I let the voices draw me on a few steps at a time, the crowd keeping pace with me, enveloping me in thin static. The soft body covered me like a quilt, its gelatinous hand creeping through my clothes, caressing my bare skin. Other bodies swayed heavily against me. A strange, sudden lust stirred in my chest. Someone laughed madly, half aloud. Now the giant made for us too, eyes riveted on something in our midst. The crowd tried blocking him but he strode powerfully through it, slowly yet irresistibly pulled the bright locomotive from under Gaddi’s arm, and continued on his way. A cheer went up from the crowd. He too flashed something like a smile. Gaddi was shaking all over.
“Don’t worry, he’ll give it right back,” the old fellow reassured us. “He just wants to look at it ... I’ll get it back for you in a minute...’’
The library door opened and Horatio emerged, wagging his tail and shaking scraps of paper from his fur. After him came father, his face blanched, his tie askew, an extinguished cigarette in his mouth. A scrap of paper fell from his jacket too. Despair stared from his eyes. The dog tried ponderously to jump on him and lick him but father flung him rudely aside.
The crowd of patients; ran up to him, shook his hand too, begged for more cigarettes. The old fellow pushed and pulled, trying to keep order. Father’s eyes met mine above their heads.
“Tsvi ruined everything! He made her think ... she wants it all now ... the house ... everything. Ya’el is still talking to her inside ... don’t go in ... damn you, what have you done?”
“Here’s the lawyer!” someone shouted.
And indeed up the path in the early twilight came Kedmi, irritably waving his arms and shouting something. The patients moved back. The blonde woman released me. A low baying went up like the sound of hounds scenting prey. Kedmi rapidly approached us.
“What’s going on here? What have you been up to? Did you decide to settle down here for good?”
The patients turned to him. The old fellow sought to shake his hand too, but he rebuffed them, walking right past them.
“Yes? I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Please ... let’s have a little air ... give me some room here ... another time...”
They frightened him yet he provoked them, unable to control himself.
“What is this, some kind of happening? What do they all want? At least let me have my child back. Where’s Ya’el?”
He pulled Gaddi toward him, hugging him hard.
“Where’s the locomotive?”
“He took it.”
“Who did?”
“He’ll give it back,” cried the old fellow. “He’ll give it back right away. I’m responsible.”
“Nobody asked you,” said Kedmi sharply. Without further ado he flung himself at the giant and tried extricating the toy.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Gulliver, taking things from little children...”
The patients surrounded Kedmi in an uproar. “He’ll give it back! He’ll give it back!” they shouted while I tried to restrain him. The giant clutched the locomotive with a terrified look, crushing it against his chest with his great paw while Gaddi watched in silent agony.
“That’s enough, Kedmi!” shouted father. “I’ll buy him another one.”
Kedmi was repulsed, flushed with rage.
“Where are all the nurses? Where are all the doctors? Where is the management? This is total bedlam! Come on, Gaddi, let’s find mom and get the hell out of here.”
Like a whirlwind he spun toward the library, kicking Horatio out of his way and flinging open the door. In the thin, dimming light inside mother was standing and talking to Ya’el, who sat listening quietly, her arms on her chest. The floor was littered with paper. Kedmi bent to pick up a piece of it and laughed bitterly. In a crushed voice he said to father:
“Well, this is the end. Extraordinary ... she actually finished thinking...”
“I tore it,” declared father, while fresh anxiety shot through me. “Never mind now. It’s none of your business.”
“It’s none of my business?” marveled Kedmi in his quick, husky voice that was already a thought ahead. “You’re right, it’s none of my business! I only wish you had told me that a year ago. I couldn’t have put it any better myself: it’s none of my business and never will be ... I’ve had it...’’ He crumpled the scrap of paper, shredding it in his hand. “If I had known you only wanted it to rip it, I would have given you blank pages...”
“Knock it off, Kedmi!” I broke in.
He looked at me jeeringly, “Ya’el!” he cried suddenly.
