Waking Lions

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

  9

  THE TASTE OF THE TEA she’d given him was still in his mouth as he drove toward the garage, three days later. Hot, sweet, soothing. When he emerged from the SUV, she came out to greet him and he said the same “good evening” to her that he said to the nurses at the beginning of his shift. A slightly reserved greeting – no doctor was happy about starting an exhausting night shift, but they still greeted the nurses because they clearly weren’t to blame for the shifts, which were just something that had to be done. He thought he might be able to see his visits to the garage that way – a tiring obligation that was no one’s fault, a chore he had to complete with a minimum of thought. But she, instead of returning a “good evening” with the submissive smile of a nurse, gestured for him to follow her. And once again, the controller became the controlled, the authoritative doctor doling out generous greetings became the extorted doctor stumbling into another unpredictable encounter. Once again, he hated her.

  Lying on the table was a large muscular man with a battered face. His loud, labored breathing split the air of the garage in two. He shook. Eitan looked at the muscles of the large man’s hands, which tensed under the skin with every wheeze and cough. Bedouin smugglers or Egyptian soldiers – someone had beaten the living daylights out of this man. He was lucky to have reached the border. Grudgingly, he admired this black giant who had traveled such an arduous path to get here. Until now, he had never asked the patients’ names. He saw them one after another: a scratched hand followed by a broken leg followed by stress fractures followed by a snakebite followed by gunshot wounds. A long chain of bodies and injuries, foot after foot, hand after hand, an endless black centipede. Until now, he had never tried to differentiate between them. Seeing them as one lump made it easier for him to forget them when he got into the SUV and finally drove home, close to dawn. But now he was curious to know the name of this man who should have fallen down dead, yet was still here. The nobility of his face attracted him, the tired smile on his lips even when they were distorted by yet another cough.

  He took the money of the people who were with him in the camp in Egypt. He grabbed them one at a time and because he’s big, they had no choice. He arrived here last night. This time, when they met him, they were in a large group.

  Eitan looked again at the man on the table. The only one whose name he wanted to know was nothing more than a thief. Yet it was his face that looked so aristocratic, a face that held a secret.

  “So they beat him up and then called a doctor?”

  Sirkit shrugged. They wanted to punish him, they didn’t want him to die.

  He went over to the man. Clammy skin. Rapid pulse. Increased abdominal sensitivity.

  “Did they hit him in the stomach?”

  She didn’t reply. Perhaps she didn’t know the answer. Perhaps she thought it was obvious. He checked the stomach again. When he touched the upper left quadrant, the man cried out.

  “If you don’t want him to die, I have to take him to Soroka.”

  She smiled at him as if he were a child. She didn’t even try to argue.

  “The man needs surgery,” he said, “this much internal bleeding is not something to play around with.”

  He won’t go to Soroka, she said, he’s from southern Sudan. Everyone from his area has already been deported. If they catch him, it won’t be a detention center, it’ll be a quick exit out of here.

  “But first they’ll operate on him.”

  And then deport him.

  “Sirkit, if this man doesn’t go to the hospital, he’ll die.”

  Not if you operate on him here.

  “I can’t operate on someone in a garage. It’s irresponsible. And extremely dangerous.”

  She looked at him, her smile even broader than before (how much she reminded him now of the wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood”. Who knew what lay in this woman’s stomach).

  We’ll see.

  *

  She watched him as he left in a rage. Even when he was angry, there was something relaxed about the way he walked. As if deep inside his body knew that nothing bad would happen to it. If she asked him about it, he wouldn’t know what she was talking about, but anyone who saw truly frightened people could spot someone who was not ruled by fear. Of course, her doctor knew fear. Maybe a stray dog had attacked him once, or something had happened to him in that army of theirs. But for him, fear was an uninvited guest, definitely not a permanent resident. His eyes told her that. The direct way he looked at people. Frightened people do not look directly at others to keep from arousing disapproval or rebuke. Frightened people lower their eyes, blink, do not dare to demand a bit of someone else’s face with their glance. That’s how they are when they work in Davidson’s restaurant. That’s how they are in Bedouin camps. Eyes staring at the ground of the Sinai Desert, eyes staring at the ceramic tile floor at the Tlalim junction. Never raised, defiant eyes: I am here.

  Eitan didn’t know that a glance was freedom. But Sirkit did. And whenever she saw him get out of the SUV and survey the patients as he walked to the garage, anger rose in her. His smug, unhurried gait, his indifferent glance. Of all the Eritreans standing at the garage door, she was the only one who looked the doctor in the eye. If anyone else dared to raise his glance, it would be accompanied by an obsequious: I am here – do what you want with me. Hers were the only eyes that persisted in asserting: I am here – do what I want. For the first few days, that was the only thing in her glance – do what I want. Then, when she saw that he was indeed doing what she wanted, she was tempted into examining the other possibilities held in a glance. Beyond the freedom lay the pleasure. She could look at him for hours. Study the curves of his lips. The line of his chin. The shape of his nose. Wonder about every single part of his body – beautiful or not. It was hard to know what gave her more pleasure – looking at Eitan or the knowledge that she could look as much as she wanted.

