Below, deep in the valley, there was a little brook, thin as a string. She went to it, carrying the dirty sheets and their clothes. While she crouched there, rubbing the clothes through the water, she thought that since she had first entered Pesach’s home, she had hardly had any time alone; it had been one of the hardest things for her there, because since childhood, she had always needed to be alone with herself, for at least an hour or two each day. She needed it the way she needed air. Now she was a bit confused, because from the moment Assaf had arrived, she could actually allow herself these short ‘vacations,’ to walk around the valley a little, breathe by herself. And somehow – it was as if that deep need disappeared. She washed herself in the spring water and rose from her bathing as happy as a girl: ‘Friends give it water / like a spring on a hot day . . .’ she sang cheerfully, hanging the clothes to dry on the branches of a bush in a hidden place by the cave. ‘. . . Like a spring on a hot day / this is why it is in love . . .’ and stopped herself in time, laughing at her foolishness. She gave herself a sharp talking-to, and soon returned to her senses, reminding herself what was what – but as she did she actually stood and gazed at her blue overalls blowing lightly in the breeze next to Assaf’s T-shirt.
She had prepared clothes to change into, but Assaf didn’t have anything else, so he wore some of the clothes she had brought for Shai – the few that fit him. Later, when those got dirty, too, he wore one of her big T-shirts, one of those she’d brought especially to serve as work clothes here. It was from her fat period, she told him, and he said it was hard for him to believe she ever could be fat. She laughed – Wait until you see the pictures, I was like an elephant! And his heart expanded in joy, because there was a hint of a future in that ‘wait until you see.’
Oops, Assaf thought when she took out her toothbrush, ‘I don’t have one.’
‘Use mine,’ she said, after she finished. And Assaf – yes, yes, if his mother saw this with her own eyes, it would be the most unbelievable part of this entire epic adventure – brushed his teeth with her toothbrush, without missing a beat.
The vomiting stopped. The huge yawns, too. Diarrhea started, and that was also a test that had to be passed, and they passed it together, both of them; actually, the three of them, because Shai was starting to be himself again. Shame returned as well, and he started asking questions about Assaf, who he was and what he was doing there, and Tamar said, simply, He’s a friend.
But when Assaf told her he had to go back to the city for an hour or two, her face grew so sad that Assaf almost gave up going. ‘It’s okay, go,’ she said, as if she had decided instantly, without the possibility of appeal, that he would never be back. She sat down with sudden exhaustion, her back to him, and seemed angry with herself for wanting to believe in him. He explained to her exactly the things he had to do. He tried to speak in the most reasonable, calm way he knew how, but he felt that she had already built a wall between them, and he didn’t know what to do to calm her. Besides, how could she even dare to doubt him after their night? He looked at her angrily, despairingly, feeling how that complicated, twisted part of her was rising and taking control over her – how she gave herself away to the rat’s attack with a strange pleasure; and he felt he would never be able to convince her with words alone.
When he left the cave, she got up and thanked him for everything he had done – her politeness was almost insulting. He said goodbye to Shai as well and, mainly, to Dinka, who also seemed worried when he walked out: she ran after him, and then to Tamar, stitching up, again and again, what was being pulled apart between them. When he had already gone far from the cave, he turned around, because he heard – or thought he heard – Tamar calling him silently, as if checking to see whether he could hear her that way. He ran to her, almost flying on a wave of painful excitement. Tamar herself was shocked by the wave that washed over her at the sight of him returning. Yes, what did you want? he asked, panting. Why did you come back, she wondered. Because you called me, and also because I forgot to give you a letter from Leah. A letter from Leah? Yes, she gave this to me for you, but when I got here there was the matter with the plank and the head and we started with Shai and I forgot. He gave her the letter. They stood in front of each other, formal, torn apart. She folded the letter in her hand and crumpled it. He saw a blue vein beating rapidly in her throat and almost sent a finger out to soothe it. Only then did he remember to ask why she had called him. ‘Why?’ Tamar wondered. ‘Oh, wait a minute, yes, listen.’
