“Has your grandmother passed away?” I smiled.
No, not yet, but at the airline office they’d agreed to buy back his return ticket at half price. He now had a thousand pounds. Could he take the car? I thought carefully, for a moment I considered taking the thousand pounds and cancelling the rest of the debt, letting the car go, but suddenly I didn’t want to let it go.
“No I’m sorry … you’ll have to bring the rest of the money … anyway it’s better you should keep the money for the time being … have you started looking for work yet?”
He was disappointed but he didn’t insist. He murmured something about Jerusalem … he’d go there and look for work … there were no opportunities in this town …
Somebody’s going to get control of him, I thought.
At supper I found myself thinking about him again, seeing him pace slowly about the garage, his back slightly bent, moving cautiously among the cars, avoiding the Arab workers. The faded French beret, the professional vagrant. I remembered him fainting on the garage floor, his opened shirt, his thin white chest, his history of mental illness, his fixation about a dying grandmother. He doesn’t stand a chance in Israel. He must be taken in hand. I asked Asya, I thought perhaps there might be something at the school. Of course she didn’t understand what I meant, washing the dishes, in a hurry to get back to the study, surprised at my concern over a customer, not understanding the interest I took in him. But when I told her about the lost money she stopped short at the study door, and of course Dafi interrupted every other sentence. To my surprise I realized that it really was the loss of the money that bothered them. Dafi in her usual way started being facetious, suggesting ways of employing him in the house, her imagination running wild, he could wash the dishes, scrub the floor, help her with her homework. I looked at Asya, she smiled.
Of course I didn’t decide anything. But the next day I found the phone number that Erlich had written on the bill, which was still in my pocket. I phoned him. I got him out of bed, he was half asleep and confused, I told him to come around and see me in the afternoon. He asked, “Are you going to give me back the car?” I said, “We’ll see … in the meantime I may have found you a job.”
Five minutes before he was due to arrive I told Asya, she was surprised at first, then she laughed. He arrived with that perpetual cap of his, but in a clean shirt, sat down in the living room and began to talk. She liked him, as I knew she would, slowly the conversation developed, she asked him about Paris, about his studies there. And he, a confirmed lover of the city, started talking about places that she knew only from maps or books, describing ways of life, mentioning historical events, all this in a light, colourful style of speech, sometimes getting quite carried away.
Dafi came back from the beach, came straight into the room, just as she was, her hair untidy, all stained with oil. He leaped up at once, took her hand, told her his name, he had strange, funny manners, he even bowed slightly. The girl blushed, fled from the room. I whispered to Asya, “Why don’t you see if he can help you, he’s done a lot of translating and copying work.”
She took him into the study to show him her papers.
Dafi started pacing about restlessly, standing listening at the closed door of the study. But I felt suddenly weak, I couldn’t get up from my seat, couldn’t even switch on the light. Wondering if I should have told her something about his time in an asylum in Paris, or if it was better to let her find out for herself.