Mother and Ya’el stepped outside. A new light shone in mother’s face. She seemed very calm. Ya’el hurried to father and hugged him, whispering excitedly while mother nodded in agreement. All at once the patients surrounded her as though she were their queen, and the old fellow linked arms with her. Kedmi was already hurrying Gaddi away. Mother regarded me timidly, wanting to say something, to explain, but unable to. I backed slowly away as she stepped toward me, my briefcase swinging in my hand. I took a last look at the patients, my eyes lingering on the boneless blonde, who stood leaning against a tree. Next to her on a bench sat the giant, the crushed locomotive at his feet. I turned to go.
Mother whispered something to father. He called to me, his arms limp at his sides. I halted.
“Come over here. Mother asks you to forgive her.”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
“Forgive me,” said mother. “I’m asking for your forgiveness, Asa.”
“What for?” I mumbled, turning red. “Forget it.”
“Forgive me, Asa.”
“All right.” I winced. “All right.”
“It’s my fault ... all mine...” Mother almost managed a smile, glowing with a sadly poignant beauty. “Just don’t hit yourself anymore. I thought you had stopped that long ago...”
“All right, all right.” I bent to kiss her and walked by myself toward the gate. Ya’el and mother followed me arm in arm, while father tagged along at their side, still very pale, absorbed in thought. Further back the crowd of patients trailed slowly after us. We crossed the lawns, Horatio lumbering between us, our sole connecting link. Kedmi’s car was waiting at the gate, already faced toward the main road, its radio blasting away. The engine started up and raced nervously.
“Tomorrow...” said mother in parting. “Tomorrow ...”
Ya’el slipped into the front seat. Father was talking Russian again, hurriedly, urgently, intent on finishing his thought. But his words were drowned out by the motor. I got into the back seat with him after me. Horatio tried squeezing in too but the door banged shut on him. He began to howl, clawing at it frantically.
“Ya’el,” yelled Kedmi, “if he scratches up that door I’ll murder him...”
He stepped on the gas.
Horatio chased us. We watched him through the back window as he ran down the middle of the narrow side road, a diminishing point. Smiling to himself, Kedmi glanced in the rearview mirror. He slowed down and the dog began to catch up.
“Drive faster, Kedmi,” said Ya’el.
Kedmi sped up a bit and then slowed down again, stopping for a long while when he reached the main road. Horatio loped on down the middle of the side road, behind him the sea and a last gasp of sun setting in a wrinkled orange sky. Eyes narrowed to a slit, red tongue dripping sunlight, he almost touched the car with his wolfish cranium when Kedmi started up again and turned into the main road. Horatio chased us into it, still running down the center line, cars honking and screeching all around him.
“Stop, Kedmi!” cried father. “He’ll be run over.”
“Don’t,” said Ya’el. “Drive faster.”
But Kedmi neither speeded up nor stopped. All concentration, he led the dog away from the hospital, determined to kill him.
“Kedmi, what are you doing?” pleaded Ya’el. “Drive faster!”
He was deliberately staying behind a slow truck.
“All criticisms of my driving should be typed in triplicate, pleas
e ...”
I said nothing. As soon as we entered Acre we lost sight of the dog among the cars behind us. We were in heavy city traffic now, stopping for lights, passing pedestrians with their packages of matzos and youngsters hanging out on corners between appliance stores and fastfood stands. In Crusader times St.-Jean-d’Acre had been a metropolis the size of London or Paris.
Kedmi stopped to fill the car at a gas station, moving lazily, looking around him. At the last light on the way out of town we caught sight of Horatio in the crosswalk in front of us, his eyes bulging, his tongue grazing the asphalt, a hairy old thing lost in a shuffle of human feet, sniffing the tires of cars. The light turned green, leaving him by himself in the middle of the crosswalk, still searching for our scent. Behind us cars beeped their horns wildly. Kedmi was set to steamroller him when I opened the door and jumped out, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him onto the sidewalk. The traffic flowed past. At first Horatio fought me, but when he saw who I was he licked my hand, more dead than alive, yelping with dumb, hoarse joy. I peered in his eyes. He was exhausted, half crazed from fatigue and the maze of city streets. “Go home, Horatio,” I said, pointing north. He looked at me, his skull bones strong but fragile in my palms. “Go home, boy. Go home to mother.” He wagged his tail, his eyes a dull wolfish blue. I picked up a small stick, a broken sliver of board, ran it over his dry snout, and threw it as far as I could into a rubbish-strewn abandoned lot. “Go get it, Horatio! Don’t you remember how?” He looked at me without budging, drawn to a different scent, wagging his tail some moire. “Get it, Horatio!” I shouted. I took another stick and threw it too. “Go fetch, boy, I need it!” He cocked his head wonderingly, then suddenly shook himself as though harking to an ancient call and ran into the lot, vanishing among some two-by-fours. I dashed back to the car, jumped in, and slammed the door.
