Every House Needs a Balcony

by Rina Frank

  I was still wailing when my sister burst out laughing, and Mom and Dad joined her; pleased to see her forget for a moment her tragic losses, they were keen to encourage her to laugh more.

  We walked around the Carmel neighborhood for a while and then went down, on foot of course, with me hobbling along on one shoe, holding the other, ragged and ruined by the escalator in the new Carmelit light railway. My lovely new shoe had lost all its patent leather shine.

  The next day we wore our new white pleated skirts from Passover even though it was a regular weekday, and Mom took us to the head office of the Carmelit light railway, with me grasping my disgraced shoe in my hand.

  The manager looked at my sad eyes and explained to Mom that he couldn’t reimburse me for one new shoe. If I had been injured, or squashed to death, for that they have insurance. But not for a single shoe that got mangled because I didn’t know when to step on that modern escalator that moves of its own accord and doesn’t have to be operated.

  “Still,” he said, in reparation, “the girl will get ten free rides on the Carmelit.”

  Mom immediately told him to make it ten free rides for the whole family, and when, to her surprise, the manager agreed, she was quick to add, “Round trip. So we won’t have to walk down from the Carmel to Wadi Salib.” The manager agreed to this too, and we went away satisfied, determined to celebrate our victory.

  On the street corner an Arab kid was selling prickly pears. We went over and joined the queue to buy some. In front of us stood a fat man who ate one and then another pear and yet another and another and another. And every time we thought he had finished eating, the glutton’s sharp eye picked out our prickly pear, pointed to it, and the Arab kid picked it up in his scratched hands and sliced it, peeled off the prickly skin, and handed it to the fat pig who stood in front of us in the queue. By the time my mother shouted at him to give pears to the girls as well, the fat slob had put back at least forty already. The boy peeled two nice juicy prickly pears and handed them to us. But no sooner had Mom pointed out other pears for him to peel than the boy noticed an approaching policeman, and since he had no license to sell prickly pears at the entrance to the Carmelit, he quickly gathered all his goods together and disappeared to the right, down the alleyways of the Turkish market. We were devastated because the fat man had eaten all our prickly pears, and hadn’t even paid for them; Mom reckoned that it was certainly he who had called the policeman, but not before he’d finished gobbling down all the prickly pears.

  The policeman walked up and asked us if we’d seen the direction the Arab kid had run off in. The prickly pear thief pointed in the direction of the boy’s escape. Mom told the policeman that the man was lying and that she’d seen with her own eyes how that that man had stolen all the prickly pears off that poor kid who was only trying to make a living, and anyway, the boy had run off in the opposite direction. The policeman, who had no illusions about the ability of adults to lie, turned to my sister and asked her if she’d seen where the prickly pear seller had disappeared to. He must have decided that a nine-and-a-half-year-old girl in a white pleated skirt wouldn’t lie.

  My sister pointed in the same direction my mother had.

  The policeman hesitated for a moment, and I waved my mangled shoe and asked him why should he believe that liar who ate all our prickly pears and was also very fat.

  The policeman set out in the direction Mom had sent him, and we made slowly to the right, where we found the Arab boy with the prickly pears and bought another one each, paid him, and went on our way.

  We were very proud of our mother for misleading the policeman and defending the Arab boy. Not only did that fat bastard eat up his entire livelihood, but that he should do time in jail for it as well?

  But Dad decided that a round-trip ticket on the Carmelit was not enough to make up to a girl for the loss of two important women in her life and a few days later he came home carrying a large cardboard box. We all gathered around it, trying to guess what was inside.

  My sister was first to guess and said: “It’s a radio!”

  Mom hoped it might be a small manual washing machine, one with a handle that has to be turned and then the laundry comes out clean and would relieve her of the revolting Thursday-night laundry burden. I thought it was a large doll that Dad had decided to buy for us to share, now that he had some money, because soon, in November, there’d be a general election, and Chaya had taken all her dolls with her to America, but it was indeed a radio. It was a brown radio with a plain wood case and rounded corners and a green dial that lit up when the radio was switched on and words that come out of it with music. Most of the time the radio was switched off, because electricity costs money, and once a day Mom and Dad listened to the news in Romanian.