DAFI
It began just with going down to the beach at the beginning of the vacation, because Osnat and Tali and I had nothing to do after the Girl Scout camp was cancelled and it grew into a full ritual. Since I was born I’ve seen the sea every day from my bedroom window, but it was only in this last vacation that I came to know it, really discovered it. The sea fascinated us, made its way into our souls and our bones, I didn’t know it could be so wonderful. At first, in the first week, we were still taking books with us, newspapers, our holiday assignments, rackets, a transistor, afraid we might be bored, but after a while we realized it was another world and we began going just as we were. At nine o’clock in the morning we’d meet at the bus station wearing only swimsuits, no hats, no blouses, barefoot, like savages, clutching only some folded money, going down to the beach, finding a place in a corner a long way from the lifeguard’s booth, collapsing on the warm sand, the sun on our backs, talking lazily, telling one another about our dreams, beginning to enter the slow rhythm of sea, sun and sky, losing our sense of time, roasting in the heat, diving into the cold water, swimming, sinking, floating, finding a little island of rock, rising and falling on the surf, coming out and lying on the water line, wallowing in the muddy sand, digging holes, then going to buy falafel or ice cream, drinking water from the big tap, moving away from the crowd, finding a quieter place, sinking into drowsiness, a kind of Nirvana, a quiet listless reverie, like corpses on the beach, to the sound of the waves, not caring that the sun’s in our eyes. Slowly waking and starting to run, a light run, a gentle long run, the whole length of the deserted beach, farther and farther from any sign of human life, stripping naked and plunging again into the sea, where it’s shallow, among the rocks, looking at one another no longer with curiosity or with embarrassment but studying the parts that the sun hasn’t reached, needing to be brown all over, on our nipples and our asses. Putting on our swimsuits again and walking slowly back, hunting for shells, bending over a yellow crab, motionless in its crevice. Sometimes one of us dives into the surf again and the others wait till she comes back, all the time our eyes fixed on the blue horizon shimmering in the heat, feeling the sands shift beneath our bare feet. When we reach the lifeguard’s hut the last of the people are packing up to go, with their baskets, chairs and children, we stand and watch the setting sun, not wanting to move, until the lifeguard comes to us, tells us to go.
Day after day it’s the same and we never tire of it, that’s the amazing thing, we’re never bored, we find less and less need to talk among ourselves, we could lie there side by side for hours, or walk together in silence. Even Osnat relaxes, begins to realize that she doesn’t always have to be making remarks about everything, she’s even a bit prettier, she takes off her glasses sometimes, tucks them away between her tits and starts wandering about dreamily, like Tali.
On the bus going home, in the evening, we’re like foreigners among the smelly people, the pale, sweaty, noisy people who take care not to touch us. We sit on the back seat, ignoring the crude looks that we get, they stare at us so hard you’d think we were still naked, turning around and looking again at the sea as it recedes.
On the steps of the house it’s already twilight. Barefoot and saturated with sun and salt, hair wet and bedraggled, I go into the dark house that’s full of the smells of cooking, the stench of people. Mommy’s in the study, in the pale electric light, papers and books scattered about her, dirty coffee cups, plates and scraps of food, the bed unmade, pillows squashed, the ashtray overflowing, the traces of that man, the assistant, the secretary, the translator, the devil knows what, all around her.
ADAM
He used to arrive in the morning and leave early in the afternoon, I didn’t meet him but I knew that he came almost every day to translate, to copy, to consult dictionaries. Asya really made him work, because he had time and he very much wanted to redeem the car that still stood there in the garage covered in dust, from time to time it had to be moved so as not to interfere with the work until finally Erlich told them to lift it and push it into the storeroom, they found room for it there between two boxes, it was that small.
“You’re in pretty deep with that car,” Erlich couldn’t resist saying. “You won’t see a single cent from that crazy bastard.”
But I just smiled. Heavy summer days, the long vacation at its height. Dafi goes down to the sea every day, she wants to get as sunburned as she possibly can, she says she wants “to be really black.” And I’m in the garage, which is working at only half capacity because
of the workers going away in turn on their holidays. Erlich has gone abroad too, and I have to look after the accounts on my own, staying on to a late hour. When I arrive home in the evening I find Aysa in her room, in a new, unfamiliar kind of chaos. Books and papers on the floor, dirty coffeecups, pips and nut shells on the plates, full ashtrays. And she sits in the middle of all this, silent, milder than she used to be, thinking her thoughts. A quiet woman, detached perhaps, refusing to look me in the eyes.
“So, you’ve been working,” I say softly, a statement, not a question.
“Yes …I haven’t been outside the house.”
“How’s he doing?”
She smiles.
“He’s odd … a strange man … but easy to get on with.”
I ask no more questions, afraid of alarming her, of upsetting her confidence, of showing surprise, even when I find some strange-looking stew, reddish-brown, in a bowl in the fridge, she’s never cooked food like that before.
She blushes, stammering.
