Three Floors Up
Page 1
Copyright © 2015 Eshkol Nevo
First published in Israel as Shalosh Komot
by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan, Tel Aviv, in 2015.
English translation copyright © 2017 Eshkol Nevo
Published by arrangement with the Institute of
the Translation of Hebrew Literature
Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
Text designer: Julie Fry
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Nevo, Eshkol, author. | Silverston, Sondra, translator.
Title: Three floors up / Eshkol Nevo ; translated by Sondra Silverston.
Other titles: Shalosh komot. English
Description: New York : Other Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017001627| ISBN 9781590518786 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781590518793 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PJ5055.35.E92 S5313 2017 | DDC 892.43/7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001627
Ebook ISBN 9781590518793
Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v4.1
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
First Floor
Second Floor
Third Floor
First Floor
What I’m trying to tell you is that underneath the surprise, there was something else that Ayelet and I didn’t dare talk about, that in the back of our minds we knew—okay, I knew—that it could happen. The signs were there the whole time but we chose to ignore them. What could be more convenient than next-door neighbors who watch your kids for you? Think about it. Five minutes before you have to leave, you just take your daughter as she is, no bags, no carriage, knock on the door across the hall, and that’s it. She’s happy to stay with them. They’re happy to have her. And you’re happy to be free to do your thing. And it’s cheaper than a regular babysitter. Talking about stuff like this is unpleasant, but I don’t have the energy to censor myself, so I’ll just tell you everything and you promise not to put it in one of your books, okay?
A couple of pensioners like them have no idea what the going price for a babysitter is in the free market. They’re not part of the babysitters’ information network. Which means that you can tell them any price you want. So we did. Twenty shekels an hour. Nine years ago, that was reasonable. Low, but reasonable. In the meantime, the average price in our area climbed to forty, but we stayed at twenty. Every once in a while, Ayelet would remind me that we should pay them more, you know. And I’d say, yes, of course we’ll pay them more. But we stayed at twenty. And they didn’t say a word. Refined people, you know, like all those German Jews, the yekkim. He walks around the house in a suit and tie and she’s a piano teacher at the conservatory, says things like “if you would be so kind.” Even if they wanted to object, their yekke pride wouldn’t let them. And we told ourselves—okay, maybe not out loud, but we thought it—what do they have in their boring lives, those people. They should thank us. They should be paying us for the privilege of being with Ofri.
I don’t remember exactly how old she was the first time we left her with them, but she was pretty young. How long do you have to wait to have sex with a woman after she gives birth? A month? A month and a half? That’s how it started. With sex. Ayelet had toxemia the last month of her pregnancy, so I couldn’t touch her. A month after she gave birth she was still bleeding. And I was so horny I was practically exploding. It had never happened to me before—in the middle of a meeting I could stare at a woman client and think about dragging her to the restroom and ripping her clothes off. And the thing is, women pick up on that hunger. Loads of them came on to me during that period, loads of them. And it’s not like I’m Brad Pitt or anything. I got a text from the spinning instructor that you wouldn’t believe. I’ll show it to you sometime. But I kept a lid on it. I bit my lips hard and Ayelet appreciated it. She didn’t say, “I appreciate it,” she wouldn’t say anything like that. But she’d always tell me, “I miss your touch, I need it as much as you do.” One night she suggested, “Let’s leave her with Herman and Ruth for a few minutes.” And she ran her finger over my shoulder, slowly. Which is a kind of signal we have.
It was her idea. Ayelet initiated the first time. Together we knocked on their door and asked if they could take Ofri for a few minutes. I think they understood exactly what was going on. What the urgency was. You can see that they’re the kind of old folks who still have that spark between them. Herman’s a tall man who stands very straight. Looks like a German chancellor. And Ruth has long white hair she always wears pulled back in a ponytail, which makes her look more like a woman than an old lady. She asked Ayelet when Ofri ate the last time, and Ayelet told her that she shouldn’t be hungry now, and in any case, it’s only for a few minutes. She asked whether she took a pacifier and wanted us to leave a diaper too, to be on the safe side. Then Herman started making funny noises for Ofri and tickled her stomach with the tip of his tie. Ofri smiled at him. Smiles at that age are instinctive, not genuine, you know. But still I said to Ayelet, “Look at how she’s smiling at him.” And Ruth said, “Children are crazy about Herman.”
Ofri wouldn’t go to just anyone when she was a baby. She even cried when her grandmother held her. But the minute we put her in Ruth’s arms, she snuggled up to her, put her head on her breast, and played with her long hair with her fingers. Ruth said, sha, sha, sha, and stroked her cheek. Ayelet bent down to Ruth’s height and said to Ofri, “We’ll be back in a few minutes, okay sweetie?” Ofri looked at her with that clever expression of hers, then moved her eyes to me. It looked like she was about to cry. But no. She only burrowed deeper into Ruth’s chest and Ruth said, “Please, if you would be so kind, do not worry. I raised three children and five grandchildren.” Ayelet said again that it would only be a few minutes, then stroked Ofri’s cheek one last time.