She asked him whether he would be willing to do her one huge last favor. Assaf spread his arms out in despair, even stomped his foot. Why the last favor? Why? But he didn’t say anything. He wrote down the telephone number she gave him and listened to her instructions, the many detailed warnings she gave him, and the question she asked him to ask them. In fact, the mission seemed a little too big, and entirely unsuitable for him, and she knew it. ‘Clearly, I’m the one who needs to talk to them. I know. But how can I from here?’ He said he would do it. ‘Then tell me one more time what you’re going to say to them,’ and she made him repeat the question exactly the way she wanted it asked, and he repeated it, a little amused by his first look at her tough side, but also unnerved by the strange entanglement of her family affairs, now exposed to him in all their ugliness. She felt it, too, of course, and after he had successfully passed the test and repeated after her precisely, her hands dropped and all the toughness evaporated. ‘Look at me; I’m telling you things I’ve never even told my best friends.’ ‘Listen, I’ll be back at three.’ ‘Yes, yes, I need to go back to Shai.’ And she turned back to the cave, being realistic to the point of pain, knowing how hard it would be for him to return to this hell after he tasted, for a moment, his normal life.
He climbed to the road, caught a bus, and took his bearings, noting landmarks and street names, until he could locate exactly where Leah had brought him when his eyes were closed. Back home, he listened to the messages on the machine. (Roi called again, and with a cautious voice suggested that perhaps he and Assaf should meet for a man-to-man talk. It seemed to him that Assaf was stressed out, going through some kind of tough time, and they’d better clear it up, yes? No, Assaf said, and skipped over to the next message.) His parents said that they were going for a three-day trip through the desert and he shouldn’t worry about them. Assaf smiled: three days . . . they always gave him exactly what he needed, even in their disappearances from his life. He listened again to their cheerful voices: they were already fully recovered from their jet lag; they had visited Jeremy’s high-tech company that morning, and even Father, who’d been an electrician for thirty years, said he had never seen anything like it.
Then there were seven messages in a row, all from Rhino; the last one said that if Assaf didn’t call him by twelve, then he, Rhino, was calling the police.
He had ten minutes left. He drank three glasses of mango juice, one after the other, and called the workshop. Rhino’s roar silenced the noise of the machines behind him for a moment, and Assaf remembered instantly exactly why he loved Rhino so much, as if he even had a need to remember that. Assaf told him everything, not hiding anything except for the news from the United States and what was happening to him when he was with Tamar (meaning – the most important things). Rhino listened without interrupting – that was another thing Assaf liked about him: you could tell him an entire story, from beginning to end, and he wouldn’t interrupt you with lots of dumb questions. When he’d finished, Rhino quietly said, ‘So you did it, huh? You turned Jerusalem upside down and inside out, but eventually you found her . . . You want to know the truth, Assaf? I never thought you’d pull it off.’ It was only then, for the first time, that Assaf actually grasped that he had managed to do it, to find Tamar. Odd that the thought had never occurred to him before – maybe it was because, from the moment he’d found her, he had been plunged into the new mission of caring for Shai, and once that happened, who even had time to breathe? Rhino then asked quickly, with military pr
ecision, a few matter-of-fact questions: Did Assaf know the people who were chasing Tamar and Shai? Were Tamar and Shai, in Assaf’s opinion, in danger from these people? Where exactly was Leah’s restaurant, and was it possible for him to describe a few landmarks to locate the cave, in case of emergency? Three times he warned Assaf to make sure he wasn’t being followed now, because as long as he was hidden in the valley he was protected, but walking around he was an easy target, and there was probably someone looking for him. Then he casually asked what was new in the Diaspora.
Assaf said he hadn’t actually managed to talk to them, they’d only left him a message, a pretty dry one saying they were going on a trip for three days, but it sounded like everything was pretty much all right. He felt he was talking too fast, and hoped Rhino didn’t hear it against the noise of the sharpeners and metal saws in the background.
Then he dialed the number he’d written down on a chocolate wrapper. That conversation lasted for just three minutes, but was even harder. He set a meeting time and place – at a coffeehouse in a mall, midway between their homes; he described himself so they could recognize him, remembering to include the recent developments in his looks.
