Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo

  During the last minute of Chopin’s Piano Concerto no. 1, the music swells. The piano, the violins, the oboes, they all crescendo at once. At first it sounds as if the instruments are arguing with each other about which ones can play louder, but during the final seconds, they all blend, you can no longer hear each instrument separately, and the only clear thing is that the end is approaching…

  Nevertheless, I want to separate the details from each other, Michael. Since you weren’t with me at those moments (as you would have been if you hadn’t been such a stubborn mule), you can at least picture the scene:

  First of all, Noit is much greener than I expected.

  Meadows, bushes, palm trees with fronds large enough to shade you from the sun. Window boxes filled with blooming plants. Low, simple houses. And between them, paths wide enough only for bicycles.

  But no one is riding a bicycle in the blazing heat of the noonday sun. Everything is utterly still. No one comes into or out of the row of houses. There is no movement. Even the hammocks are motionless. We keep driving. Slowly. The front yards here, I notice, are full of the pieces of junk that are typical of backyards: the backseat of a car without the car, a couch with torn upholstery, a rusty scooter. Abandoned.

  At the end of the row of houses and front yards—a temporary shack. Without window boxes. In front of it are laundry lines filled with clothes and clothespins—proof that people actually live here—and beside them, a pickup truck, its bed covered with yellow canvas.

  We stop. The wheels of our car crunch the dirt. The hum of the engine stops abruptly. Avner Ashdot turns to look at me to check that I am all right.

  At almost that exact moment, two doors open—the car door and the door of the shack. I emerge from the car door. Your son’s wife emerges from the door of the shack. Delicate, that is the only word to describe her. Soft bones. Long blond hair. Small wrinkles around her mouth. A certain affront in her upper lip which, at first, reminds me of something, but I can’t remember what, until I realize: it reminds me of the affront in Adar’s upper lip. He follows her out. Bearded, expression grim, holding a baby. He suddenly stops moving, as if he wants to maintain a safe distance from me.

  His delicate wife, however, doesn’t keep a safe distance. She walks toward us, her hand on her waist, pecks her father on the cheek, takes his hand, and says, “Thank you Dad, for bringing Devora.” And then, without adding a word, takes me to see the baby.

  The stents are hurting me very much, but I follow her. Already at first glance I can see: Your grandson, Michael, looks like you—the devil’s work. The high forehead, the nose, the slightly folded ears. The coloring is Avner’s, but the features—yours.

  I asked her what his name was. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to ask. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to speak at all.

  “Benyamin.”

  “Can I…hold him?”

  She looked at Adar for permission.

  And he, without looking at me, said no. Then he turned on his heel and went back into the shack.

  His wife hurried to put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be upset,” she said. “He’s a little bit in shock right now, that’s all.”

  So am I, I wanted to say. So am I.

  For two days your son didn’t say a word to me, good or bad. For two days we were all action. And action was definitely needed there, in their shack.

  It seemed that the fear of making mistakes paralyzed them and that their anxiety spread to the baby. Maya couldn’t breast-feed. She had no milk and her body still hadn’t recovered from the difficult birth, so the baby drank formula. He suffered from gas pains, and they suffered along with him. I’m not at all sure they understood that he was screaming because of gas pains. They were so…lost. It’s hard to believe that someone could be so clueless in this age of the Internet. But they had no Internet connection. And they didn’t even have a changing table for the baby. I’m no expert in this either, right? Years had passed since I had cared for a baby. Even so, I felt like an expert. Adar always had good hands, so I asked Maya to ask him to build a changing table. It was ready in a few hours. He asked with a glance where to put it, and with a movement of my head I indicated where the best place was. I sent Avner to Beersheba to buy a different brand of formula, a rocking cradle, a bath seat, and some toys. Adar had to take Maya’s place in the babushka hothouses and at the same time, collect honey from the hives, and during the many hours he wasn’t home, there was no one to help ease Benyamin’s gas pains. Maya couldn’t hold him for more than a few minutes without her stitches hurting her. I asked her to ask Adar to let me hold the baby when he was out of the house. He was only a few meters away from me when I asked. He was washing dishes in the small kitchen, and I was wiping down the new changing table with a rag. I could have spoken to him, but I was afraid he wouldn’t answer, so I asked her to give him the message. With a brief movement of his beard, he agreed to let me hold Benyamin. I thought that was a good sign.

