by Yael Hedaya
He sat paralyzed in the armchair. The friend stood up and went into the bathroom and came back with a towel soaked in warm, soapy water. She knelt down and wiped him with it. He looked at her, and closed his eyes again. Then he looked at his watch.
33
When he got home, a little before three, the lights were still on in the apartment. There was a pile of paper plates on the living-room table and next to it a tower of disposable cups. On the floor was a big garbage bag with half the chocolate cake peeping lopsidedly out of it. The broom was leaning against the sofa, and lying next to it was the dustpan into which the birthday candles had been swept. He went up to peep into the garbage bag and saw his name written in white cream on the cracked chocolate icing.
He walked around the house turning off the lights and then he went into the dark bedroom. The woman was lying in bed with her face to the wall. At the foot of the bed, on her side, on the little rug which had been stored all these months in a plastic bag on the kitchen porch, lay the dog. The man stood in the dark and looked at him. The dog didn’t move. Then he looked at the woman curled up under the blanket pretending to be asleep.
He decided to take care of it in the morning. He felt too guilty to make a scene now. He got undressed, threw his clothes into the laundry hamper in the bathroom, and got quietly into bed. He put his arm on the woman’s waist. He knew she was awake. He prayed she would say something, mutter something resentfully, but the woman said nothing.
In the morning he found her drinking coffee in the kitchen with the dog lying on his side next to the fridge.
“Why is he here?” he asked, but the woman didn’t answer.
He turned on the electric kettle and leaned against the marble counter.
“Why are you here?” asked the woman.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why are you here?”
“Where do you want me to be?” he said, moving the dog aside with his foot and opening the fridge. “Where’s the milk?”
“It’s all gone,” said the woman.
“But I bought milk yesterday. How can it be gone?”
“Because it’s gone,” said the woman.
He knew where the milk was, but he was afraid to look. He glanced down at the floor, at the two tiles next to the porch door. On one of them stood the bowlful of dog food. On the other the dog’s aluminum pan, brimming with milk. He looked at the woman, who was sipping her coffee and reading the paper.
“Why did you give him all the milk?” the man asked and stared at the dog. The dog averted his eyes.
“Because he likes it,” she said.
“Why did you bring him inside?” he asked. “Why did you bring him into the house?”
“Because it’s his house,” she said.
“What are you trying to tell me?” he said.
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Stop it!” yelled the man. “That’s enough. Let’s talk. Let’s really talk.”
“Go ahead and talk,” said the woman. She folded the newspaper and put it down on the table, and took another sip of coffee.
The man sat down at the table and lowered his eyes to the floor. Between the legs of the table he saw the dog’s thin legs trembling. He’s got strange legs, that dog, thought the man, legs like a deer. He had never noticed them before. Come here, he said gently, but the dog ignored him.
The man whistled, and the dog ran to him. He put his front paws on the man’s thighs, and began to whimper and wag his tail. The man stroked his head. “Come here,” he said to the dog and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. “Come here, you little idiot.” He stood up and led the dog to the front door.
“You’re not putting him out,” said the woman quietly.
The man opened the door. He tried to drag the dog outside, but the dog sat down in the doorway and began to cry.
“Don’t you dare put him out!” the woman screamed from the kitchen. “Don’t you dare!”
The man took hold of the dog’s forelegs and pulled. He was stronger than the dog. The dog slid forward, his forelegs trapped in a scissor grip by the man’s hands and the paws of his hind legs scratching the floor.
The woman ran to the door and yelled: “Leave him here. He’s mine. I want him here.” But the man didn’t hear her. He looked deep into the dog’s eyes, and the dog looked into his eyes. Only his tail now remained inside the house. The rest of his body was trapped in the man’s hands, in a kind of violent embrace, with the man kneeling in front of him, their heads touching. Both of them suddenly had the same look in their eyes. Later, when he tried to reconstruct what had happened, the man thought that it was strange, the way the dog looked at him, because dogs, he had once read somewhere, were incapable of looking you in the eye.
The woman put her hand on the man’s shoulder. He hadn’t sensed her coming up behind him; he startled and stuck his elbow in her thigh. She put out her hand to stroke the dog’s head, but his lips trembled, and she heard a noise that sounded like a distant generator, a low, deep growl, coming from his throat. She drew back, but the man and the dog went on squatting there, face-to-face, trembling, as if caught inside an electric circuit.
The man let go. Suddenly he raised his hands and fell backward and sat down on the landing. The dog too sat down and looked at him. The man rested his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his arms. The dog raised his head and looked at the woman, stood up, and went outside onto the landing. Then he pressed himself against the wall and walked along it, up and down.