“Go, Kedmi! For God’s sake, step on it. The poor dog.”
“Since when have you begun believing in God?”
“Go, Kedmi!” shouted all three of us. “Go!”
“All right, you don’t have to shout.”
And while the old dog was still hunting for the stick we were already driving south on the highway toward Haifa. Father sat huddled in one corner with his head thrown back, his face swept by headlights, his lips tightly clenched. Suddenly he felt me looking at him and looked back, noticing for the first time the scratch on my forehead, terribly upset, in total despair over me.
“So you’re still hitting yourself,’’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “But you promised! There’ll never be any peace for me now. I shouldn’t have brought you today. It’s my fault.”
I could see Kedmi’s beady eyes in the mirror, studying us curiously.
He was struck down by lightning toward evening. His charred body was lifted from the street and laid on a bench at a bus slop, a torn blanket over it. Eventually it was brought to the morgue and left in a corner on the floor. A quiet night passed. In the morning the waiting students filled the lecture hall. A few of them went out to look for him in the corridors. Suddenly, bloodshot, Professor Berger hurried to the dais. He’s dead, struck down by lightning, our great genius. What a frightful loss. The most brilliant of all my pupils. Our bright young hope. And just when he was on the verge of the great historical breakthrough. You have no idea what he had in mind, the sheer daring of it Now only his notes remain. What a painful loss. If only he had had the time. If only he had been given more time. But his parents killed him. A bolt of lightning struck him down.... Dina faints at the graveside. Now I know, she says, that I too am to blame. She returns to her parents’ home, where she lapses into religious mysticism. In the end she is married off to a dirty old rabbi.
I got out at the Haifa bus station. Father stayed in the car. He’d sleep at Ya’el’s tonight and return to the hospital the first thing in the morning. This time by himself. They would call Tsvi immediately; should they phone Dina too and tell her I was on my way? No, I said. You needn’t bother. Maybe I’ll stay on for a while in Tel Aviv. To punish her. To make her miss me.
Father laid a protective hand on me. My hitting myself had left him one up, he could pity me now. “Well, now you understand me better, don’t you? Don’t worry, though, I’ll let her have her way in the end. Do you want me to give you any money?...When will we meet again?...You’ll have to come on the holiday to say goodbye.... We’ll be in touch ...”
Suddenly I was putty in his hands. A burst string. And yet deep down a feeling of tranquillity.
The large concrete station was already dark and silent. In the cafeteria where we had eaten lunch the lights were out and the chairs were stacked on the tables. I boarded the Tel Aviv bus, and it backed slowly out of its stall. A lit-up train traveled parallel to it until it vanished into thin air. The driver turned on the news. The bus was full of sleeping soldiers. A narrow, shrunken patch of sea flickered in the wind. To take some distant period and discuss it in trivial terms—to find a neglected document or manuscript that has yet to be written about and blow up its significance—to burrow through old newspapers in search of unknown facts about some second-rate statesman who lived in a forgotten age—let that be for the rest of them. But I would find the cryptograph, the secret code. The old age has died, the new one has yet to be born, and meanwhile there are morbid pustules everywhere, a bad case of adolescent acne. An age of nostalgia, confusion, anticipation and fear, a twilight zone, an eve of great upheavals, a jumbled time of contradictory processes. Who will find the right cipher, who will see thirty years into the future, not by means of his fallible intuition but clearly and with scientific certainty...?
