All the Rivers

by Dorit Rabinyan

  On the way there in the car we talked about how awful the situation in Israel was, with buses blowing up almost every week, but in the same breath we both admitted how much we missed it, and longed for the sun and the sea. We shared our dislike of New York winters and how expensive the city was. He said he’d been offered a job at Haifa University and was seriously considering going home in time for the academic year.

  He finally seemed at ease when he drove. The sense of control over the car and his grip on the wheel gave him a relaxed air and a new sort of masculinity. A sly wrinkle that had emerged between his brows before softened, as did his intimate tone of voice. He told me he had a brother and a sister, Maya was the oldest. His brother lived on a moshav in southern Israel with his wife and three little kids. ‘And my parents are also part of the equation, I mean, of whether or not to go back.’ He paused as though this simple, banal truth necessitated an apology. ‘They’re not getting any younger, you know.’

  I let out a surprised laugh. ‘That’s exactly what my mother told me on the phone today.’

  I’d called her earlier than usual that morning, as soon as I woke up, to get her before the whole family commotion of Friday night dinner. She was just finishing up the cooking, and the radio was on in the background.

  ‘Oh, that tune!’ Yaron understood immediately and joined in when I started humming the intro to the ancient Reshet Gimel show. ‘I love that…’

  Far away at home, the energetic guitar and the host’s eternal velvety voice had come through: ‘Here, there,’ she just had time to say calmly before my mother turned the radio off, ‘and everywhere.’

  ‘Oh, Liati!’ my mother cooed as soon as she recognized my voice. ‘May you have a long life – I was just thinking about you!’ She laughed. ‘Just this second.’

  The flavour of those sounds painted an instant, wonderfully detailed picture of the scene: Friday afternoon, the radio is on, my mother bustles around the kitchen tending to bubbling pots and dishes, a cake just out of the oven, vegetables waiting to be chopped. I could see her there as twilight approached in the window, with the weekend newspapers, bags of groceries, the phone in one hand and a fork in the other. I could hear aubergine sizzling in a pan, I could smell frying oil and rice. I could tell, just by the hum, that right now, finally taking a break, she was sipping the instant coffee she’d made an hour or two ago, long cold. I could see the glass mug, the light milky shade of the coffee, the expression on her face, busy even while she sipped and talked to me, her eyes already in search of the next task.

  I explained that I wouldn’t be home later and so I was calling now. I said I was going to dinner at some Israeli friends who were flying to Israel soon, and that they would bring gifts for Aviad and Yaara.

  ‘What did I want to tell you…’ she murmured after informing me about tonight’s guests. ‘Oh, yes, I remember, honey! I dreamed about you. The night before last.’

  She’d dreamed that a burglar broke into the house through the living-room balcony. In the dream we were still living in Hod Hasharon, and she saw him through the bedroom wall. ‘And you know what? Remember the little TV in our bedroom? Well, it was like a security camera, in black and white, a hidden camera. So I see him climbing in with a backpack, and he had curly hair…’

  She interpreted my muffled response – a stunned gasp – as an expression of concern. She laughed warmly: ‘But it’s OK, my sweet, it’s a good dream.’

  ‘How could it be good?’ I asked, suddenly impatient and angry. I was amazed to think that her telepathic maternal instincts might have somehow led her to see Hilmi in her sleep. ‘And what does it have to do with me, anyway? You said you dreamed about me.’

  ‘Well, listen to what Grandma said,’ she replied secretively. ‘I asked her about it, and she said thieves coming into the house in a dream is one hundred per cent a prophecy. It’s a sign that there’s a groom on the way, thank God.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, really!’

  ‘What do you mean, oh really? Liati, what do you think? You think me and Dad are getting any younger?’

  ‘It’s true, time flies,’ Yaron went on as we approached Union Square. ‘Unfortunately, I was late to that realization, but they are getting older. When I see my mum, I can’t believe how old she’s got. My dad’s not what he used to be at all. And they’re in good shape, relatively speaking, you know? So being with them would also be for myself. I want to be close to them. Seeing them twice a year – what is that? It’s nothing.’ He glanced at me and looked back shyly at the road. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I shrugged my shoulders and kept looking at him. ‘That’s nice.’

