Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

Her mother takes an unhurried sip of coffee before answering, her lips curled in a smug smile.

  “I laid the cards.”

  Her father makes a sound as if a bone is caught in his throat. “The cards!”

  Tomorrow is Toni’s Latin exam. All her striving and sweating for a brilliant mark seem so childish now. War will come, the kind of war that shaped her parents’ generation and perhaps will test hers, at least those of her generation brave enough to rise to the challenge.

  “What’s the point of exams when there’s going to be a war?” she wonders aloud.

  Her father’s hand slaps down hard on the table.

  “The point of exams! The point!”

  His normally quiet eyes are wild. “You mean to tell me war should be an excuse to slack off? Precisely when war comes you must get your credentials. Precisely now—you mustn’t waste an opportunity. What you hold in your head is all you can rely on in this world. Haven’t I told you that often enough? Nu? Haven’t I?”

  Yes, he has, in jokes and maxims and words of praise for her diligence and occasional grumbled warnings. Never like this, with such desperate fury. Toni sits frozen, stunned.

  “Let’s all calm down,” Lisa says as she rises and lays soothing hands on Julius’s shoulders. “No need to get so excited. Of course Toni will do her exams.”

  Her mother shoots Toni a warning look that says, Your father has come apart, we must put him back together.

  The next day Toni writes her Latin exam in a strange mood of detachment. When she closes her exam booklet, she has no idea whether she breezed through or mucked up and hardly cares. She rushes home for dinner and the evening Star. It is Friday night. Her mother has gone to some pains to create a festive atmosphere with candles, challah, the best dishes, as they used to do when Toni was a child and before their lives got so hectic with work and school. Nevertheless, after the meal, they all rush to watch the CBC news and sigh because so little is said about what’s really going on. The coverage is mostly on the infernal, lumbering debate in the UN, which can’t even bring itself to call for a cessation of hostilities.

  On Saturday, they sift through every word of the weekend papers. On Sunday, there’s neither a Gazette nor a Star, and they all prowl the apartment grouchily, on edge. On Monday, the war breaks out.

  It’s a strange relief to have war finally underway, though the early reports are far from reassuring. Fierce battles rage on three fronts. Each side claims victories. Air raid sirens sound in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities. Each side blames the other for starting the war. Israel says it’s fighting for its survival. The US makes a surprise announcement of neutrality.

  “The Americans won’t help?” Toni asks, incredulous. “Even if Israel is really in trouble?”

  Her father can only offer that look of infinite pity.

  On day two of the war, Toni comes home from writing her biology exam to find everything has changed. Israel claims stunning early victories, the annihilation of Egypt’s air force, a breakthrough in the Sinai. The claims seem backed up by the front-page photo of Egyptian prisoners under Israeli guard. But most telling is the Soviet Union’s belated and urgent call for a cease-fire.

  “Hah,” cackles Lisa, eyes flashing gleefully. “Now you want a cease-fire! Now that we are winning.”

  She points her finger at the newspapers spread out on the couch as if the Soviet representative at the UN, the treacherous Fedorenko himself, were sitting there hanging his shameful head. Though Julius is not so certain that the tide has turned completely, he’s visibly relieved. Toni performs 5BX jumping jacks up and down the hall.

  No one sleeps that night. They drift about like restless ghosts, and every hour on the hour, they reconnoitre, bleary-eyed, in the kitchen for the radio news. Julius twiddles the dial in between announcements, now and then locating a station that broadcasts a bulletin. Each tidbit of information lifts them higher. Finally, even Julius can’t deny that victory is at hand. Even he agrees the UN can go to hell. Let Israel smash its enemies. Once and for all.

  Toward dawn, Lisa brings out crystal glasses and a bottle of Sabra orange liqueur that she bought in a burst of patriotism last week and has been hoarding for this occasion. They clink glasses, shout l’chayim, let the warm glow rise from their bellies to their heads. Humming Hava Nagila, Lisa pulls Julius and Toni to their feet and they link arms and stumble around the kitchen in their night clothes, slippers flapping against the floor. No one worries about the poor Cheung family down below who must be startled out of their sleep by the commotion above their heads. Despite his rumpled pyjamas and the unnatural flush of his cheeks, Toni finds that her father cuts a dignified figure. His noble bald head and greying goatee recall photos of the nineteenth-century European intellectuals who founded the Zionist movement. And her mother, how lovely and girlish she suddenly appears, her dark eyes laughing, her pink satin nightgown swishing around her hips. Toni collides happily against her parents, her father on her left, her mother on her right, swinging them this way and that in the drunken dance. What amazing times! She has entered history. She has fused with a huge and magnificent force. Nothing will ever be the same again.

