A Possibility of Violence

by D. A. Mishani

  Chaim sat down on the blue chair and continued to wait. Suddenly, from above, Ezer’s voice could be heard. “I know who lost the suitcase next to Shalom’s daycare,” Chaim heard him say; and because he wasn’t sure that he understood what he heard, he asked his son, “What suitcase?” and Ezer said, “The suitcase someone lost. The one they closed Shalom’s daycare for.”

  THIS IS WHAT HE TOLD THEM that morning.

  He had to say something when they got to Lavon Street and saw that it was closed to traffic. At the corner of Lavon and Aharonovitch people had gathered, and Chaim saw some parents of children from the daycare, among them the young father with the glasses who carried a toddler in his arms. A patrol had closed off the street, and police prevented pedestrians from crossing from both sides. But some time passed until he found an explanation. He froze and didn’t know where to turn. He was so panic-stricken at the sight of the police that he forgot that the boys were with him. The first thing that came to his mind was that he had to go back to the apartment. For a moment it seemed to him that he forgot his keys in the door, but when he touched the sides of his pants he felt them in his pocket. He held the boys’ hands tightly and said, “Let’s go back,” but a young woman standing next to them said, “No point in going back, they’ll open it soon,” giving them no alternative but to stay.

  Across the street he saw the teacher speaking with two policemen.

  And suddenly there was a commotion.

  They pounced on a young man, and one of them pinned him down on the sidewalk, sticking a knee in his back and bending his arms behind him. Someone in the crowd said, afterward, “That could be him,” but this didn’t reassure Chaim. He held the children’s hands and said to them, “We’ll go to Ezer’s school first.” So they wouldn’t run into the teacher, they crossed to the other side of Aharonovitch Street and walked down it, turned right onto Ha-Aliyah Ha-Shniyah, and continued on to Arlozorov. Chaim walked quickly and the boys straggled along behind him. He didn’t think his racing ahead would upset them. Shalom asked, over and over, “I’m not going to school today?” Only when they stopped in front of the gate to the school did he explain to them that someone had lost a suitcase near the daycare and the police were searching for its owner in order to return it. They’ll find it soon and the daycare will open again. The fear dissipated, and he didn’t think about it during the day, and in the afternoon they didn’t talk about it at all; but if Ezer was still thinking about it, then the children were more frightened than he had sensed.

  When Chaim rose from the blue chair his face was at the height of Ezer’s bed. He asked him, “Who lost the suitcase?” and Ezer said, “I can’t tell.” He continued lying on his back, without moving, and staring at the ceiling when he answered.

  “How do you know who lost it?” Chaim asked, and Ezer hesitated before saying quietly, “My first dad told me.”

  Chaim shook. In recent weeks Ezer spoke more than a bit about the first dad, and each time he mentioned him Chaim got the chills.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That it’s a secret.”

  He debated whether to continue the conversation or let it go. Shalom moved in his bed and he didn’t want him to wake up. He whispered, “How does he know?” But Ezer didn’t answer. His eyes were closed.

  CHAIM THOUGHT ABOUT THE CONVERSATION IN the boys’ room while he washed the dishes that he had left in the sink after dinner and prepared the kitchen for his catering work. What disturbed him was that Ezer needed the first dad because he wasn’t enough for him, as Jenny had said a few times. Because he didn’t speak enough. Perhaps because he’s too old. Because something in him isn’t strong enough. He knew he didn’t speak with the children enough, particularly with Ezer, and that this was one of the things that he’d need to change. And he’d need to be stronger. Not show fear or weakness. Give them the feeling that he’s protecting them. This is exactly what he had tried to do at Shalom’s daycare a week earlier, without much success.

  The window in the kitchen was open and voices from the street came his way.

  Cars passed and an ambulance’s siren could be heard in the room. The fear came and went, unexpected.

  It will continue like this for a long time, he thought.

  The matter of the suitcase next to the daycare was unfortunate, but if a suspect is arrested, perhaps the investigation will end.