  He gave me half a smile, and I smiled too, at the wind-screen. ‘Well, I guess you caught me on my most sentimental day of the week.’

  The clock on the dashboard showed 10.30. For a moment I kept thinking about the pot of cholent stew my mum would have been cooking slowly on the heating plate all night, with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes that now, at 5.30 a.m., roasted and speckled, would be steaming aromatically in the Tel Aviv apartment. I thought about that warm, intimate smell of Saturday morning spreading through our sleepy, dark home, about the sharp blend of cholent, candle wax, myrtle and geraniums my dad picked on his way home from synagogue to say a blessing over before the Sabbath kiddush. I remembered how that comforting whiff used to hit my nostrils when I came home after a night out on the town, quietly took my shoes off, and padded past the candlesticks, the yahrzeit candles in memory of my grandparents, and my parents’ breathing bedroom. ‘Is that you, Liati?’ ‘Yes, it’s me, goodnight.’

  ‘It’s strange, you know?’ I told Yaron, a thought coming to me for the first time. ‘Because of the time difference, it’s like they’re always asleep since I’ve been here.’

  His forehead darkened and wrinkled. ‘What do you mean?’

  I explained that since day and night were reversed, when I thought about my parents in Israel and imagined where Mum was, or what Dad was doing, they were often asleep. It was like my life here went on from day to day, while back in Israel my family and everyone I knew was in a deep slumber. And maybe – I told Yaron – maybe everything I was experiencing in New York, the independence and the freedom to do anything I wanted and be anyone I wanted, derived partly from that liberating feeling that no one would know.

  ‘I mean, it’s not like I’m doing anything that crazy…’ I backtracked, grinning. ‘You know?’

  Yaron laughed. ‘I was just going to say! What sort of dubious characters are you hanging out with at night?’

  The waitress – purple ponytail, half-moon glasses, row of silver piercings along her right eyebrow – arrived with our drinks and told us to call her if we wanted anything else. I didn’t pick up on any particular accent, but Yaron immediately pegged her as Australian.

  ‘Are you an Aussie too?’ she asked him.

  ‘No, no, we are both’ – he pointed at himself and at me, uniting us with a slight move of the hand – ‘Israelis.’

  It turned out the waitress was from Melbourne, like Yaron’s ex-wife. They’d met when she was in administration at Princeton, and two years after the wedding he woke up one Saturday morning and found a letter on the kitchen table: she was in love with another man. After the divorce she moved to San Francisco, and Yaron was crushed. He thought he’d never recover. He worked like a robot all day, came home and fell asleep in front of the TV. He was careful not to drink on weekdays, and didn’t take up smoking again, but he spent his weekends drunk. Autumn, winter and spring of last year were completely wiped out, as if he’d been in a nine-month coma. Last Passover, when he was visiting Israel, a friend doing his residency in psychiatry gave him a prescription for antidepressants.

  But what really saved him – he laughed and his face lit up when he said the name – was Henrietta, a white Lab he’d adopted from a centre that trained seeing-eye dogs. In March, when Henrietta turned one, he would have to say goodbye and she would be given to a blind person. But from the minu
te she’d arrived, this rambunctious two-month-old puppy had forced him to get out and walk around town with her for at least two or three hours every day, and to run and play with her in the park.

  The doleful jazz gave way to more melodic sounds. Two guys and a beautiful young woman had come in earlier, chattering cheerfully as they walked past our table on their way to the bar. While Yaron talked I could hear them behind me, clinking glasses and laughing. When, to Yaron’s chagrin, they started to sing along with the piano enthusiastically, I turned around and saw that the place had emptied out. Even the waitress was gone, but the pianist seemed to have come to life. One of the young men stood with his hand resting casually on her shoulder, and she was playing show tunes.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. At some point he had taken his glasses off, and he looked at me with tired, red eyes that reflected the candle flame. ‘Don’t you want kids?’

