Cafe Nevo

by Barbara Rogan

  Sighs, clicks, and murmurs from the passengers. “Ai, ai, ai,” wailed the Yemenite woman. Tears coursed down the furrows of her cheeks. Ilana took her hand.

  “You have children serving there?” she asked.

  “They’re all my children,” the woman wept “My sweet babes. Ai, ai, ai.”

  Ilana pressed the hand, then let it go. She never knew when her own brothers were doing their reserve duty in Lebanon and so lived with constant fear.

  The nut-brown face then peered into hers, and strong fingers gripped Ilana’s arm. “God grant you a daughter,” the old woman whispered defiantly. “He should spare you a son; He should spare you the heartache.”

  “My mother always prayed for boys,” Ilana said dreamily. “She said there were worse things in life than a clean death on the battlefield.”

  “True, true,” said the Yemenite, peering at her with frightened, beady eyes.

  Embarrassed, Ilana smiled weakly, removed her arm, and turned back to the window, leaning her forehead against the warm glass. The jolting of the bus aggravated her nausea, which had set in with a passion since her return from London. She wondered how she would stand up to the pain of labor and birth: would she bear it bravely, or would she break down like those women she’d heard of, who filled the labor room with their shrill cries of “Mama, Mama!”? Her own mother had borne her labor pains without a cry or a whimper, but when Ilana was placed in her arms, she sobbed without surcease for three days. Her doctor was astonished. He had been a friend of her family in Germany and had known Katya all her life. “A modern European woman like you,” he remonstrated, “should be above such foolish prejudice! I might expect it from your husband, but you!” Too far gone to resent or even notice the racial slur, Katya railed back at him: “What good is a girl? What can she do?” Her Iraqi husband forgot his own disappointment in terror of his wife’s, and consoled her in the only way he could. “The next one,” he promised, patting her arm awkwardly, “the next one will be a boy.”

  And though it proved true, that not only the next child but also the three who came after were male, Katya never entirely forgave her first-born. Yitzhak Maimon’s preference for sons was shallow, a cultural prejudice that dissipated as he grew to love his daughter. Katya was less easily reconciled. Ilana could not remember a time when she did not know the story of her birth. Sometimes Katya told it as if ironically, hugging her daughter to her side with a bony arm. Other times, in private, she told it in anger, reproachfully. One way or another she told it often. But Ilana was not allowed to blame her mother, who had suffered greatly under the Nazis and would bear the mark of her captivity until the day she died. Ilana was required to understand that Jewish sons were a mother’s weapons against the world of Jew-haters, while Jewish daughters were hostages to their hatred; thus sons redeemed their parents’ suffering while daughters increased it.

  In fifteen years nothing had changed. Inside the Kiryat Ata bus station, old men and women hunkered against the walls, a few pathetic baubles spread out on black cloths before their feet. A hunchback of indeterminate sex pushed a desultory broom across the filthy floor. Ticket clerks drank tea inside their cages, and in the station kiosk, flies buzzed around meat cooking on a rotating shwarma spit.

  Outside, shirtless youths lounged on the pavement, smoking, ogling women, talking among themselves. Someone recognized Ilana and shouted her name aloud. A group of boys followed her for several blocks, keeping their distance, until one, more intrepid than the rest, approached and asked if 1,000 shekels were enough. Ilana shoved him out of her way, and his friends jeered.

  Her parents lived in a project on the outskirts of town, a thirty-minute walk from the station. As she drew nearer, Ilana found herself walking more and more slowly, until she came to a complete halt just outside their building, which like all the others in the project was decorated with lines of washing. A gaggle of girls younger than Ilana’s exile were playing hopscotch in the streets. They stopped to gape at her, for even her simplest clothes could not disguise the fact that Ilana came from another world, and one, the oldest, stepped forward bravely to ask whom she was looking for. Ilana smiled but did not reply.

