Strong light around and voices. Sun. The cattle shed the stable the hen coop rustle. The face of a creature before her a creature not an animal, a creature talking to the animal. She wants what does she want? She wants how does she want? Why? A creature that once was. A little pain waking within. Deep down inside the animal something stirs such a soft wind a breath without air without movement bride to the creature her soul her soul. She is here she has not vanished. She always was. The man talks. From a familiar distance. But what is he saying his speech is dark. Gives up and leaves. The animal begins to understand with surprise that she is also human.
ADAM
In fact it was I who found him, who brought him home to Asya. People put themselves in my hands sometimes, I’ve noticed, they throw themselves at me as if saying – “Take me,” and sometimes I take them –
At the beginning of last summer, in the quiet months before the war, I detached myself more and more from the general work of the garage, arriving in the morning, seeing everything working at a high pitch and after two or three hours getting into my car and driving around the shops looking for spare parts, driving to Tel Aviv, touring the automobile agencies, looking through catalogues, visiting other garages to pick up new ideas, driving back to Haifa by side roads leading up to the Carmel range, walking in the woods to pass the time, arriving at the garage before the end of working hours, chasing back into the workshops the men who thought they’d get away early, telling one of the boys to unpack the equipment that I’d bought, hearing reports from the foreman, glancing at an engine or two, deciding the fate of a car smashed up in a road accident and going into the office to sit with Erlich over the accounts, to sign cheques, to receive the keys of the safe and to hear the last of his explanations before he goes.
I used to enjoy counting on my fingers the bank notes accumulated during the day, but over the last year this has all changed into a pen and paper business, all calculations, studying bank balances, making decisions about shares, estimating future profits, a quiet assessment of the financial assets accruing to me, and all this while around me there’s silence, the garage empty, the work benches clean, the floor swept, the winches released, the generators switched off. My considerable kingdom into which the old night watchman now comes with his funny little lame dog, his big bundle jingling, locking the side entrances and leaving just the main gate open for me. He takes a kettle and fills it with water to make coffee, all the time staring intently towards the office, to catch my eye before bowing to me humbly, and then through the main gate a little car enters slowly, a very old Morris painted bright blue, rolling slowly into the garage without a driver, without a sound, like something out of a nightmare.
I straightened up in my seat.
And then I saw him for the first time, still through the window of the office, wearing a white shirt and sunglasses, a beret on his head, walking behind the car and pushing it like a baby carriage. The watchman in the corner by the tap hadn’t noticed him, but the dog started barking hoarsely, ran slowly towards the man and attacked him. The man stepped back from the car, which rolled on a few more metres and then stopped. The watchman dropped the kettle and ran after his dog shouting, “The garage is closed, get that car out of here.”
I looked at the car with great interest. A very old model, dating from the early fifties, perhaps even earlier. It was many years since I’d seen this little rectangular box, with the windows like lattices, on the roads. It seems they still exist, I thought to myself, but I didn’t go out of the office.
Meanwhile the dog had fallen silent. He’d found the strange old running board on the side of the car and was amusing himself jumping on and off it, but the watchman went on shouting at the man, who made no attempt to argue. He’d gone around to the front of the car and was trying to push it back, but he couldn’t do it, the car had settled into a dip in the garage floor.
The watchman went on shouting, acting as if he owned the place. I went out into the garage. The dog wagged his tail, the watchman turned to me and started to explain.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked the man. He began to explain – “Nothing serious, the engine won’t start, there’s a screw missing,” and he went and opened the hood.
He looked rather pale, as if he hadn’t been out in the sun for a long time, there was also something odd about his way of speaking, about his style, his manners were a little strange. For a moment I thought he was religious, a yeshiva student, but his head was already uncovered, the beret crumpled in his hand.
The little car fascinated me, it had been kept in good condition, it seemed incredible but it was possible that this was the original paintwork, the chassis was clean, without rust, there were spokes in the old-fashioned wheels, the windshield wipers shone. Drops of water fell from it. My hands instantly began to stroke it.
“What’s missing?”
“Just one screw … I think.”
“One screw?” I’m always scornful of such assurance. “Which screw?”
He doesn’t know what it’s called … it should be here … in this part … and he bent over the engine to find the place … there was always one screw that used to fall out here …
I looked at the engine, in contrast to the bodywork it was in a hideous state, all dry and dusty and parts of it were even gummed up with spiders’ webs.
“Look, I don’t understand, when did you last drive this car?”
“About twelve years ago.”
“What? And hasn’t it been touched since then?”
He smiled, a gentle, pleasant smile, no, it’s been used, he thinks it’s been used, perhaps not a lot … but not by him, because he hasn’t been here, in Israel that is … he only came back a few days ago … it had been left in storage at a garage not far away, he pushed it from there after cleaning it up a bit …
“Then why didn’t you look for the screw there?”
They didn’t want to have anything to do with the car … they don’t know … they don’t have spare parts … they sent him here … they told him this was a big garage with a stock of spare parts …
“For a 1950 Morris?”
“1947 … I think …” he corrected me cautiously.
“1947? Even better … do you think I run a museum here?”