  And he knew that they’d manage fine without Jenny, though there were problems for which a solution still hadn’t been found. The nights in particular. He gathered up the dirty clothes in the bathroom and wiped the wet floor with a rag. The socks didn’t stink, and he folded them and put them on the small shoes by the door.

  Songs played on the radio until ten, and after the news the call-in program began.

  Jenny usually slept at this time, or sat in the living room and watched movies on television and ignored his existence. Now he was all alone but nevertheless didn’t turn up the volume on the radio, so as not to wake the kids. He finely diced onions and red peppers and dumped them into a bowl, and to this he added ten cans of tuna and mixed in a few tablespoons of mayonnaise and a bit of mustard. Afterward he squeezed a whole lemon over the bowl and sprinkled salt and pepper. On the radio a woman from Beersheba told how she overcame cancer. After the doctors gave up she turned to a rabbi who blessed her, and only the rabbi helped. The host said, “So you actually don’t need help, I don’t understand why you called,” and the woman said, “I called to help others and to wish the people of Israel a happy new year.” The host refused to permit her to give the rabbi’s telephone number on air and went to the next caller, who had lost his son in a car accident. Chaim cut tomatoes into thin slices and cucumbers into strips and put them on two plates. In the meantime the water boiled in the pot on the stove and the eggs hardened, and he mashed five into the bowl of tuna, and after this he prepared egg salad in a second bowl. The next caller was a man who refused to reveal his name or where he was phoning from. His wife had left him when he got sick with diabetes, cheated on him with a friend from work. Chaim couldn’t listen to his terrible story and turned off the radio. He worked for a few minutes in silence.

  The first dad wouldn’t let go of him.

  What exactly did Ezer mean when he said that he spoke with him?

  If he didn’t shy away from conversations he could have called the radio show and asked for advice, but that was out of the question. He knew that children can’t thrive in silence, and yet he managed to provide more than a little for his children even without using many words. Shalom had been attached to him since he was born; and Ezer too, until a few months ago, loved to be in his company and sought it out. Only recently did he grow distant from him and closed up, because of her.

  Chaim recalled his father as he followed the quick movements of his own fingers. His father wasn’t very verbal either. He was a tailor by profession, but he didn’t always manage to make a living from his work and traded fabric or did some sewing in a factory. He remembered him smoking all the time. Always with a cigarette. The swift movement of his fingers when he sewed. What else did he remember? That on Friday evenings he went to synagogue, and also on Shabbat morning and on holidays. That he was tall and thin, very impressive in his clothes. He wore suits for the holidays. When the children woke up he was always awake and dressed and shaved. That he chewed his food slowly. Always finished dinner after his wife and kids. On pleasant nights he sat in the courtyard, smoking and listening to the radio. He died when Chaim was at school, in the Jewish calendar month of Nisan. For some reason they didn’t send anyone to inform Chaim and take him out of class. They told him at home, when he got back. He was eight years old, and it was a few nights later that they found him for the first time in the courtyard, walking and talking in his sleep.

  When Ezer was born it was clear that he’d be named after him.

  HE FINISHED HIS WORK IN THE kitchen at eleven and called his mother from the phone in his bedroom. He asked her how she was feelin
g and she said that her legs were swollen. “Did you stand today?” he asked, and she said, “No, I sat.”

  He asked her to rest more. Not to stand at all if she didn’t need to. She asked him how his leg was and he said much better. Afterward he asked, “Did someone come to visit you?” and she said, “Yes, Adina came.”

  “What did she want?”

  “To see how I’m doing.”

  They were quiet for a moment, but there was no awkwardness in their silence. His conversations with her didn’t demand any effort from him. Usually she spoke and he listened. She waited in bed for a call from him and only afterward turned off the television and the light and tried to fall asleep. Her nights were sleepless too, and sometimes she couldn’t manage to sleep a wink until morning arrived. She asked, “How are the children?” and Chaim said, “Went to sleep.”

  “Did you tell them that she went away yet?”

  “Not really. I’m waiting a little more.”

  “What are you waiting for? Tell them already, so they’ll get used to it.”

  He ignored what she said.

  “And how about at home? Maybe I’ll ask Adina to come help you?”