The woman bent over the man and whispered something in his ear. The man shrugged his shoulders and then he stood up and went inside with her. At noon the door opened and the man came out again. He was showered, his hair was wet, he looked relaxed, and he was smoking a cigarette. He hopped over the dog, who was lying on the mat, and ran down the stairs. A few minutes later the door opened again, and the woman, whose hair was wet too, said to the dog: “Come and eat.”
34
Winter set in. It was cold on the stairwell, and the wind whistled to the dog from the bottom of the steps. Every morning the old lady from the top floor climbed the stairs and stopped next to him, transforming her loneliness for a moment into a modest act of giving. “Here’s a cookie,” she said to him in a breathless foreign accent. “Here’s a slice of turkey.” She started to take him into account when she did her shopping in the market.
Every day the dog watched the slow procession of objects going down the stairs. Books, tapes, a toaster oven carried in the man’s arms, its electric cord dangling after it like a tail. And finally, on a rainy morning in the middle of November, the dog saw a colorful pile of clothes floating past him like a big cloud, and one sock, a white sport sock, which was left lying on the stairs.
The dog missed the man. At night his shadow appeared before the dog’s eyes and in the mornings the memory of his voice pierced the silence of the stairwell, the silence of his daily march to his bowl, the silence of his new routine—the memory of the didactic, explaining voice. But above all it was the man’s smell that flooded him with waves of longing. He didn’t know what to do with them. When they came, he would close his eyes tightly and lay his head on his paws.
The smell was everywhere. The smell of his bare feet on the kitchen floor, the smell of his muddy heels on the doormat, the faint and painful smell of his sweat, still lingering in the stairwell, diluted over the weeks and fading into the other smells of the building—frying and cooking, small children, the smell of rain brought in by people going up and down the stairs, the fur of a wet cat seeking shelter, the bad smell given off by the old lady.
Sometimes when he went out for a walk he thought he saw the man’s car passing in the street. His heart beat hard when he saw the back of the car turn quickly into another street, its white color flashing in the dark. He wanted to chase it, but something always stopped him and rooted him to the ground: the hindquarters of his body, where his nightmares were stored.
; The woman wanted him to come back and live inside the house, but he preferred to remain outside. She tried to coax him to stay, but the dog set clear limits: he ate and drank, allowed her to pet him a little, but then he walked to the door and sat down next to it until the woman let him out.
And one day, at the end of winter, his body began to straighten out. His pelvis, as if a small crane had come to its rescue, rose a little, and his gait grew less apologetic. His tail still hung down, sheltered between his legs, but now and then it too showed timid signs of life; it would wag for a moment, against his will, at the sight of another dog.
Seeing the park and the dogs and their owners no longer hurt so much either, and sometimes the woman accompanied him. The dog would take her out for a walk; she followed in his footsteps, straining to keep up with his new and energetic pace. Every now and then he would stop and turn his head to make sure that she hadn’t run away or gotten lost. Sometimes she would sit down on a bench, take a book or a newspaper out of her bag, and try to read, but her eyes would always wander, lingering on the old people sitting on the other benches, on the couples crossing the paths, or sitting on the lawn and eating together, a towel or a blanket spread out between them. When he saw her sitting like this, like a sad, heavy air balloon rising in the wind, he would rush to her and gently dig his teeth into her ankle, trying to catch hold of the string that would bring her back to earth. He wanted to make her happy with the things that made him happy.
And one day he brought her a stick. He laid it in her lap and waited. The woman took the stick in her hand and looked as if she didn’t know what to do with it, and suddenly she threw it far and smiled when she saw the dog racing off with a speed she didn’t know he possessed. He came back to her panting with the stick between his teeth and, bowing his head, laid it in her lap. They played like this for an hour—the woman inproving her throws and the dog, as if some spring had been released inside his body, stretching out and growing straighter as he ran. At noon, when the woman tired, the dog who lay down at her feet was no longer the doormat dog she knew, but a proud hunting hound with an invisible brace of pheasants.
And there were new friends too. At first they treated him with suspicion and were afraid of coming close, because in spite of his confident posture and his tail which now wagged constantly, they could still smell the residue of sadness and sickness. There was a big black dog who looked dangerous at first but proved to be good-natured and a faithful friend. And there was a little bitch who scampered around all the time and courted him, and there were people too, who sometimes came up and spoke to the woman.
And one night, at the beginning of spring, the man returned. He was a little thinner; there was a black-and-white beard on his chin. He had a new coat, not the big, soft coat the dog remembered from the previous winter, but a short leather jacket that gave off a sharp animal smell. He was glad to see the dog; he bent down and patted him and then straightened up, smoothed his new beard with his hand, and took his key ring out of his jacket pocket. He chose the middle key and was about to insert it in the lock, but then he changed his mind, put the key back in his pocket, and rang the bell. The dog closed his eyes and pricked up his ear. The woman opened the door and the man went inside.
