A Late Divorce

by A. B. Yehoshua

  —Never. Just more miserable depression.

  —That isn’t so. There was such sweet happiness then too. And now with Godina.

  —I’m telling you that’s enough!

  —Godina! We can’t take it back anymore. It’s been said. What a shame that Yehuda...

  —You’re crazy. There is no Godina.

  —Then just the word. We’ll just keep the word. The soft she-ness of it.

  —You’re not dragging me back there with you. I’ll fight. I’ll kill you.

  —But it’s all inside you.

  —Nowhere else. Deep down. That’s where the war will be. Deep down...

  —Godina! You better get it straight. Godina. And now I’m going to sing.

  —That’s enough. I’m not listening. I’m through with you. Go back to the desert. Die!

  The telephone rings and I know that it’s Ya’el she’s worried maybe Tsvi too maybe even father but I’m afraid to answer because I might say something that will only upset them more. I walk outside to the path hearing the phone steadily ringing waiting to come to my senses to be myself again. Around me out among the trees women are stirring dancing up out of the earth. I bury my face in my arms I listen to the wind fan over me like a tender gust in some huge sail billowing bright light into this darkened world. Far off I hear Yehezkel’s voice at last the phone stops ringing. I look around me inhaling the cool air slowly pulling myself together watching the world go back to normal the guardhouse the road the lit-up dining room the ticking of the water pump the sound of the surf here and there a lone star I rise my head clearing in the good still night slowly I walk back to the office to phone them perhaps I’ll hear Gaddi or the baby I’ll ask them how they like the seder.

  THE FIRST DAY OF PASSOVER

  I still am haunted by the knowledge that,

  whether separate or apart, we are one thing.

  Eugenio Montale Xenia

  Already it’s tomorrow. This is it. A new shadow gleams on the wall like a bar of thin mercury. Good morning last day. Who would have thought they would all pass so quickly? A matter of hours now. At midnight tonight your divorced your divorcing father blasts off. A whirlwind visit but the knot has been cut. Not without mistakes but I’m free. To forget it too. All the dreadful little moments. Perhaps only one of them will remain perhaps not even that the parchment flying through the air into her outstretched palms a spasm of rabbis around us. Old toothless religion you still have the power to shock at the least expected times. A dash of mystery. So farewell my murderess. No fantasy of mine. A few hours from now you will bank steeply over clouds and land in a gray alien dawn straight into a big American kitchen filled with quiet suburban light. Into a cold and peaceful exile. The Return of the Old Israeli laying his now available name beside the swollen white belly. Cold cereal and coffee before stripping to a flabby erection. But with infinite patience. There you do not disappoint. There is only grateful wonder that you exist at all. That you are what you are. But what time is it and what’s happened to my watch?

  The door opened gently, admitting a quick shaft of reddish light, and Ya’el groped her patient, cumbersome way into the room. Without a sound she made straight for my bed and rolled back the blanket, searching among the sheets. Carefully she moved aside my hand and pulled out a small, limp bundle from beneath my feet.

  “Ya’eli?”

  “Shhh. Go back to sleep, father. I’m just taking the baby.”

  “Rakefet? She’s still here? I forgot all about her ... but what happened?”

  “She must have put you to sleep.’’

  Night’s sweet, stubborn plaything came aloft from the sheets, her clenched fist a last vestige of her nocturnal storm of tears, her head drooping limply, delicately backwards. For a second she blinked, a blue light flashing in the stubbornly idling little engine.

  “You should have woken me. How did I miss hearing her?” said Ya’el.

  “Don’t be silly, what for? I wouldn’t give up an extra minute with her, and I couldn’t just let her cry. What time is it?”

  “It’s still early, father. Go to sleep. You have a long, hard day ahead of you.”

  “But what time is it, Ya’eli?”

  “Not even six yet. Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t find my watch.”

  I got out of bed and searched for it barefoot among the linen. Ya’el bent and poked a hand into the large, finned diaper just as the little fist opened and a shiny object fell onto the pillow.

