“So you already have a good friend.”
“Yes, it’s easy to make friends here, but to create a solid connection you have to provide stories of illness and other misfortunes. So many amazing stories here about exotic maladies, so vividly described you imagine catching them right then and there.”
“And you don’t have a disease you can spread in return?”
“None, my child. You know I’m healthy. Also, Abba’s death was so easy and simple, people are jealous.”
“Then talk about family problems.”
“We don’t have any. We were always a normal and stable family.”
“Normal?” Noga laughed. “What about me?”
“What about you?”
“A woman no longer young, whose husband left her because she refused to have children.”
“If you refused, what’s the problem? If you were unable, I could look for sympathy or pity. I’m not going to turn you into a problem to satisfy some old lady here.”
“Then at least provoke a little anger at me.”
“Why anger at you? If the experiment succeeds and I move here permanently, what will I gain from other people’s anger at you? Your father didn’t get angry, and he didn’t allow us to get angry either. ‘We have to honor Noga’s wishes,’ he said. ‘Childbirth can have complications, even cause death.’”
“Even death? That’s what he said?”
“He not only said it, he thought it.”
“Good Abba, he couldn’t think of another way to justify what I did.”
“That’s how he tried to explain it.”
“I didn’t connect my decision to any death.”
“Of course you didn’t. I don’t think you connected it to anything at all. You didn’t want to, and that was it. That’s also how I put it to Abba. But he stuck stubbornly to his explanation. So I said to myself, if Noga’s imaginary escape from death calms him down, who am I to deny it?”
The back door leading to the porch and garden was open, and Noga noticed that the room faced the western sky, bathed now in a reddish glow.
“It’s nice here, so pleasant. Honi found you a good place. By the way, I was amazed to see how many things you threw away. All of Abba’s clothes . . .”
“Not just Abba’s, mine too. Honi was impressed how easily I emptied out the closets. If the experiment here doesn’t succeed, I’ll at least return to an apartment that’s light and airy. If you had been with us, we would have convinced you to throw out things of yours that were still there.”
“Not much is still there.”
“True, not much, and you can throw the rest out yourself.”
“In any case, you left Abba’s black suit.”
“It was so beautiful and new, a shame to give it to charity.”
“Maybe you’re saving it for a new husband,” teased Noga, and her mother laughed.
“You know me, Nogaleh—do you see me with a new husband?”
“Or at least a lover,” the daughter insisted.
“A lover, fine, but he’d have to be Japanese or Chinese, as Abba used to joke with me at night, but they’re so small and thin the suit wouldn’t fit them. I thought of offering it to Abadi, but I worried he would be embarrassed to wear a dead man’s suit. So let’s keep thinking. If you want, we can give it to our neighbor Mr. Pomerantz. He’s still a handsome man and dresses well.”
“But without the shoes and socks, because that would be insulting.”
“Shoes and socks? What are you talking about?”
“The shoes and socks you left below the suit. It almost looked like you were waiting for Abba to come back.”
“That’s right, Noga, I am waiting for him to come back, but if the shoes and socks bother you, then you should throw them out right away.”
“We’ll see. It really is lovely here, and the residents seem quite cultured.”
“The ones you saw. There are others in frightful condition who barely get out of their rooms. But if the experiment succeeds, it will be a relief for Honi, who won’t need to travel to Jerusalem, which he hates more by the day. That’s why he’s so pleased I’m here.”
“He’s really attached to you.”
“Too much. Drops in several times a day to see how I am, even joined me twice for meals in the dining room. Yesterday he brought the children for me to look after. Good thing there’s grass here where they can run around, because my room’s too small for their energy. I thought they’d be picked up in two hours, but Sarai showed up after four hours. I said nothing, she’s an artist after all, and her sense of time is rather vague. If I can be useful once in a while, why not? Now it’s dinnertime, come join me.”
But Noga didn’t get up.
“Take it slowly, Ima. We’ll do it next time. Today I have no strength for interrogation by your old ladies.”
The mother went off to the dining hall, and Noga sank into the small armchair, fixated on the remains of sunlight. After a while she stood up and went out past the porch to the darkening lawn. How did this grow here? she wondered. This old folks’ home is a building among other buildings on an ordinary street, and suddenly it’s like Oxford or Cambridge, where you open a plain door to find an ancient cathedral with great expanses of grass.
She strolls across the lawn to figure out where it goes and how it ends, and in the violet twilight she can make out, beside a bench, a little old man in a wheelchair covered in a blanket, a thin scarf around his neck, dozing or perhaps unconscious, a shriveling intravenous bag connected to his arm.
A forgotten resident, not brought in for dinner? Or perhaps the IV is his meal?
She is careful not to wake him, and sits on the bench to ensure his safety in the gathering darkness. But soon, in the warm evening air, she is intoxicated by the serenity of her napping neighbor and closes her eyes—and suddenly an unknown hand clutches her neck.
For a moment she is terrified that the man with the IV has risen up to strangle her. But the old man is gone. Apparently someone has quietly wheeled him back inside. And behind her, the laughter of her brother.
