The Extra

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Scowling, he studies the woman in the nightgown.

  “I didn’t learn of your father’s death until I ran into Honi at Masada. But even had I known in time, I doubt I’d have come to the funeral, or even the shiva.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wouldn’t have wanted to see you.”

  “But you and my father were close. I only just learned from Ima that you brought your kids to meet him, to prove that you’re innocent of blame.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But who thought you were to blame?”

  “Whoever.”

  “And now you understand that I’m also not to blame. I just have some kind of mental defect.”

  “True.”

  “And if you had understood a year or two ago that because of a psychological defect I’m not to blame, would you still have taken your children to my father to prove your innocence?”

  “Yes, because the boundary between defect and guilt is not always clear.”

  “Would you have taken them even if you knew it caused him pain?”

  “It didn’t cause him pain. He was happy and he played with them.”

  “The fact that he played doesn’t mean it didn’t also cause him pain. He played with them because he couldn’t kill them.”

  “Why kill?”

  “So you wouldn’t bring them again.”

  “I wouldn’t have brought them again.”

  “Maybe you would have enjoyed another chance to taunt my parents. By the way, how did my father play with them?”

  “He found an old doll of yours and put on a funny little show.”

  “And you told your wife you brought her children here?”

  “I don’t hide anything from her.”

  “You won’t hide this visit either?”

  “Not this visit either. The second trip to Masada, the wounded soldier at the port, all will be told when the time comes.”

  “When will that time come?”

  “You’ll know when it comes.”

  “Ima caught a glimpse of your wife during intermission at Masada and told Honi she looks like me.”

  “She doesn’t look like you.”

  “Or reminded her of me.”

  “She doesn’t remind.”

  “What’s her name, by the way?”

  “Osnat.”

  “My mother saw her at intermission, waiting for the restrooms, and not knowing she was your wife, just from a casual glance, she told Honi that she looked like me.”

  “She doesn’t look like you.”

  “But my mother wouldn’t just make that up. She’s a smart, practical woman, and she also gave birth to me and knows me. And of her own free will she stated that your wife looks like me.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “Maybe there’s something similar that you don’t notice?”

  “She doesn’t resemble you in any way.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. If she resembled you, why would I be here?”

  “Because you still love me, even though you’re the one who broke off the marriage, not I.”

  “True . . .”

  “In which case, why exactly are you here?”

  “My love is playing tricks on me.”

  “Who is your love? A separate entity from you?”

  “Yes, a separate entity. Who tags along even after the separation from you.”

  “A love with chutzpah.”

  “Yes, separate and rebellious and cannot be tamed.”

  “I might tame her, take her by surprise.”

  “How?”

  “I have a whip. I bought one in the Old City to use on the haredi kids who were breaking in here, but in the end I was afraid to do it. But this disobedient love of yours deserves to be whipped. Wait, Uriah, you’ll see.”

  She dumps the remains of the egg in the garbage, puts the dirty dishes in the sink and goes to the bathroom to wash her face and put on makeup along with the appropriate smile, which she checks in the mirror. But she keeps on the nightgown that thinly veils her nakedness. She wonders where she left the whip, then remembers, but when she comes back with it in hand she finds Uriah standing sadly by the apartment door, holding his briefcase, ready to leave.

  “Here,” she says, putting the whip in his hand. “An old whip, a real one, which over the years beat many a camel in the desert, will now whip your love until it lets go of you.”

  Astonished, Uriah holds the whip. He then snaps it spontaneously to see how far it extends.

  “You’re insane,” he declares with satisfaction, “and it’s madness that needs whipping, not love.” He whips the big sofa, the two armchairs, even the television, which trembles under the blow. Then he gives her back the whip and says, “That’s it, Noga, enough. Everything is imaginary and absurd except for work, which I’m late for.”

  And as much as she feared he would come, it hurts her now that he’s leaving, for this time it will be forever. When her brother asked her to join the experiment, she never imagined he would also bring in her former husband, yet now she is trying to delay him.

  “Wait, Uriah. Before we say goodbye, just tell me what your job is now.”

  “Same job.”

  “Meaning?”

  “At the Ministry of Environmental Protection.”

  “How great you’re still there. I was so proud that you worked in a field that had value. Even in Holland I tell friends and colleagues that the man who left me is not only a stubborn person but a positive person.”

  “Please . . .”

  “That’s what I thought and that’s what I think. That’s why my love for you never fully died. Tell me, have you stayed in the same department, where you were a deputy? You haven’t been promoted?”

  “Now I am the director of a department.”

  “A department. How many people?”

  “Twenty.”

  “A small department, but undoubtedly important.”

  “A department that deals with garbage, recycling, packaging . . .”

  “And that’s the most ethical part,” she gushes. “Really important. It’s the future. If only I could recycle myself.”

  “Too late,” he quietly hisses. “The rot has proliferated.”

  “So why don’t you let go?”

