Honi asks about the whip. “A real whip?” “Totally real,” she says, “nearly a meter long.” “It won’t help you,” he says dismissively. “Those haredi bastards are trained from childhood to confront the tear gas and water cannons of the police. Your whip will only tickle them. Too bad you didn’t buy a gun.”
“Enough, Honi, don’t get crazy,” chides his mother.
Still drowsy, Noga doesn’t respond and sinks into a chair her brother offers her. “Your bed mesmerized me, Ima,” she says. “No need here to wander from bed to bed to make it through the night—one is enough. The cosmos is calm in Tel Aviv. History and politics don’t leave it in ruins like Jerusalem. So if you want an answer regarding the experiment, I say yes, Ima, this is the place. Move here, absolutely, we’ll be relieved, and we’ll help you.”
Honi is surprised, excited, his eyes shining. He didn’t expect such a clear-cut declaration, and so soon. He secretly squeezes his sister’s hand with gratitude and turns to his mother:
“If, as you say, it’s Noga who knows your heart, more than Abba and certainly more than me, then listen to her.”
“Yeah,” the mother sighs, “I’m listening.”
“Then we can end the experiment,” says Noga, “and I can leave.”
“No, no, not yet,” the mother says, alarmed. “The experiment was for three months, and it’s barely been a month and a half. Please, children, no shortcuts. That’s not fair.”
Honi agrees. “We’ll live up to what we said we’d do, and besides, in another ten days Carmen will be waiting at Masada for Noga to help her.”
From his jacket pocket he pulls a few pages detailing the obligations and benefits of the extras in the opera to be performed in the desert. And he has tickets for himself and Sarai for the second evening, so the two of them can enjoy not only the music and the desert, but the sight of Noga as a country girl from Seville, strolling among the chorus in an embroidered dress.
“So that’s the role?”
“Here, take this and read it.”
“And you’ll come to laugh at me.”
“On the contrary, to be thrilled.”
Darkness gathers, the children have lessons to do and must be taken home. Noga hesitantly asks her mother if she can stay for dinner. “Let’s try,” says the mother. “Dinnertime is over, but we might find something in the kitchen for a rare guest.”
They manage to put together a fine meal in the dining hall from the evening’s leftovers. Noga is delighted: “Even the leftovers here are spectacular. So, Ima, despite your many virtues, truth be told, your cooking was fairly pathetic, borderline hazardous. So why not, in the years that remain, enjoy some good cooking? Not just the bed but also the food is in the plus column of this sheltered housing.”
“Maybe,” the mother confirms halfheartedly, the other half remaining unclear.
Noga did not return to Jerusalem until ten-thirty at night, and as she walked through the Mekor Baruch neighborhood, it looked to her just as it had in her childhood. The people are the same people, what they wear is what they wore, the shops are the same shops, the streetlights have the same weak bulbs. Yes, here and there homes have expanded, adding a story and a window, enclosing a porch, and municipal garbage bins sit alongside the houses—but the dead seem not dead, and the newborns seem as yet unborn.
In her heart she harbored a hope that she would find traces of the children in the apartment, and as soon as she entered, she went to feel if the TV was warm. It was not. She inspected the rooms, even checking whether the angle of the head of the electric bed had been changed, but no alien hand had touched the mechanism. She thought about the whip, and since for a moment she didn’t recall where she’d left it, she imagined that the little invaders had indeed been here and taken it. But then she remembered its hiding place and went to look for it in her parents’ empty clothes closet, left lying like a desert snake in its burnt reddish skin, its long tail resting on the picture of the king of Jordan in the newspaper spread beneath it.