  When Adar left for the hothouses, I picked up the baby and put him on my shoulder, patted his back lightly, and sang him the songs I used to sing to Adar when he was a baby. After a while, my arms hurt, so I put him in the cradle Avner had brought from Beersheba. He cried. I picked him up again. He liked being in my arms. I liked that he liked it. It gave me confidence. When Adar was a baby, he didn’t like anything I did. I always thought he wanted something else. I sent Avner to Beersheba again to buy a baby carrier. He drove there for the second time that day, anxious to please. I bathed the baby, and when I saw that he liked it, that it soothed him, I bathed him again a few hours later. Each time I soaped his folded ears, I smiled inwardly, thinking of you, Michael. I was sorry that you weren’t with me, that you would never know what it was like to hold a grandchild. And I was furious at you. For locking Adar out of your heart and entering into a pact of silence with a part of me that had grown tired, that wanted to believe you when you said that even if there had been a moment when we could have saved him, we had missed it.

  I was furious at you for having the nerve, after all that, to die before me. And leave me alone. Completely alone. My fury at you was so intense, Michael, that it would have scorched your flesh if you had been beside me. And I was sorry that you weren’t beside me. To be scorched.

  Avner came back from Beersheba with the carrier. He glanced at Maya, making sure she saw how hard he was trying. He brought me an almond croissant. I managed to take two bites of it, no more, because just then Benyamin woke up. I put him into the carrier I’d harnessed to myself and went out to the yard with him to get some air. I needed air. The sun was setting and it wasn’t so hot anymore. His tiny head protruded above the straps of the carrier.

  He seemed to be smiling at me, and I thought that was another good sign.

  Then Adar came back from the hothouses. And walked right past me. Without looking at me. As if I were a stranger.

  You weren’t in court, so you didn’t see, but that’s exactly how he walked past the husband of the woman he ran over: as if he didn’t exist at all.

  Benyamin woke up at night. That’s just how it is—babies wake up at night. Maya went to him. I got up with her and we made him a bottle. She held him and I fed him. When she got tired and started having pain again, I took him, wrapped him in a blanket, and went out to the yard with him again.

  Nights are different in the Arava. There are more stars in the sky. The air is drier. Wind chimes tinkle gently in the distance. Which means there’s a wind.

  I walked along the empty paths of the farm, rocking Benyamin in my arms and singing a lullaby to him. He liked that, and his long lashes had already fallen by the end of the second verse. I used to sing that lullaby to Adar too, but without success. Yasmina, the nanny who replaced me after three months, used to sing him songs in Ladino, which he actually did like. I asked her to teach them to me, and she agreed. She even wrote the words down on a piece of paper so I could practice singing them. Can you believe it? I practiced songs in Ladino in the car on the way home.
But when I sang them to him, he kicked his feet in the air in frustration.

  It wasn’t the songs—I understood that. It was me. He was pushing me away.

  I went back into the shack with Benyamin, put him in the cradle, and covered him with a thin blanket. I covered Maya with a thin blanket too because she had fallen asleep on the couch, and I noticed that she had six toes on her left foot. I lay down on my mattress, controlling a strong urge to go to Avner Ashdot’s mattress on the other side of the room and check how many toes he had. And then—I’m sorry, Michael, it’s the truth—to sleep beside him, to lie in his arms. To feel the heat of his body enter mine through our clothes. To be consoled for all the mistakes I’d made in my life, including the one I was making by finding consolation in him.

  “Thank you, Devora,” Maya said the next morning. “You really saved our lives.”