  He said there’s no need, and after another silence she asked, “And did you speak with Shalom’s teacher again?”

  There were things he didn’t tell her, in order not to worry her, but he had told her about the incident with the teacher and she supported him and understood his outburst. He didn’t say a thing about the suitcase near the daycare, because he knew if he told her, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. He said, “I didn’t have a chance. We got there late.”

  “Did you ask him how it was?”

  “It was better,” he lied, and she said, “You see? It’s because you did some shouting. Everything only comes by shouting.”

  He didn’t want to talk about the incident at the daycare and asked her, “Home’s okay?” and she said, “Hot. You won’t come to finish the courtyard before the holiday?”

  For a moment anger stirred in him over her asking him this. He said, simply, “On the holiday. Stop worrying,” and she said, “Sleep well,” and put down the phone.

  NEXT TO THE BED SAT A few books that he planned to look over before reading them aloud to the boys, without making mistakes. To read them quickly, and naturally. At the start of the year the teacher asked if they read books to Shalom and gave Jenny the names of some books, and the saleswoman at the store recommended another two. He saw an insult in the teacher’s question, an expression of disdain for his son, and, indirectly, for himself as well, and it’s possible that this question may have contributed to his outburst. He didn’t see why he had to read a book to Shalom. His father had never read books to him.

  One of the books that he bought called out to him especially. It was a story about a boy who walks on the walls at night. According to the story, after they put him down to sleep the boy got out of bed, walked on the walls of the room, and entered the paintings that were hanging there. The paintings came to life and the boy spoke with the painted characters. In the illustration on the book’s cover the boy walks on the wall with a straight back and his hands extended in front of him, as if he’s walking in his sleep. His hair is red and his face clear. He doesn’t resemble either of Chaim’s children.

  On the nights that passed without Jenny, Chaim was almost convinced he hadn’t woken up.

  He went to bed late and got up at four in the morning, in order not to oversleep. And as he’d done in his youth, he stretched sewing thread at knee height across the frame of the bedroom door, so that he would know in the morning if he had left his room. Locking the door wasn’t a possibility, because of the children. Since he met Jenny his nights were calmer. She slept lightly and woke when he rose from their bed. Sometimes that happened to him every night, but many months it didn’t happen at all, mainly when he was less tense, when his catering business was doing all right. She took him to the couch in the living room. She turned on the television, because that helped him wake up. In his sleep, she told him once, he actually talks a lot. “What do I say?” he asked her, and she said, “I don’t understand much of it. But you talk a blue streak.”

  A few of her clothes still lay folded on the shelves in the bedroom. Most of them were no longer there, nor were the two large suitcases.

  After midnight, following a last visit to the children’s room, he got dressed for bed and turned out the light in his room, closed the shutters in their room, and left the window open only a crack because suddenly a wind was blowing. On Shalom’s forehead a scab had formed over the deep scratch. Ezer was no longer on his back, in the frozen position in which he fell asleep. He lay on his stomach, his cheeks sunk into the pillow. He looked like a child again. The two of them resembled Jenny more than they resembled him, but also something of him, which couldn’t exactly be described, was in their faces.

  Ever since they were born Chaim asked himself what the boys would remember of him. Would they remember him like he remembered his father? He hoped that nothing would happen to him before Ezer reached the age when a father is etched into a son’s memory, perhaps because his own father died when he was a boy, and perhaps because he was already over fifty years old when Ezer was born. He wanted him to remember a man of strength, but without fearing him. And until a few months ago he was sure that this was how he would be burned into his son’s memory.

  You did not have a “first dad,” I am the only dad you’ve ever had, he wanted to whisper in his ear, but did not.

  CHAIM DIDN’T WAKE UP THAT NIGHT, or if he did he didn’t leave his room. The clock struck four and he hurried to get out of bed, and with the bit of light that filtered into the room from outside he checked that the thread was still in place. He turned on lights in the kitchen and the bathroom but left the living room in darkness so that the children wouldn’t wake up. He found Shalom at the end of his bed, folded up like a snail. Ezer slept in the position he’d seen him in at night, curled up with the blanket up to his neck as if he were cold.

