All the way there, he fantasized about courteous, automatic service, a walking robot that would follow his instructions without any unnecessary words. But when he told the teller what he wanted, she raised her nose above her computer monitor and said, “Wow, that’s a whole lot of money.”
Three more tellers peered over the glass partitions that separated them, eager to know the exact amount of that “wow, that’s a whole lot of money” and the identity of the man who was about to carry it off into the unknown. Eitan didn’t react, hoping that cold disregard would suffice to shut the mouth of the teller whose name he could see now on the nametag pinned to her shirt as she lifted her head to look at him: Ravit. But Ravit wasn’t fazed by his coldness. On the contrary. The intransigence of the man standing in front of her, the scornful look in his eyes served only to give her special pleasure as she raised her voice and said, “So you’re buying a house?”
She continued working as she spoke, of course, counting the notes once, then counting them once again to make sure she was actually holding 70,000 shekels in cash in her hand. She counted a third time to prolong the feel of the notes on her fingers because she earned barely that amount for an entire year’s work. Eitan looked at the gorgeous nail enhancements that lay on his money. Plastic gemstones tripped pleasurably along the length of the growing pile of 200-shekel notes. As Ravit continued to be amazed at the amount, Eitan was growing anxious that it might not be enough. The Eritrean woman might ask for 200,000. Or 300,000. Or even half a million. What was the price of silence? What was the price of a man’s life?
When he left the bank he called Liat and told her he’d be at a department get-together, a spontaneous gathering one of the doctors had suggested. Everyone had loved the idea and he felt uncomfortable being the only one to pass on it. They’d be going out for a beer at ten and he’d try to duck out by 11:30. “It’s important that you go,” she said, “and it’s important that they don’t see on your face that you’re suffering.” He had never lied to Liat like that, and it both relieved and frightened him that it was so easy.
At ten that night, Eitan turned off the engine of the SUV at the entrance to an abandoned garage near Kibbutz Tlalim. Half an hour earlier, he had driven along the access road to the garage and checked out the dark building. There was no movement visible inside. He considered waiting for the woman at the garage door, but decided against it. He didn’t want the smell of that place, the smell of that dusty earth, to adhere to him. With the press of a button, all four windows closed. With the press of another button, the radio turned on. The outside air and the night sounds were left to smash against the chrome cover of the SUV. But by ten o’clock, Eitan knew that he could wait no longer. Reluctantly, his sweaty hand reached for the handle of the door that separated the interior of the hot SUV, saturated with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, and the cool, quiet desert air. Now he was outside, the noise of his footsteps on the gravel grating in his ears, audible for miles, making a mockery of all his efforts to be discreet.
He had barely taken two steps when he saw the Eritrean woman emerge from the garage. Her dark skin blended into the darkness of the night. Only the whites of her eyes glittered and two black pupils fixed on him as she said, Come. Though his feet began to move almost of their own volition in response to this quiet order, he stopped himself.
“I brought you money.”
But the words seemed to have no effect on the woman, who didn’t react to them, but simply repeated, Come. And once again, Eitan felt that his feet instantly wanted to obey the hushed order, the soft voice commanding him to walk. The garage in front of them now looked darker than before and he couldn’t help but ask himself about other people who might be inside, resentful dark-skinned people who now had been given the opportunity to hurt the person who had hurt them. Though he hadn’t hurt them, but had hurt him, the man who didn’t have even a name, it could easily have been any one of them. Hell, it could have been the woman standing beside him now, a look of urgency in her eyes. If he had run her over, would he have gone to the police that same night? The next morning?
When he didn’t move, the woman reached out and took his hand, pulling him behind her toward the garage. The vestiges of resistance he still felt (she’ll drag you inside and they’ll beat the living daylights out of you. They’re hiding behind the door and they’ll kill you) fell away the moment her hand touched his. Again, he could do nothing but walk behind her, descending to the dark netherworld of the garage.