  Avner said, “Yes, well done, Devora, you performed miracles here.”

  Adar was just installing a new shelf so there would be somewhere to put the toys. I thought he was too focused on his work to listen to our conversation. But then he turned around and said in my direction, “Tell me, when do you think you’ll…?”

  I couldn’t answer him. The most painful blows are those your body is unprepared for. And I—I just doubled over with pain. Adar, for his part, didn’t even wait for my reply. He finished putting up the shelf, folded the ladder in two quick, matter-of-fact movements, and told Maya he was going to the hothouses.

  The slam of the door woke Benyamin up. Maya put a hand on her lower stomach, looked at me, and said, “Please, as long as you’re here, you pick him up.”

  But I gave her a look that said, Sorry. I have another child to tend to now.

  I walked out of the shack and Avner followed me. I told him to stay there.

  “But—”

  “This is between me and Adar,” I said firmly.

  I started walking toward the hothouses. Avner remained standing where he was. My first steps were angry and purposeful, but after a few dozen meters, I had to acknowledge the sad fact that I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was going in the sun. I recalled Avner saying that the plot of land they gave Maya was near the Jordanian border, so that meant I had to walk eastward. That is, to go as far away from the Arava road as I could. I turned east on the first dirt road it was possible to turn east on. The air was getting hotter and I began to perspire under my clothes. Drops of perspiration crawled down me like ants. Part of me wanted to give up. But another part was absolutely unwilling to do so. I passed a few houses and a kindergarten, and then I saw the first hothouse. Then another hothouse. And another and another. Dozens of hothouses spread across the desert. I shaded my eyes with my hand, thinking that I had no way of knowing which of them he was in.

  Where are you, my son? I spoke to him silently, the way I used to sometimes after you had fallen asleep and I was no longer afraid you would hear my thoughts.

  From where I stood, I could see the flash of the sun’s rays as they hit the windshield of the pickup parked near one of the hothouses. I recognized the yellow canvas that covered the bed of the pickup.

  When I opened the door to the hothouse, I saw rows and rows of green bushes with red peppers sprouting from them. There were drip irrigation hoses on the ground, and every few meters, hanging from poles, were white cardboard boxes that had holes on their sides. From the buzzing coming from them, I guessed that those were the bombus beehives.

  For the first few seconds, I didn’t see Adar. But then I heard branches moving and saw him emerge from between them.

  I cleared my throat.

  He turned to face me. I saw the surprise in his face. And then the attempt to pretend he wasn’t surprised. He came a bit closer to me and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see the famous babushka peppers.”

  “So now you’ve seen them.”

  I wanted to say not really, because I hadn’t seen the small peppers hidden inside.

  But he looked at his watch and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, so I said, “I also wanted to see…you, Adar. I thought we should talk.”

  He rubbed his beard for a few seconds. “What is there to talk about?”

  “Tell me, do you really want me to leave?”

  He didn’t answer. For a long moment he stared at a nearby branch, and then finally said, “I’m not like you, Devora, I’m not good with words.”

  That was the hardest thing, Michael. The fact that he called me Devora. More than his ignoring me, and honestly, even more than the fact that he said nothing about your death. Denying me the title of mother—that was just unbearable. And he didn’t do it to hurt me. There was nothing hostile about the way he said “Devora.” Just the opposite. He spoke my name naturally. As if that was exactly what I was to him now. A woman named Devora.

  I needed more than a moment to swallow my pride before saying, “Even so, Adar, I’d like to know if you want me to stay or not.”

  He was silent again. Pulled a leaf off a branch. Rubbed it between his fingers.

  I thought: Spaces are different here in the desert. Between one person and another. Between one sentence and another.

  After a long while, he said, “It’s too fast for me. I’ve built something new, and all of sudden—all of a sudden you come. Unannounced. Changing things. It’s too fast for me.”

  “So let’s do it at your pace,” I suggested. And I sounded like I was pleading. Almost groveling. I thought, when have I ever groveled?

