Another crowded circle had gathered down the street: people were surrounding a girl who sat on a chair, playing the cello. Assaf didn’t understand anything about music and was still surprised that anyone had come up with the idea of playing that instrument in the streets. She was a tiny girl with glasses and wore a red hat, and Assaf felt that the people gathered around her not for the sad music, necessarily, but because she, the little girl with the big cello, was some kind of strange performance in herself.
Assaf and Dinka had already passed by the circle, but then the dog stopped, as if her body had just absorbed an unseen shock. She turned around, confused, feverishly sniffing at the air; she spun around and stubbornly shoved her way through the crowd. Assaf was dragged after her – he had no choice; he made his way through the audience and found himself standing in front of the girl playing in the center of the circle.
She was playing, her eyes closed, her face changing expression quickly, as if she were dreaming. Dinka barked loudly. The girl opened questioning eyes and looked at the dog; Assaf thought she went a little pale. She stiffened in her chair, flashed nervous looks to both sides, and continued to play, sawing at the strings without emotion. Dinka kept pushing forward, using all her strength; Assaf pulled her back. The people surrounding them started to scold him, telling him to move, take the dog away, stop interrupting. He got scared – he realized that now everyone was watching him, now he and Dinka had become the street performance . . .
The girl pulled herself together first; she stopped playing, leaned forward quickly, and whispered to Assaf in a choked, scared voice: ‘Where is she? Tell her she’s great, that we all think she’s fantastic – terrific! Now run – run!’
She then straightened up and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes tightly, as if erasing the event that had just occurred from her memory; she continued to play, spreading her strange melancholic charm over the audience.
Assaf didn’t understand a thing she had told him; he especially didn’t understand why he was supposed to run. Dinka realized it before he did – quick as lightning, she jumped up; his hand was still holding her collar – Assaf felt her practically rescuing him, pulling him forward and dragging him off with all her strength. He pulled himself together after a moment – they circled the girl, pushing their way through the audience, bursting out of the crowd. He thought he heard someone calling after him to stop; he didn’t hesitate. If he had looked back, he would have been able to see a short, wide man looking at him, then quickly dialing his mobile phone. Assaf ran and thought. She knew Tamar, that’s for sure – she recognized Dinka and wanted him to tell Tamar she was terrific. Now I need to think fast – they all think she’s terrific? What did she do? Who are they? He ran, his mind exploding, collecting information, filtering, putting together pieces of the mosaic, testing all kinds of theories. He knew and did not know at the same time; his heart told him that he was going in the right direction, he was already in the best place he could be, deep in his 5,000-meter run; he sank into himself, listening to the story that started to snake through him. What’s more, he found himself moving in astonishing unison with Dinka. Without looking at each other, they moved through the people, the crowded traffic, crossing streets the way they used to, when they were first friends. (Yesterday? Dear God, Assaf thought, could it have only been yesterday?) Only now, no rope linked them – only a quick glance every once in a while, confirmation, silent support – I’m here with you – I’m with you, too – nice turn – thanks – where are you now? – ten steps behind you, there are a few people between us, but don’t worry, I’m following you, keep going – I hear someone running after us – I can’t hear it, but turn down this alley – no, I’m not going down there, I smell something – where? – one more minute, just keep running, I’m getting close to something good, just don’t stop running – don’t make me laugh, stop talking, you’re ruining my concentration; I hope you know where you’re taking me – of course I know, and soon you’ll know it, too. Hey, Dinka, this looks familiar, I think we’ve already gone down this alley by that high wall – open your eyes, Assaf, we were here just yesterday. You’re right, this is the – you finally recognized it? – follow me, now we’re here.
She jumped on the green gate, standing on her hind legs and pushing the knob with both her paws; they both galloped inside. Assaf peeked over his shoulder and saw there was nobody there. His pursuers hadn’t reached him yet. He entered the yard, ran over the stones, passed the well; between the trees, their branches heavy with fruit. He found himself wrapped up in the deep, familiar silence.