He showered for a half-hour, put on clean clothes, and went to the mall. He felt disoriented as he walked through the bubble of air-conditioned air, between the polished stores. He seemed artificial to himself there, as if he were only a double of the real Assaf, who was off where he should be right now. With the emergency money his mother had left him in her sewing box, he bought four hamburgers (one for Dinka) and a few packs of chocolate bars, because Shai couldn’t stop gorging on chocolate and had almost exhausted the supplies Tamar had prepared. When he walked among these lighthearted people, he remembered the feeling he sometimes had when he entered Muki’s room while she slept: she used to sleep the way little children sleep – on her back, her arms and legs flopped out, abandoning herself to the world – and Assaf would sense, then, how innocent she was, unaware of anything – and feel a terrible need to protect her. He felt it again there, too, in the mall – that all those people walking around didn’t really know what was going on so close to them, how dangerous, dark, and fragile life was.
When their meeting was over, he was sweating and exhausted; he almost considered going back home to take another shower. There was no physical cause for this feeling – he had met a couple of very clean, well-dressed, reserved people, slightly younger than his own parents, and a lot more educated than they; very rational, who hardly let him open his mouth. They were prepared with a better answer for everything he said, and despite the fact that he had come to talk to them, they behaved as if they were the ones doing him a favor. They also argued with him – especially the man – as if he were guilty of something, and they were struggling to make him understand, admit even, how right and hurt they were. Assaf simply did not know how to behave around them. He didn’t even try to argue with them. He passed the information on that he was asked to pass, refused to give any further details, and asked only one question of them, the question Tamar wanted him to ask, and was amazed to see how hard it was for the man in front of him to give up, to bend, to agree to anything.
But the moment it happened, the man’s face started to shake. First, the right eyebrow, which trembled like a creature with a life of its own – then it was as if his whole face was coming unstitched, and then the grown man began to cry bitterly into the palms of his hands. The woman also burst into tears, while people turned and stared; they didn’t touch each other, or try to stroke, comfort, or calm each other down. They sat, separate, distinguished, and both wept their own terrible tears; Assaf knew, from the little Tamar had told him, that he was now witnessing the most impossible from these two: a complete collapse of their façades. He didn’t know how to calm them down, so he talked about Tamar. They wept, and he spoke. He said she would help them, that they could trust her 1,000 percent, that everything would be fine, and other such nonsense. They couldn’t stop sobbing; the tears had probably been gathering inside them for too long. After they had calmed down a little, they sat, speechless, miserable, even pitiful. Then the conversation started again from the beginning, as if they hadn’t heard a single word he had said before that moment. They asked him hesitating, submissive questions he had no answer for, because he didn’t know a lot about Shai and Tamar, or what they had gone through before he met them. They kept asking, even when he didn’t know the answers; he had the feeling that these were questions they hadn’t dared ask anyone this entire time, not even themselves. He sat silent, responding sometimes with a word or two. Eventually he had to stop them, because the hamburgers were getting cold, but mainly because he knew that Tamar was in the cave, certain he was never returning; that was an unbearable thought.
When he left, he thought how right his mother was, who was sometimes shocked by the thought that in order to perform the hardest, most important profession – that of parenting – you don’t have to get the approval of any entrance committee, or even pass a minimal exam for certification.
The three of them sat outside the cave, devouring the food he’d brought. That is, Assaf devoured it, and Dinka with him; Shai was starting to taste here and there; only Tamar couldn’t swallow a thing. Her eyes never left Assaf, and they were shining and happy, as if Assaf were a huge surprise gift. After they ate, they napped a little in the sun, lying out in a kind of triangle – Shai’s head on Tamar’s leg, whose head was on Assaf’s leg, whose head was on her backpack – and Shai, for the first time, was talking about some of the things that had happened to him over the past year. Through his jeans, Assaf could feel Tamar shrinking as she heard about the places, the humiliations, the miseries Shai had endured. From time to time, Tamar also spoke, mentioning some amusing performance she had given in Ashdod, or in Nazareth, describing the endless driving and singing in the street in front of strangers. Assaf listened, spellbound, and thought that he would never be capable of doing what she did. Just to think about how she had planned this so far in advance without ever giving up or breaking down – truly, someone like her should have been a marathon runner.
