My Father, His Daughter

by Yaël Dayan

  In the Bible, Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, is also called the Harvest Festival, the Feast of Gathering. The words “gathering” and “harvest” in Hebrew stem from one root and are applied to grain and vegetables, grapes and honey, as well as to human life. “Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace” (II Kings:22).

  On the fourth day of the Feast of Gathering, Friday, October 16, 1981, my father passed away.

  PART

  Five

  FIFTEEN : SHIVA

  “Three days for weeping and seven for lamenting …” And if my weeping was over, my seven days of Shiva were doubled. We did not intend to sit Shiva at all, and I paid for it by “sitting” both in Zahala and in our own apartment. Because it was dignified, I thought then, and because I was ignorant of so many undercurrents. Two houses, two families, two widows, two sets of friends, and too much food.

  The custom of Shiva is an old one, though not biblical. Immediately after the funeral, the bereaved family gathers in the house of the deceased. For seven days, people call to pay respects and ease, I suppose, their sense of loss. No chores are done, no manual labor, no business transactions; the days are devoted to lamenting, remembering, sharing. Orthodox Jews pray, wear cloth shoes, sit on the floor, and are forbidden any luxury or indulgence, from the washing of hair to intercourse. It is only after the Shiva that the will is opened and read.

  My children didn’t want to attract attention, and they returned to school. Dov was busy with an important Egyptian delegation, and my mother held the fort in our house while I went to Zahala every morning, spending most of the day there and returning home in the afternoon.

  I was not unwelcome in Zahala, nor was I begged to stay beyond the few hours I did. Some people looked for me there and wouldn’t come otherwise, and others just nodded with pity—and felt better for ignoring me.

  Rahel’s daughters were there all the time, one with the children, the other with the dog, and her close friend from New York was very much there, being so useful and well organized I could have screamed. So, the sentence most frequently repeated was: “Please speak in English, so my friend can understand.” I had little to say, in any language, and after three days I almost enjoyed the fact that people were not comfortable in my presence there. Food was brought in, whole catered meals or friends’ specialties. Someone did the shopping for the house, and the driver walked around, haunted and wet-eyed, looking for errands to do. I was in tears often, but not hysterical, and I was often smiling. My smiles had to do with little memories; my tears with the certainty of what would not ever be.

  Many exchanges stopped when I entered the room, and many phone conversations ended with “I’ll call you later, I can’t talk now.” I was moving with the sensation of being watched all the time, and if someone had asked to search me upon leaving, it wouldn’t have surprised me. I was an obstacle, a nuisance, but not of a major sort apparently. I was a thorny reminder of the life my father had which they were not part of. When he was alive, Rahel and those close to her could claim him exclusively, but in his death they had to share, and after all, I did have a unique position. He had two wives he loved in life; he had two boys; he had two mothers-in-law and many grandchildren. He fought side by side with many men and made love to many women, but I was his only daughter, and even if I weren’t special, or loved, or wanted, nobody could take this away from me, and nobody did.

  My own house managed itself. Three dear friends came every day, saw to the children, and kept the place tidy, dozens of others kept my mother company, and there was no way to feel lonely when I came home, and no need to. Udi was in Nahalal, riding up the hill every day, alone, and accumulating bitterness and frustration, while coping with his collapsing second marriage.

  One evening, when we were home with our mother, my father’s will was mentioned. If we didn’t discuss it before, it was not out of reverence. We expected Rahel to get a fair half, or more. We also knew he had a great deal, and there was no reason to worry about the fairness of his judgment. I, personally, didn’t give it a moment’s thought. My mother had to leave before the Shiva was over, back to work—as her widowhood was not an official one, and pay for days of absence was deducted from her salary. She was casual about it. Don’t worry, she said. He loved you all, and he was a wise man. He had a lot, and I am sure you’ll be well provided for. She even furiously rejected Assi’s words about not feeling he deserved anything.