But before he could hurry behind the house to the window facing west, for the basket that would descend with the key, a little airborne, bulrush basket, he noticed something strange. He felt the air around his ears cool suddenly – the door to the house was open, swinging slightly on its hinges.
He leaped inside and Dinka followed. They halted together, shocked, and stared.
The entrance hall looked as if a hurricane had hit – disaster everywhere. The floor was covered with hundreds of books, flung open, torn, disgraced. The tall cupboards had been pulled down and broken, as if they had been smashed with an ax. Even the altar had been shoved from its place, exposing a lighter rectangular patch of floor; it looked as if it had been moved to check for someone hiding underneath.
He thought, Theodora. For a moment, he didn’t dare run upstairs, because in order to get there, he had to step on books. Then he started running, stepping on books – he knew instantly that what had happened here had something to do with him, with his visit to her. He galloped up the round stairs, miserable, his mind full of horrifying pictures awaiting him at the end of the corridor, everything he knew from horror movies and his most gruesome computer games. A frightened child began weeping in his mind – Don’t surrender to it, Assaf thought, don’t surrender. Theodora is so small, he thought, like a little chick; how could she survive such cruelty? He took a fleeting look into the pilgrims’ hall; the beds had been turned upside down, the mattresses torn, slashed by knives. You could still feel the hatred of those who had done it in the air. He bounded up the last six stairs in one and a half steps, opened the blue door, and forced himself not to shut his eyes in fear.
In the first moment, he couldn’t see her at all in the mess of the room. Then he discovered her – on her rocking chair, her eyes wide. She looked like a rag doll someone had forgotten on a chair. No spark of life filled her eyes; an eternity passed, and finally her mouth opened slightly, her eyes moving over to him.
‘Assaf,’ she murmured voicelessly. ‘Is that you, agori mou? Run away from here quickly.’
‘What happened, Theodora? What did they do to you?’
‘Run before they come back; go, find her, keep her safe.’ Her eyes closed.
He hurried to her, knelt by her side, took her hand. Then he saw the open wound stretching from the edge of her temple to the corner of her mouth.
‘Who did this to you?’
She breathed slowly and held up three tiny straight fingers. ‘Three,’ she signed to him. Suddenly her hand clenched his arm. ‘Beasts, and more than that – the big one was the devil.’ She was so weak she could hardly speak. But her hand tightened on his arm as if her entire personality were concentrated there. ‘Remember, he is balding – oh, Satanas! – and he has a braid down his back, may he be hanged by it, amen!’ Her eyes closed again, as if she had fainted, but she continued to rage, even with her eyes closed, and Assaf was relieved to notice that she had very little difficulty speaking. ‘He asked about Tamar, the bat, the butting ox, the evil spell – and when I said nothing, then smack! He hit my cheek! But don’t worry, my dear.’ A faded hint of a familiar smile, the rebellious child she had been, shone from deep inside her. ‘I bit him so that he shall never forget the strength of my mouth.’
‘But what did they want?’
She opened her eyes and smiled tiredly. ‘Her.’
‘And how did they know to come here?’
‘Perhaps you can tell me.’
His long lashes fluttered and closed for a moment in pain – he was the one who had brought them here. But how? Someone must have seen him when he came here before – someone had recognized Dinka and was sure that Tamar had been hiding in the house.
Theodora moaned and signaled to him that she wanted to get up; Asaf couldn’t believe she would have the strength to stand. She did, holding on to him, swaying like a tiny flame of sheer will. They stood still for a moment, until the color returned to her face.
‘Better now. It was very bad at night. I thought I would not live through it.’
‘From the beatings?’
‘No, he only slapped me once, but from the despair.’ Assaf understood.
One of her fingers traced along his wrist. ‘Did they see you again, on your way here?’
‘They saw me,’ he admitted. ‘They chased me. I ran away, but they still might be around.’ As soon as he said it, he knew what he hadn’t dared to think until that moment: whoever was chasing Tamar believed they were partners.