  And there was another surprise from Dad at the end of the month, when he took us to be filmed for an American movie. It was a real movie; and he even made some money out of it. For this he had needed nepotism, protekzia, and the party arranged for Dad and his family to be extras on the movie because this time, just before the elections, they were buttering him up more than usual after learning that our house had been the only one to avoid being sprayed with stones during the riots in Wadi Salib, unlike all the other Ashkenazi houses.

  It was a movie about a thirtysomething American woman who realizes that her childhood sweetheart has survived the Holocaust and is living in Israel, and she has arrived on a ship from America to meet the love of her life, whom she hasn’t seen for about fifteen years. Of course she had refused to marry in America, because in her heart of hearts she had always believed that her beloved had survived the horrors of the Holocaust. And he hadn’t married in Israel, but had listened ardently to the daily radio program Seeking Relatives, until he’d managed to locate her. They meet on the wharf as she disembarks from the ship, dressed in a pale pink suit and pink hat and holding a white bag. Her beloved is waiting for her at the bottom of the gangway, holding a bouquet of fresh flowers. We were extras, waiting for our relatives who had just arrived in Israel on the same ship. The actress held on to the railing, trying not to pass out in anticipation of meeting up again with the man of her dreams. According to the stage instructions meted out by the director, we were required to applaud each time any of the travelers walked down the gangway. Over the course of several hours we watched as the actress went up and came down the ship’s gangway to the applause of the extras, until she was finally reunited in a passionate kiss with her beloved who was waiting below. They kissed time and time again, and each time the actor was provided with a fresh bouquet of flowers. Sefi and I soaked up every word that was said in English, relished every moment in the presence of genuine American actors, and prayed that it would never, ever end. Our happiness knew no bounds. Besides, we knew that Dad was making money just from our standing there. But the fact is that we would have stood there for days on end for nothing, the director need only have asked. In the end we even took all the bouquets back home with us.

  For a long time they stood gazing down at their perfect little baby; then Noa began suddenly to turn blue and her tiny fists beat at the air as if asking, Whence would my salvation come? Her mouth was pursed tightly, and her entire body appeared to be struggling against something they couldn’t see. In the incubator, all the instruments started beeping. The nurse tried to lead her out, but she refused to budge. The nurse pushed her lightly and inserted more oxygen into the incubator, but Noa turned bluer; she was twenty-six hours old.

  The baby opened her mouth wide as if trying to shout, changed her mind, and started crying, a long silent wail. It wasn’t the demanding cry of a hungry newborn baby, but the silent cry of a newborn wanting to live; a sad cry. The instruments stopped beeping. Her breathing gradually returned; her tiny, perfect mouth was slightly open. She looked at them, and she felt that her baby was reassured and knew she was safe with her parents nearby, although this had been their first meeting. She inserted her sterilized hand through the round opening and stroked the ba
by’s soft head. She loved her so.

  Zohara said that it was about time she tried feeding her baby.

  “Hasn’t she eaten anything until now?” she asked, slightly vexed that they had been starving her so-tiny baby.

  “She’s been given fluids intravenously.” Only then did she notice the tube that was connected to the baby’s minute foot. “We still don’t know what is causing her respiratory problem, and we’ve run all kinds of tests on her, but we still don’t have any explanations. Let’s make a first attempt at feeding her.”

  “With a bottle?” asked the new father.

  “Through a tube,” replied Zohara, and tried inserting one into the baby’s right nostril. After several attempts, Zohara, with her magical smile, called Dr. Mogilner and told him that she was unable to insert the tube through the baby’s nostril. Dr. Mogilner stood next to the angel in white, watching her trying to insert a new tube, this time through the left nostril; again, she failed.

