by Yaël Dayan
They went and came back for more and he remembered his own suitcase and returned for the third time and she said:
‘Come back quickly, I’m making the best coffee in Tel-Aviv, to celebrate.’
And for Nili everything was a cause for celebration.
‘We have to celebrate Bobo’s new place.’ He nailed the cage to the wall in the kitchen. ‘The first flowers in my new home! My new library! Do you like the bed under the window or opposite it? You don’t talk much,’ she said. ‘But then I do. There is so much to say! My bottles. Where to put my bottles!’ She unpacked one of the baskets and Daniel watched her with fascination.
‘I don’t use them but I like to have them in the room. Some are so pretty and the names are so exotic and whenever we go abroad to dance all I buy is shoes and bottles. Which scent is your favourite?’
‘Orange-blossom.’
She smiled and calmed down.
‘I’m not always like this. I can be serious and silent too.’ But she was always like that. Even her seriousness was bubbling and her silence was that of a lightning belt. Autumn street lamps were lit and warmth settled in the corners of the little flat while she was arranging it.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I’ll look for a room.’
‘You can stay here tonight,’ she said. ‘We can get a camp bed. I like you.’
‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’re young and very pretty and the world is yours but you can’t ask a stranger to stay the night just like that.’
‘Aha!’ Her big eyes were serious now. ‘So I can’t. Well, I can and I do, and you’re not a stranger and I’m not a baby and don’t be so moral.’
She unpacked his suitcase and watched him shave and wash.
‘It’s nice to have a man in my new flat. We have to celebrate.’
He was hungry and the hospital across the road seemed to lean towards him. Its first floor was in the right place but the rest of the building, the more he looked at it, slowly tilted, stretching bare arms as if trying to reach his window. He walked down stairs to Lipsky’s and ordered a sandwich. The café was empty at this hour and Mrs Lipsky wasn’t there.
‘She is visiting a friend across the road,’ her husband explained.
Daniel’s thoughts were still with Nili. She must be in the army now, dancing her way through it and missing her bottles and her shoes. He paid and walked away from the town along one of the paved roads that ended nowhere in particular.
Nili had left him in the room that first evening and returned with a camp bed and some sheets.
‘Do you have money?’
‘Some. Why?’
‘Can we go out and have a bite, to celebrate?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’ll get dressed.’ She took out three dresses and displayed them on the bed. ‘Which one do you like?’
He looked at them. One was a small striped one in orange and mauve, the other two low cut and frilly, a blue and a green.
‘The green one.’
‘Do you have good taste?’
‘How do I know?’
‘I keep forgetting you come from a Kibbutz.’
‘What does that have to do with it?’
‘Were you born there?’
‘No. I was born in Warsaw.’
She stopped combing her hair. Nili combing her hair, he could watch it the way he could watch the Jordan flowing or wheat in the wind or the dunes folding under the wheels of a car.
‘Fancy me with a Pole. Can you speak Polish?’
‘No.’
‘I know nothing about you, do I?’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘The honest to God truth? Absolutely nothing. Do you mind?’
He did not mind, and it was the truth. She wanted to know nothing. She didn’t care, and she wasn’t curious – or rather her curiosity was limited to details.
‘Your favourite colour, flower, street, dish, skirt. What’s the use?’ she said. ‘It’s all pretty words. You’ll tell me you love Dostoyevsky and I will say I prefer Tolstoy and you’ll tell me you are afraid of heights or women or your family and I shall analyse myself and invent complex qualities and we’ll bathe in the pleasure of being profound and understanding. All I care about is that you’re not a fool, and you’re gorgeous-looking and you’re new.’
‘And when I stop being new?’
‘Then off you go!’ She illustrated it by waving her hand in the direction of the window. ‘You’ll want to, too. And no hard feelings.’
‘And you’ll look for something newer?’
‘The way you will, the way we all do. You’re here because I am new to you, and different perhaps. Not so?’
He used her evasive tactics.