*
He felt the presence of another person even before he saw him. The acrid smell of sweat. The rapid breathing. The silhouette of a man in the dark. And he suddenly realized that this was a death trap. The late hour. The abandoned garage. He would never get out of this place. Then Sirkit turned on the light and he found himself standing at a rusty metal table with a half-naked Eritrean man on it.
At first he thought it was him, the Eritrean he had hit the previous night. And for a brief moment he was filled with happiness because if this was the condition of the man he’d run over, then everything was fine, really fine. But a second later he realized that he was deluding himself. The man he had hit yesterday was now completely dead, while this man, though his features perfectly resembled those of the other man, suffered only from a severely infected right arm. Despite himself, his gaze was drawn to the Eritrean’s wound. A spectacular mosaic of red and purple, dappled here and there with a fleck of yellow or a dot of green. And to think that this rainbow of colors owed its existence to a simple cut caused, for example, by barbed wire or a pair of scissors. Five centimeters into the flesh, perhaps even less than that. But without an antiseptic… several hours of blazing sun, a bit of dust, the slightest contact with a filthy rag and within a week, your path to death was paved.
Help him.
He heard those two words dozens of times a day. Pleading, hopeful, in high sopranos and deep baritones. But he had never heard them spoken like this: with not an iota of obsequiousness. Sirkit wasn’t asking him to help the man on the table. She was ordering him to do it. And that was exactly what he did. He hurried to the SUV and returned with his first-aid kit. The man moaned in a language Eitan didn’t know as the needle of the syringe of cefazolin penetrated his muscle. Sirkit muttered something in response. He worked quite a while disinfecting the wound, the man mumbling and Sirkit replying, and Eitan was surprised to discover that although he didn’t understand a word, he understood everything. Pain and consolation sound the same in every language. He spread an antibiotic salve on the cut and explained with his hands that the man should apply it three times a day. The man stared at him with inscrutable eyes, and Sirkit muttered something else. Now the man’s eyes lit up and he began to nod enthusiastically, his head going up and down like the bobblehead bulldog on the dashboard of the SUV.
“And tell him to wash it before he applies the salve. With soap.” Sirkit nodded and spoke again to the Eritrean, who also nodded after several seconds. Then the patient launched into a speech that was at least a minute long, and though it was spoken entirely in Tigrinya, the message it conveyed was clear: gratitude. Sirkit listened but didn’t translate. The man’s gratitude stopped with her, did not move on to the doctor who, under normal circumstances, would consider himself deserving of it.
“What is he saying?”
He’s saying that you saved his life. That you are a good man. That not every doctor would be willing to come in the middle of the night to a garage to treat a refugee. He’s calling you an angel, he—
“Stop.”
She fell silent. After a few moments, the patient fell silent as well. Now he was looking in bewilderment from Sirkit to Eitan as if he sensed, through his wound, what stood between them. Sirkit turned away from the rusty metal table and walked toward the entrance. Eitan followed her.
“I’ve brought you money,” he said. She straightened her arched back and remained silent. “Seventy thousand.”
A moment later, when her back remained straight
and her mouth closed, he added, “I’ll bring you more if necessary.” He reached for his bag and took out the notes he’d been given by the teller Ravit, whose remodeled nose he had managed to forget completely. But Sirkit stood there unmoving, arms folded, and looked at the offering. Though the night was cool, Eitan’s hands began to sweat, staining the pinkish 200-shekel notes with embarrassing dampness. Despite himself, he found himself speaking: yes, he knows that there can be no price on a man’s life. And that’s why he is so grateful for… this opportunity that has been given him today to save a life in place of the one he took. And perhaps this combination of, well, a large sum of money and, no less importantly, dedicated medical treatment can atone, if only a little, for what he regrets with all his heart and soul.
Sirkit’s silence continued even after he’d finished his stammering speech. He asked himself whether she’d actually understood what he’d said. He’d spoken quickly, perhaps too quickly, and the words had sounded so hollow in his ears.