  They were terrified, since it was at this very moment that they were beginning to realize that for some unknown reason their baby was unable to breathe, and it was also impossible to feed her. The man held her hand with all his strength, as if trying to draw courage from it. But Dr. Mogilner seemed very troubled. He asked Zohara to take two new tubes and try once again to insert them into the baby’s nostrils. Zohara tried again, but failed.

  “The nostrils are blocked.” She looked at the doctor in desperation.

  “Excellent.” For the first time Dr. Mogilner seemed to shine. “That’s the reason for this baby’s respiratory problems.”

  He turned to them, pleased. “The baby’s nostrils are completely blocked, and that is what is causing the blueness. This is the first such case I have encountered personally in the twenty years I have been a specialist in premature babies.”

  “Is that good or bad?” she asked at once.

  “It’s solvable,” he said, and appeared extremely excited. “Now we can start treating the problem.”

  Dr. Mogilner asked Zohara to bring an airway device, and with utmost gentleness, inserted into the baby a kind of small hollow tube whose sides were fixed to her mouth. “Now your baby will be able to breathe,” he said to the worried parents and watched her until her breathing was regular and relaxed. The device held the baby’s mouth open and enabled her to breathe through it.

  They looked in wonder at the child’s regular breathing and her extraordinarily beautiful face.

  “This is the most beautiful baby we’ve ever had in this preemie unit,” said Nurse Zohara, and Dr. Mogilner immediately agreed with her.

  “She’s the most beautiful baby we’ve ever had,” said the man, his eyes shining.

  “You are looking at a miracle,” said Dr. Mogilner.

  “A miracle that you discovered the problem?” she asked.

  “No. A medical miracle that the baby has managed to remained alive for twenty-six hours without being able to breathe.” As they watched her wordlessly, the doctor explained that newborn babies don’t have the instinct to open their mouths in order to breathe. “Only at one month old, sometimes only two months, do they develop the instinct to breathe through their mouth. I have no explanation for the miracle that your baby, with her nose completely blocked, has managed to survive all those hours without air.”

  Hand of God, she thought to herself, and realized that she had given birth to a little angel with enormous blue eyes and God by her side.

  According to standard procedure, she was released from hospital three days later; Noa remained in the Premature Baby Unit for an indefinite period.

  “You have a very sick baby,” the doctor said, trying to explain the gravity of the situation. “Fortunately we have successfully solved the issue of the blueness, but the blockage of her nose is only a symptom of another fundamental problem that we haven’t yet managed to locate. Her blood tests lead us to suspect a problem in her autoimmune system, but we still have to check other things, and she has to be under observation twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Can I come back every two or three hours to nurse her?” she asked.

  “Right now you have to rest at home,” Dr. Mogilner told her in his heavy South American accent, with the gentleness that is apparently typical of heads of Premature Babies Units.

  “Why?” She was offended. “Isn’t my milk good enough?”

  “She’s breathing through her mouth,” her husband pointed out at once.

  “She won’t be able to breathe if she’s at the breast,” the doctor explained, when she still didn’t understand that Noa’s mouth mustn’t be closed over a breast or the teat of a feeding bottle.

  “The only way she can be fed is through intubation,” said the doctor. “We’ll supply you with a breast pump so you can express your milk, which we’ll then feed to your baby through the tube. There is no substitute for mother’s milk if the baby is to get all its immunities.” And he added, “All the mothers in the preemie unit express milk so that we can feed their babies.”

  “And when will Noa be released?” She insisted on knowing his prognosis.

  “I haven’t a clue,” the doctor told her candidly. “Certainly not in the near future.”

  She went back home with the things she had packed for the birth, and on the way to their car, they saw the religious couple about to drive off, their fourth baby in its mother’s arms. They looked on enviously.