  “Because I feel the pain of the unborn child.”

  “Then wait, and we’ll make another effort to understand. If you’re the head of a department, nobody will punish you for being late. Don’t go. Let’s talk a little longer, then you’ll go . . . Just a second, somebody or something is standing outside the door. Please don’t leave now.”

  Thirty-Eight

  “YES, THERE’S KNOCKING at the door. You expecting someone?”

  “No. I wasn’t expecting you either. Maybe it’s your wife, coming to show me the kids.”

  “Don’t talk that way.”

  “But my father—”

  “Your father had the right,” he interrupts angrily. “You don’t.”

  Standing at the doorway is a Hasid, dressed in black with a broad-brimmed hat, his beard and sidelocks soft and flaxen, beautiful emerald eyes shining through the thicket of hair. With a gentle smile he proffers a glass bowl piled with fruit and says, “A little something from my mother and father to your mother. They should all live and be well.”

  Behind him hides a child, he too wearing black and a hat, a schoolbag on his back, his head bowed but his eyes alert.

  “Yuda-Zvi!” she happily exclaims. “Here you are again.”

  And now she recognizes Shaya, the handsome son of the Pomerantz family, who in their youth would sometimes chat with her on the stairs with no barrier between them, in complete freedom, before he was dispatched to a distant yeshiva.

  “And you too, Shaya,” she adds excitedly, her face burning. “I’ve been living here for three months, and I even had a strange sort of romance with your clever son. But you, where are you these days?”

  “I’m not
far from here,” he explains graciously, “on Ovadiah Street in Kerem Avraham, but during the week I teach up north near Safed, which is why we haven’t run into each other.”

  “A shame, because your Yuda-Zvi would drop in here freely via the gutters and down the drainpipe, and bring along a mixed-up little tzaddik. By the way, where is he?”

  Shaya smiles. “The tzaddik, as you call him, Shraga, he should live and be well, was sent away to Safed, to a family with the patience and heart for children like him. But here is Yuda-Zvi, coming to you to ask forgiveness, because we know what he has done. Right, Yuda-Zvi?”

  “Right,” the boy confesses in a whisper.

  “And the fruit is for your mother, lovely fruit from the Galilee, the vineyards and orchards of Mount Canaan. Your mother phoned my father yesterday to tell him she was returning to the neighborhood, and we wished to congratulate her on her decision and give her our blessing.”

  “Of all of us, it was your father she told first,” she murmurs, astonished.

  “Maybe it was easier for her that way.”

  Insulted, she does not take the fruit from him, motioning for his son to come to her. The boy hesitates, looks pleadingly at his father, who nudges him forward. She clasps the child to her bosom, stares him in the eye and says, “Now do you understand that because of stupid television, you and your little tzaddik could have crashed to the ground?” Yuda-Zvi nods, and she strokes his sidelocks, straightens his hat, lightly kisses his forehead and eyes and returns him to his father, who watches with a smile and sways back and forth with immense devotion.

  Only then does she take the fruit bowl from Shaya, placing it on top of the TV and indicating Uriah, who still stands with briefcase in hand. “Maybe you recognize him,” she says. “This is Uriah, my former husband, who is on his way to work.” Uriah, red with embarrassment, extends his hand, but when she extends hers too, Shaya quickly drops his hand and moves it to the doorframe, covering the mezuzah as if to keep it warm, until he and the boy depart.

  Thirty-Nine

  “YOUR CHILDHOOD LOVE was unwilling to shake your hand.”

  “Because I was wearing a nightgown.”

  “Even if you were wearing a fur coat there would have been no handshake from him.”

  “What does he matter? You’re still here.”

  “You just announced I’m on my way to work.”

  “No, today the work will be done here. We’ll seat your love, that stubborn entity, between us, and together we’ll set you free.”

  She goes into her room, puts on one of her mother’s bathrobes over her nightgown, and on her way back to the kitchen she picks up the glass bowl, rimmed with a gold decoration, apparently part of a set. The fruit is unblemished and ripe—plums and apples, grapes and cherries, pears and peaches. She places the bowl between her and her former husband, and the indignity resurfaces.

  “It’s pretty annoying and insulting that a neighbor, a haredi yet, is the first to know about my mother’s decision to come back to Jerusalem, and also suspicious that this man is so quick to send her a bowl of fruit.”

  “Maybe it’s his wife.”

  “No, it’s him, because his wife—I learned this from the grandson—is so ill she doesn’t know who she is. It’s him. But why? Why does he care whether Ima comes back here or not?”

  “Why shouldn’t he care?” says Uriah. “When I was surprised that your parents had stayed in the neighborhood, you used to claim, perhaps half seriously, that there are religious people who enhance and sweeten their neighbors’ secular way of life. Maybe also the opposite is true—your mother’s secular life sweetens his religiosity. When you played your harp on Shabbat, he would get all excited and prophesy that you would play in the Holy Temple.”