Asum was my husband.
He almost asked her who Asum was, had already opened his mouth to speak before he stopped himself with a grating squeal of brakes. Idiot, didn’t it occur to you that he had a name; did you think that everyone called him him, the Eritrean, the illegal immigrant? His name was Asum and he was her husband.
But if he was her husband, why did she look so calm now, so poised? Less than twenty-four hours had passed since she’d buried him, if she had buried him. She didn’t look very much like a woman who had lost her husband. The spark in her eyes, the unnatural glow of her skin, the black hair that seemed to dance in the desert night wind. Sirkit remained silent and Eitan knew that it was his turn to speak now. He didn’t know what he could say, so he said the first thing that came to mind – he said that he was sorry. That he would feel guilty for the rest of his life. That not a day would go by when he didn’t think about…
During the day, you can do whatever you want, she interrupted him, but you will keep your nights free.
Eitan looked at her questioningly and she explained slowly, the way you explain to a child: she would take the money. But not only the money. The people here needed a doctor. They were too afraid to go to the hospital. That’s why she was asking the esteemed doctor to kindly give her his phone number – she hadn’t found it in his wallet last night – so she could call for help whenever she needed it. And since the local community had been living without continuous medical assistance for a long time, she would most likely need it a great deal, at least for the first few weeks.
So that’s how it is, he thought, the Eritrean bitch has decided to extort me. There was no reason to assume she’d stop with 70,000 and a few weeks of work. What began with medical treatment would probably end up with his paying for the sick leave of half the members of the Eritrean diaspora in the Negev. Damn it, what doctor would agree to treat patients on a rusty table in an abandoned garage? He could imagine dozens of lawyers competing for the right to file the malpractice suit of the decade. No, you black-eyed Che Guevara, that’s not going to happen.
Then, as if reading his mind, she smiled and said, Not that you really have a choice.
And that was true. He really didn’t have a choice. Though he walked off angrily and slammed the SUV door without saying a word, they both knew he would return to the abandoned garage tomorrow for his second night of patient rounds.
*
Everyone is looking, but her eyes are dry. She has no tears for him. Everyone’s ready to say the nice words, but if you want to get nice words, you must give tears. Just as you must give money if you want to get bread; you can’t just take a loaf without giving anything in return. But when she goes into the caravan, her eyes are dry, so they keep the nice words to themselves, along with the possibility of a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t care. All she wants is for them to stop looking at her. The caravan door is open all night to let the air in, and the gas-station lights color everything pale yellow. In the silence of the night, she hears them listening hard – maybe she’s crying in bed. And in the morning they’ll examine the mattress looking for signs of tears, wetness that will prove she was truly devoted to that man. Just as once, in another place, on another mattress, they looked for signs of blood that would prove she had not already given herself to another man.
She turns onto her back and looks at the ceiling, and on the other side of the ceiling there are either clouds or stars, it doesn’t matter. She runs her hand up and down along the scar on her forearm. An old scar without a history, so old that she has no idea who or what caused it, and there is no longer anyone to ask now. Her fingers travel the length of the scar, faint and pleasant to the touch. Pleasant because it’s faint. Other scars come with memories, and then it’s not faint and not pleasant, and who wants to touch them at all? But it’s nice to move her fingers over this one, back and forth, two centimeters of a different texture that, even now in the dark, she knows is lighter than the rest of her skin.