  She knew – at some point during one of those nights, he began looking at her as well. She asked herself what he saw. And after a while, she also wondered what she saw. At first, she thought she saw Eitan, but as time passed she grew unsure. If fate had delivered a different doctor to her that night, would she still look at him this way? Did it even matter whether his eyes were gray or brown, if his nose was bulbous or long? Maybe not. Maybe the only thing that mattered was: a white man. And when he looked at her, did it matter if she was tall or short, fat or thin? Did the sound of her laughter matter? Her smell? Or simply: a black woman.

  But no, that way there could be no desire. Desire needed one clear thing – his lips. Only them. Otherwise, it was impossible. If it made no difference whether his eyes were brown or gray, if it didn’t matter whether his name was Eitan or Yoel, then there was no urgency. No pressing, burning need for it. For it and only it. And that was a good thing. Anything else would be a disaster. She had to guard carefully everything she had and not want too much. But sometimes, at night, as she lay on her mattress, her hand between her thighs, she wondered: Maybe. Maybe, after all, those specific eyes. That frightened her so much that she quickly turned onto her side and went to sleep. She only hoped that Asum heard her thoughts in his kingdom of demons, and was going mad.

  Now she followed him with her eyes as he left the garage, angry. She saw him get into the SUV, slam the door and start driving back to his life, to forget this place for a few hours. Forget her. And she pictured, not for the first time, flames consuming the private house in Omer.

  When he reached home, his heart was still pounding rapidly. He had to stop himself from slamming the SUV door angrily. The last thing he wanted to do now was wake somebody. But when he went into the house, he found Liat sitting on the couch, awake. For a moment, he thought she knew. Everything. And was surprised to discover how much of a relief that thought was. She knew he’d lied to her, she knew he’d run over a man and driven away. Yet she was sitting there in the living room wearing his T-shirt, which was too big for her. She was angry, disgusted, judgmental – but she
was here.

  “How was your shift?”

  “Okay.” And a moment later, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  She said there was no real reason, work stuff, and he should go to sleep. He said there had to be a reason, something was bothering her, and he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep now anyway. So she told him about the Bedouin kid they’d arrested two days before, that at first she’d questioned him about a stolen car and then, almost by chance, she’d solved the case of the Eritrean’s hit and run. It took time. The kid confessed that he was driving an SUV near Tlalim on the night of the accident, but he insisted, he actually swore that he didn’t hit anyone. They didn’t know what to do. It was clear that someone else was with him in the car – a potential witness – but the kid refused to say a word about him no matter how much they threatened him. Marciano finally agreed to send a forensics team to the site, but since almost four weeks had passed, they didn’t find anything. She gave up – without a confession, and with only some featherweight circumstantial evidence, there was no way anything would come of it. But then Cheetah asked for ten minutes with the kid, and when he came out the Bedouin immediately signed a confession, no arguments. And yes, she was supposed to be happy now but…

  “But what?”

  Liat sat in the dark living room and replied to the question without noticing the paleness of the face that uttered it, the strange quaver of his vocal cords, the hands of the man clutching the couch backrest like a drowning man clutching a rope.

  “That Cheetah, I don’t really know him yet, but I don’t trust him. Esti told me today that they almost fired him this year for insubordination. And after the kid signed the confession, I went into his cell and saw that his left thumb was completely broken. He said it was from before the arrest, but I’m not sure. Maybe Cheetah scared him, who knows.”

  Liat leaned her head on the couch backrest and closed her eyes. When she opened them, her husband was still sitting on the couch, speaking in a voice that wasn’t his. “He didn’t do it.”

  In the darkness of the living room, she looked at Eitan. It wasn’t only the voice that wasn’t his. It was also the color of his face. The glitter in his eyes. Suddenly, it was clear to her that the man sitting in the living room now was different from the man who had come in. She saw it, but didn’t know why. Maybe she bored him with her investigation stories. He’d come home from work dead tired and had felt obligated to ask her to tell him. But he didn’t look bored. More like a wax figure of himself. Like that museum in London when you stand as close as you can to John Lennon but know that there’s not even a single internal organ behind the shiny skin, and if you peer inside that mouth, it will be hollow all the way down to the feet.

  She sat up on the couch, tried to make eye contact. Eitan didn’t look at her, stared into space, and Liat thought that if he wasn’t bored, then maybe he was sick. Or more tired than usual. Maybe he’d fought with someone at work, or had gotten into another hypothetical argument with Zakai on the drive home. But then he looked at her again and repeated, “He didn’t do it,” in a voice that shook so much that she went and got him a glass of water, saying, “Don’t tell me you caught a virus in the department again. Last time the whole house was sick for a month.” He drank some water. She put her hand on his forehead and was glad to discover that it wasn’t hot. Maybe just a tiny bit.

  “I don’t think he did it either. At first, when I found out he was at Tlalim that night, I was sure the case was solved. But the more I think about that kid, the more sure I am that he isn’t capable of doing something like that.”