  Part III

  Jerusalem

  chapter 14

  The bus bumps and lurches up the steep, twisty road through blasted rock, past rusted wrecks of armoured vehicles. Hairpin turns that make Toni’s already queasy stomach flip. A stout hip presses into her side. The standing passengers stumble and grumble “Oy!” Just like Jews. Just like Jews anywhere. Unbelievable!

  Still, who are these people? Soldiers loll over their kitbags. Matrons clutch squirmy toddlers and string nets of groceries. A black-hatted praying guy jerks in his seat. There are sweaty men with briefcases and newspapers held up to their noses. There are girls in flowered miniskirts that show off smooth, tanned legs. The driver wears shorts, sandals, a shirt open almost to his bellybutton. The faces are beautiful or ugly—spectacularly so, either way.

  As Toni leans into the breeze from the open window, her hand slips into her pocket to feel for the postcard that has accompanied her everywhere for weeks. The dog-eared corners feel pleasantly furry. This funny little country will blow you away.

  Hot, dry wind whips over her face. They are in hill country, far from the airport on the humid coastal plain. Graffiti splashed on the dynamited rock is written in the same ancient chicken-scrawl letters of the Kaddish prayer her mother keeps handy in the kitchen drawer back home. This too seems unbelievable.

  “Studenteet?” a voice shrills into her ear.

  Her seat-mate is an oily-skinned crone with sagging breasts and a tight yellow kerchief out of which have escaped bits of lank grey hair. She jabbers, pitching her voice above the blare of peppy music from the radio, hung above the driver at the front of the bus. The old woman repeats “studenteet” more insistently this time. Toni nods and tells her where she’s from.

  “Ah! Ka-na-da!”

  The woman pulls a sad face and makes her fingers walk through the air as if travelling a long distance.

  “Ima! Aba!” she says tragically and slaps her hand to her cheek.

  Toni stiffens in surprise. How would this woman know about Toni’s fierce struggles to convince her parents to let her come to Israel for a year? It began last fall with some tentative musings at the dinner table about how some of her classmates were planning to take a year off before starting university to go to Israel to join a kibbutz. Julius had almost choked on a chicken bone at the idea Toni might do this. Lisa agreed, in principle, that Toni should visit Israel some day to round out her education, but certainly not any time soon. So Toni had dropped the subject. At that point she wasn’t sure Israel would interest her anyway, despite the enticing posters from the Israeli embassy plastered around the neighbourhood. Then came the postcard from Jerusalem. It contained just a few brief offhand lines, but they acted as a summons, galvanizing her vague fantasies into iron determination.

  Her acceptance by Hebrew University
and the generous scholarship that came with it helped soften up her father. She disarmed her mother with a new-found Zionist fervour that so echoed Lisa’s own. Still, both her parents grew frantic as the day of departure drew near, and Toni teetered between excruciating guilt and a desperate urge to get away. How good it felt, at last, to turn the corner of the corridor at the airport in Montreal. Away from her mother’s scrutinizing gaze, from her father’s foreboding eyes, she felt like a birthday balloon let loose. Now she shrugs and makes a hand-waving gesture at her seat-mate on the bus.

  “Ima, Aba, shalom,” she says. The final goodbye, the sobs and hugs and her own brief moment of panic, seem so long ago. At this moment her parents seem like outgrown articles of clothing on a closet floor.

  The old woman returns Toni’s smile with a sly one of her own, elbowing Toni in the ribs. She gestures to one of the young soldiers, twines two fingers together and babbles some Hebrew words. Toni catches the drift: romance, marriage. The woman assumes Toni will be on the lookout for a boyfriend. Her mother, too, dropped broad hints. I wouldn’t be surprised if my little girl catches a nice fish in the Israeli sea.

  Toni turns her head away from the woman to study the craggy peaks above the road, the forests of pines. She is saved from further conversation by the radio now cranked up to what must be the news, delivered by a sombre-voiced announcer. The bus goes still. Everyone listens intently, Toni’s neighbour included. A few heads shake, mouths turn grim. Then static, a change of channel, more music. The old woman flicks the air with her hand as if to say, “Don’t ask.”