  “She swiped it from you,” laughed Ya’el. “But at least she was fair enough to return it in her sleep.”

  “Let me have her for a minute. I can’t stand to think of leaving her.”

  I reached out to take her on my lap, planting little kisses on her warm mouth and on the familiar set of her jaw. All at once she sighed deeply.

  The door shuts the shaft of light is gone the silent tremor of a shadow resumes its place on the wall. My bare feet still touch the cold floor the watch is warm and fragrant in my hand its face hidden from me. Let it be a clockless day. Leave time alone for this once. Forget it let it lie in your bag by your ticket and passport ticking away in the dark while you step out of the cold vise of its hands into the nebulous light now creeping toward the issue of your loins who will get you through this day let them pilot you in and out of it right up to the flight gate at midnight Ya’el and Tsvi and Asi and Dina who promised to come today too let them all have their way with you. You are theirs today you belong only to them even to Gaddi who has gotten close to you in his fashion even to the baby even to Kedmi yes you will put up with him too. Be patient with him today the man puts his foot in his big nasty mouth each time he opens it yet since you helped him get his murderer back he’s mellowed toward you. You can put up with him too I’m at your service Kedmi have all the fun you want with me I’ll even put up with your Haifa this formless town that once used to be a real city but is only the sum of its neighborhoods now. Yes you can even put up with Haifa today in this new holiday light this aroma of spring. All winter long you dreamed of Tel Aviv the people the places in the end it all went down the drain of coming and going to see her in the hospital but never mind. The knot has been cut the parchment crossed the room. Next time. Whenever that will be. It’s goodbye for a long while now. My small maddening land you’ll have to wait for me I need to rest. What was it that little fellow that Calderon said that night in the kitchen his dark eyes deep in their sockets just give me time. To protect the chafed exposed surface of your embroiled identity. A nervous land. And how quickly without even thinking he agreed to give her his share. Just give me time. But the knot has been cut. A new freedom. The shadow moves on the wall the windowpane shakes a bus starts its motor in the street startling the morning’s deep quietude. I lift the blinds and open the window letting a breeze slip inside. A dawn mist swaddles the bay. The newspapers vivisect this country on each page merrily they wonder if it has a future Kedmi makes hash of it ten times a day but here it is stretching so peaceful and safe its smokestacks exhaling lazy gray smoke into a low sky. Reality is stronger than all thought it even surprises itself.

  Not even Kedmi believed it until they rang the doorbell halfway through the seder. We were sitting with our Haggadahs, and for a moment I was terrified that it was her on the heels of her phone call. But Kedmi ran to the door and there he was in the dim light of the hallway, come to turn himself in. I didn’t recognize him at first in a white shirt, freshly shaven and combed, his beady chimp’s eyes gleaming fiercely, until Kedmi broke out in a crafty smile and grabbed him with both hands as though to make sure he stayed put. He was already talking a blue streak. “Well, well, well, what an honored guest! Just look at what we have here, everyone! Now that we’ve made two happy people of father and mother, it’s time to cheer up the police.... But do come in. We’ll have to think quick if we’re to keep this night off of yours from costing you another two years.”

  The young man stood silently, sullenly in the doorway, recoil
ing from Kedmi’s grasp, a great fatigue in his eyes. He turned back toward the dark stairway from which two more figures emerged, one of a short, sturdy old workingman wearing a threadbare suit and gray cap and clutching a plastic bag, and the other of a swarthy, unkempt, gypsyish-looking woman of undefinable origin. Kedmi divined at once who they were and hurried toward them.

  “This way, please, Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Come right in, it’s no imposition at all. I’m sure God won’t mind if we take a break and finish the seder later. Come in, have a seat.”

  I felt a twinge of pity for the father standing so awkwardly with his dark wife, who looked too young to be the boy’s mother. I rose to make room for them and offer them my seat, as did Ya’el, while Kedmi’s mother sat up and smiled indulgently and Tsvi slumped deeper in his chair, looking the murderer over. More chairs were brought but the couple seemed uncertain whether to join us or not. Both kept looking at their son, unprepared to have to part with him again.