He was embarrassed at first, then he laughed, taking off his sunglasses for a moment to see me better. He had bright eyes and a pleasant face, his body was thin with a bit of a stoop, and he had a slight accent that I couldn’t place.
“So there’s no chance of finding just one little screw so the engine will start?”
Either he’s a simpleton or he’s mocking me.
“It’s got nothing to do with a screw.” I began to feel irritable. “This engine, can’t you see, it’s ruined and rusted. Do you want to sell it?”
“Do you want to buy it?”
“Me?” I was astonished by his frankness. “What would I want with it. Twenty-five years ago I used to have a car exactly like it, it really wasn’t at all bad, but I don’t feel any great nostalgia for it. You might find some nut, some antique collector, who’d give you something for it …”
Right from the start I noticed that I was talking to him in the manner I usually reserve for customers, with him it was as if I was trying to establish a bond, and refusing to desist. Something about that old blue box fascinated me, as if I was looking at something from a distant dream.
“Anyway I can’t sell it now … it isn’t mine yet.”
“Well then, do you want me to restore it?”
As if I was short of work in the garage –
He thought for a moment, hesitated. “O.K., but …”
But I cut him short, afraid he might change his mind, and at that very moment an idea occurred to me, I thought of starting a new line in restoring old cars, in the general climate of affluence there’d surely be nuts interested in a new hobby.
“Come back in three days and collect it, it’ll be fit to drive again. Leave the keys inside and p
ush it into a corner so it won’t be in the way. Help him,” I ordered the surprised watchman and went back to the office, wondering for a moment if I should say something about the cost of repairs, but I decided against it in case he would change his mind.
I sat down at the table, going over the last accounts, through the window I saw him and the watchman pushing the car into a corner. He paced around the car for a while, deep in thought, looked towards the office and disappeared.
Five minutes later I finished my work, stuffed a few thousand pounds in my wallet, locked away the rest in the safe and prepared to drive home. Before getting into my car I went again to the Morris, opened the hood and looked inside. Again I was astonished to see the tangle of spiders’ webs entwined around the engine. I took off the oilfiller cap and a big black spider crawled out of the dry rusty sump. Just one screw missing … I grinned to myself, squashing the spider with my fist. I closed the hood, got inside the car. I sat down at the wheel, which was completely loose, playing with it like a child, studying the primitive dashboard. The interior of the car was very clean, the seats were covered with hand-sewn flowered upholstery, on the back seat lay an old travelling hat with a long scarf attached to it, an old-fashioned lady’s hat. I looked in the mirror and saw the old watchman standing behind the car, watching me curiously.
I got out hurriedly, smiled at him, climbed into my own car, started the engine and left the garage, a hundred metres farther on I saw him standing at a bus stop, he couldn’t have known that the last bus had gone. This entire commercial district was deserted at that hour. I stopped. He didn’t recognize me at first. “You’ll have to wait till tomorrow for a bus.” He didn’t understand, turning his head with the winter cap towards me.
“Come on, get in, I’m driving to the city.”
He took off his cap and sat down beside me, thanked me politely, asked permission to pull down the sun shade.
“This awful sun, how can you stand it? I’d forgotten what it was like …”
“How long have you been abroad?”
“Twelve years, perhaps more, I’ve already lost count.”
“Where have you been?”
“In Paris.”
“And you suddenly decided to return?”
“No … why should I? I haven’t returned … I only came to pick up an inheritance from my grandmother.”
“The Morris … is that what you inherit?”
He blushed, embarrassed.
“No, I wouldn’t have come back for that load of junk, but there’s a house as well … an apartment actually … an apartment in an old Arab house in the lower city … and a few other things … old furniture …”
He spoke sincerely, with a pleasing candour, without apologies, without guilt for having left the country, without excuses, admitting that he’d come to collect a legacy and leave.
“You’ll be surprised, but that Morris isn’t a heap of junk at all … it’s basically quite sound …”
Yes, yes, he knows … he and his grandmother used to drive around in it in the fifties, they got a lot of good use out of it.
We drove slowly, joining a long line of traffic at the approaches to the city. He sat there beside me, with his big sunglasses, busily adjusting the shade, as if the sunlight might sting him. I couldn’t make him out, his Hebrew was good, admittedly, but he used all kinds of old-fashioned expressions. I carried on with the idle conversation.
“And your … your grandmother … she used to drive the Morris all the time … who used to look after the car for her?”
He didn’t know, to tell the truth he hadn’t been particularly close to her … he’d been ill … out of touch … for a few years he’d been in an institution in Paris.
“An institution?”
“For the mentally ill … that was several years ago … but now everything’s all right …”
He hastened to reassure me, looking at me with a smile. Suddenly it all became clear to me, the way he came into the garage, pushing the car, his search for one screw, the oddity of his speech, his hasty confessions. A lunatic who suddenly remembered an ancient legacy.
“When did she die, this old lady … your grandmother?”
An idle conversation in the heavy, slow, burning traffic.