  I remembered that in September, at the Rosh Hashanah dinner, the twins had danced around him and clung to him. During the blessings, after we dipped apple in honey and wished each other a sweet new year, Kobi had winked at Yaron and said the next blessing was dedicated especially to him, and when the stuffed fish was passed around, he recited from the siddur: ‘May we multiply abundantly like fish.’ I remembered Yaron’s embarrassment when everyone looked at him, and how he’d reached out abruptly to muss one of the boys’ hair.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll happen,’ I answered. My hand reached out to the candlestick and shifted it slightly.

  ‘Well, you still have time. You’re twenty-nine, aren’t you?’

  ‘Thirty.’

  He said he’d wasted too much time mucking around. He couldn’t believe he was turning thirty-six next month. He felt like the past few years had been a kind of failed dress rehearsal for life, and sometimes he wasn’t sure he’d really know how to live if it ever did start. He said he couldn’t understand how Maya and Gidi found time for it all – careers and a house and kids and friends and travel. Sometimes, when he got back to his empty apartment, hungry and tired, with piles of work still waiting, he wondered how he would cope if there were also a wife and two kids.

  ‘OK, I’ve talked way too much.’ He stood up, a little wobbly, and headed to the lavatory. ‘Excuse me.’

  I watched him walk away, then turned back and touched the bottom of the candle with my fingertips again. This time the flame went out, leaving a black tail of wick and a vanishing curl of smoke. I thought about the phone call with my mother, and her dream. I was amazed again by her sixth sense, and by the midnight burglar with curly hair – the image of Hilmi – who had come to her in her sleep. I thought about my grandmother’s prophetic interpretation, about my intended groom who was supposedly making his secret way into our home. I realized that my mother had manifested in all sorts of guises this evening: the Shabbat candles, the smell of cholent at dawn, and perhaps even Yaron himself, unknowingly, was the embodiment of her concerned spirit. Patient, sensitive Yaron. Kind Yaron. Sent lovingly to bring me back to her, to take me home, to get Hilmi away from me.

  Yaron came back and stood on the other side of the table. ‘Ready to go, Bazi?’

  ‘What?!’

  He raised his voice over the din: ‘I said, Let’s go, it’s too jazzy.’

  chapter 19

  Thick flannel undershirt under a long-sleeved shirt and a turtleneck sweater. Long-johns under jeans. Two pairs of socks, leather boots. Red ski jacket. Beanie and matching gloves. And now Hilmi’s blue wool scarf, too, and I’m still cold.

  We’re at the overground station at Marcy Avenue in northwest Brooklyn, not far from the Williamsburg Bridge. This is where the J-M-Z lines go above ground, emerging from the tunnels into open air, and the station is elevated – the iron tracks, the platforms on either side, the rows of wooden benches – all exposed to the elements.

  It’s only 8 p.m. but it’s gloomy and foggy like in a film noir. Freezing wind whispers from the river, carrying cold clouds out of the darkness. Vapour hangs in the air and floats silently in the beams from the lighting over the tracks, above the patches of sooty snow. Re-emerging in a greyish-white, it turns red in the signal lights.

  We’re on our way home after seeing the doctor who treated Hilmi after he cut his hand on the broken glass ten days ago. Her clinic is not far from the station, and this evening she removed his stitches. She checked his range of motion and promised there was no nerve damage, the thumb tendon had healed well. She gave him a prescription for antibiotic cream. His left hand is wrapped in fresh white bandages and the right is covered with a brown fleece glove.

  ‘Here you go.’ He tucks the scarf into my collar with his right hand, smoothing and tightening it on either side. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ He smiles as he evaluates his handiwork.

  ‘But what about you?’

  He prods a tuft of hair into my hat. ‘I’m all right.’

  I feel a bit like a child. A quiet, obedient girl whose father is taking care of her. I sit motionless, both hands in my lap, surrendering to his concern with a needy sort of passivity that befits the cold. Over his shoulder I spot a few passengers in hats and coats scattered along the platform: some on benches, still as statues, others standing, shifting around or talking to each other, steam coming from their mouths. No one is sitting to my right, and someone has left a rolled-up sports section there. The same old lady who was sitting here when we arrived is still on the seat next to me, her head bowed to her chest and her eyes shut, a few plastic bags at her feet.