  “Sit down, have something to drink,” said Kedmi, suddenly in one of his manic moods. “Perhaps you’d like some wine ... you can have the cup we saved for Elijah...”

  “You haven’t informed the police yet?” asked the father in a thick German accent.

  “No. I decided to wait and see whether your son would really show up. I thought he might want to spend the whole holiday with you, ha ha ... but never mind ... never mind ... we’ll give it a religious twist, eh? We can say that he ran away to pray ... I hope you at least attended services ... what, you didn’t? But we’ll still make a born-again Jew of him! We’ll have him wear a skullcap ... we’ll give him a new image in the very best contemporary style. Do you know, I phoned the prison this afternoon and they were still hunting for you in the woods ... they’re absolutely determined to find you there ... they even brought some dog to track you, just like in the movies, and flew over in a helicopter. Oh, they’re playing a real fine game of cops and robbers. I tell you, this family seder of yours will cost the government a quarter of a million pounds ... but never mind, they’ll run it off the press as soon as the holiday is over.... Come, sit down, ladies and gentlemen, don’t be afraid. There’s no extra charge for any of this. I’m still waiting for your uncle from Belgium ... perhaps the police will find him in the woods too, ha ha ha...”

  Kedmi Kedmi where did they ever find you? With your supercilious sarcasm your total tactlessness your diarrhea of the mouth your weird pointless but still surprising even sometimes anarchistic jokes. And yet Ya’el does love you I never realized that until this visit. And controls you too with that passive silence of hers that manipulates you by some hidden force. Who really are you Kedmi? And such a home-brewed Israeli concoction always shoving to the front of the line...

  The morning mist is breaking up dissolving northward a clean light washes the bay. How quickly day is born here. And out there in the west darkness awaits you or rather it creeps up behind you in a few more gratuitous hours it will have caught up with you again. A free gift that you needn’t pay back. What time is it? What time can it be? You open the door of the darkened guest room Tsvi is curled up on the living-room couch fast asleep his pale arm dangling down his wristwatch catching the light you can’t resist picking up the thin hand he lets you have it in his sleep you twist it to look it’s five after six. He opens his eyes for a moment with a smile then curls up like a fetus again. You walk to the dining room nothing is left on its expanded table but the soiled cloth you drop into the seat at the head of it where you sat last night your head in your hands from somewhere comes the flicker of a thought.

  Here next to you, a few hours ago, sat the uncommunicative parents. At first they wouldn’t hear of joining us but I insisted until they did. Kedmi took the young man aside for “a quick briefing,” as he put it, telling him what to admit and what not, the main thing being to dispel all suspicion that he had escaped to stash away the loot from the robbery. Once again it struck me that he thought the fellow was guilty and was defending a client whom he didn’t believe in. In the end he made him sign some document stating that he was turning himself in of his own free will, after which he hastened to phone the police, refusing to talk to anyone but a certain officer he knew. Meanwhile the murderer’s parents sat with us at the seder table, frantic with worry, not touching the wine cup placed in front of them, the woman staring at the table, the man watching us with hard, alert eyes. Gaddi looked back at them hostilely, while I sought to smile sympathetically.

  “He simply wanted to spend the seder with us,” the woman explained to Ya’el. “He’s an only son, he didn’t want us to be alone ...”

  “Are you his mother?” Ya’el wondered softly. The woman nodded in an admission of guilt. When you began to question the father you discovered a stubborn but naive German Jew who had somehow fallen by the wayside due to his own self-limiting rigidity and had remained a simple blue-collar type all his life. Now he was in total, unremitting conflict with the world, and economically slowly going under.

  “Don’t you worry,” said Kedmi’s mother, beatifically inspired to feel that via Kedmi they had come under her patronage. “You’ll see. My son will save him.”

  The woman regarded her trustingly, murmuring her gratitude, but the father burst out irately:

  “There’s nothing to save him from because he never did anything in the first place!”

  Kedmi’s mother gave him a knowing smile, mystified by his stubbornness but ceding nothing. “You’ll see. Even if he did murder her, Yisra’el will save him.”

