Before he orders the technicians to shut down the elevators and examine the shaft, there is still time to summon to the tower not only the acoustic expert with her sensitive ear, but also a fresh and creative intelligence. Ya’ari is thinking of his son, who joined the business three years ago and has demonstrated an ingenuity appreciated by his father and coworkers alike.
He rides to the top floor, and before he emerges from the elevator, he cancels his control and returns it to the main system. Here, on the thirtieth floor, all is silent. It would seem from the plastic wrapping on the door that a buyer for the deluxe penthouse has yet to be found. He enters the machine room opposite; to his surprise he hears neither growl nor whistle, only the precise, pleasant whoosh of the European cables, which now begin to stir as the earliest-rising tenants leave the building. He edges between the huge motors and walks out onto the tiny iron balcony, which the building’s architect opposed but Ya’ari insisted upon, so that maintenance technicians could flee into the fresh air in the event of fire.
The Retrospective Page 36