“But she isn’t dead …”
“What?” He started to explain to me the “mishap” that had befallen him, with that same reckless sincerity. Two weeks ago he heard that his grandmother had died, he made arrangements, scraped together the money for the ticket and arrived here a few days ago to collect the inheritance, as he was the sole heir, her only grandson. But it turned out that the old lady was still dying, she’d lost consciousness and was in the hospital, but she was still alive … and in the meantime he was stuck here, waiting for her to die … that was why he’d tried to move the car, otherwise it wouldn’t have occurred to him to have anything to do with it … he knew as well as I did what it was worth … but if he had to wait a few more days perhaps he’d tour the country a little … see the new territories … Jerusalem … before going back to France …
Cynicism or just eccentricity, I wondered. But for some reason there was something charming, open, agreeable in his manner of speech. Meanwhile we were entering the centre of the town, going up towards Carmel, he still didn’t ask to be put down. As we climbed the hill, with the sun beating down on the windshield, dazzling me too, he really seemed to shrink, curling up in his seat as if he were being shot at.
“This Israeli sun … it’s impossible …” he complained. “How can you stand it?”
“We get used to it,” I replied solemnly. “Now you’ll have to do the same …”
“Not for long.” He hoped with a smile.
Conversations about the sun –
I was approaching central Carmel. He still showed no sign of wanting to get out.
“Where do you want to go?”
“To Haifa … I mean to the lower city.”
“You should’ve got out long ago.”
He didn’t know where we were.
I stopped at a corner, he thanked me, put on his cap, looked around him, not recognizing the place. “Everything here has changed,” he said very mildly.
Next morning I asked Hamid to dismantle the engine to see what could be done with it. It took him five hours just to shift the rusty screws, and they were ruined by the time he’d managed to free them.
“Is it really worth it, working on this heap of junk?” From the start Erlich had taken a violent dislike to the little car, which perhaps reminded him of the days of his unsuccessful partnership in the garage. To make matters worse he couldn’t even make out a work sheet because I’d forgotten to take the owner’s name and address and there were no documents in the car.
“Why should you care?” I said, but I knew he was right, was it really worth the effort of removing the engine, dismantling it to its smallest components, looking through old catalogues to find replacements for the rusted parts, testing the pressure of the pistons, drilling, cutting out new parts, welding, and all the while improvising with odd spares. Only an old lady could have put a vehicle into such a state. If instead of sewing covers for the seats she had once changed the oil …
We worked on that car for three full days, building it up from scratch, Hamid and I. Because for all his abilities, Hamid couldn’t manage the work on his own, he didn’t have enough imagination. Sometimes I used to find him standing motionless for half an hour with two little screws in his hand, trying to figure out where they belonged. Erlich paced around beside us like a restless dog, noting down the hours that we worked and the spare parts that we used, afraid that the owner of the car wouldn’t come back at all. “The repair will cost more than the car’s worth,” he grumbled, but it may be that deep down that’s what I intended. I wanted to get control of it.
On the third day we reassembled the engine and it worked. We discovered that the brakes were in a hopeless state and Hamid had to dismantle them too. At noon he appe
ared. I saw his funny hat bobbing about in the crowd, among the moving cars and the whispering workers. I hid from him. He stood beside the car, unable to imagine the amount of work that had been put into it. Erlich pounced on him, wrote down his name and address, but as was his way made no mention of the bill. He was told to come back when the job was finished, the car had yet to be tested on the road, there were final adjustments to be made.
A few hours later he returned. I myself took him for a test drive, listening to the engine, which throbbed delicately but steadily, testing the brakes, the gears, explaining to him all the time the meaning of the various noises. He sat beside me, silent, with a strange weakness that was somehow endearing, worried about something, pale, unshaven, occasionally closing his eyes, without appreciating the miraculous resurrection of the ancient car. For a moment it occurred to me that he might already be in mourning.
“Well then, has your grandmother passed away?” I said softly.
He turned to me hurriedly.
“No, not yet, there’s no change in her condition … she’s still unconscious.”
“If she recovers she’ll enjoy riding in the car with you again …”
He looked at me in terror.
We returned to the garage, I gave him the keys and went out to talk to one of the mechanics. Erlich had been lying in wait for us and he came out at once with the bill, demanding payment immediately and in cash. The man looked dubious to him, not to be trusted with a bill sent through the mail. The cost of the repair amounted to four thousand pounds. A bit steep, but still reasonable in view of the amount of work put in. Erlich had decided to impose an especially high rate on work in which I was personally involved.
The man took the bill, glanced at it, he couldn’t understand the writing, Erlich explained it to him and he shook his head. Then Erlich left him. I stood to one side, deep in conversation but watching him with a sideways glance, watching him go to the car, starting to pace around it, glancing at the bill, his face growing dark, looking around for me, seeing me deep in conversation and drawing back. Erlich returned, he retreated, muttering something, came to me. I finished my conversation and turned towards the office, he began to walk beside me, his face very pale, I noticed white hairs at his temples, although he couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. At the door of the office he began to speak, he didn’t understand, he was sorry, but he didn’t have the money to pay now, he was sure that a lot of work had been put into it, he didn’t deny it, but such a price …
The Lover Page 12