‘Let’s go and eat. I have to go to work at five in the morning.’
‘Every day?’
‘For a while.’
‘The green one then!’
He heard her shower and sing, he heard her dress up and sing, he heard her say good night to Bobo and she closed the shutters declaring:
‘Summer is over, and that’s a good excuse for celebration.’
Summer was over. Bare trees guarded the Tel-Aviv pavements and only patterns of the neon signs gave the streets any colour. The city’s pace had changed and people were hurrying indoors, thinking it was time to air the winter garments, and the birds began to wander south to hotter climates. The whitewashed houses did not reflect the sun and became as gray as the skies and at night, that night, the city looked like a heap of colourless play-bricks scattered in haste, charmless and alien. Nili was wearing her green dress and holding Daniel’s arm and they walked fast against the wind to make it home.
‘It’s going to rain at last,’ Nili stated. ‘You’re a farmer, you should know.’
‘It might. That was the way my father met my stepmother.’
‘In the rain.’
‘No. She told him he could stay the night, and he did.’
‘Well, don’t worry.’ They were climbing the stairs to the flat now. ‘I’m not about to marry you, or anybody. So you have a father?’
She gave him the key, rubbing her chilled arms, and he opened the door and fumbled for the light.
‘Yes, I have a father, he lives in Beer-Sheba. Don’t you?’
‘And a mother, and a younger sister, and a brother in the army. Do you like jazz?’
‘Sort of. I’d better go to sleep or I won’t be able to make it for work in the morning.’
‘O.K.’ she said. ‘Don’t mind me. I never go to sleep before two. When you leave in the morning you can take this key. I have a spare one.’
‘I’ll look for a room tomorrow.’
‘No hurry.’
She moved the record-player to the kitchen and he was lying in bed in the dark listening to the music when it started to rain.
The doctor injected Kalinsky to ease his pain.
‘You’ll fall asleep soon,’ he said.
‘What’s the use?’ Kalinsky murmured.
The light was off in the room and the white partition closed in on him. He was thinking of Mina, the boys’ mother. He wondered why he thought of her so seldom, and why should he think of her now? Young laughter reached him from the street and he could see chestnuts when he closed his eyes. Tall green chestnut trees along the river. And the slope, the wild park, a meeting-place for lovers, Okromglaak, where he proposed to Mina. He couldn’t remember exactly what words he used or what she said. He remembered they decided to wait until he finished his studies, and he remembered he thought he was lucky. Mina was a beautiful girl, and perhaps it had never occurred to him that she might refuse him. Large green chestnut trees, he could see them now. He was going to be buried in Gilad, in the green forest, there were no chestnut trees there, but still, it was better than this treeless landscape he lived in. Where do lovers go in Beer-Sheba, he wondered. No river, no forest, and the dunes hugging the city offered mystery, but no hiding-pl
aces.
Mina was a virgin. He had kissed her once or twice and held her body but she was a virgin when they married. He was a virgin too. Little Shmuel is happy, he thought, so maybe it was all worthwhile. He has never seen chestnut trees, never seen a river. But he will walk one day with a girl, to the dunes or the wadi – he heard laughter again – the way his mother did. The pain melted away, and his hands felt heavy, footsteps echoed occasionally in his mind, running, pacing, walking down slopes to the river, steady, floating, barely touching the ground.
Daniel was measuring the road. Very slowly, first along the asphalt, then along the unpaved hard surface which became softer and softer and when he stopped he was on top of a hill overlooking the city. He should visit Nechama, he thought. Would she let him in without uniform, not wearing the red beret? Nechama was an immense night, protective and tranquil. He could close his eyes with her and disappear, she was never really with him, it could have been someone else and yet he was there, with her, inside her, beside her. Nili was sunshine, night and day, a bright warm intangible beam. He could hear jazz, then the raindrops tapping on the shutters, then her body next to his, the first night.
‘The first rain,’ she said, and came to lie next to him. ‘I’m cold.’ She lifted the thin cover and slipped in. ‘Were you asleep?’