  Leaving their hearts in the Premature Babies Unit, they returned to an empty house. A large coffee stain graced the mattress of their bed. He put fresh sheets on the bed and inserted the white duvet into a blue cover, so she wouldn’t see it in its shame. He knew how fond she was of blue. He filled the bath with hot water and mineral bath salts and wanted to help her undress, but she preferred to be alone with herself when she washed the hospital off her body, a term that turned over the years into a catchphrase they both used when they returned from hospital after a long day of treatments—to take a shower in order to wash away the hospital and to vigorously scrub off the germs they had brought with them. Completely immersed in the warm water, she lay quietly, motionlessly, checking how long she could lie underwater without air. She was a heavy smoker, so her possibilities for airtime without air were rather limited. It’s no wonder that since the telephone companies took control of airtime, they’ve been charging so much money for it. It’s an expensive commodity, air. She surfaced from the water all at once with a cry of agony. At that very moment, the man came into the bathroom with a pair of clean underpants and pajamas and laid them on the side of the sink. He knew her aversion to mixing up clean and dirty clothes in the bathroom—it reminded her of poverty—but he didn’t want her to step naked out of the warm bathroom; February is the coldest month of the year in Israel, and in the empty house, without their baby girl, the cold penetrated her soul. In spite of the hot bath, she shivered all over as she climbed in under the blue duvet, unable to control herself. She consoled herself with the knowledge that the preemie unit was centrally heated, and in the incubator, her Noa wasn’t suffering from the cold.

  “How is she going to breathe, our baby?” she asked the man from out of the furnace of her body.

  “Like deep-sea divers,” he replied. “She’ll get used to it, she’s a strong baby.”

  “I wasn’t able to just now, in the bath,” she said.

  “You had a choice,” he told her.

  “Have you tried it too?” she asked him.

  “Three days already I’ve been holding my nose closed with my fingers to see what it’s like.”

  She fell asleep and awoke in the middle of the night, her entire body shivering and her teeth chattering uncontrollably. She was burning up with fever. The man brought her a thermometer; her temperature had shot up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “I think you might have pneumonia,” he said.

  “What’s it like?” she asked.

  “Pneumonia?” he asked.

  “Stopping up your nose and not breathing?” s
he asked back.

  “A nightmare,” he replied.

  For nine days she lay in bed with a severe case of pneumonia, a raging fever, and a terrible sense of guilt for being unable to stand beside her daughter’s incubator. Her husband visited the preemie unit every day and didn’t bring back any encouraging news. Anything Noa was fed through the tube, she vomited back up again; she continued to lose weight, and still there was no clear picture of what she was suffering from, except for a mother deficiency. Because of the pneumonia and the antibiotics she had been obliged to take, she was unable to express her milk, and her breasts shrank as her milk dried up. She felt like an empty vessel, utterly useless.

  Her mother came from Haifa for a few days to care for her, leaving her sick husband in the care of a good neighbor, even though she herself suffered from extremely high blood pressure.

  Bianca recited her silent prayer, words in an unknown language, spit three times at her burning head and Amen, three times. But her temperature didn’t drop.

  Bianca was extremely depressed, what with her husband sick in Haifa, her daughter consumed by fever and a severe case of pneumonia, her newborn baby granddaughter hospitalized in a serious condition, and her witch’s prayer not proving itself.

  Between one hallucination and the next, she tried to make her mother laugh with stories about her father, when his senility had already passed the brink of tears and there was nothing to do but laugh at his antics. She had visited them unexpectedly in their home in Haifa when she was in the eighth month of her pregnancy, and her mother ran off to the market to buy food so that the fetus inside her would become familiar with Romanian cuisine. Her father, who seemed uncharacteristically angry, complained to her that Bianca had thrown away his black shoes that he had only just finished polishing. During the last year of his life, he had loved polishing shoes. He would sit for hours, completely focused on his shoes, brushing them forward and back, back and forth, with the polish and the cloth from side to side, then with the brush, polishing them to a high shine, as if the shine he gave to his old shoes reminded him of the shining highlights of his life.