Since she’d returned from Tel Aviv fully rested, she sat glued to the television, surfing from channel to channel, finally landing on Mezzo and going from a concert to a dance troupe to an opera, until at a very late hour her eyelids began to droop, and musical drowsiness segued into hallucination. But instead of seeking slumber in one of the beds, she felt underneath her father’s armchair for a lever that lowered the chair into a kind of bed. She doesn’t stay in this bed, but climbs in her dream onto the stage before her, where the orchestra is getting ready for the second act of a concert performance of an opera. The musicians are tuning their instruments, singers are gathering on the stage. The male singers are wearing black tie, and the women wear the costumes of the characters they portray. Although this is the second act, she doesn’t yet see her harp, which someone is to wheel onto the stage. Now it comes, the harp, large and majestic, but instead of being placed near a group of strings, it is moved to the brass section, next to the trumpets and trombones, not far from the drum that will drown out its sound. As she worries about the new location, a woman turns to her. “I am Carmen,” she says. “Can you sing the second act for me? A grain of sand got into my windpipe.”
Twenty-Four
THE NEXT DAY and the day after, the children did not sneak in. Are they sick of television, or did they find a more kosher TV? Perhaps Shaya’s son devised a different way to soothe the stormy spirit of the little tzaddik. Either way, the threat of the whip had not been in vain, and the whip itself will eventually be put to use.
Yet she continues to hope that the children will again try to break into the apartment. In the entire building, perhaps the entire street, this is the sole remaining bastion of secularism. And even if a few scattered families secretly own the scandalous appliance, none would dare admit it.
She hopes to prove to herself that the whip is not a myth but a reality, and so refrains from locking the front door with Abadi’s bolt and leaves open the window in the bathroom. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” her father would declare when she was little. He would even undo his belt to frighten Honi when she would catch him rummaging through her schoolbag or chest of drawers, and demand that her parents protect her from him. But her father would drop the belt without ever waving it as a threat, because the boy would defuse the anger with sweetness and smooth talk, and beg forgiveness in an amusing performance of bowing and kneeling before his sister.
She was, in their home, an object of awe and reverence. When she was a girl it was taken for granted that no one could make her do anything against her will. This wasn’t, however, out of stubbornness for its own sake, but because her boundaries were always fixed and stable, if not always explicable, even to herself. Only her younger brother, who tagged along behind her in childhood and perhaps loved her the most, would try to shift the border and come closer.
When she and Uriah became romantically involved, Honi was thrilled, not only because he admired the future husband, but because he thought that through him he could deepen the connection with his sister. Uriah too was fond of his future brother-in-law, and when he was still an officer in a combat unit, he would come to the building in a command car and take the excited youngster on rides around Jerusalem, allowing the boy to touch the trigger of his army rifle.
But Honi’s hope to be an uncle to his sister’s baby was not fulfilled. After several years of marriage, her firm refusal to bear children became clear, and it was the brother, not the parents, who protested and fought in various ways for the unborn child, inevitably provoking anger. Only when Uriah demanded he stop pestering his sister did he refrain, and not long thereafter he too married, and was quick, perhaps defiantly so, to give his parents the grandchild they yearned for.
The circumcision took place in this very apartment, which to everyone’s surprise had room for a multitude of relatives close and distant, of friends and acquaintances. This was after Noga’s divorce, but Uriah came to the celebration and stared coldly at the newborn, who sle
pt serenely on the knees of its grandfather, the honored sandak, as the mohel recommended and supervised by Mr. Pomerantz carefully performed the cut, his long beard brushing the tiny penis. Noga kept her distance from them, but beamed with joy at her happy brother, not least in the hope that he would now leave her be, and also because she had just been accepted as a harpist by the Dutch orchestra.
Now the apartment is empty and she is in charge. And since many possessions and pieces of furniture are gone, the space has expanded and could accommodate even more guests at a new celebration—were there any reason for one. But with her in control, and in the rising heat of summer, the lone tenant can strip off her clothes and walk naked between the rooms before dipping her body into the blue foam.
