by Meir Shalev
Suddenly, the Baby heard different shouts, not of pain but of fury and madness. A door in the corner of the monastery opened and the platoon commander who had sent him to the shed burst into the alley hollering and cursing and firing his tommy gun. “Die, you shitheads! I’m coming to get you, you bastards!”
The Baby watched as he ran and fired like a madman. He saw the barrel of the machine gun on the armored vehicle swivel in his direction like a sickle. The platoon commander was injured right away He fell and began to crawl, screaming for help, a red-and-white coil of ropes trailing behind him. Horrified, the Baby realized these were his innards. The armored vehicle did not fire again, just stood at the end of the alley like a large animal testing the torment of his prey, even letting him crawl to a clearing, escorting him with slow, almost caressing, merciful movements of the machine-gun barrel, as if showing the way to its victim: over here, over here, lie down here. Soon Death will make time for you, too. At the moment, he’s busy Calm down. A little patience, please.
When the gun barrel reached the end of its pivot it turned back toward the alley to lie in wait for another victim. The platoon commander lay in a relatively safe place, groaning and cursing. The Baby took action: he hung the dovecote on a thick nail sticking out of the wall of the shed, stepped outside, and ran, crouched, to the wounded man and threw himself down next to him.
The platoon commander began groaning and pleading. “Please … please … please …” The Baby asked, “Please what? Tell me what.” The platoon commander whispered that he was in pain, that he was cold, that he was thirsty—“Bring me water, will you? My throat is so dry”—and he was bleeding, and when the Baby thought he had already died he began talking again, saying he had to stay alive. He fired a round from his tommy gun and shouted, “Come on already, you bastards. And you, move your ass already” Suddenly he began speaking Yiddish, a language that enabled the Baby to identify him: he was the one who had called him kelbeleh on the day he’d arrived at the brigade headquarters. Now several times he said, “Di toybn … the pigeons … sorry …” and then a few words that the Baby understood, like mamme, mamme, but she, unlike the monastery bell, which resounded and vibrated after each hit, died out.
The Baby retched and felt slightly better. Now no one knew where he and his pigeons were. He needed to return to the shed, take his dovecote, and get back to the monastery in case one of the commanders wanted to dispatch a pigeon. He took the tommy gun from the hands of the dead platoon commander, slung it across his back, and began to crawl. Abullet whizzed past him and he, afraid of being sighted, froze in his tracks. Then he started again, very slowly on his stomach and his elbows, his cheek pressed to the ground, careful not to stick out.
2
AS I HAVE ALREADY explained, at certain times and under certain circumstances the Baby could be firm and determined. His short, chubby body concealed strong muscles and a backbone of steel. And he possessed the power of single-minded concentration, his path unfailingly clear and direct and his will tireless. If he were to see my idle meander-ings on the streets of Tel Aviv, he would scold me. If he were to scold me, I could hear him. I know what he looked like, I know about his deeds and his death, I can imagine the touch of his fingers, but I have no idea what his voice sounded like.
After a few feet of crawling, a slug hit his left thigh. He pitched forward, then he rolled, surprised by the strength of the blast. Anyone whose body has never been hit by a bullet—especially when it penetrates to the bone—cannot begin to approximate how powerful it is. His thigh broke near the knee. The Baby released a single shout then stifled the others to come, dug his fingers into the ground, and proceeded to crawl to the dovecote.
His mouth was parched. His eyes teared from pain and effort. His leg dragged behind him like a rag. His trousers were filled with warm blood and his shirt with cool sweat. He drew near a low stone fence and began to gather his strength in preparation for climbing it and in preparation for the pain that would hit him as soon as he dropped to its other, safe, side. He had already managed to grab hold of the top row of stones and pull himself up, but as he lay there considering how he would slide down the other side and how terrible the pain would be, he took another two bullets, which sliced through the old patches on his battle dress and entered his waist and his back.
Moaning, groaning, the Baby slumped to the other side of the fence. None of the bullets had struck a major artery or a vital internal organ, but each had crushed his pelvic bones and torn large exit holes that spurted blood from the front of his body—not the throbbing, artesian eruptions of slit arteries but a strong and unhampered flow
At this stage, a cannon joined the battle. The Baby heard it and tried to figure out whether it belonged to the armored vehicle or was a field cannon firing from some distance, whether it was trying to hit the monastery or, in fact, his shed—or perhaps it was just firing in any direction with the hope of hitting something by chance. Now he could feel the probing touch that veteran fighters know to sense at times — they after long months of battle, he in his first war—those gentle fingers touching their skin, here stroking the back, there slipping down both sides of the neck, here tickling behind the testicles, there in the hollow of the neck: Death’s pleasant foreplay whereby he prepares his partner to accept him willingly and with love.
In such situations it is a good idea to divide hope into small bits of reality, not to expect a huge miracle at the end of the road but to wish for the grace of the few feet just ahead. In his heart the Baby said that it was all one and the same if he was to die from another bullet or from those that had already hit him, and he understood he was no longer fighting for the monastery or Jerusalem, and not even for his comrades’ lives, but for his love of the Girl, and for the child to be born to them after the war. His strength, he felt, was waning, and he wished for nothing more for himself than to return to his dovecote and the pigeon she had given him.