“You better watch out,” she says. “At age forty-one my heart can’t handle your jokes.”
“Your heart is the same as ever,” Honi says, holding her wrist as if checking her pulse. “A young heart, a strong heart, a heart of stone, as Uriah used to say.”
“He complained about me to you too?”
“Yes, out of desperate love for you. And how’s the home I found for Ima? The lawn lets her look after the kids while sitting in an armchair.”
“And this will be her final apartment, if she wants?”
“This one, or maybe a better one, providing you don’t weaken her resolve.”
“I didn’t come to Israel to weaken any resolves, yours or hers.”
He nods in gratitude.
In the room, a fruit platter assembled by the new tenant awaits her two children, and the three of them now sit, six months after the father’s death, in the peaceful setting of a posh old-age home, light years away from the blackening neighborhood in Jerusalem, discussing the experiment just begun, and the arrangements for the Jerusalem flat under Noga’s care.
“Wait a minute,” Noga says. “Those children, Pomerantz’s grandchildren . . . what do I do if they come into the apartment again?”
“They won’t come in,” decrees her brother, “and if they try, don’t let them. Even if they beg, no mercy. Don’t repeat Ima’s mistake. And make sure the bathroom window stays locked. They managed in the past to climb down the drainpipe.”
“From the third floor down the drainpipe? How old are they?”
“The older one,” says the mother, “is eleven or twelve, the younger six or so. The older one is Shaya’s son. You remember him, Noga? Pomerantz’s middle son, the handsome boy you sometimes ran into on the stairs or in the street. After you got married and left, they arranged for him a bride among the most extreme ultra-Orthodox in Mea Shearim, and though he is more or less your age, he’s
already fathered ten or maybe eleven children—I think even his mother gets confused how many. And that younger one is a cousin, and as it happens in these huge families, one of them always turns out retarded.”
“That’s not a nice word, Ima,” scolds Honi.
“If not retarded, then strange, a space cadet, but sweet, nice-looking. And because he is hyperactive, they send him with Shaya’s son to let off steam at grandma’s house. But how much can Mrs. Pomerantz keep him occupied? She’s not a well woman. They don’t have a television, of course, just a radio tuned to some religious station, so it’s no wonder the kids get bored and run around on the stairway, up and down, over and over, making noise and yelling. And this little one, the retar—‘challenged’ one, he sometimes makes these blood-curdling screams. So to keep them quiet, I invited them to watch a little television, children’s programs, because they don’t allow television.”
“And you got permission from the grandma?”
“I didn’t want to put her to the test, get her in trouble with Shaya, who has become a total fanatic, but I’m sure she knew, or at least guessed and looked the other way. It brought her peace and quiet. The Pomerantzes were always a respectable family, not extreme. When you played music on Shabbat, Nogaleh, they didn’t get angry.”
“Well, bottom line, what am I supposed to do now? Not only keep watch on the apartment, but also deal with crazy Orthodox children?”
“No, not at all. Don’t let them in, period,” says Honi. “Ima took pity on them, that was a mistake, but you don’t need to do that. Just take the key away from them.”
“Key? What key?”
“They apparently walked off with my spare key,” the mother says defensively.
“Then you should call the police.”
“Police?” The mother is taken aback. “How can you talk that way, Nogaleh? These are Pomerantz’s grandchildren, Shaya’s unfortunate kids. We should call the cops to lock them up? What’s wrong with you?”
“Not lock them up, just take away the key.”
“We’ll take the key, don’t you worry. Honi will phone Mrs. Pomerantz, she’ll take the key from them. Just lock the bathroom window at night, that’s all. It’s not so hard.”
Eleven
HONI DROVE HIS SISTER to the bus station, but when he found out there’d be a long wait for the next bus, he offered to drive her to Jerusalem.
“What’s going on?” she again protested. “Go back to your wife and children. You’re addicted to this experiment. You’ve fallen in love with it.”
“So don’t ruin it.”
“Why would I ruin it?”
He took out a few bills from his wallet.
“Here, for the time being, just for now.”
“Don’t you dare . . .”
“But you won’t be able to last for three months without additional income. That way you’ll trip me up with your stubbornness and pride. Ima is also worried.”
“I have my own money, and if I run out, you said you could find me work.”
“Very good. So what I’m giving you now is an advance on your first paycheck. Please don’t say no. I won’t be able to rest easy if I know you’re going back to Jerusalem without enough money.”
She hesitates. In the evening darkness, by the desolate bus station, her brother grows older by the minute. His hair has gone gray, and though no one ever said he resembled his late father, the old man’s look has begun to flicker in his eyes.
She sighs and strokes his arm.
“It’s strange to come back home and be an extra. Where do I go, anyway? Who do I talk to?”
“Nobody. I’ll take care of everything. They’ll be in touch with you and work it out. I heard about a movie about foreign workers or refugees, and they need a lot of extras there. I’ll handle it all.”
Aboard the bus, racing along the highway to Jerusalem, her anxiety surfaces: the orchestra will perform the Mozart double concerto without her. I should have asked for clearer assurance that they will not forget me, she says to herself, gently extending her arms to the seat in front, as if it were the harp she will clasp to her breast when the conductor gives her the sign.