  “Fine, there’s something to that. Now there’s an old lawyer lurking in the neighborhood just waiting to sell the apartment to an extremist haredi family, and those people are specialists in making life miserable for the Orthodox who are less ultra than they are.”

  She sets down two small plates and on each puts cherries and grapes, a pear and a peach, along with two small knives, and says, “This, Uriah, is so we’ll have the strength to work.”

  He looks around with mild disbelief, takes a knife and peels the pear, hesitates a moment, then reaches over without asking permission and peels her pear as well, but when he tries to peel the peach, the juice sprays all over.

  “Careful, you’ll stain your nice jacket. Take it off, and your tie too. You were always good at staining yourself. Anyway, what’s with the tie?”

  He finds this amusing, as if his ex-wife were an actress playing the wife he once had. And like a soldier who has been given a sensible order, he takes off his jacket and tie, undoes the top button of his shirt, sits down and goes back to peeling the peach.

  “Strange,” he says, “how the ultra-Orthodox from poor neighborhoods in Jerusalem end up in the Galilee.”

  “Why not? After the government built them yeshivas all over the country, they turned themselves into teachers and were in great demand.”

  He nods his agreement with the woman who has long since left her homeland, then eats a few grapes and a few cherries, not putting the pits on the plate but getting up and tossing them in the trash under the sink, then rinsing his hands.

  “Strange”—he has grown attached to the word—“how nothing here has changed. Even the same trash can from when we were married.”

  “Exactly the same. But if you hadn’t left me, you’d have managed to persuade my parents to buy a different trash can, one more in line with your ideology.”

  “No doubt. I had a very good relationship with them both.”

  “More than good. They really loved you. Honi especially.”

  “And I loved this old apartment, not just because it was your childhood home, but for itself. This is where we slept together the first time.”

  “And do you remember what you said afterward?”

  “What?”

  “‘I hope we won’t have a baby from this.’”

  “That’s what I said?”

  “Yes, and that makes sense. We were so young, why be parents so soon?”

  “True.”

  “You don’t remember how I responded?”

  “How did you respond?”

  “‘Don’t worry, Uriah, we won’t have a child just like that.’”

  “Even then?”

  “Even then I could feel the controlling nature of your love. Only you didn’t want to hear the warning, and your love wasted time on me, which is why your kids are now in elementary school and not high school.”

  “I don’t remember what you said.”

  “Maybe you thought it was just talk. But I don’t just talk.”

  “Not you.”

  “And if you’re hoping that our work today also includes making love, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t let you or me hurt your wife, even though I don’t know her and you insist she doesn’t resemble me in any way.”

  “In any way.”

  “But she is important to me, because I made a sacrifice for her. After you forced yourself to leave me, I knew that the heart that was still bound to me would not be able to connect with another woman. And so, although I could have waited and hoped for a position as a harpist in some Israeli orchestra, I hurried to accept the Dutch offer and disappear from your horizon, so you’d be free to heal with a new relationship. So don’t think that we can repeat the past, even if I have the urge and capacity to do so.”

  He gets up sullenly, walks into the living room, picks up the whip from the sofa, holds it close to his face, smells it, then winds it up and places it on the television. He goes into the bedroom to look at the double bed, and is startled to discover the elevated hospital bed, plugged into the wall socket.

  “What’s this? Where’d it come from?”

  “After my father died, my mother wanted to replace their worn-out double
bed with a new single bed, but a young engineer, who took over for my father at the municipality, offered her an old hospital bed that he upgraded himself with a clever electrical system. If you want, you can try it.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Why not? Back then you insisted we sleep together in my parents’ double bed, not in mine.”

  “Because your bed was narrow, the bed of a teenager, and it was important to both of us to have a space that would calm our fear and confusion. So we made love in your parents’ bed. They were abroad at the time, as I recall.”

  “In Greece.”

  “Far enough so they wouldn’t surprise us.”

  “I wasn’t afraid of being surprised, but of violating my parents’ intimacy. I washed and ironed the sheets, but two spots of my blood managed to stain the mattress, and I couldn’t get rid of them, so I had to flip the mattress over.”

  “And let’s assume that your parents, without knowing it, had sex on the proof of their daughter’s virginity—maybe that was nice for them, unconsciously I mean.”

  “So now you’re getting into my parents’ unconscious.”

  “By logical deduction. I, for example, wouldn’t care if I slept on a mattress where, unbeknownst to me, were buried signs of my daughter’s virginity.”

  “How old is she now?”

  “Six.”

  “Then you have time.”

  “I hope. Anyway, if even in the beginning you had your doubts about having children, I, as a young man, swept away by love, might have interpreted your hesitation as a teenager’s fleeting radical protest against the state or against the world.”

  “The state?”

  “In the hackneyed sense that if Israel was going downhill, better not to have children here.”

  “I never said that and never thought that. And even if I was sometimes too radical for your taste, I could have given birth to radical children who would aid and abet my radicalism.”