  He got dressed in the dark bedroom and then shaved. Before he started working he closed the kitchen door. In three pans he fried up the regular omelettes and the vegetable omelettes with parsley and dill and placed them on the windowsill so that they’d cool down. The smell of the coffee that he’d made for himself blended with the smells of frying and morning. Afterward he set the slices of yellow cheese on the table and placed next to them the bowls he’d prepared in the evening. At five fifteen he carefully opened the door to the apartment, went out, and locked it behind him. For a moment he waited outside, in order to hear if one of the children woke up, then went down to the car. He hadn’t found a solution for this problem, either, but in the meantime there was no choice. He explored the possibility of using a delivery man to bring the rolls, but there was an enormous difference in price. And at this time of morning the trip lasted less than ten minutes. Even though he wasn’t at peace with locking the boys in the apartment, this was a better solution than leaving the door unlocked.

  And this is what he did on the first morning without Jenny, as well.

  He drove down Weitzman Street, turned left on Sokolov, and stopped in Struma Square. Even though it was light outside, the streets were empty. Luckily, most of the traffic lights flashed orange. All the stores in the square were closed, except for the Brothers’ Bakery. He went inside the bakery’s rear entrance and his nostrils immediately filled with the smell of dough. One of the brothers saw him and shouted, “The Sara order,” and a worker answered him, “Coming,” from an inner room.

  A minute later he was back in the car.

  Everyone slept, while his day was already under way. Chaim loved these moments in his work even more than he loved the hours of silence in the evening. The sidewalks silent with only doves and cats and street cleaners, not a word to be heard. He drove down Shenkar and Fichman and Barkat and finally turned onto Lavon Street and passed by the daycare.

  In two hours he would bring Shalom here a
nd try to avoid meeting with the teacher.

  Since the incident the previous week they hadn’t exchanged a word. He walked Shalom inside the daycare and avoided looking at her, hurried to Shalom’s personal cubby and put his change of clothes inside. Quickly said good-bye to the boy. In any event, he shied away from the entrance to the daycare, and from meetings with the other, younger, parents, most of whom took him for the grandfather.

  The insult from his conversation with the teacher still stung, not to mention what happened after it.

  Jenny pushed him to arrange it, even though she knew he didn’t want to. He barely managed to tell the teacher that the boy was scared to go to daycare and complained that the other children hit him. That his wife had been finding dark spots and other unrecognizable marks on his body, under his clothes. That he came home with a scratch on his forehead. It was morning, and the daycare was full of parents. The teacher challenged what he said. Refused to listen. Looked at him with contempt, and he was sure that it was because of his age and the way his children looked, and sure that she behaved differently with the other children and parents. She spoke better than he did, and he lost his confidence and didn’t respond, even when she said his son was lying. “Here at our daycare we don’t hit,” she said. Shalom got the scratch because he was being wild and fell on the wheelbarrow. If Shalom says that the children hit him, then he’s lying, was how she finished. He saw that Shalom, who stood next to him, looked frightened, so he tried again, but she insisted that she didn’t have time to hold this conversation in the morning in front of the children. She also certainly didn’t want the other parents to hear. When he didn’t relent, she shouted, “I told you I do not wish to continue this conversation, Mr. Sara. Here at our daycare there are no children who hit, and if your boy complains about being hit, maybe you need to look at yourself and your wife and ask why.” He couldn’t control himself and interrupted, warning that he’d remove the boy from the daycare, and she smiled at him and said, “Go ahead, you think you’re threatening me?” He had no doubt that Jenny was right, that the woman didn’t want the child there. But there wasn’t another daycare in the neighborhood, and this was also the only daycare they could afford. None of the parents spoke up or intervened, and it seemed to him that this was because they, too, preferred that his son disappear. He left the daycare, stricken with shame and loathing, directed mainly at himself, since despite the incident he had left Shalom there. Is that what his son would remember of him? The boy cried and he ignored his crying and left after bringing him to the Russian assistant. She bent down and wiped his face with the palms of her hands.