As soon as our door slammed shut behind us, I grabbed her ass, but she froze and said, “Wait a minute, do you hear crying?” We stopped and listened, but all we heard were the normal sounds of the widow in the apartment above us dragging furniture. We waited another few seconds just to be sure, and in the end Ayelet took my hand and said, “Please, if you would be so kind, no foreplay, yes?” And pulled me into the bedroom.
Herman and Ruth’s grandchildren are scattered all over the world. Two in Vienna. Two in Palo Alto. And the oldest, who lives with her mother in Paris, comes to visit every summer and drives the teenage boys in the neighborhood crazy with her miniskirts, her tanned skin and green eyes. They wait for her outside the building like cats in heat, and she toys with them. Touches them offhandedly when she talks but doesn’t let them touch her. A regular little mademoiselle. Already in high heels. Wearing women’s perfume. Last summer Ruth sent her to ask us for eggs and I answered the door without my shirt, so she said, in a French accent, “Monsieur Arno, put on a shirt. It is not very genteel to be like this in front of a lady.” And she gave a flirtatious giggle. I brought her the eggs without laughing in re
turn, thinking that you could tell the little minx didn’t have a father. That if I were her father, I’d make her take off that mini. But never mind, we’ll get to her later.
Herman and Ruth’s other grandchildren also come to visit once or twice a year. And then their apartment, which is usually quiet except for the sounds of the piano and the voices on the German-language cable channel, suddenly becomes noisy and full of life. Herman builds the children slides and swings in the garden. Before he retired, he worked for the Israel Aircraft Industry, so he has the touch for things like that. He also makes them model airplanes they can fly with a remote control. If it’s summer, he takes a pool out of the storeroom. A huge one, made of hard plastic. And he builds an aircraft carrier in the pool that they have to try and land the model planes on. Then he takes the carrier out of the pool and they change into bathing suits and climb inside, splashing each other. But they’re not wild. They’re well-behaved kids, not like the ones we have here. They eat with a knife and fork. Say hello to you on the stairs.
When their grandchildren fly back to their countries, Herman and Ruth are depressed. It’s a regular routine. The day after the flight, their door is locked and you know not to knock. There’s no way to explain it, as if there’s a heaviness in the door that transmits the message: not now. Two days after the grandkids leave, they themselves knock on our door to say that if we want, we can bring them Ofri. Herman says to her, “Give Herman a kiss,” and bends down so she can reach his cheek. She kisses him carefully so as not to be scratched by his bristles. Ruth says to Ayelet, “If you need to, you can leave her for a short time too, no charge.” She adds almost in a whisper, “It’s so hard for Herman when the grandchildren leave us. He hasn’t slept for two days, hasn’t eaten, hasn’t shaved. I don’t know what to do with him.”
That business with the kiss, for instance. When I told you before that there were signs, I meant things like that. It started with asking Ofri for a kiss when she came in. One on each cheek. But this last year, he could suddenly open the door for no reason when we were on the stairs on the way in or out, bend down, and call to her, “Hey Ofri, give Herman a kiss.”
Telling you this now makes me want to die: was the writing on the wall ever clearer? But we didn’t want to see it, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Ayelet’s mother is not the person you want to leave your kids alone with. My parents retired and are always taking long trips. South America, China. All of a sudden, they decided to be muchilleros. That’s exactly when Yaeli was born. And she had that complication with her breathing. We spent weeks at her bedside in the hospital, Ayelet and I, taking shifts, and when you were on shift, you couldn’t fall asleep because maybe the minute you closed your eyes would be the minute she stopped breathing. You went straight to work after your shift—there wasn’t even time to go home and change. I’m not making excuses, I’m just saying that we needed Herman and Ruth more and more. In the afternoon, in the evening, on weekends. Sometimes we’d leave Ofri with them for just half an hour. Sometimes half a day.
Hey, I just remembered—how could I have forgotten—one morning, when Ayelet came to relieve me and start her shift at the hospital, she told me about a dream she had at night: We were both waiting outside the operating room. But the girl being operated on, the girl in danger, was Ofri, not Yaeli. And she wasn’t nine in the dream, but a year old. And the surgeon, the one who came out of the operating room to tell us the results, was Herman. Except that instead of wearing a doctor’s white coat, he was wearing a patient’s gown, the kind that’s open in the back. She couldn’t see the opening in the dream. She just knew it was there. Then Herman put his finger between his eyebrows and said, “Ofri will live.” And she was surprised that he was talking about Ofri and not Yaeli, but didn’t want to ask because she didn’t want to ruin the sense of relief she felt.
I didn’t interpret the dream for her. When we first started going out in Haifa and I once tried to interpret a dream she had, she told me that I was terrible at it and I should just listen. But even if I had interpreted it for her, I couldn’t connect it to what happened a year later. Sure, I would have told her something like: Maybe in your dream, only in your dream, you’d rather that Ofri was sick because she’s stronger and has a better chance of fighting it.