  “When I left him,” she said proudly, “I took this into account. I left with so little, and I didn’t ask for what I was entitled to, because I knew it would be yours one day—much of it, anyhow.” After all, she said, “it was my parents who bought us the farm in Nahalal and the house in Zahala, and if he wasn’t a generous man in his life”—an understatement we all smiled at—“you’ll enjoy his generosity now.” End of speech. She was easily overexcited, and she was defending the father of her children.

  I was sitting in the garden with the New York friend when she said my father wanted Rahel to be buried next to him in Nahalal. “That’s why,” she said, “the grave was not dug next to his own parents.” “Oh,” I said, casually, “my mother will be buried next to my father, too. After all, burial places are to be frequented by the children, and we wouldn’t like to do cemetery tours cross-country.” “Wouldn’t it be better if your mother were buried next to her own parents,” she suggested. “Her parents will outlive us all,” I remarked, “and my mother’s place is in Nahalal, regardless of my father.” Weird as this conversation was, it remained with me, as it was on that day that the rift between me and everything that was my father for the last ten years began. That day, some antique merchants walked in the garden, not taking notes, but obviously appraising parts of the collection in detail. Later, a mutual friend sat with Rahel in a remote spot in the garden, and when I walked to the car, he referred to their conversation. “I told her to be generous,” he said repeatedly. “Whatever he wanted, I advised her to be generous.” I smelled problems, and pushed the thought away. I mentioned it to my brothers that evening, and we had a long session of black humor. “I will get the glass eyes,” Assi said, Udi thought he might be lucky and get the spades Father excavated with, and I knew I’d be getting my own oil portrait. Mother had left already, and the Shiva was to end the next day. We were to go to Nahalal, lay flowers, and say Kaddish, a family affair, private and intimate. A larger public ceremony was to take place later, on the Sheloshim, thirty days after the burial, when a tombstone would be placed on the site—the final, heavy gesture.

  The Shiva was to end, and life had to resume its normal course, only without him, and the last seven days were totally, intensively his. The Zohar, the book of Cabalistic mystical wisdom, suggests that during the Shiva the soul goes to and fro between the house and the grave, mourning for the body. After the seventh day, the soul departs as well. I doubt that my father’s soul bothered mourning his body, and to this day his soul certainly never left any of us. In life, and in death, he never sought peace of mind, nor wished to inspire it in others.

  The lawyer called me in the morning to set up an appointment. Despite all the jokes of the previous night, and the suspicions we had voiced, I didn’t notice the peculiar tone he used. Then he fumbled for words. “You do know more or less what the will says,” he said, hesitating. “More or less,” I answered, short of words on my part. Then he followed with one long, unpunctuated sentence: “You know then that the house and its contents, the collection, and all the moneys and the pension and the royalties all go to Rahel. However, he left you a piece of land he owned, and Udi’s older children get half an apartment that was his—so, is tomorrow afternoon suitable for you and your brothers?” “What for? Can’t you put the good news in the mail?” I snapped. He apologized for troubling us, but this was the way it had to be done; and he had suggested to Rahel to have two separate sessions—with her, who of course was familiar with the contents, and with us. But she preferred
us to be there together, and he was not too happy about having to implement … He was talking too much, and we left it at that.

  Very calmly, I called my brothers with the news. Whatever they expected, and I didn’t know what they did or what they felt they didn’t deserve, they were wordless. I had a strong feeling they mostly felt upset for me. They knew I didn’t expect much, but they thought I deserved more. Our poor naïve darling mother was thousands of miles away, so she didn’t have to face us with a sense of guilt and shame.

  The boys’ first reaction was to avoid the graveside ceremony. I begged them to come, not for our father, not for the press, just for me, as I couldn’t face it alone. Dov was with the Egyptian Minister of Defense, and I wanted us three to stand there, proud and belonging, as if he had bequeathed us the world. I didn’t take into account the security of tears. I didn’t think these glands and ducts could pour out more liquid, ever, but there I stood, shaking and crying as if Father had died a second ago. Assi said Kaddish quietly. It was short and sad and tired, as if the past week, with the coming and going of the soul, had exhausted us completely.