‘Then,’ Theodora reasoned, ‘in a moment or two they will start to wonder whether you came here again, and now they will be searching for you, not for me. They shall not be gentle with you. My dear, you must leave.’
‘If I leave now, they’ll catch me.’
‘If you remain, they will catch you much faster.’
They were silent, scared, both imagining the beating of their hearts as the sound of steps running in the corridor. Dinka looked up at them, her eyes shining, her body trembling with nerves.
‘Unless,’ Theodora said.
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless something distracts them.’
Assaf didn’t understand. ‘What on earth could dis –’
‘Quiet! Don’t disturb me.’
She started walking around the room, clearing space between the piles of books, between the broken shelves, stepping on fragments of plates, on heaps of letters bound by thick yellow rubber bands. Assaf had no idea where she found the strength to move, to think, to worry for him, when her entire life had been poured out and trampled.
A little wooden cupboard was thrown on its side, blocking the entrance to the small kitchen. She opened the cupboard and took out a white cloth parasol with thin wooden ribs.
‘In Lyxos,’ she explained gravely, ‘the sun is very strong.’ Assaf tensed up and his lips grew pale. She’s gone crazy, he thought. The shock has thrown her completely off balance.
Theodora looked at him and divined his thoughts. ‘Please, my dear, don’t worry. I am not losing my mind.’
She tried to open the parasol. The wooden ribs moved quickly and silently, but the gentle white fabric disintegrated once the parasol opened and fell on her head like snowflakes.
‘It seems I shall have to relinquish my shade, but where have I put my shoes?’
She spoke with a strange matter-of-factness, as if reducing her entire being into the little actions before her. She removed a tiny pair of black shoes, wrapped in yellow newspaper, small as a girl’s, from a hidden drawer. She blew on them, scattering a cloud of dust. She wiped them off, shining them with the sleeve of her gown, then sat on the edge of her bed and tried to put them on. He could see her fingers getting tangled in the laces.
‘What a foolish old woman your new friend is.’ She gave him an embarrassed look. ‘She has not tied her shoelaces in fifty years and has already forgotten how!’
He knelt before her and, with the utmost reverence, like Prince Charming with Cinderella, tied her shoelaces.
‘Look, my feet have hardly changed since then!’ she crowed with evident pride, stretching her leg out in front of him, forgetting the terror of the situation for a moment.
His face was level with her wounded face, the clotted blood pooled over her entire cheek. She saw the shock in his eyes. ‘The ways of the world are wondrous.’ She sighed. ‘No man has touched my face for fifty years, and the first one – was a slap.’ A spasm of sobs passed between her eyes and stopped at the edge of her nose. She said, ‘Enough. Enough! Now tell me please, quickly, what is it like there?’
‘It doesn’t look too good,’ he said. ‘You have to have it bandaged.’
‘No, not there! There!’ and she pointed over her shoulder, toward the outside.
‘There . . . ?’ He hesitated. What could he tell her? How can you describe the outside world in half a minute? ‘You have to see it to understand,’ he whispered.
Her worried eyes delved deeply into his in silence. Assaf knew it would be a long time before he could ever digest the things he was witnessing here.
‘I will walk out through the gate, then turn in the direction of this hand.’ Theodora took a deep breath, and he realized she didn’t even know which was left and which was right. ‘And you will wait another few minutes inside the house. If they are waiting out there, why, they will most certainly hurry after me, to discover what the old woman is up to . . .’
‘What if they catch you?’
‘That’s it, exactly. I want them to catch me, not you.’
‘And if they hit you?’
‘What will they do to me that they haven’t already done?’
He looked at her, thrilled by her bravery. ‘Aren’t you scared?’
‘Scared? Of course I am. But not of them. It is only the unknown that is frightening.’ She lowered her head and spoke to some stubborn thread on the sleeve of her gown. ‘Please tell me, when I go out, when I pass through the outer gates, what will be the first thing I see? What is the first thing there, on the outside?’