That’s how it is. Until you have a second daughter, you don’t really understand your first one. Because of Yaeli, we realized how unusual Ofri was. How rare it was, that calmness of hers. Her backbone. All her teachers, even in nursery school, always told us that the child was mature for her age. But we needed to go through Yaeli, with all her dramas, to understand what they were talking about.
I’ll tell you something that sounds bad, but I don’t care: in some way, it would have been easier if what happened had happened to Yaeli. With her, everything’s simple: When she’s sad, she cries. When she’s frustrated, she lies on the floor and screams. Ofri doesn’t scream. She absorbs. Ponders. Quietly considers things. And you have no idea what’s going on inside her. Only sometimes, in the end, she says a few precise words. Then goes back to looking at the world, absorbing everything she can. I’m telling you, the kid’s like walking radar. When she was little she could tell when Ayelet and I were going to fight just from the energies in the room, and she’d stand between us and say, “Daddy, don’t fight.”
She was also the first to see that there was something wrong with Herman. Even before Ruth. One day she came back from their place and said, “Herman’s broken.” What do you mean, broken? “He keeps forgetting things.” What things? “Where he put his glasses, where the door to the garden is, his name.” Maybe he’s playing with you, Ofriki. Maybe it’s a kind of game. “No, Daddy, he’s broken.”
One evening a few days later, they knocked on our door. Both of them. Herman went straight to Ofri, asked her for a kiss and then got down on all fours so she could ride around the living room on him. Ruth handed Ayelet a plate full of slices of her marble cake and asked if she could use our fax. Every once in a while, they used it or asked Ayelet to help them with their old computer that was always getting stuck. And we’d ask them for milk. Or eggs. Or onions. We don’t have what you have in Tel Aviv, places open twenty-four hours a day, and if you’re out of tomato paste for shakshuka, it means there’s no shakshuka and you’ll have to eat your eggs plain, with no tomato sauce. Sometimes they’d run out of oil or sugar too, but not as often as we did. It wasn’t really balanced, but we never bothered to balance it. Just the opposite. We told ourselves that that’s what made it great. They were neighbors like neighbors used to be. Before people had ulterior motives. I’ll tell you even more than that: these last few years, every time we thought about moving to a larger apartment so the girls would have their own room and Ayelet could have a normal workroom, one of us would say, “But what are we going to do without Herman and Ruth?” And the discussion ended there.
So on the day that Ruth came in to use the fax, she didn’t go straight to the machine in the corner as she always did, but stayed at the door. Her hair, which she always wore in a ponytail, was loose and she kept running her fingers through it. She said quietly, “Something’s happening to Herman. Something’s wrong with him. Yesterday, I came home from work and found him wandering around in the street, asking passersby where he lived.”
Ayelet offered her something to drink and asked her to sit down, and Ruth sighed and sat down. Herman kept galloping around the living room with Ofri on his back. I took Yaeli in my arms so Ayelet could make Ruth a cup of coffee with milk.
“All those years alone in the house,” Ruth said, “it hasn’t been good for him.”
“You can go crazy from being alone in the house all day long,” Ayelet said.
And I said, “Yes, that’s what finally got to me when I was running my own business from home.”
Then Ruth said, “But what can we do, I have to keep working. His pension isn’t enough for us.”
“Tell me,” I asked her, “don’t we owe you money?”
Ruth said, “Don’t be silly, pay me when you can. Your little girl is a source of joy for Herman. And that’s the most important thing, especially now.”
Ayelet said, “Drink your coffee, Ruth.”
Ruth stopped to take a sip, then continued, “He was the most attractive fellow on the kibbutz. Those blue-gray eyes of his. Like a cat’s. And he had that Israeli tan. I was new. Right off the boat. When they saw that I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, they warned me, that one changes girls like they were socks. He’s only interested in one thing when it comes to girls. But I didn’t care what they said about Herman. I thought to myself, he’s like that because he still hasn’t met me!”
“And were you right?” Ayelet asked with a smile.
Ruth looked at Herman and Ofri with total seriousness. “I was right and I was wrong.” Then suddenly she was quiet, sipping her coffee and running her long pianist’s fingers through her hair again.
Ayelet told her that if she needed help in the near future, we were there, and I added, “Don’t be shy, really.”
“Thank you,” Ruth said. “Really, you are wonderful neighbors.”
That night I said to Ayelet, “There’s no way Ofri’s staying alone with Herman anymore.”
“Yes, you’re right. And we have to pay them. It’s not right for us to drag it out like this. Do you have any cash?”
“No.”
“Take some out tomorrow?” she suggested.
“Yes, sure, how much do we owe them?”
“I don’t know, a lot, at least six or seven hundred.”
“Okay, I’ll withdraw a thousand.”