  She climbed the four flights of steps leading up to the apartment. Dimly lit by naked bulbs, the stairwell was not too dim for her to see the grimy hand prints on the peeling walls. Though there was a faint, pervasive smell of urine in the hall, her parents’ landing was swept clean, and the door freshly painted. Ilana knocked softly. She heard no footsteps inside; but suddenly the door flew open, and her mother stood before her.

  Katya’s pale eyes widened; the corners of her mouth tightened. “You!” she breathed.

  “May I come in?” Ilana said.

  Her mother crossed her arms over her chest and stood pat.

  “We could talk in the hall.” Already doors were cracking open, curious eyes peering out. Grimacing, Katya stepped back. Ilana followed her inside and shut the door behind them. The smell of roasting chicken made her mouth water. “What do you want?” Katya said.

  Ilana walked into the salon and saw the same old ugly, functional furniture, somber colors, bare, tiled floors, and drawn draperies she had grown up with. Even Katya’s dress was familiar. Like everything she wore, it was high-necked and long-sleeved, to hide not only the tattoo but all the rest of her as well. Her family had been Orthodox, and though she had lost her faith in the camp, Katya retained her modesty.

  The immaculate penury of the home and her mother’s appearance were what Ilana had expected; she had known that every cent that her mother so grudgingly accepted had gone for her brothers’ support and education. The only change in the room was a portrait of Menachem Begin embroidered on velvet which hung over the couch, another of Golda over the table, and a potpourri of photos of her brothers, together and separate, which stood on a side table, Ilana lifted the pictures one by one, examining them closely, saying their names in a small wondering voice, while Katya watched tensely. “They’ve grown into fine men. I want to know them. Mama, I want an end to it. I want my family back.”

  Her eyes locked onto her daughter’s, Katya picked up the hem of her apron and began to dry her already-dry hands. She breathed deeply through her nose and after a while said without inflection, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Does something have to be wrong with me?”

  “You never came before.”

  “You threw me out. You said you never wanted to see me again.”

  “But I’ve seen you anyway, haven’t I?” Katya retorted savagely. “On magazine covers, in newspapers: ‘Playgirl Ilana Maimon.’ You might have had the decency to change your name!”

  “I didn’t want to change my name.” Ilana sat on the couch and felt the broken springs sag beneath her.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Katya snapped, rubbing the apron over her hands, which now were liver-spotted and—was it possible?—reduced in size. Not only her hands but she herself seemed both smaller and thinner than Ilana remembered. The word “cancer” entered her mind, was examined and dismissed. Her mother’s complexion was good and her bearing erect; only her size seemed oddly reduced, as if she’d been washed repeatedly in boiling water.

  “How is Papa?”

  “Fine.”

  “And my brothers?”

  “Fine.”

  “And you’re fine, too.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, too. Is this what you came for?”

  “Mama—”

  “Don’t call me that!” A feather stroke of pain brushed over Katya’s face.

  “I want us to be a family again. Haven’t I been punished long enough?”

  “You got what you wanted,” Katya said. “You can’t have everything.” Yet Ilana sensed a softening truculence in her tone, a willingness to be overcome, and for the first time she felt hope.

  “I’m ready to change my life,” she said. This time it was unmistakable: Katya’s restless hands stilled, released the apron, and fell to her side, palms opened toward
Ilana. She took a short step forward.

  Ilana jumped up to meet her. The sudden change of position drained the blood from her head, and she staggered backward, falling into the couch. Katya’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Ilana bent forward, forearms folded protectively across her abdomen.

  Katya’s eyes followed her arms. “You’re pregnant!”

  “Mama—”

  “You slut!” she screamed. “You filthy slut!”

  “Mama, I need you. I need a family.”

  Katya covered her face with her apron and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Oh, God, the shame. Why did I live, why did I live?” When Ilana arose, more slowly this time, Katya threw out her arms, not to embrace but to ward her off. “Get rid of it,” she said, her face pinched and white. “Cast it out”

  “Don’t say that,” Ilana begged.