Slowly, in a direct line, pushing with his elbows, his legs dragging behind, his shredded body brushing against the ground and his fingers boring, pulling: to her, to the dovecote, to the pigeon, with Death walking behind him, licking his lips and preparing himself for what was to come.
Chapter Sixteen
1
IN THEIR BED, which had become his bed, Yordad lies awaiting his death. He has bad days and he has good days, but this waiting exists in both: on the good days he waits by reading or listening to music, and on the bad days he lies immobile on his back. His body is lean and straight and long, his legs cross at the ankles, a thin and tranquil smile tugs gently at his lips, his hands clasp on his stomach. One of his eyes does not blink, so as not to miss what is being screened on the ceiling. The other eye is shut, so as not to miss what is taking place within.
“This is no good, lying sick and alone all day!” Meshulam exclaimed.
Yordad did not answer.
“And if heaven forbid you should fall? And if heaven forbid something happens to your heart?”
Yordad uncrossed and recrossed his feet. At first his right ankle had rested on his left; now his left ankle was resting on his right.
“We’ll set you up with a panic button, we’ll get you hooked up to a medical call center, and to me, and to Iraleh, and to anyone else you want. All you’ll have to do is push the button and all of us will come in a jiffy”
“Meshulam,” Professor Mendelsohn said, “please settle down. A heart attack is no reason to invite guests. I am not ill. I am simply old. Exactly the same as you. If you want a panic button so badly, then install one for yourself.”
Meshulam left, returning the next day with the director of the medical call center and one of their technicians, as well as one of his own electricians. Benjamin and I were invited to the installation ceremony but Benjamin did not come. The idea of installing a panic button is absolutely logical, he told me by phone, and he was certain that Meshulam would have it set up in the best manner possible even without his presence.
Now Yo
rdad had a different reason for refusing. “If I have this buzzer, you won’t come to see how I’m doing anymore. You’ll all just sit at home waiting for the buzzer to ring.”
“That’s not true!” Meshulam said, flinching. “If I’ve been coming three times a week up till now, I’ll start coming three times a day Once to see why the buzzer is buzzing and twice to see why it isn’t.”
In the end, Yordad acquiesced. The call-center technician connected a microphone and a speaker, and Meshulam’s electrician added a double backup system, which relied on a battery and electricity stolen from the stairwell. I asked Meshulam what would happen if someone caught on to the theft, and he said, “In the first first place, it’s so little electricity that nobody’s going to catch on, and in the second first place Professor Mendelsohn made the worth of the whole building go up, so doesn’t he deserve just a few drops of electricity for free?”
“Now Professor Mendelsohn,” said the director of the call center, “we’re going to stage a simulation of an emergency situation. We’re all going to go into the other room and you will stay here as if you are home alone. Please press the button as if, God forbid, you weren’t feeling well, and our doctor will answer you through the wall speaker as though he were examining and treating you for real. You will be able to hear each other and speak.”
Professor Mendelsohn waved his hand impatiently He knows what a simulation is, and he certainly knows what emergencies, examinations, and treatments are. All his well-wishers filed out of the room and into the kitchen and the director called out, “Please press the button!”
Nothing happened.
The technician said, “He’s not pressing the button.”
Meshulam went to the doorway of Yordad’s room. “Press, please!”
“But I could hear him in his normal voice,” Yordad said, “not through the speaker.”
“First you have to press the button, then you’ll heart through the speaker.”
“Professor Mendelsohn,” the director called out again, “please press the button!”
Yordad pressed it. A metallic but pleasant voice answered. “Hello, Professor Mendelsohn. This is your call-center doctor. What seems to be the problem?”
Yordad cleared his throat and said, “In 1964 my wife, Raya, left me and my heart was stricken.”
He uttered this in a clear and measured fashion, behind which stood medical knowledge, longing, and frequent repetition. As for me, my legs were melting beneath me.
“I had a small heart attack then,” Yordad continued. “I recovered and didn’t mention it to a soul except for her. She did not come back to me, and since then my health has been deteriorating.”
Meshulam grabbed me tightly around the waist and pulled me in to his short, thick, sturdy body which was like mine.
“Professor Mendelsohn,” the young doctor said through the speaker, “my father was your student many years ago. Please, this conversation is only meant to test whether the equipment is functioning properly”
“This bed, on which I am lying, alone,” said Yordad, pursuing his own agenda, “was our bed. When I lie in it I feel very bad, and when I lie in some other bed I feel even worse.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Meshulam let go of me and burst into Yordad’s room. “I’ll bring you new beds right away!”
“Thank you, Professor Mendelsohn,” said the young doctor. “The equipment is working. I am ending this conversation.”
The director, the electrician, and the technician departed. The cook that Meshulam had found for Yordad appeared, laden with groceries. At that moment I felt useless, since a friend and a cook are far more helpful to Yordad than I.