Shai and Tamar started to swap stories of street performing, but they also spoke of Pesach; when they mentioned his braid, Assaf knew he was the man who had hit Theodora. But Tamar seemed so happy and lighthearted just then, he didn’t want to tell her what they had done to Theodora. She spoke about the bulldogs and their pickpocketing, about the poor Russian woman, and the father and child in Zikhron Ya’Akov, and all the others she had seen robbed. Later, she and Shai demonstrated for Assaf the many ways people put coins in the hat. Shai directed, and Tamar executed the different characters gracefully: those who tried to hide how little they gave, those who threw money at you as if they had just bought you; those so delicate at heart they ultimately don’t give you anything; those who send their kids to put money in; those who listened to the entire performance and, the moment you finished the last song, on the very last note, would evaporate . . .
She played and laughed and moved lightly and gracefully – you could see her body returning to life, see her sprouting through the armor that had been covering her. She felt it, too; she felt a little like the name of that book by Yehuda Amichai, only the other way around – The Fist Becoming Again an Open Palm with Fingers – when she finished, she sank into a royal curtsey. Assaf applauded, wishing she would let him take her photograph, that he might capture all her facial expressions at once.
Shai asked Assaf where, exactly, he was from. It was the first time Shai had asked him a personal question. He also asked where he studied; he mentioned two guys from Assaf’s school he knew. Assaf (who, as everybody knew, never forgot a face) said he thought he once saw Shai at a Ha’Poel match – could that be? Shai laughed – it certainly could be. Assaf asked whether he was still going to games. Shai said, ‘I used to. For me, everything is in the past tense.’ Assaf asked, ‘So what’s up with Manchester United? Their poster is hanging in the cave.’ Shai laughed. ‘She
brought that – she got confused and thought I was a fan. A dire miscalculation, Watson!’ and he tossed a few thin twigs at Tamar. Tamar smiled. ‘What’s the difference between Manchester and Liverpool – isn’t it all the same?’ The two boys protested, explaining to her that no sane Ha’Poel fan would ever support a team like Manchester. But why? she demanded to know, savoring the conversation. ‘Explain why to the kid,’ Shai sighed, ‘because I don’t have the strength.’ So Assaf explained that a true Ha’Poel fan could never support a winning team like Manchester. ‘We can only identify with losing teams, only teams that almost take the championship, like Liverpool (that was Shai’s team) or Houston. . .’ ‘So now, imagine, I have Manchester over my head.’ Shai moaned. ‘How will I ever recover with Beckham and York watching over me!’ Tamar laughed joyously, her heart full; she remembered some urgent question that had bothered her, not so long ago, something along the lines of – if, during the execution of a certain mission, a person decided to seal up his soul, and then the mission ended, could he go back to being himself? Assaf told them about a friend of his, Roi, another fan of Ha’Poel, an ex-friend, actually – who didn’t have a single yellow thing in his entire room – not a cup, not a piece of clothing, not a vase, not a rug – not a single bit of evidence of Beytar’s yellow. They jabbered on, and Tamar listened, with double pleasure. She swallowed their words like a medicine curing two different pains. Every once in a while, she threw out a question – for instance, about that ‘ex-friend’ of Assaf’s, and he told her about it, without hiding anything. Tamar listened attentively, thinking with relief that Assaf was the complete opposite of her – in what interested (and bored) him, in his rhythms, in the kind of family he came from, in his absolute inability to pretend. She liked, for example, the fact that he spoke slowly, weighing his every answer, analyzing each one carefully, as if taking full responsibility for every word he uttered. She’d never thought she would have the patience for someone as unhurried as he was, or that she would like such a pace. He’s the kind of person, she thought, who would remain exactly what he is, even if you turned your back on him for a while. He has a clean voice, she told herself, and it wasn’t something you could learn from a voice teacher. Through his jeans, she felt his blood slowly pumping through the vein along his thigh and thought he would probably live for a hundred years, and grow and change that entire time, but slowly, and he would learn a lot of things, in his methodical, profound way, and never forget one of them.
Someone to Run With Page 17