The caravan is quiet and the people who looked at her are lying in bed asleep. As asleep as they can be, because after what happened, they don’t really remember how to sleep with their entire bodies – there is always some part of them that remains awake. And the opposite is also true – when they’re awake, it’s never total. Something remains asleep. It’s not that they do their jobs less well because of it. None of them forgets to take the chips out of the oil in the restaurant, or to wash the floor before sweeping it. The sleeping part of them doesn’t interfere with their work. Maybe it even helps. And the awake part doesn’t interfere with their sleep. Just the opposite. None of the people here would dare to fall asleep without it. But tonight, the awake part of her is extremely awake, and though the movement of her fingers along her scar has soothed her for as long as she can remember, the blood is still flowing very fast through her body; she has already forgotten that blood could flow so fast. And even though she knows it must stop, that she needs to sleep, that she has a long day tomorrow, a small part of her doesn’t want it to stop. Doesn’t want it to thicken again in her veins. Doesn’t want to fall asleep.
But it happens of its own accord. The minutes pass and her blood slows down. And her fingers abruptly stop moving up and down along the scar and spread out on the mattress. She turns onto her side. Sees eyes white in the darkness and turns onto her other side before she has time to see reproach in them. What kind of woman are you. Why don’t you cry. And maybe it isn’t the reproach that makes her turn around, but the other possibilities that might be in the open eyes of a man looking at you in the middle of the night. Her husband is lying in the ground now instead of watching out for her, and she must be careful. And on the other side of her – the wall. She closes her eyes. Inhales the damp, moldy smell coming from the places where the paint is peeling. Even through the dampness and mold she can smell the body of the woman on the mattress next to her. She has smelled it for so many nights that she has no doubt she would recognize her even if they didn’t see each other again for years. She’d walk down the street, inhale, turn around to her and say, I remember you; it was ten years ago and even then you were sweet-and-sour from the sun.
Her blood has slowed down, but not completely, and when she remembers what happened it begins to race once more and she begins to think that she will never sleep again. That strikes her as funny, because she’s old enough to remember all the previous times she thought the same thing, and how she always fell asleep in the end. When she was a little girl, the nights seemed as long as years and the years as long as eternity and if you couldn’t fall asleep, you’d lie there and listen to the sound of grass growing and you’d go mad. Later, the nights became less long and the years shorter, but there were still nights that stretched out far beyond what was logical. The night when blood flowed from her down there for the first time, and not long after that the night she slept with him for the first time, and the night before the morning they set out on their way. And now this night, which might end in a moment or might never end at
all, and a part of her would give everything to fall asleep, her head hurt and her muscles were tense, but another part of her was actually smiling, looking at the peeling walls of the caravan and the sleeping people, saying: why not.
In her sleep Liat feels the blanket being lifted as Eitan gets into bed. He hugs her from behind, his nose against her neck, his hand on hers, his leg on her thigh, his stomach pressed to her back. And though tonight is not the slightest bit different from all other nights – their bodies are intertwined in precisely the same way – something is nevertheless registered in the flutter of eyelids. Nose to neck, hand to hand, leg to thigh, stomach to back, but this time with an urgency, a desire to flee – the man who got into bed is a man running away. All that is registered in the flutter of Liat’s eyelids, and all that is erased when her eyelids open four hours later and she awakes to her day.
*
Every morning Victor Balulo would get out of bed, cook an egg in its shell for exactly two and a half minutes and eat it as he listened to the radio. While broadcasters talked about inflation and Cabinet meetings, Victor Balulo would mop up the yellow yolk with a slice of challah and think about how another ill-fated chick was entering his body. Victor Balulo knew very well that chicks weren’t born from the eggs sold in the grocery store. But that thought about the chick, though it made him slightly uncomfortable, was also somewhat pleasurable because it meant that he, Victor Balulo, generally considered an inconsequential person, still had the power to bring about a disaster of such great proportions. One egg, two and a half minutes, every morning. That added up to 363 chicks a year, if you leave out Yom Kippur and Tisha b’Av, the two fasting days on which Victor Balulo didn’t eat eggs or any other food. Taking into account Victor Balulo’s age, excluding his first year when his diet consisted mainly of mother’s milk, you reach the extraordinary number of 13,431 eggs, which means that a huge yellow flock waddled after Victor Balulo wherever he went.
Waking Lions Page 4