by Yaël Dayan
How lost the city looked at night, small, empty, helpless. He walked to his house and noticed that he had left the light on. I could go in now he thought. To the second floor, to his room and his bed, and wake him up. I could hold his hand and watch him die. Watch my father die. I could talk to him, say good things, tell happy tales, tell him the night is good. He walked on through the central bus station, along the main street to Nechama’s house. Orion was high above him, it must be long past midnight he thought, climbing the stairs to the familiar door.
‘Who is it?’ she said.
‘Daniel. Are you alone?’
She opened the door, a changed unsmiling woman. ‘Am I alone,’ she said, ‘yes, I am alone. You forget an element called time. Come in.’
Time had not affected the flat, its smell or its atmosphere. Had she turned the lights off the years would have crawled back to the white breasts and the round body and the black hair on the white pillow, to Yoram, to years without Kalinsky, without Nili. It was not with a sudden shock that he noticed the change in her, but with a slow lingering realization. Her black hair was dyed now and there was something artificial about it. She made coffee and when she bent down to put his cup on the low table, he noticed her breast, Nechama’s full breasts, and he thought of his father shrinking behind the white partition. There was something forced in her laughter, and the smoothness of her arms was gone. She lit a cigarette and the flame threw a shadow under her eyes, her fallen cheeks. Nechama’s flabby arms, thin ankles, swollen feet. ‘It happened fast,’ she said. ‘The boys stopped coming.’
‘It’s a different generation,’ he suggested.
‘It’s the age,’ she murmured.
‘You look well,’ he lied.
‘A lonely woman never looks well. I’ll tell you what happened the other day, at Morris’s.’ He was listening. ‘I had dinner alone, in a corner and some paratroopers were talking around a table next to mine. They talked about a legendary woman. They had just arrived in Beer-Sheba and they had nothing to do. “It used to be different,” they said. “The unit had a woman once, not a whore, a woman. She lived here and she was beautiful and they were her lovers, her sons, her friends. She loved them all and they loved her and she was their good luck charm. She knew the ones who died, they left for battle with her memory and she was something to come back to.” Another sighed and said, “why don’t we find one too,” and then the sergeant among them said, “you don’t find women like that, they find you, they just happen to you.” Then one of them asked, “what do you think happened to her,” and the first one said, “she must be an old hag by now and a woman knows when the game ends.” They left to see a movie and they never so much as looked at me.’ She had a wise smile on her face. There was no sadness in her eyes and he had nothing to say. ‘I happened to them, to you, to your friend Yoram, to all of you. Perhaps I only happened to the first one, the one I loved. You’re not married are you?’
He laughed. ‘Not at all, no plans either.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Come to visit my father, he’s in hospital dying.’
‘Well, it’s a hospital you know well. Are you staying long?’
‘A few days, depending.’
‘Still in Gilad?’
‘On and off.’
And there was nothing else to say. Little bridges above time, across a wrinkled face. How are you, what do you do, where do you live, how is the family? Bridges hanging above precipitous gaps trying to touch the other side, nostalgically – do you remember? What happened to him? Do you recall … And the ironic grin of memory trying to erase the wrinkles grows more distinct and subtly reality takes over and there is Nechama – an old worn-out woman. It couldn’t go on any more. One day the last one came. He was new and fresh and I was his first woman and all of a sudden I saw there was a little boy in my bed whose skin was fresher than mine and I burst out laughing. He never returned and the others drifted away. At times they visit, like you tonight. He shook her hand to bid her farewell and she embraced him. He held her for a moment and left quietly. ‘I’ll come again,’ he said. She opened the window and watched him walk up the street, a grown-up man, joyless and measured.
For the first time in many years he resented being alone. He fell asleep with dawn, leaving the lights on and the windows open.
In the morning he decided to go and visit Rina. He had nothing to do and the flat was empty. He told Lipsky he was going away. Lipsky never asked him anything.
‘If Miriam asks tell her I’ll be back soon.’
And he walked to the crossroad at the southern entrance to the city, to the bridge. A hot day and no cars on the road. An army lorry approached. He shyly waved his hand trying to hail it. The car didn’t stop. The advantage of uniform on the road, he thought just as a civilian jeep stopped near him. ‘Want a lift?’ the driver asked. ‘Yes please.’ He climbed in. The driver was a middle-aged man, gray-haired and tanned. You could tell a desert dweller by the look of his skin. He knew the road well and avoided the lumps – the best car in the world he said. Daniel agreed.
‘Ever driven one?’
‘In the army.’ He mentioned his unit which produced a look of respect on the man’s face.
‘Where would you like to go?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the Phosphate Plant. I’ve been going there for years, since it started.’
‘I’ll get off at the corner and wait for another lift.’