  Udi had removed the dry wreaths of flowers during the week, and fresh ones were laid now. When the tombstone was placed, we should plant some shrubs, I thought: my father didn’t like cut flowers. I watched Rahel, across the mound of earth under which her husband rested, the way I had watched her across his deathbed. My mother had said before leaving, or rather implied, that there was no need to keep up a relationship. She had said it before when my father married Rahel, and there was no way I could satisfy her then. Now there stood a blond woman in her mid-fifties, beautiful, and feminine, well dressed, well combed, composed and elegant, but what we had in common was dead and the distance between us seemed unbridgeable, or at least I felt no need or desire to cross it.

  When the short ceremony was over and we were walking to the cars, I asked her whether I could come that afternoon and collect a few things I kept in the safe in Zahala. I must have said it in a harsh tone, suggesting I was off on a journey, breaking away, never to return. She nodded, and referred to it later as the peak of bad taste, which I suppose it was. Severing, unlike the intricate weaving of ties, could and I thought should be swift. She must have known I knew what was to come that afternoon, and if I showed bad taste, there was more than a touch of nervousness in her reaction.

  The lawyer’s office was on a high floor in a modern Tel Aviv building, and the fluorescent light in the elevator bothered me as we were going up—Udi and Assi and myself. We talked to our own attorney, or rather a friend who was a brilliant young lawyer and a political associate of our father, and arranged to come to see him with the will later.

  The building was deserted, as it was after working hours, and we encountered nobody, going up or, half an hour later, down. My father’s close friend and lifelong legal adviser, Yossi, was away (he lived in New York), and Mr. Nahir, the local lawyer, showed us in, fidgety and pale, wishing it were over already.

  The small boardroom had a large table with chairs, and we sat there facing Rahel. Nahir sat at the head of the table, and said he didn’t mind leaving the room if we wished it; actually, he said, he’d rather leave the room. He gave us each two typed pages and rose to go. Udi, or was it Assi, ordered him in a flat tone to sit down. We came to your office, and if there is any embarrassment, you are a party to it.

  We quickly read the document. It plainly said what I knew already. Rahel was to get everything that had belonged to him, everything that was coming to him, exclusively and totally. We were given the quarter of an acre of land he owned; and Udi’s children, half an apartment. He also asked to be buried in Nahalal, not to have obituaries or speeches at the graveside, no gun salute at the funeral, and not to name anything in his memory. Yossi was appointed executor of the will, and a special request was added—not to take the will to court in case of a dispute over it.

  Paragraph 3 said that if Rahel and he died at the same time, all properties, moneys, and income were to be distributed in equal parts among his three children. The will was dated August 1981, six weeks prior to his death.

  It took us two minutes to read, and the silence that followed was deadly. Rahel asked to say a few words, and in a trembling voice, looking none of us in the eye, delivered a small speech. She realized we were hurt and she could understand it. This was his will, his last will, and she intended to see that it was respected. However, she thought she should compensate us to a degree, and was offering to give the other half of the apartment—Udi’s children had one half—in Eshkol Street for our children, his grandchildren. Each grandchild would get a fifth of a half of the apartment, after taxes … provided we did not do anything to hurt his name or hers or show disrespect to his memory, as unhappy as we might be at that moment. We looked at her bewildered. Could it be that she felt it was genuinely a generous offer? The lawyer tried again to get up and leave, and Udi ordered him to sit down. I said, suggesting I wasn’t a spokesman for the three of us, that I was not willing to make any deals right there and then. Whatever she felt she wanted to offer should be directed to us, and not our children, as I didn’t feel we should be punished or be made to feel guilty by being bypassed. Udi quickly added that he wasn’t about to be pressured into any promise of silence, and he felt free to express his feelings about his father any way he chose. If this was silence money, he didn’t care to discuss it. Nahir gave us two more pages, a duplicate copy of a letter our father had written to us, and a copy of a poem he had written a couple of years earlier, both to be given to us after his death.