‘Hush,’ he said. ‘You talk too much.’
She continued to talk. Her hands were along his body and she was no different in bed than in the kitchen, or in the café, or in the street.
‘Do you like to make love? Don’t think I ask strangers in every night, and jump into their bed. Do you think I do? I like you. Perhaps I will like you more and more, maybe less and less, but can you hear the rain? Please talk to me.’
‘What can I say? You’re lovely. I don’t know what I’m doing here, and tomorrow, I have to think about tomorrow. Well it isn’t here yet, it’s now.’
And Nili was always now and he was making love to her on the small unstable bed and she was talking.
‘We’re so silly,’ she said, her hands deep in his hair. ‘The other bed is more comfortable, shall we move?’
‘Please don’t talk.’
She giggled.
Nili’s giggle, coloured candy, raindrops on tin, coins in a can. Nili’s body. He was sitting on the ground smoothing the sand now. Among the lights below, he could discern the hospital’s. He was very tired. As if he had always been seventeen, and then suddenly he was twenty-seven and the leap was too demanding. His father was dying, he knew, and his sister was pregnant and Nili was asleep somewhere, right now, in the arms of someone, dreaming up new names for bottles and new shapes for shoes. Even Nili slept sometimes.
He left her asleep on the small bed in the morning to go to the bus station. Her fair hair drew a pattern on the pillow and her hands rested near a hot neck, folded and young. He felt light and oddly happy and only for a brief moment the image of yesterday’s mongoloid child crept into his mind to be driven away by that of Nili saying: ‘We should celebrate.’ He was used to hard work and there was something relaxing about the roar of the engine, the heavy movement of the bulldozer, the upturned and lifted earth and the sight of other men, muscled and perspiring, naked to the waist. He forgot to buy food and one of the men offered him his.
In the afternoon he returned to the city, to Nili’s city, Nili’s street, Nili’s house. The flat was empty. She had made the bed and brought more flowers in and near the flower-vase a note scribbled in a childish handwriting in green pencil and the largest possible script. ‘Nili will not be late,’ it read, ‘don’t dream of leaving. Does anyone ever call you Danny?’
He made some tea and fell asleep to wake up in darkness, not knowing what the time was and Nili still gone. There was some food in the kitchen and he ate, wrote a letter to Rina, looked through the records and the books (Sartre, Camus, Wilde, a book on dancing, an Anthology of English Poetry) and sat down to look through the window. A street full of windows, and lights in the windows, and the faces of people and backs of people and women carrying food to tables and a woman with a child and a young man looking out and talking to someone in the street. And more windows down the street which he could not see clearly but could imagine the people behind them, and there was something unbearable about it. They were not him. They had never seen Daniel Kalinsky and had never heard of him, never heard of Nili – who filled the universe. They all had hands and heads and plans and dreams and little wallets with pictures of more people, and other people walked in the street. They were wearing clothes which they bought in shops, chose, rejecting others, tried on, had fitted. They had thoughts and they were not him, he had never met them, they had never seen him, they didn’t care. And if there were other windows, perhaps there were other cities, other countries, other worlds, more stars and billions of people having dinner, laughing, making love, liking garlic or disliking lamb. They all had legs, and tongues and hair and teeth and he laughed at himself thinking about it and felt sick. They talked, they answered questions, he did not know them, he would never know them, how could he, they were not Daniel, they had other names, other faces, other desires. He closed the shutters in anger, anger and unfathomable sadness. Just then the door was flung open and Nili walked in. ‘Guess who’s here!’ she said and put her arms around his neck stepping out of her shoes at the same time.
‘You look so worried,’ she said.
‘What’s the time?’
‘You’re a grown-up boy, you should have a watch. It’s almost midnight, did you eat? Had a good day?’
While she was talking, never saying anything about where she had been, she undressed and he had never seen anybody undress fast as Nili. Here she was a bundle of colours and stockings and her hair tied back in a ribbon looking like a little girl and less than a moment later, a naked woman in the bed, eager and inviting.