  “Cast out the child of sin, or you, too, shall be destroyed!”

  “I want the child. I came for your forgiveness, and instead you curse me. Oh, Mama, you would treat your worst enemy with more compassion. Have you no feeling for me at all?”

  Katya cried, “It’s you who have no feeling for me! No one forced you to become what you are! You, a free Jewish woman, chose to live the life of a whore. You are my punishment, but I’m no fool Christian, to turn the other cheek. Haven’t I suffered enough in my life? Oh, no, you wicked Jezebel, you traitor to your race. Get out of my house! I disown you, I spit on you and your bastard. I wish I were rich, I wish I were a millionaire, so that your disinheritance would cost you something you care about.”

  Ilana stumbled to the door, but turned once more in silent entreaty. Katya shrank back, covering her face. “I thought I had reached the end of my suffering over you, but I was wrong,” she said. “You still have the power to torment me. I pray God never to see your face again.”

  Ilana ran up to the roof and stood close to the edge, looking down. The heat, collected and stored by the tarred surface, burnt her feet through her sandals, but Ilana shivered with cold. By jumping, she thought, she would put an end to three lives: her own, her child’s, and her mother’s, three generations with a single leap. Though this thought presented itself with cinematic clarity, accompanied by a vision of herself lying crushed on the stones below while neighbors tried to shield her mother from the bloody sight, both the thought and the vision lacked compelling force; she felt no impetus, only curiosity, like someone peering down a well.

  Something fluttered inside her, as though the tiny fetus sensed danger and struggled desperately, butting, kicking, and punching with its primitive limbs to make itself felt. Ilana responded with a wave of fierce protectiveness. “Be calm,” she crooned, kneeling beside the parapet, “be calm. Nothing will harm us. We are safe here.”

  The roof had always been her refuge. Especially after fights with Katya, she would escape the crowded apartment (one bedroom, divided by a curtain, she shared with her parents, the other belonged to her four brothers, while the living room was preserved in spotless order and inutility for the entertainment of visitors who never came) for the roof, where she spent hours and days gazing out beyond Kiryat Ata, beyond the industrial wasteland that surrounded it, over the hills to the green slopes of the Carmel, where, in a kind of sustained dream nurtured over years, she imagined herself living, a grown woman, beautiful and skilled in the usages of beauty, powerful, with men at her command and a palatial apartment all her own, staffed with invisible servants who cooked and cleaned for her—although being so very much in demand, between parties and dances and dinners in the finest Haifa restaurants, she made little use of the cook, except for intimate, candle-lit dinners for two.

  Her family did not totally disappear in this opulent dream world, but were relegated to their proper places: her brothers confined to the kitchen, her parents, with the respect due their relationship if not their behavior, allowed into her reception rooms when no one else was there.

  Twenty years later, as she stood in the same spot overlooking almost the same vista, Ilana was struck by how much of her dream she had achieved. She was as rich as she needed to be. She had traveled further, and in a more luxurious manner, than the child-Ilana had had scope to dream of. And although she had little power of her own, she had access to those who did, and she was an expert borrower and user of others’ power. Her only failure lay in preserving her roots; that connection had been severed, her four little brothers grown from children into tall attractive men without her knowing them.

  She saw her mother’s face again, heard the bitter words, “You got what you wanted.” It was true: she had been determined enough and unscrupulous enough at twenty-one to discard her family to attain it. Even now, she could not regret it.

  Not for anything would she go back to that tiny, airless apartment; designed, as David would say, by men of little soul for men of little soul, to that press and stink of bodies, the snatched privacy, and the constant noise.

  Longing, suddenly, to be safe in her apartment; cocooned in luxury and alone, Ilana decided to find the nearest cab stand and taxi back to Tel Aviv. But as she reached the door leading to the stairwell, it opened, and her father stepped out onto the roof.

  He blinked in the strong sunlight; squinting at Ilana, who backed away warily.