  At last, the bus crests a final hill and squat buildings come into view along with TV antennas, carpets slung over balcony rails. Some girls at the front begin to clap and sing “Jerusalem of Gold,” the song that has become like a second national anthem since the end of last year’s war. At a dark narrow station with grubby kiosks and jostling crowds, the bus jerks to a halt. People scramble to their feet, grab for belongings. The air is suddenly thick with heat and exhaust. Toni’s neighbour remains firmly planted in her seat, blocking Toni’s way.

  “Yerushalayim!” she exclaims, squeezing her eyes shut as she lovingly pronounces the city’s name. Then she clutches Toni’s arm and babbles urgently in Hebrew. A middle-aged man with a briefcase twists around and flaps his free hand at the woman to stop her stream of chatter. His deeply lined face and pouting mouth seem set in a perpetually sardonic expression, the look of someone utterly fed up with this world of disappointments. So his next words are a surprise.

  “This is not Jerusalem, this station,” he says in English. “You will see. Yes. Really.”

  He bows his head in thought. His forefinger shoots upward. “The ancient rabbis said ‘Ten portions of beauty gave God to this world and nine of them fell upon Jerusalem.’ You see those soldiers?”

  He gestures toward a group on the platform greeting their comrades with hand slaps and shouts.

  “They go through fire, these boys, without a murmur, but when they bring back to us the Old City and our Wailing Wall, they cry like babies. There is one Jerusalem now. One Jerusalem whole and complete.”

  His voice thickens, his eyes grow moist, his lower lip trembles as if he too would cry like a baby right there amid the press of passengers shoving forward to leave the bus.

  Standing on the platform with her luggage amid the throng, Toni feels in her pocket yet again. The postcard, damp from the sweat of her thighs, touches back. The words lodged in her mind sing out: This funny little country will blow you away. Ya gotta come.

  The man on the bus was right. She has seen towers, walls, gardens, stones like polished coins, light, and more light. Every day she roams the labyrinth of streets and gets lost anew. She drifts into a courtyard where geraniums blaze against shady walls and the sound of a flute spills from an open window. She turns a corner and stumbles into the downtown roar. She follows a stretch of new-laid asphalt to a field of thorns. She beholds a dazzling white building that has shouldered its way into vista of barren hills. And over there, tumbling down a sun-scorched terraced slope, a herd of goats, followed by a swarthy goatherd who looks as if he could have stepped out of the pages of the Golden Treasury of Bible Stories.

  She roams like a smitten lover. She is one of thousands. From the four corners of the earth, young people, mostly Jews, have flocked to Jerusalem. They have come to be part of the miracle, the stunning victory of last year’s war that has marked a new beginning for the homeland. The walls and fences that so lately divided the city have been torn down, forever, the people say. In vacant lots that were once no-man’s-land, rolls of barbed wire wait to be collected, along with bullet-holed signs that read “Danger! Border!” The lots are criss-crossed by both Jews and Arabs seeking shortcuts into once-forbidden territory. New Jewish suburbs are shooting up, built by Arab labourers who carry baskets of dirt on their shoulders. Hammers ring out. Machines clatter.

  At the ulpan, the intensive Hebrew course that will run through the summer, Toni learns about words within words: the Hebrew language is based on three-letter roots out of which blossom a profusion of nouns, verbs, and modifiers. Every name has a meaning. Jerusalem has many.

  “What words do you find in Yerushalayim?” asks Michal, the ulpan teacher. “Yes, shalom. Exactly. And shalem. Very good. And notice the ending, ayim. This means two, a duality. Why? Ah, this is a question for rabbis and mystics. But you will see this ending in other words, and that is why I mention it.”

  Michal strides up and down, her gauzy skirt billowing, her long hands waving. Her skin, like that of most Israelis, bears the ravages of the sun—furrows, crow’s feet—yet her eyes are bright, her gestures energetic, her voice vibrant enough to keep the doziest students awake through the long, hot morning hours. She teaches with a passion for every letter and phrase, the humblest parts of speech. Chalk sprays like sparks as she writes on the board.