The waters of Jerusalem feel sweet, since she believes they derive in part from ancient cisterns of rainwater, as her father had taught her. So she lingers in the bathtub that stands on iron feet shaped like the talons of a bird of prey, and every few minutes she sinks beneath the foam, to the sounds of old Hebrew songs on a tiny transistor radio, mixed with an unfamiliar wailing, caused perhaps by weak batteries.
It takes a while for her to realize that the wailing does not originate from the batteries or a remix of the old songs, but rather from actual wailing through the open window, where two little feet in white socks and worn-out sandals are scrambling for a foothold.
“He’s going to fall!” she screams and, naked and dripping with foam, leaps to the window and grabs the two flailing feet. Feeling more secure, the child loosens his desperate hold on the drainpipe and lets himself slide to the floor between the wet arms and breasts of the woman. Quickly she returns to the window, expecting to find his guardian behind him. But there’s no one on the pipe. It twists its rusty way upward, above it only a patch of sky.
“And this time you came by yourself.”
She leans over the tzaddik, who huddles at her feet, his sweat sour, his little hands black from the pipe. She picks him up joyfully, deftly peeling off his gray jacket and white shirt, its filthy collar embroidered with a mysterious pattern. As he struggles, she strips off his worn trousers, hand-me-downs from one generation to the next, and under them discovers a soiled diaper, which she throws in the trash, and pulls the tzitzit undergarment, its fringes stuck together, over his head. Naked as a newborn, the boy is propelled through the air, landing in the bathwater, and in her eyes he is no longer a boy but a beautiful little girl, whose two wet sidelocks gather into a golden mane.
Dousing him with fresh water, she diligently purifies his body, no organ escaping the hand of the confident musician, and while doing so she recalls the advice her father gave her mother, to handle the tzaddik with care, for he might become the leader of a stubborn religious camp that could topple a government. Sure, why not, let him topple a government, but at least he won’t pollute it.
And despite her awareness of her own nakedness, she is in no hurry to cover it up. Boy or girl, she says to herself, why should I not be engraved in the child’s memory? And she wraps the clean body in a big towel and carries him, light as a feather, into the living room and seats him in her father’s armchair, and he still looks to her like a girl, in whose blue eyes sparkle diamonds of tears but whose little arm is outstretched pleadingly at the black screen.
Television, again? But why not? She switches on the set, hoping the symphony orchestra on the Mezzo Channel will captivate the little viewer with its rich sound. But the tzaddik demands the remote control, expertly changing channels, coming to a halt at the Jungle Channel and a troop of monkeys.
In which case, he’s not so damaged after all.
Suddenly a frantic pummeling rattles the front door. She wraps herself in a bathrobe, firmly fastens its belt, shakes out her hair and combs it with her fingers, and only then opens the door for the pale and terrified chaperone. She escorts him to his protégé, who sits in the armchair wrapped in a big towel, transfixed by monkeys delousing one another with care.
“He’s going to fall and crash if you keep this up,” she scolds, not unkindly.
Yuda-Zvi says nothing. His face is red, he bites his lip, and then, in a heartbreaking gesture, he kneels before the little boy, who is not looking at him, and feels and smells the damp towel. “What is this?” he asks. “You washed him?”
“Of course.”
“Why? What did he do to you?”
“He slid down the drainpipe and came in here filthy and stinking.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what? He had to be washed.”
“How?”
“How? With soap and water. You’ve heard of water? You know what soap is?”
Shaya’s son studies her with undisguised anger.
“And the clothes? His tzitzit and the shirt with the special embroidery?”
“Don’t worry, it’s all safe, except for an old diaper. But make sure, Yuda-Zvi, not to dress him now in those dirty clothes. Take him up to Grandma and change him.”
“He has no other clothes here.”
“Just take him from here as he is, wrapped in this towel, which is a gift to you. But first swear to me on your father’s life, the life of Shaya Pomerantz, that never, but never, will you sneak in here again, not through the door or through the window, because if this tzaddik were to fall and get hurt, what would all his Hasidim do?”