  “Your mother called me,” he said. “The neighbors told me you came up here.”

  “I was just leaving,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But come for a walk with me first.”

  He led her to a forest on the outskirts of the village, behind the housing project. When Ilana had played there with her brothers, it was a child-sized forest with trees no higher than a grown-up’s head. Now the trees were tall enough and the foliage broad enough to block out the sun. A cool breeze shifted through the trees, and in the shade the temperature dropped ten degrees. By mutual accord they paused to rest just inside the wood, leaning against two trees some feet apart. Staring at the ground, her father said, “Your mother tells me you are with child.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the father Jewish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to have the baby?”

  She paused. “I want to.”

  “And keep it?”

  “If I have it, of course I’ll keep it.”

  Her father nodded and said, “That is right.” Ilana lifted up her head and gazed at him, remembering him as he had been: a stern man, not given to laughter, fair and judicious with his children. She had feared him in those days, feared his untold stories, which must have been too terrible to tell—for if not, why not tell them?—and his temper, which, though well controlled, was fierce. He believed in respect and discipline, and would strap his boys (though not Ilana) for serious infringements. The worst offense of all, for which corporal punishment was mandatory, was rudeness toward their mother. The children learned very young that nothing but absolute respect toward Katya would be tolerated; they were taught to rise when she entered a room and to address her as “ma’am.”

  She felt none of that fear now. Perhaps all those years of sinning had produced some wisdom after all, or at least an area of clear vision, for now his emotions seemed as legible as any other man’s, though his purpose was firmer. She saw that he felt love as well as anger for her, that he was torn in his feelings but not in his determination. She read fatigue in the postman’s slump of his shoulders, as if he’d been carrying that bag for too long now ever to straighten up. For no particular reason she remembered the time her brother Hezi brought home a stray. Katya, always indulgent toward the boys, shook her head doubtfully and said, “Ask your father.” When Yitzhak came home, all five children were lined up at the door to greet him. He looked pleased, then suspicious; his eyes traveled over the ascending line of his children’s heads to meet his wife’s. Katya shrugged and nodded toward the kitchen. When
Yitzhak saw the rangy yellow Bedouin mutt; a half-breed Canaani, his brows came together fiercely. “Can we keep him?” the children chorused hopefully.

  “Keep a dog?” he thundered without raising his voice. “Keep a dog, feed a dog, when Jews are starving?”

  The children fell back, but need not have bothered; Yitzhak had eyes only for his wife. “Feed a dog?” he asked, reproachfully.

  He ordered the children to find another home for it or else give it to the pound the next day. The dog was allowed to stay the night, but Yitzhak absolutely forbade them to feed it. “If you feed it,” he said, “it always comes back.”

  Sadly, the children went to bed, where they fell asleep to the plaintive lullaby of the dog. Very late at night, Ilana awoke to silence. She slipped out of bed and crept past her parents’ bed, through the living room, and into the kitchen. Her father stood beside the icebox, watching as the dog lapped up a saucer of milk. He looked up and said sharply, “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I woke up,” she whispered. She expected to be sent summarily back to bed, but instead, her father fixed her with a brooding stare, then shook his head and said in a voice that was neither apology nor explanation, but trembled with passion, “I hate hunger. Even in a dog.”

  Now her father shook his head to rid himself of her gaze. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “You had no right to upset her like that.”

  “It was a mistake. Quite useless. I see that now.”

  “Worse than useless. Wrong.”

  “Wrong” was a word seldom heard in her walk of life. In her father’s mouth it clamored like an old church bell.

  “She was wrong,” Ilana said, her voice strident. “She was cruel.”

  The forest was very still. Yitzhak clenched his fists but did not raise them from his side. “Cruel?” he said. “She is charity itself.”

  “But I came to beg for forgiveness and reconciliation. What charity is it to turn away the prodigal daughter with a curse?”

  “You don’t understand how she suffered—”