A taxi takes her to Rashi Street, but the driver seems hesitant. “You sure this is your address?”
“For now,” she says blithely, and hurries out.
The hour is late, there are few cars in the street, a human presence prevails. People exit and enter the apartment buildings.
By the gate of their building an old man stands in the dark, waving to her with his hat.
“Are you Noga?”
He pronounces her name softly, though they have never met. She reckons this is the lawyer who lies in wait to liberate the apartment.
“For now,” she answers cheerfully.
“But you live abroad, in Holland.”
“For now,” she repeats, liking the sound of it.
“Because even if you came back to Israel,” the man continues, “you should know that your mother cannot transfer the apartment to you, and you may not even rent it from her.”
“Why is that?”
“Because this is a key-money flat with only your father’s name on the contract. After his death, your mother was granted, out of pure kindness, the rights of a protected tenant, but not the right to rent it out.”
“You’re the owner?”
“I am their emissary. I am their legal eagle.”
“How nice.”
“The neighbors say your mother left, went into a home.”
“For now.”
“So please tell her Attorney Stoller sends his regards. I had good relations with your late father. He would bring me the piddling rent money twice a year. As long as he was alive, we expected nothing. But now, tell her from me that to live in a home near her son and grandchildren is wonderful and important. Why should she live alone among people whose poverty turns them into strange fanatics? Also, we want to get rid of this apartment, and we have buyers. So give your mother my very best regards. If I were able to get into assisted living in Tel Aviv, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Are you Orthodox?”
“I can be Orthodox when I want, but so far I haven’t found the Orthodoxy that suits me.”
“And if I decide to stay here as the daughter of the family?”
“Without your mother, you can’t. You have no legal standing for tenant protection. Besides, what do you want with an apartment like this? It needs a lot of repairs. You don’t want to go back to your Dutch orchestra?”
“You’ve even heard about that?”
“I know a lot about your family. Your father, of blessed memory, used to jabber in my ear about you all. What do you do in the orchestra? A drummer?”
“A harpist.”
“That’s better. More dignified.”
“Every musical instrument has its own dignity.”
“If you say so. You undoubtedly know.”
And he tips his hat and bids her farewell.
The apartment’s bathroom light was left on by mistake, though the window is closed.
She undresses, but before deciding in which bed to start the night, she sits in front of the TV, watching a concert with the orchestra on a stage in the middle of a forest, and a crowd of twenty thousand enthusiastic Germans sitting on the grassy ground, listening to popular classics. The camera lovingly caresses the bare shoulders of the women musicians. Until two years ago, she too performed with her shoulders bare, but they grew thicker, and compared with the magnificent shoulders of other female players, they suddenly seemed to her ungainly. So she decided to cover them, though Manfred, the first flutist, found no fault with them and kissed them with passion and joy.
Twelve
IN THE MORNING Noga phones Manfred in Arnhem and asks him to nail down the promise given her regarding the Mozart concerto. “Not to worry,” he assures her, “the Concerto for Flute and Harp is meant for the two of us, and I will not play it with any other harpist.” Meanwhi
le, as the keeper of the key to her little flat in Arnhem, he casually mentions a faucet left running in her bathroom, a result no doubt of her hasty departure, but promises all will be dry by the time she returns.
She wonders if he is only looking after the apartment or also using it, but the distance between the Middle East and Europe dims her concern, and when Honi calls about tomorrow’s work as an extra, she makes jokes as she jots down the details in her father’s old notebook, where he would faithfully record every errand assigned him by his wife or children.
At lunchtime she cooks herself a real meal, then enters her parents’ darkened bedroom, takes off her clothes and adjusts the electric bed, but her sleep is soon punctured by footsteps scurrying up and down the stairs and an occasional wild, piercing scream, as if a small predatory animal were fighting for its life.
Silence finally returns, a breeze compels the dozing woman to rearrange her blanket, and as sleep takes its time to settle in, there are two soft taps on the apartment door.
Noga smiles. These must be my mother’s TV children, she thinks, doing her best to ignore them. But the tapping, soft and rhythmic, goes on. To hell with them, she says to herself, and waits, and it stops, permission now granted for blessed sleep, for Noga to burrow into the pillow and be carried to a place she’s never been, a crowded city street in a ghetto, where someone is giving a speech in a faint but familiar voice full of eloquent indignation. Can she have traveled so far in her dream only to hear that voice again? She flings off her blanket, wraps herself in a bathrobe and silently opens the living room door.
The TV is on at low volume. Sitting cozily in the two faded armchairs that survived her mother and brother’s purge are two boys with sidelocks, clad in black, hats perched on their laps, the tzitzit fringes of their ritual undershirts dangling on their thighs. The older boy senses her presence and looks up at her seriously, brazenly, with a tinge of supplication. In the other armchair nestles a beautiful, golden child, twisting his right sidelock into a curl as his light blue eyes stare at the speaking prime minister.
The Extra Page 4