  “Murder who, grandpa?” asked Gaddi, who was sitting next to you, in an excited whisper.

  “No one,” we all exclaimed together. “No one at all.”

  Tsvi smiled, still slumped in his chair, toying with the little Haggadah that he held.

  “Then why are the police coming to get him?” Gaddi persisted.

  “Because they think that he murdered someone. But your father will prove that they’re wrong.”

  The murderer’s father looked angrily at Gaddi and we all fell silent, listening to Kedmi rant over the telephone with his customary know-it-all aggressiveness and uncalled-for provocations. Tsvi alone sat there untroubled, taking it all in with an ironic smile, his fingers constructing a small pile of matzo crumbs on the white tablecloth. At last Kedmi returned to the dining room, beamingly dragging the escaped man after him as if afraid to let go of him for a second. It had taken a while for the morons at police headquarters to get it, but soon they would arrive. “Come on now, let’s finish the seder in a hurry before the fun begins...”

  The parents jumped up in alarm. “Well then, we’d better go,” they said sorrowfully. “We’ve bothered you enough as it is.”

  “But how can you say that?” asked Tsvi. “You’ve been no trouble at all!” He got gallantly to his feet. “Stay with us until the police come. You’ll want to say goodbye to him then.”

  “Yes, do,” agreed Ya’el. “Perhaps you’d like to wait in the living room. You can be there quietly by yourselves.”

  “But why should they?” protested Tsvi, who had come suddenly, mysteriously to life. “Come sit with us if you can stand it.” He smiled at me. “You’ll have the experience of hearing my father sing Passover songs.’’ And he made room for Kedmi’s murderer, brought him a chair and helped him into it, and redistributed all the Haggadahs.

  I felt a burst of fear when I saw how he looked at the fellow. Kedmi was taken aback for a moment but quickly gave his assent; perhaps he was afraid that the escaped prisoner would disappear again if left alone in the next room. Hesitantly the guests resumed their seats and listened to the weak, uncertain singing led by me with Kedmi’s mother and Gaddi joining in while the others just hummed along. Thus the seder came to an end, leaving us at the table still waiting for the police.

  Kedmi went to open the front door. “For Elijah.” He winked. Suddenly there wasn’t a sound. We sat there unaccountably silent, except for Tsvi, who whispered something to the murderer with glowing cheeks, t
o which the escaped man replied with an annoyed, uncomprehending look. And so we waited until at last we heard heavy steps on the stairs. Kedmi hurried back to the door. “Listen to them drag their feet,” he mocked. “The only place you’ll ever see a cop run is on TV.”

  Finally a fat, mustachioed sergeant appeared in the doorway gasping for breath. He had a piece of paper in his hand and a big pistol strapped to his waist. “Does Yisra’el Kedmi live here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” answered Kedmi rapidly, “and it’s about time you’ve come. It’s only on TV that you people ever move fast. In reality you’re as slow as molas...”

  The words were still in midsentence when the sergeant pulled out a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and slipped them with startling speed onto the astonished Kedmi’s wrists.

  “That’s enough of your wisecracks,” he said, dragging Kedmi to the door. “Move!”

  Kedmi went wild. “Just a minute, you nut, I’m the lawyer! Why don’t you read that note through to the end...”

  Tsvi let out a loud, strange guffaw while the rest of us crowded around the sergeant. Next to me Gaddi was biting his lips. The murderer grabbed the policeman and said calmly:

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m the one.”

  But imperturbably, stubbornly, the sergeant refused to admit his mistake. He stood there slow and stolid, his humorous eyes the only sign that he was enjoying the scene he had caused.

  “What do you mean, it’s you?”

  “I’m the one who escaped.”

  “Are you Yisra’el Kedmi?”

  “No, I’m Yoram Miller.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “That’s me.”

  “No one said anything to me about any Miller. But if you care to join us, come along.”

  Kedmi went totally beserk, rattling his handcuffs and screaming, “You let me out of these at once, you moron, I’m his lawyer!”