  He shook his head (with disbelief? Refusal? Pain? I didn’t know. That boy, the fruit of my womb, was as unreadable to me as a stranger).

  “Listen, Adar,” I said, “Avner will take me away from here now. If you want me to come again, just ask.”

  He tossed the leaf onto the ground and said, “Maybe I’ll ask and maybe I won’t. Things should happen when it’s time for them to happen.”

  I gave Benyamin many goodbye kisses on his chubby cheeks. I gave Maya a gentle hug goodbye because strong hugs hurt her. I didn’t say goodbye to Adar. When I got into Avner Ashdot’s car, he was still in the babushka hothouses. Do you understand? He made sure to stay in the hothouses so he wouldn’t have to say goodbye to me.

  For the first hour of the trip, we were silent, Avner Ashdot and I. As if our children’s silence had stuck to us. We drove past army bases and monuments to fallen soldiers, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed them on the way down to the desert.

  We stopped for gas. The fellow who filled the tank cleaned the windshield with a small squeegee, and Avner Ashdot gave him a generous tip. You never tipped at gas stations. You didn’t like being forced into spending more money.

  When we were back on the main road, he said, “I’m sorry, Devora.”

  It was clear to both of us what he was sorry about. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

  “Your intentions were good,” I said, sighing instead of crying.

  “Yes. But the results—shit.”

  He put his hand on mine. This time I didn’t move it away. He said, “You were hurt. That wasn’t my intention. Adar didn’t tell…I mean, I only heard the details for the first time when you told them to me on the drive to Noit.”

  “Are you saying that you knew I liked almond croissants but you didn’t know the story with Adar?”

  “The croissant was a coincidence, believe me. And Adar—he didn’t say much about you. As you saw, he’s not a big talker…We knew you were estranged. We even knew there had been a shivah and he didn’t go. But we didn’t know why. We didn’t know that the story was so…”

  “Serious? Yes, Avner, it is definitely a serious story.”

  He looked at me with compassion, then returned his gaze to the road and said, “He’s a good boy, do you know that?”

  “I never noticed that he was bursting with goodness.”

  “Look, he…he’s a hard nut to crack. It took me time to get used to him too. During the first few visits I made to them,
he didn’t say a word to me. It was insulting. Infuriating. But then, all of a sudden, on the fourth or fifth visit, before I left, he put a jar of honey on the hood of my car. Do you see? That was his way of communicating with me. Also, he’s taken over for Maya in the hothouses now—do you know how hard that work is?”

  I thought, He didn’t give me anything when I left. But I said, “That’s all well and good…But still…There’s something in Adar…There was always something…cruel. Did you know that he never said he was sorry to the husband of the woman he ran over?”

  “No. I didn’t know.”

  They sat a few seats away from each other in court. Adar never turned around to face him even once during the entire trial.

  I told Avner about the space-filled conversation with Adar in the babushka hothouse. And as I spoke, he began to move his hand on mine. To stroke it.

  When I finished, he said, “The situation isn’t as bad as I thought. He left an opening. Both of them, Maya too, have left us an opening.”

  “But Adar’s anger and resentment are so deeply rooted in him,” I said.

  “We have to take a long breath. Both of us. And be patient. People usually lose each other because one of them doesn’t have the patience to wait for the other one to be ready.”

  “I don’t know, I wish I were as optimistic as you.”

  Avner Ashdot was silent. Slowly, he spread my fingers and laced them with his.

  It’s all because of that hug with Hani, my neighbor. Until that hug, I didn’t know how much I yearned to be touched. That’s when the countdown began. Internal. Silent. But the kind that could end only one way.

  I invited Avner Ashdot to come up to the third floor. For coffee. Even though we both knew very well that I drink only tea and water. I won’t go into details about what happened later. There’s a limit to what I can ask you to listen to. I will only say that I discovered that he too had six toes on his left foot. And that after he left, I felt unbearably lonely.