  Toni scribbles diligently in her notebook. Shalom = peace. Shalem = wholeness. The ayim ending means two. A suggestion of two cities in one, embedded in the ancient name. A case for the mystically minded, indeed. After just three weeks of Hebrew, she has two crammed-full notebooks to study, along with Michal’s mimeographed handouts, newspaper clippings, and her well-thumbed dictionary.

  In the evenings, in her dorm, Toni reviews and memorizes, trying to block out the chatter of girls in the corridors and that of Brenda, her bouncy, too-friendly roommate. Most of Brenda’s companions are Americans like herself, who travel in packs to the Old City markets, to dances and suppers and Shabbat evenings with the guys at Hebrew Union College. They speak English amongst themselves, but also manage quite well in Hebrew because, unlike Toni, they learned the fundamentals at religious schools and youth groups. Toni lags behind. When university starts in two months, her lectures will be almost entirely in Hebrew. She’s majoring in biology and will be competing for honours with native-born Israelis. There’s not a second to lose.

  Other than Brenda, Toni has only two possible contacts in the city, and she avoids them both, for different reasons. There’s a Mrs Lieberman, related to Mrs Shmelzer, her mother’s boss in Montreal. Mrs Lieberman lives in the well-heeled neighbourhood of Rehavia, and her husband is a doctor. Weeks before Toni’s departure, Lisa began to talk about Mrs Lieberman: how to get in touch with her, when (Not after lunch; Mrs Shmelzer says people sleep after lunch), what to bring (Flowers, one always brings flowers; very cheap in Israel). Mrs Lieberman’s address and phone number lie buried in Toni’s empty suitcase. Toni has no intention of paying a visit. She can see herself being interrogated and fussed over. Detailed reports sent across the seas. Enough!

  The other contact is an entirely different matter. Janet Bloom. She lives in Beit HaKerem, a neighbourhood between the university campus near the centre of town and the new complex of dorms on the western edge of the city. From the window of her ulpan class on campus, Toni can see beyond a sun-drenched wadi to Beit HaKarem’s pines and red-tiled roofs. She resists the impulse that tugs he
r feet in that direction. Soon. But not yet. She wants more of a tan, more Hebrew under her belt, that tough, confident Israeli look, so that when she does finally knock on Janet’s door, she’ll hear, “My God! I never would have recognized you.”

  But Hebrew doesn’t come easily. Toni slogs and strains, yet words refuse to march in orderly procession from her mouth, and she becomes tongue-tied at critical moments. Meanwhile, Brenda, her roommate, engages in easy conversation with Simha, the cleaning lady on their floor. Simha, a Sephardic Jew from Iraq, is short and squat, with swollen ankles and a rasping voice suited to her guttural Hebrew. Each morning Toni hears the slap-slap of Simha’s rag on the terrazzo floors. Brenda asks after Simha’s children. “Ai! Daughters!” Simha sighs. The oldest is twenty-seven and still no bridegroom. A tragedy! A scandal! Brenda argues the cause of the modern woman, while Simha counters with age-old wisdom.

  “Habibti, listen. After twenty-four, a girl is overripe fruit.”

  Toni hears everything through the door that Brenda once again forgot to shut. Brenda’s pronunciation is terrible—so Yankee, those broad vowels—but the words flow. To learn Hebrew, Michal says, you have to engage with the people: talk, ask directions, bargain, discuss, argue, don’t be shy. Which is hard for someone who is.

  And it’s not just language that eludes her. There are mysteries in faces and gestures, encounters that make her feel out of her depth.

  One day, waiting at a bus stop, Toni finds herself being scrutinized by three Arab workmen. They are dust-covered, leather-skinned, wear keffiyehs, baggy pants, torn shoes. There are men like these all over the city. According to Michal, they are grateful to have jobs and to be under Israeli rule, enjoying a much higher standard of living than their cousins in Jordan, never mind what their terrorist leaders say abroad. Squatting in the shade of a wall, they smoke and watch her out of eyes dark as new-laid tar. Are they angry, judgemental, leering? Toni becomes aware of her long bare legs sticking out of her shorts. A foreign girl’s legs. Michal would say these people have to get used to modern ways. They can’t live in the Middle Ages forever. The men make no gesture except to lift their cigarettes to their mouths and exhale the smoke. Yet their gazes drill into her. Toni wishes she could manage that quintessential Israeli gesture of disdain, a shrug and toss of the head accompanied by a sharp click of the tongue. Tzuk! But her mouth is too dry, her sense of rightness too uncertain.