“Stay for a meal,” Meshulam told me. “There’ll be kebab and salad within twenty minutes.”
“No, I’ll leave,” I said, thinking I should not have come in the first place. As usual, Benjamin had been right. There are things you need to do with a friend, not with your sons. With a technician, not with family And there are stories better told to a stranger, through a microphone and a buzzer and a speaker, through wires and panic buttons.
2
TWO DAYS LATER I paid him another visit.
“How are you, Yairi? I didn’t hear you come in; the panic button didn’t ring.”
I decided not to explain or correct him.
“How are Liora and the girls?” Yordad asked.
My skin turned to gooseflesh. How had those dead fetuses been reconceived in his brain? How had his mouth given birth to two live girls?
“Liora is fine,” I said. Should I remind him of that bird-watching gynecologist who said, “It was a boy,” and then, “This boy was a girl”? Should I quote Liora, whose words were no less terrible: “It’s the two of us together that’s the problem”?
“I have a new joke,” Yordad said. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Where do you get these jokes from? Do you have new friends I don’t know about?”
“From the Internet. I find them and record them in a notepad.”
And he extended a beautiful, white hand to the small table next to his bed, opened a drawer, and removed a notepad. I have already mentioned that Yordad loved notepads and always had a number of them on hand. And just as he classified and separated everything, so too did he divide them up: his patient notepad and his list-of-chores notepad and his ideas notepad, which he would suddenly remove from his pocket to record something that he would conceal with blatant stealth. And although he had become a knowledgeable amateur of computers, he claimed there were situations in which a notepad was quicker and more user-friendly Now jokes had their own notepad, so that if, heaven forbid, guests should come, he could read them jokes instead of being amicable and conducting a conversation.
“Lots of people are interested in being friends with us,” my mother used to tell him. “But you build walls between us and them.”
“I am tired,” he would say, and “Anyway you invited people only yesterday,” and “I have a headache.”
“Those are the kinds of excuses women make, Yaacov”
He would take offense and fall silent, then walk straight-backed down to his clinic.
My mother loved guests and flourished when hosting. She knew how to seat them so that conversation would flow and no one would feel abandoned or out of the loop. She knew who to place near whom and, more important—Meshulam’s joke—who to keep away from whom. She recognized the woman who needed to stay near her husband and the woman who would blossom if separated from him. Her eyes sparkled in anticipation of their arrival, her smile shone. Only now, in my new house, many years after she left home and a few months after her death, does it occur to me that she invited guests so as not to remain alone with Yordad.
Pleasant aromas wafted from the refreshments she prepared for guests. There was a sort of simple pastry she was renowned for, small puffs of seasoned dough stuffed with tiny frankfurters. The secret, said mouths astonished into joy, was the sauce in which they were cooked, a sort of “dainty-dainty” sauce, she called it, made of mustard and black cumin, which she had concocted herself
After my mother left home, Yordad’s friends and acquaintances also began to disappear. And he, when his walls of arrogance and isolation had fallen, discovered that behind them there was no one. No enemy no companion, no battering foe, no knocking guest. There remained nothing but the infrequent visitor: doctors, students, lawyers asking his opinion on issues of medical malpractice, and us: Benjamin, rarely; Liora, who comes to see him whenever she is in Jerusalem on matters of business and they enjoy a conversation together in English; me, who comes whenever I am in Jerusalem on matters of idleness and emotion; and the Double-Ys, his grandsons, who, even today, at twenty, continue their regular entertainment with him, which began when they were babies —a trip through the pages of the large German atlas, the very same atlas he had traveled years earlier with us.
“Come, children,” he says to them just as he said to us, “let’s take a trip in the atlas to a
ll sorts of lands.” And those two enormous twins sit obediently Y- 1 on his grandfather’s right and Y-2 on his left, but unlike Benjamin and me, who followed him through deserts and crossed rivers and mountain ranges with him, they stop at their favorite map, the one of food and agriculture. They scan the meat countries and the fish countries, the olive oil countries and the butter countries; they take pity on the puree-deprived and deplore the eaters of tofu and lettuce and seaweed. They spy out land after land, the fat with the lean.
The world is split, Yordad explains to them again: this part eats corn, this part eats rice, and here, in our part, people eat wheat. And they inform him, “Not anymore, Grandfather. Everyone eats everything. We eat corn, too, and different kinds of rices, as well as wheats.” And they ask when Yordad’s cook will be there, the Romanian laborer whose culinary skills Meshulam discovered and who he then sent to our house after my mother left. He was a young worker when he first came to us, and he has grown old along with Meshulam and Yordad. He cleans the house, too, does the laundry and ironing and shopping, clips Yordad’s toenails since Yordad cannot bend down to them anymore, and helps him get in and out of the shower.
Meshulam has warned him not to dare add onion to Professor Mendelsohn’s salad, and instead of mamaliga and icre, Romanian specialties that met with a cool “No, thank you,” he learned to prepare linsen-suppe mit wurst—lentil soup with bits of sausage—and to season potatoes with schnittlauch and butter. The Romanian foods he makes include pickled vegetables, ciorba, and mititei.