The road folded under the wheels like a metal ribbon and the roar of the engine inhibited conversation. Daniel felt the warm familiar wind blowing at his face and he wished the journey would never end when the jeep came to a halt. He jumped off and started walking downhill. First walking, then taking off his sandals and running along the soft shoulders of the asphalt road until he was breathless.
The sun had reached its zenith and he was thirsty. A few Bedouins were gathered round a well in the distance and he walked towards them for some water.
Kalinsky’s lips were dry. His mouth was dry, so was his throat all the way down to his lungs and the pain subsided when he drank, only to return more strongly later. It was a bearable pain, but it promised a worse one and he knew he was at the end. No thoughts of another world, paradise or hell, no thoughts altogether. He lived with the apathy of the dying, succumbing to it willingly, emerging from it and reaching for the bell and again sinking with it and drifting away. He was careful not to touch his body as the touch irritated him and he avoided looking at his arms stretched in front of him above the sheet. He fixed his stare at the ceiling, the ventilator and at times the window and when a thought came into his mind he felt too weak to grasp it.
The doctor said they would move him to a private room and the doctor’s voice reached him through many layers of soft cottonwool, echoless and numbing. A long trip followed. They removed the partition and lowered his bed and Rachel came in to roll him out. He didn’t open his eyes but sensed the low movement. It didn’t feel like a horizontal trip along corridors, but a downhill one and he wondered whether he was in some secret passage which bypassed the stairs leading to the ground floor. Closer to the morgue. When they stopped he thought he was still moving and the pain was renewed. He opened his eyes. The room was different. For a second he thought he was at home, in Warsaw, his parents’ home and he could hear them talking in the living room. ‘Your son is very sick.’ his mother told his father. ‘He will recover, he is a healthy boy and the doctor the best there is.’
He knew he was in Warsaw, because of the smell in the room and the snowflakes against the window. ‘What is it?’ he heard a strange voice ask. He must have been talking aloud because a blurred image of Rachel confronted him, very closely, very dark against the white curtain. There was a small spare bed in the new room and his personal belongings were placed in a new cupboard. The smell of disinfectant overpowered the Warsaw odour and he closed his eyes again. He was waiting.
Daniel had some water from the well
and chatted with the Bedouins. They knew a short cut to the excavations and offered to take him there. After a few minutes he changed his mind. ‘I have to go back to Beer-Sheba,’ he said, ‘how do I get to the main road?’ They didn’t seem to understand but accepted it when he turned in the opposite direction and started walking fast, almost running. The road, straight as a ruler and carless, met his eye. Getting back was a question of luck. Two overcrowded cars swept by, a motorcycle – a girl glued to the rider’s back – and then silence again, disturbed only by a southerly wind carrying sand and sprinkling it along the road like grains of salt. He didn’t want to see Rina. He knew she would preach and ask and scold and he wasn’t up to it. He didn’t want to be alone either, because his aloneness like never before was invaded by ghostly memories and he knew he should visit his father or it would be too late.
Not that it mattered. The old man would die anyway and Daniel didn’t believe it mattered how you died or what you carried with you to the grave. But what you left behind did matter. Daniel was one of the things Haim would leave behind, and somehow visiting or not visiting his father had to do with his value as a legacy. There were no cars in sight and, exasperated, he measured with his steps the road towards the city, turning his head back every now and again hoping to see a car emerging from behind the low hills.
When Kalinsky regained consciousness he heard Dora’s voice. She was lying on the spare bed in his room and he thought they were at home. He asked her about the shop’s turnover that day and then, ‘Why do you cry Dora?’ and she mumbled something which escaped him. ‘Did Miriam come by?’ he asked, and she managed to answer casually. ‘Shall I get you some water Dora?’ and then, ‘How many years have we been married?’ and, ‘I feel a pain in the chest.’ He saw that Dora was wearing a dress. ‘Why are you dressed up Dora? Where are we?’
Two cars passed Daniel going in the opposite direction. Both drivers stopped and asked if he needed anything and he continued to walk. With nightfall a heavy lorry stopped for him and it felt like the end of a battle. The lights in the wilderness, the minaret, the bridge. He went to eat at Morris’s and decided to go and see Miriam after dinner. Perhaps they could go and visit Haim together. He felt like seeing little Shmuel. Miriam opened the door. She was not surprised to see him.
‘Did you get my message?’ she asked.
‘No, I was out of town, just came back. How is he?’
‘Come in. Shmuel asked about you.’
They entered the room and he wondered whether Kalinsky was dead and Miriam was slowly breaking the news to him. He thought of Nili not asking him about the baby and stopped cold.
‘I asked you how my father was.’
‘He just is. He had a haemorrhage.’
‘When was that?’
‘In the afternoon. Mother is with him. He’s unconscious now. Perhaps it’s a matter of hours, or a day, I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t stay and talk to the doctor. Did you have dinner?’
Her husband entered the room holding Shmuel in his arms. He lowered the boy who ran towards Daniel and pointed a toy gun at him laughing.