“I tried something new today … he gave me the idea for it.”
“He?”
“Gabriel.”
They’re cooking together now –
I smile amiably, not saying a word, eat some of the stew, it has a strange sweet taste, I compliment her on it, mustn’t give her a sense of guilt, crush her hope, show her a sign of the jealousy that isn’t there. Give her strength, give her time, we’re no longer young, both in our forties, and the man is strange, unstable, he may disappear at any moment, the long vacation will be over soon.
I remember a particularly hot summer, heavy on the limbs, and I’m up to my eyes in work in the half-empty garage, among the few workers, hardly managing to cope, walking around among the cars and thinking about him, how to hold on to him, maybe I should give him some sign. One day I come home early, waiting in my car at the corner of the street, watching them as they both come out of the house, climbing into her Fiat, she drives and I follow, my heart beating fast. She drives him to his house in the lower city, in the market area, he gets out, she says something to him, leaning out of the window, talking earnestly, he listens with a faint smile, glancing around him. They part. I park my car, run after him to catch him before he disappears in the crowd. I see him standing in the doorway of a vegetable shop buying tomatoes. I touch him lightly, he blushes when he recognizes me.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Your grandmother?”
“No change … I don’t know what to think.”
So, he’s still trapped here –
“Where do you live?”
He points to a house on the corner, his grandmother’s house.
“How’s the work that I found for you?”
He smiles, taking off his sunglasses as if he wants to see me better.
“From my point of view it’s fine … perhaps I really can help her … she’s trying to do something very difficult … but …”
“The car?” I interrupt him, I don’t want to let him talk too much.
“The car …” He’s puzzled. “What about it?”
Has he forgotten it?
I study him closely, the dirty shirt, the crumpled clothes, the bag of tomatoes going soft in his hands.
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you have it yet, my partner’s a stubborn type … he isn’t prepared … but if you’re short of money I can always give you a small loan …”
And before he can reply I take a bundle of bills out of my pocket, a thousand pounds, and lay them carefully on top of his tomatoes.
He’s confused, touching the bills, wanting to count them. He asks if he ought to sign something.
“No need … you’ll be coming back to us, of course.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“By the way, I ate some of that food that you cooked … it was excellent.”
He laughs.
“Really?”
Just be careful not to scare him –
I lay a hand on his shoulder.
“Well then, have you got used to the sun? You don’t want to run away from us …?”
“Not yet.”
I shake his hand affectionately and he quickly disappears into the crowded market.
ASYA
Wooden steps, flowery paper on the walls, the stairs up to the village dentist, a tall old woman comes out of the office, putting on an overcoat. She glows – A wonderful dentist, you won’t feel a thing.
And through the open door I see a big dentist’s chair facing me, and the dentist, with clean-shaven rosy round cheeks, a bow tie straggling over his white coat, sitting in the chair, his head leaning back on the rest, his hands folded in his lap, and the pure reddish light, the rural light, the otherworldly light, oh; such a clear light, shining on his sleepy face, full of glowing contentment at the painless treatment he has just performed.
I enter. In the corner of the room, beside the big primitive washbasin stands Gabriel, in a short white gown, dressed as an assistant, offering me a cup half full of a whitish liquid, like milk mixed with water. A soporific. Apparently this is the revolutionary innovation of this rustic office, this primitive place. They no longer give anaesthetic injections, they give you a drink to soothe the pain.
I take the cup from his hand and drink. The liquid’s tasteless but it’s heavy. Like drinking mercury. It slips down my throat and plunges into my stomach like a clear and smooth weight. A festive feeling, I’ve drunk something full of meaning. And I’ve already mounted a second chair, like the armchair in the study except that one arm is missing, to make it easier for the dentist to approach the patient. Such a pleasant silence. At the window that wonderful light. I wait for the drug to take effect, for the light paralysis within, Gabriel lays out instruments on the tray, thin wooden rulers, not threatening, not dangerous, and the dentist still doesn’t move from his seat, he really is asleep.