  ‘That’s it.’ He tilts his head back and surveys me with a bemused look. ‘You should see yourself.’

  But there’s no mirror, and even if there were a reflective surface, all it would show is a strip of eyes. He wrapped the wool scarf around my head so that it covers my ears, mouth and nose, and he pulled the beanie down to my eyebrows so that my entire face is masked, with only my eyes exposed to the cold.

  ‘You should go and see them now,’ he chuckles, ‘those FBI guys! Just like you are now.’

  He can’t see my smile under the scarf that smells of his warmth, only the one in my eyes. ‘Thank you, my sweet,’ my muffled voice emerges through the layers. ‘Thank you.’ I look up at him and he’s laughing. ‘What?’

  He takes a cigarette out. ‘Want one?’

  There are three of them. I watch them come up the steps onto the platform. Three young guys in their mid-twenties, wearing jeans and dark coats. They walk past the big subway map on the wall towards my bench and stand in between me and Hilmi, who has wandered away to the platform edge where he paces, smoking. At first, because of the scarf over my ears, their voices sound fuzzy, but even before I pick up the tone and recognize the Hebrew, I know they’re Israeli.

  ‘What do you mean, Lior?! You totally fell asleep!’

  ‘Forget it, I don’t even think the actors underst—’

  I glance at Hilmi and I can see in his eyes that he also knows they’re Israeli.

  ‘And they gave it five stars, dude!’

  ‘Are you shitting me?’

  As I do every time I come across Israelis in New York, I puzzle over the mystery for a moment: Is it the gait? The body language? What is that thing we have that is so noticeable, so uninhibited and self-confident, so animated? What is it that we instinctively respond to, that allows us to recognize each other even before hearing the Hebrew? All it takes is the facial expression, the hand gestures, even just the look.

  ‘Oh, Abramov, Abramov…’

  ‘What a gasbag.’

  ‘God bless him.’

  ‘The mother of all gasbags.’

  They talk loudly, unselfconsciously, as though the station were their own private space. The foreign language affords them an intimacy even when they are loud: the advantage of exclusivity. One of them wears a hoody, and his cheeks and nose are so flushed with cold they’re almost red. The second one, with glasses and tall shoulders, looks Yemenite. He rubs his hands together and studies the subway map. The third one, a c
hubby guy, scans the station with his curious little eyes, pausing on me for a moment.

  ‘Come on, already. Where is that fuck-up Abramov?’ Hoody says to the one with glasses.

  ‘Go on, Lior, go get him.’

  ‘Forget it, dude, that chick is making him crazy.’

  Chubby chimes in: ‘She’s his wife, what do you want?’

  ‘OK, she’s his wife, but every single hour?’

  ‘And in the middle of the movie!’

  ‘Like you’re any better.’

  The chubby one walks over to Hilmi. ‘Em… Excuse me?’ He pulls a cigarette out of a pack of Marlboro Lights. ‘Could you give me fire?’

  Hilmi moves his Lucky Strike into the fingers of his bandaged left hand, and with his right takes a lighter out of his coat pocket. A flame jumps up between them, and Chubby gets closer and leans in. ‘Som-von took my lighter,’ he explains to Hilmi in a strong accent; the traces of Hebrew are apparent in the way he pronounces the R and W sounds. He tents the flame with his hand, and after a minute he moves his head back and lets out a ribbon of smoke. ‘Tank you.’

  Hilmi nods. He slides the lighter into his pocket and puts the cigarette back into his right hand. He takes a drag and his eyes briefly meet mine, gleaming at me through the smoke. Then he tracks the other two Israelis, who sit down on the empty bench.

  The guy with glasses leans upright against the back of the bench with his arms crossed and his hands in his armpits. His skin is dark brown and he looks like an Indian chief. Hoody lounges next to him – legs sprawled out, hands crossed behind his neck as if he’s sunbathing. In between me and them sits the older woman, still dozing.