  He very quickly added that the will was legally sound, had no flaws whatsoever, and he suggested that we not even try to dispute it. Rahel’s offer was the most she could do, and the strings attached concerned a desire to prevent any damage to his memory. I asked the obvious question, to which the reply was as obvious. What happens after Rahel’s long life, or, using the legal term, after her hundred-and-twenty? After all, he did not mean to totally disinherit us, or take revenge, or he wouldn’t have mentioned the possibility of both of them dying at the same time … No provisions, he said, were made in his will for his estate after her lifetime. This is up to Rahel when the time came. Was it possible to receive some personal things, mementos, not valuables? Like what? she asked suspiciously. Udi mentioned a painting of his eldest daughter that hung on the wall in Zahala. She would give it to the girl herself, she said. I asked about a Hanukkah lamp which my mother had given me and which my father had asked to have back many years later. No, she said. But I could have my grandmother’s photograph, and my own portrait, of course …

  We skimmed over the poem, but this was not a fit time for poetry reading, and we read the letter attached. Desperately I hoped, though it was dated almost two years earlier, that a beacon of light would flicker between the lines, an expression of great love for her or great hate for us. I wanted with all my being to find a way to justify this unbelievable blow.

  The letter was handwritten on Knesset stationery. It was one page, dated February 1980. There were many wills written and rewritten, and this same letter was attached to them all, indicating they contained similar messages.

  Dear Yula, Udi and Assi,

  I thought it proper to add a few clarifying words to the will.

  The apartment in Eshkol St. I left to Gal and Saar because I think that they, more than the others, will need material support in their adult life. The pieces of land, in Shefayim and the one in Tivon (if I get it), are yours.

  All these things are detailed in the will, and this letter I decided to write concerning one point. It isn’t a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven’t been effective and it may suddenly cease to beat (maybe during my sleep)—what is referred to as a “heart attack.”

  If this happens soon, Rahel will continue, I hope, to live for scores of years. She is healthy and ten years younger than I am. This is why I decided to leave her the money we have jointly. I am afraid that lif
e in Israel will be hard and expensive, and in order to maintain the standard of living we all enjoy now—a small car, house and garden—one would need a reasonable (net) income. Because of economic difficulties, taxation (freeze of capital, foreign currency, etc.), taking all these into account and knowing that Rahel has no profession, and other than me she has nobody to take care of her, I thought it proper to leave to her, in addition to the house and its contents, whatever money we have accumulated since our marriage. As to you, one generation younger than Rahel and myself, I believe that each of you will be able to take care of himself and his family.

  Yours,

  Father

  The text in front of me was incredible. My strong, beloved father, a fighter and a poet, a man of precision and foresight, writes his children a prosaic, banal, flat, one-page statement. Years of complex ups and downs, trust and love and disputes and arguments, all summed up in terms of net income and currency control, as if he were some accountant explaining a paragraph in a textbook on economics. He shrank to a size I refused to accept. He could tell us we were rotten bastards; he could write about his infatuation, love, and gratitude to Rahel; he could add a few words of apology, or blame, or something spiritual and enlightening, but no, he left us a salesman’s letter, and in my disappointment I started crying.

  Very coldly, Rahel added that he didn’t really want to leave us the piece of land (a quarter of an acre, heavily taxed and about to be confiscated by the state, categorized as agricultural land), but she convinced him to do so.

  I took out of my purse a few envelopes. In each was a copy of a letter I had written that afternoon, before reading the will, but when I knew, vaguely, what was in it. I passed the envelopes around—to Rahel and my brothers, and one to Nahir to send to Yossi. A few days later I heard from mutual friends that Rahel found it shocking and insulting, the more so because I had distributed it, and had it not been for this letter, she might have considered a greater generosity. It obviously had the impact I wanted it to have, though it didn’t bear the results I thought it would.