“It’s taking effect,” I say. I feel nothing but I know that it’s takng effect, I want it to take effect, it must take effect. And he takes a thin ruler and with a light touch opens my mouth, his face tense with concentration, sliding gently into the hollow of my mouth, as if trying to make certain where it is, to see if I really have a mouth. I’m overwhelmed by the sweetness of his light touch.
“Where does it hurt?” Indeed, where does it hurt, why did I come to this dentist’s office anyway? I must concentrate and find the pain in this delight, so I won’t disappoint him, so he won’t leave me, I must say something to him.
ADAM
And suddenly her voice in the silence, in the morning light, mumbling something, just as I’m beginning to wake up. Breaking out of a dream, she’s excited, groping about her, clutching at my shoulder, I freeze, again she says something, a short sentence, her hand is weak, caressing, and suddenly she realizes that she’s touching me, her hand drops, she’s midway between dreams and waking, her eyes open.
“What’s the time?”
“Quarter to six.”
“It’s already so light outside.” And she turns over, trying to go back to sleep, curling up.
“You were talking in your sleep,” I say quietly.
She turns over again quickly, looking up at me.
“What did I say?”
“Just nonsense … it wasn’t clear … a short sentence … what did you dream about?”
“A confused dream … Just …”
I get out of bed, go to the bathroom, wash my face, return to the bedroom. She’s awake, leaning on the pillow, smiling to herself.
“A strange dream, funny, something about a dentist …”
I say nothing, slowly removing my pyjama top, sitting down on the bed. It’s a long time since she’s told me one of her dreams.
“A strange dentist … a sort of yokel … in a wooden house. A rustic, primitive office. The chair was like the armchair in the study but without one of the arms, they took it off on purpose … I remember the afternoon light, a reddish light …”
She break
s off, smiling. Is that all? I don’t understand why she’s telling me. She wraps herself in the thin blanket, closing her eyes, asking me to pull down the blinds. She’ll try to sleep a little longer. To carry on with her dream? I put on shirt and trousers, folding my pyjamas and putting them under the pillow, polling down the blinds and darkening the room. I’m on my way out when she suddenly throws the blanket aside, there can’t be any doubt, something’s exciting her.
“What did I say? Can’t you remember?”
“Words that didn’t add up to anything … I don’t remember … you were just excited … was it a nightmare?”
“No, the opposite, it was supposed to be treatment without pain, instead of an injection they gave me a transparent liquid to drink, it was supposed to be a soporific, a tasteless drink … I can still taste it … it was the speciality of the dentist’s office, before I went in the door a woman came out, all radiant from the wonderful, painless treatment, a really strange dream …”
And she laughs. She’s hiding something, she’s excited, lately there’s been something about her that isn’t right, she can’t relax, she’s always watching me. I wait in the doorway.
“What did I say? What did you hear?”
“Just confused things, I wasn’t awake either.”
“What, for example?”
“I can’t remember. Does it matter?” She doesn’t answer, lies back slowly, as if at peace. I turn and leave the room, glance at the sleeping girl, the wet swimsuit still lying there beside the bed, passing through the study and seeing the chaos there, a Dafi sort of chaos. I go into the kitchen, switch the kettle on, slice the bread, bringing out butter, cheese and olives, starting to nibble as I stand there. The water boils, I make coffee, take the cup and the slices of bread out to the balcony, sitting on a chair wet with dew, slowly sipping the coffee and looking down at an ugly sea covered with a yellow mist. What does Dafi do there all day? From the bay comes the sound of explosions from the munitions factory, firing shells out to sea to test them. The cup of coffee in my hand, strong, bitter coffee, bringing me swiftly and firmly to wakefulness, no thoughts in my head, just waiting for the time to pass so I can go out to work. And suddenly Asya’s beside me, in an old dressing gown, pursued by her dreams, her face unwashed, unable to go on sleeping, leaning on the rail, breaking the heavy drops of dew with her finger.
The Lover Page 14