‘Let’s make love,’ she said and impatiently watched him wash and undress. ‘Let’s do it with the lights on, so you can see me,’ she added, ‘and I’ll let you sleep afterwards.’
And there was Beer-Sheba, a Nili-less city. More windows, more doors, more unknown people, except that he had learned not to care any more. He had stopped seeing them, lost them all one day, and he now cared for himself even less. He could place himself in one of those square lit openings and watch it and say ‘there are all these creatures, and there is one Daniel Kalinsky, another grain in the unfamiliar desert, and he has legs and hands and a mind and a beginning and an end and a lifespan in between and he will leave no mark upon this earth. Will his father? Another window in the distance, with a cough and a pain and an odour and a leftover of a body. He leaves children behind, as insignificant as he is, memories in people’s minds which will perish and disappear sooner or later.’ He touched the soft sand, Nili’s belly, her breasts, her thighs. She used to tease him and call him Danny which he disliked. She used to laugh at his clothes, and made him buy a suit. She said she would knit for him and never did, she tried to cook, she danced and laughed and never said I love you. Neither did he. She never asked questions and often called him ‘stranger,’ which he was, and chose to remain. He didn’t see Rina, and he didn’t see his father. He built a road during the day and Nili filled his nights. They seldom went out together and when she was out and back late she never failed to wake him up saying – ‘Wake up, stranger, Nili is here,’ or – ‘who’s sleeping in my bed,’ or – ‘I must tell you something.’ One week-end he went to Gilad and he returned that same night. She simply said – ‘I knew you’d miss me’ and cuddled in his arms, gratitude in her big eyes.
A month went by and he was handed a cheque which almost covered the tickets for Haim and Dora. They were to go by boat to Trieste and then by train to Warsaw. Two more weeks and it would all be over. But he refused to think about leaving Nili. He didn’t have to think about it, things simply happened.
One evening he returned from work and found her in bed. Nili, who believed that all diseases were psychological, was in bed, ill, pa
le, her stare hard and detached.
‘News for you stranger.’ She was not smiling. ‘I’ve been to a doctor. It was awful.’
‘What happened?’
‘Everything. I found out a week ago I was pregnant and today I had an abortion and it’s all over and not to worry and I have to stay in bed a day or two.’ He thought she was joking, then he thought she was lying, though he knew it was the truth and he lost control.
‘It was nothing,’ she said.
‘Just why didn’t you tell me? Before? It was my child too wasn’t it? Or am I just someone to hold at night, a comfortable body?’
‘Don’t be dramatic. You’re so banal. I didn’t want to trouble you, what’s the use? The result would have been the same.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘I didn’t want your child.’
‘What did you want? What do you want?’
‘Come on stranger, we had a good time, we were free, I knew you’d leave soon, you have to, so it was perfect, and then this happened and now it’s over. I could have hidden it from you, you know, say I had the flu or something.’
‘Well thanks for being truthful.’
He walked out into the street and around the block and when he returned the light was off and he tiptoed to his camp bed and undressed in the dark.
‘I’m not asleep,’ she said.
She was crying. He sat on her bed and watched her cry until dawn. There was nothing to say and her tears had the quality of her laughter, flowing and friendly and engulfing and she did not ask forgiveness, those were her private tears, Nili’s tears, and he was unable to pardon. In the morning he went to his boss, received some money and bought two tickets to Warsaw. In the flat he found a note, ‘Nili is gone,’ and he started packing.
Chapter Ten
His fingers sifted the sand gently and he watched it form a heap in front of him, golden purity. He destroyed it and started walking towards town. He was going to visit Nechama. Nili happened so fast, one day she was all there and the next day she was gone and he never thought of looking for her. She didn’t want his child. She didn’t ask him whether he wanted it, she didn’t want him either, and this didn’t disturb him. He was going to look for Nechama and Kalinsky summoned the nurse for another injection.