“They’ll find another tzaddik,” he mumbles darkly, and measures her with a blazing look that assesses her nakedness under the robe. He’s not a child anymore but a furious adolescent, who rips the remote control from the little one’s hand and shuts off the TV, strips the towel from the boy and flings it with disgust on the floor, then pulls the screaming, naked child to the still-open door and, without a parting word, takes him up to the grandma who no longer knows she is a grandma.
Twenty-Five
SHE WANTED TO TELL her mother the story of the boy, but then thought better of it. Her mother would not interpret the episode the way she understood it, and she did not want the joy she felt crushed by her mother’s irony. And so, after a long afternoon nap, her strange elation still intact, she goes out. She decides to walk to the city center and take in a foreign film, then remembers that the movie theaters abandoned the downtown area years ago and relocated in malls, so instead she heads for the shuk, which she had spurned and ignored for years but has lately begun to fancy.
Evening slowly falls in Mahane Yehuda, and Noga feels a strong craving for meat soup, red, thick and hot. So she prowls the alleys in search of that underground dining room, hoping that despite the hour it has not yet been converted into the bar. But the minute she goes down the stairs, her hopes are dashed. The shutter separating the room from the kitchen has been lowered, and the long communal tables have been divided into small tables, with a boy circulating among them lighting tea lights in saucers, resembling yahrzeit candles. Next to the bar are a guitar and an accordion, still in their cases, and the two people finishing their meal are apparently the musicians.
Again her gaze is drawn to the ceiling. The black camera, real or fake, still perches in its place, though the angle of its gleaming glass eye seems to have shifted.
She turns to the candle boy.
“Excuse me, is there anything left to eat?”
“All gone, lady. Come back tomorrow.”
She was about to leave when she notices, not far from the lowered shutter in the rear, the retired policeman, the stammering extra. He sits facing the entrance as if expecting someone, perhaps her.
With a small step she could withdraw and disappear into the shuk, but Noga senses that the veteran inspector has noticed her arrival, and that he knows she has spotted him too. Should she disregard him? Elazar sits motionless in his corner, doesn’t stand up or wave. She certainly doesn’t want to indulge his desire, but is it right to ignore him?
She walks toward him with a smile, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t seem surprised, as if they had planned to meet.
“I was thinking I could
find something to eat here,” she explains. “After our evening, I came back the next afternoon and had a delicious meal. But it seems they close early and get ready for another night.”
“What would you like to eat?”
“Whatever . . . not much, maybe soup . . . something simple.”
“If only soup, that’s possible. Come, sit down.”
“Meat soup,” she says, unable to restrain her craving, then backs off. “If there happens to, um, b-be any . . .”
He seems shocked. “M-m-meat?” He echoes her stammer. “Right n-n-now? I d-don’t think they have any left at this hour. But s-simple s-soup, maybe hot, thick lentil soup. That won’t b-b-be enough?”
“Definitely enough,” she exclaims, blushing. “Of course . . . the meat isn’t important . . . lentil soup or whatever . . . thick and hot is wonderful.”
He disappears, and her eyes wander around the gray cellar, the flickering flames adding an air of mystery. The musicians, done eating, take out their instruments and start to play. The cascading notes of the guitar and accordion arouse a visceral nostalgia for her harp, and her eyes well with tears.
The policeman carefully sets before her a bowl of steaming lentil soup and two slices of dark bread.
“How did you manage that? Are you a partner here, or a relative?”
“Neither one, but a police commander, especially a retired one, has p-p-power and influence.”
“Especially retired?”
“Because he still keeps his old contacts and secret information, without being subject to any r-rules.”
She cautiously sips the soup, and the eyes of the eternal inspector follow her spoon as if she were a child who requires supervision. Does he understand, she wonders, that despite his power as a policeman, he cannot touch me?
“And what’s happening with the little haredim who’ve been b-b-breaking into your apartment?”
“I think today I stopped them once and for all.”
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