  A pale moon illuminated the living room through the window. Outside, the rosemary bushes trembled in a light gust of wind. Liat looked at them for a long time. “I’m thinking of going to his village. I want to find the person who was with him in the car and question him without Cheetah getting in my hair. I want to understand what happened there.”

  Eitan was silent. Liat was silent. She wanted him to say something. She’d waited hours for him to finally come home tonight, to come home and calm her down. And although in her heart she had granted him full permission to go to sleep when he came home from his shift, she was happy that he had insisted on asking what was bothering her. She’d wanted to tell him. And now he was sitting on the couch beside her, removed and silent, and though she reminded herself that he was wiped out and maybe sick as well, she realized that she felt hurt. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him, she told herself, distancing herself from the hurt, not happy that in doing so she was also distancing herself from Eitan. Because when she stood up, the longing that had turned into hurt now turned into the sort of coldness that lasts through the night. Only four hours later, when she woke the kids for nursery school, he said to her, “Investigate some more. I’m sure he didn’t do it,” but she was already too distant from him, nodded distractedly and said, “See you in the afternoon,” and then became even colder when he said, “Not today. After-hour surgeries.”

  10

  WHAT CHOICE DID HE HAVE? He waited until seven in the morning and called Visotski. Before leaving the garage, he had bombarded the Sudanese with fluids and managed to get him stabilized, but it was only a matter of time before his condition began deteriorating again, and he knew that he had to hurry. It took twenty rings for the anaesthetist to finally answer, and even then he didn’t sound as if he were really awake. Eitan told him what he wanted and Visotski said nothing for a long time. Eitan was beginning to think that he’d fallen asleep again, but then Visotski spoke. He said that he was really sorry, but Eitan would have to manage on his own. There were a lot of things he was ready to do for a friend, but he wouldn’t steal an anaesthesia machine in a van, and he definitely wouldn’t perform any operations in a garage. Visotski was no Physician for Human Rights, and if Eitan had any sense he would get himself as far away as he could from that business; he couldn’t understand why he’d got involved in it in the first place.

  Eitan said, “Visotski, I need you,” and Visotski was silent. This time it clearly wasn’t because he’d fallen asleep. Eitan took a long breath and reminded Visotski about something he didn’t want to remind him about. The narcotics that sometimes disappeared during long surgeries. The department investigation, which found nothing because Eitan told no one about the time he saw Visotski take home five grams of morphine. Visotski remained silent, but now his silence was different. Finally, he spoke about his son. A year ago, a kid from school had hit him on the head with a rock and he hadn’t opened his eyes since. Eitan said he knew. And that was the only reason he hadn’t told anyone.

  “I’ve stopped all that,” Visotski said. “It was only for a few months, just so I could keep going. I haven’t touched the stuff for two months.”

  Eitan knew that as well. He’d sworn to himself that if Visotski filched any more narcotics, he’d report him. He’d been checking the storeroom carefully since that time, and it was true that nothing had been taken.

  “So what do you want from me now?” Visotski asked.

  “I want you to help me. The way I helped you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  This time, Eitan was the one who said nothing.

  It was almost ten when they reached the garage. Visotski had a key to the hospital’s large supply room, and taking an old anaesthesia machine out of there was almost unbearably easy. It was much more difficult explaining to Prof. Shakedi why he wouldn’t be in that day. The head of the department did not exactly look at him with affection, what with all the changes in his shifts he’d been asking for recently. It would have been different if he had sucked up to them during his first months here, as a new doctor was expected to do. But he was busy licking his wounds – Prof. Zakai’s slap in the face still stung and he forgot to worry about politics. How could he have known that, a few months later, he’d have to switch shifts constantly. In the end, Shakedi let him go, but he didn’t look at all pleased, and Eitan knew that he hadn’t heard the end of it.

  Sirkit was wai
ting for them at the entrance. She’d washed everything twice, and had also sterilized all of it with the antiseptic Eitan had brought last time. He told her to clean everything again. It wasn’t good enough. He looked at her as she scrubbed the floor, kneeling on the ground. It felt good, seeing her like that. It diverted his attention from the fact that the last time he’d opened someone’s stomach was during his rotation in general surgery. And more than twenty years had passed since then. He’d been watching abdominal operations on his iPhone since morning, but that didn’t really calm him down. You don’t learn how to swim through a correspondence course, and you don’t learn how to operate by watching YouTube. He shifted his glance from Sirkit to the Sudanese lying on the table. The patient was undoubtedly more stressed than he was, but considering the situation, that was understandable. The only one who looked calm was Visotski, who plugged the respirator into a socket and placed a generator next to it, just in case. They hadn’t exchanged a word since Eitan had picked him up. He barely looked at Sirkit or the Sudanese they were about to operate on in a garage. Eitan knew that he’d served in the Russian army before emigrating to Israel, and asked himself if that was how you spend three years in a tank in the middle of Siberia – press OFF and disconnect.

  Should we start?