Assaf tried to recall it: her street was a side alley and pretty quiet. Cars parked along it and drove slowly through; on the corner was a bank branch and an electronics store with a television set playing in the window. ‘Nothing special,’ he mumbled, then stopped, understanding the stupidity of his words.
‘And the noise, yes? I am most afraid of the noise. And the light. Perhaps you have sunglasses for me?’
He didn’t. ‘It might be a little difficult at the beginning,’ he said, feeling a great urge to protect her, to swaddle her in cotton. ‘Just be careful on the street. Always look to your left and your right and your left again, and you mustn’t cross when there is a red light . . .’ The more he spoke, the more scared he got, as he understood just how much she needed to learn in order to survive a full five minutes in the city’s center.
They went down the stairs. It was still hard for her to walk, and she leaned on his shoulder. Slowly they walked down the round corridor, and Assaf felt that, for her, it was also a journey of mourning, of separation from something to which she could never return. Amazed, she said, as if to herself, ‘When the walls of the Old City fell, I did not go out. And I did not go out when there were the explosions in the streets and in the market, although I wanted to give blood so terribly. And I did not go out when Yitzhak Rabin, may his memory be blessed, was murdered, and I knew that the whole country was passing by his coffin. And now, suddenly . . . Khristos kai Apostolos!’ she mumbled when her eyes discerned the ruins of the entrance hall, and she fell silent. Assaf thought she would faint now, but she actually let go of his supporting arm, stretched her tiny frame tall, and when he saw the deep crease lengthen from her nose to her chin, he knew that no one would ever defeat her. He tried to clear a path for her through the books, but she said there was no time for that, and gracefully she tread upon the covers, touching and not touching them, as if she were floating.
Just before she reached the door facing the yard, she stopped. She clasped her hands together nervously.
‘Listen,’ Assaf blurted, ‘maybe we don’t have to do this. I’ll manage. I run quickly, they won’t catch me.’
‘Quiet!’ she ordered. ‘Now listen: go to Leah. She may be able to help you. Have you yet heard of Leah?’
Assaf hesitated. He had encountered her name in the diary several times; he remembered some mysterious debate that had continued for a f
ew months, and a few more conversations about that matter with Tamar – something about a baby, and panic, and hesitation. Something that resulted – if he remembered correctly – in a trip to Vietnam. But of course he couldn’t tell Theodora that he had looked through Tamar’s diary.
He asked where he could find Leah. Theodora stretched out her arms in irritation. ‘Why, this is the trouble, that Tamar does not speak! She once told me, ‘There is a Leah.’ Very nice, I say, and perhaps half a year later she says, ‘Leah has a restaurant.’ Bon appétit, I say! But where? What? Who is she to you? And what have you to do with her? Then she is silent, and what now? Whom have we left?’ She looked at him sorrowfully, then bent to Dinka, stroked her ears, unfolded one of them, and whispered – Assaf heard fragments of her words – ‘To Leah . . . the restaurant . . . understand . . . quick like an arrow, hurry!’ Dinka watched her, ears pricked. Assaf thought Theodora had truly gone a bit mad if she believed Dinka could understand that.
Suddenly Theodora grasped his hand with both of hers. ‘And you will, of course, tell Tamar that I went outside, will you not? She’ll never believe it!’ She giggled in girlish joy. ‘She’ll be frightened, my Tamar! But do listen, do not tell her that I went outside for her or she will torment herself – she has enough torments without my adding to them. Pou pou! Even that word, “outside” – it tastes quite different in my mouth: I am going outside. Soon, I shall go outside. Here, outside I go.’
She opened the door and looked at the wide yard. ‘I know this side a little; sometimes, when Nasrian brings the laundry from the washerwoman or the groceries from the market, I stand here and peek out through the open door. But when you stand here’ – and she took one grand step over the threshold and was breathless – ‘what beauty! Everything is so wide!’
Someone to Run With Page 12