THE HAPPINESS GAME
A few minutes after he left, a strange thing happened: hundreds of black birds appeared out of nowhere and swooped down on the old palm tree across the street and polished off the dates hanging from it in bunches—the dates he said had to be picked because they were no good for the tree, they weighed it down and they suffocated it, and that little by little they would kill it.
We stood on the balcony, leaning against the stone ledge and looking at the passersby. We looked at the cars turning into the street and disappearing around the corner, at the building opposite, at the balconies and open windows, we looked at the palm tree, we looked at everything it was possible to look at in order not to look at each other.
We had just finished fighting. It was our first fight. I started it and did most of the fighting. Nathan kept quiet and muttered briefly only when I said something that was, in his opinion, factually incorrect, or particularly insulting. But it was more of a mumble than an utterance, something muffled he said in a low voice to the floor, his mouth full of quiet facts.
I never thought I would be that kind of woman, an accusing, hysterical woman who put her hands on her hips when she made her accusations, but as I stood opposite Nathan sitting on the sofa, mumbling to the floor, my hands suddenly landed on my hips and stuck there. I felt as if I’d grown little wings that would help me to take the fight to some other place, higher and more civilized. That’s how I felt when I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips and tried to save our relationship.
We stood on the balcony and looked at the street. I asked if I should cut up a watermelon and Nathan nodded. I went into the kitchen and took the watermelon out of the fridge. I cut it in half and cut one half into cubes and arranged them on a plate and stuck two forks into the top two cubes. I picked out a sweet watermelon this time, and I saw it as a good sign, because I didn’t know how people were supposed to feel after a fight. It was our first and last fight. I put the plate down on the ledge, between us, and we ate in silence and went on looking at the street, and then he turned my attention to the palm tree and its burdens.
He pointed to the tree with his fork and with his mouth full of juice he said: “It’s about time those dates were stripped from that tree.”
I asked why and he said that they were weighing it down.
I didn’t want to talk about the tree. I wanted to talk about our relationship. But I’d already said everything I had to say a few minutes before, and now I was standing on the balcony and eating watermelon and having a polite conversation and feeling sorry for a tree and knowing that it was all over.
He said: “If the dates aren’t removed, the tree will die.”
I asked: “So what should we do?”
And he said: “Nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”
The plate was emptied and I took it back to the kitchen. I put it in the sink and turned the water on and let it run and in the meantime I tried to think quickly about what to do next, if there was anything it was possible to do. When I returned to the balcony Nathan was already standing with his back to the street, one knee bent and his shoe resting on the stone ledge, crumbling dry geranium leaves he had picked from the flowerpot between his fingers.
I asked if I should cut up more watermelon and he said no. I knew that these were our last moments together and I wanted to buy time. I said it was no problem, that there was a lot more, another whole half, and he said that he already had enough and he thinks he’s going to leave now. I asked if this was it, if he was leaving, and he said yes. He stood a minute longer with his big shoe resting on the ledge and said: “I think I better go now.” I said: “Yes.” He threw the handful of geranium flakes into the street and rubbed his palms together and took his foot down and said: “I’m leaving.” I thought: The last thing we did together was eat watermelon.
At the door he said he was sorry. He said he was sorry it had to be this way and I said he didn’t leave me any choice. He put his hand on my shoulder and said he didn’t understand why it had to be this way and I said there was no alternative. He said again that he was sorry and took his hand off my shoulder and slid his fingers down my arm and looked at me sadly. I closed the door behind him and when I turned the key in the lock I heard his heavy steps going down the stairs and then the intercom door slam shut. I went into the kitchen and saw the half watermelon on the marble counter, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and put it in the fridge and I knew that in a few days I would take it out again, still wrapped in the plastic, and throw it away.
Then I went out onto the balcony. I stood and leaned against the ledge and stared at the street, which looked completely different from the way it looked a few minutes ago, though nothing in it had changed. I looked at the cars turning into t
he street and disappearing around the corner and at the building opposite with the balconies and open windows and I looked at the palm tree and then the birds arrived. They darkened the sky, came down to perch on the TV antennas and the treetops, and screeched excitedly, sending commands to one another, and then they massed in black bodies on the palm tree and pecked at the dates with hammerlike pecks until they polished them off.
They vanished suddenly and it was impossible to tell if the tree was relieved. The dry, yellow boughs didn’t rise, grateful and liberated, and the stooping trunk didn’t straighten up after the birds had gang-raped it, hysterically flapping their wings. I was sorry Nathan didn’t see it. I was sorry it happened a few minutes after he left. I went inside, closed the shutters and the windows and the balcony door, and said to myself: It’s over. I made a clean break. Then I lay down on the sofa and started crying. The phone rang and I didn’t pick it up. I counted four rings and the machine answered. My parents invited me to come for lunch on Saturday.