In Tel Aviv the hard dry wind still blew. A low, orange sky. The bus let us off in a dark, deserted street near the central station. Used ticket stubs swirled through the darkness. Grains of sand from the Sahara turned to grit between one’s teeth. The passengers scattered quickly and were gone. I walked down a street lined with shoe stores, their darkened display windows full of thin, cross-strapped ladies’ models, and emerged in the dimly lit square of the station, by felafel stands with their mountains of colorful salads and shuwarma joints with their glowing grills of spitted lamb. On the opposite sidewalk, at platform number three, a small line of travelers waited to board the Jerusalem bus, which was almost full. A short, middle-aged man wearing a striped jacket, elevator heels and a linked chain around his neck stood by a public phone booth, eyeing me with a warm, penetrating glance. May I? I asked. At once he moved aside with a show of deference, measuring me with his eyes. I dialed Tsvi. An unfamiliar, Levantine voice answered politely. Tsvi had stepped out for a moment. Did I wish to leave a message? No, I said, there was nothing special. But who was calling? I told him.
“Ah, you’re Dr. Asa Kaminka. How do you do? I’m Tsvi’s friend, Refa’el Calderon. Your sister and father telephoned a while ago from Haifa with the latest news. Can I be of any assistance to you? Would you care to stop by and rest up here before going on to Jerusalem?”
The same man who brought Tsvi to see mother yesterday. One more finger in the pie. I hung up.
A dark-complexioned girl in short pants and high-heeled clogs, apparently a whore, was talking in low tones on the street corner to the man from the phone booth, who kept looking at me with a friendly smile. The Jerusalem bus had already left. Waiting for the next one was a lone traveler, a thick-bearded religious man holding a suitcase tied with string. I went to get something to eat and bought myself a felafel and a glass of juice. The short man went on smiling deferentially, never taking his eyes from me. Two grotesquely madeup girls wearing Nite-Glo jerseys and swinging luminescent bags came up to join him. I stood at the felafel stand, garbage cans all around me, sauerkraut dribbling steadily from the overfilled pocket bread, eating savagely, my briefcase between my legs, getting sesame dip all over myself. It was eight o’clock. I hadn’t been in Tel Aviv for weeks; why not seize the opportunity to get in touch with some friend, someone I could talk to, bounce ideas off? Suddenly I
was in no hurry to get home. I wiped my face with a paper napkin and bought a new pack of cigarettes, hungry for human contact here in this no-man’s-land, in this no-time and no-place. In my ever-further-away-from-me native town. I thought for a moment of the lunatics I had braved today, of my newly discovered sangfroid in their presence, of the horribly sweet feeling of that soft blonde spilling over me. Perhaps I should give Stem a ring. An old friend who once had studied with me and was now teaching the same period as I was at the University of Tel Aviv: I could never enjoy a relaxed talk with him when calling long-distance from Jerusalem. I searched for another phone token in my pockets but couldn’t find one. Still regarding me cordially, the short man with the link chain took out a handful of tokens and offered me one, firmly refusing to let me pay him for it.
“But that would be an insult...”
He spoke in a low, quiet, knowing voice. A pusher or a pimp? Well, that wasn’t my lookout. I went back to the phone and opened the thick, tattered directory that was attached by a heavy chain to the wall. Its back pages were tom or missing. The letter S was gone entirely. I let it drop, the chain creaking loudly, took out a cigarette, and fumbled for a match. At once he stepped up to me, whipped out a small lighter, and lit it for me with a bluish flame.
“Are you looking for something? Perhaps I can be of help.”
“No, thanks. The phone book is tom.”
“If it’s a girl...”
“Excuse me?”
“I said if it’s a girl ...”
“No. It isn’t a girl.”
“Because I have another one for you. She’s waiting for you there. She’s taken a liking to you.”
He pointed to the two whores restlessly swinging their bags.
“No, thank you.”
“She asked me to tell you ... it’s just that she’s bashful...”
“Thanks anyway.” I smiled. He talked about the two of them as though they were one person.
A Late Divorce Page 19