‘Will you stay? Can we play a new game?’
‘I’ll play a game if you like.’
‘Leave Uncle Daniel alone now,’ Miriam said and went out into the kitchen. He had never been alone with Miriam’s husband and what could he say to him? Tell him about the baby, about Nechama? Talk to him about his shop, business, the banana plantation at Gilad?
‘Have you seen my father?’ he asked.
‘No, you know how it is, one of us has to stay with the boy and tend the shop now that Dora is with him.’
‘Do you like Beer-Sheba?’ He regretted the question once asked, but the answer was straight ‘Of course. Why else would I be here? It’s different, and special, and Miriam likes it.’
‘My father doesn’t.’
‘Doesn’t he? He would have hated Tel-Aviv. Beer-Sheba bothers him physically that’s all.’
‘Not that it makes a difference now.’
‘Well, I have heard of miracles, last minute recoveries, you never know.’
Daniel knew very well, and so did Miriam, and when their looks met it seemed that they communicated this knowledge and he was grateful to her. He liked having a sister that evening and the boy took him to his bedroom for a bedtime story.
Surprisingly enough, Daniel accepted Miriam’s husband’s invitation to play a game of chess. Shmuel was in bed and some records were put on and Daniel felt he had been there many times before, and that they were his family. Miriam was mending a dress, sitting upright on her chair. Her big pregnant belly looked firm and round and somehow she projected tranquillity. He lost the game without caring much.
‘You play well,’ his partner apologized for winning, ‘I imagine you didn’t concentrate. You know I lost my father last year.’ Daniel didn’t know. At times he even forgot his name. He got up and put his hand on Miriam’s neck.
‘You must be tired, why don’t you go to sleep?’
‘I have to leave too.’ Daniel got up.
Was it pity in Miriam’s eyes when she said goodnight to him?
‘When are you expecting?’ he asked when leaving.
‘Next month.’
‘If you’d like to, you can send Shmuel to Gilad for a week or two. It will make it easier for you and I’d enjoy it.’
‘Thank you.’ A trace of a smile, her husband’s large comforting hand and he was alone again.
Kalinsky was with Dora but he was not aware of it. The man said there were miraculous recoveries sometimes, but it didn’t look as if Haim was going to be the object of a miracle. Dora watched him shamelessly. She never did before. She had never looked at him in a detailed thorough way, she had never seen him helpless, not even at the beginning when she offered him shelter. She was already thinking about life without Haim, and it was going to be a long pull without him. She was younger, she was healthy and she had a daughter, a grandchild, a shop, a way of life. She watched her husband closely. The contours of his face were sharper than ever but the skin was not badly wrinkled. The hands were long and delicate and she held them in her own. He was a useless, helpless child, a dying bird and she accepted it. She accepted it with all the desperate agony acceptance can hold. She didn’t believe in miracles, but she wanted to talk to him. She wanted to thank him for bringing her there. She walked to the window and let the cool air in. It was her city putting out its lights ready for a short night’s sleep. She liked talking to Mrs Lipsky and when she did she was ashamed of the things they said. They were bitter, nostalgic, irritated, but this was all part of the life in her city. She had the privilege of complaining, of choosing, of disagreeing and disliking.
The doctor came in and examined Haim. ‘I am afraid there isn’t much I can do. You ought to get some sleep too. I’ll have the nurse look in from time to time.’
‘Will he have much pain?’
‘As long as he is unconscious he is free of it. We’ll see tomorrow. Do your children know?’
‘Our daughter was here today. His son knows.’
‘There is some tea in the doctor’s room on this floor, help yourself whenever you feel like it.’
‘Good night doctor.’
She took a walk along the corridor. She was curious about the other patients. Were their wives in tears? She felt guilty about her curiosity but paused to listen to sighs of pain, to two patients whispering to each other. Through the night from the Maternity Ward flashed the scream of a woman, once only. She returned to her husband but he hadn’t moved. The nurse left some food for her which she didn’t touch. She sat on the white chair, the way she used to in the other room during visiting hours, and fell asleep. The spare bed remained empty and the night nurse who looked in once thought she was wrapped in thoughts and sadness.
Sadness was what Daniel felt walking home. When Yoram died it was a passionate anger, it was revolt, it was a world shaken and crumbling pillars. When he lost Nili, when Nili
gave up his baby, it was self-pity and hurt vanity. And now sadness entered the corridors of his being, ignoring the open doors to rooms cluttered with unhappy memories and settling in. Sadness evaporating and clinging to ceiling and corners, sadness which plasters the walls and becomes a second nature. He hurried up and opened the window. He was not told about the new room and there was no light in the second-floor windows. He presumed Dora was asleep too and there was nothing to do but wait until the morning. He was alone in the world, with Kalinsky. He was seeing him clearly, now, as clear as on their last meeting, then too they were alone. ‘Nili is gone’ the note said and he packed and left. The bus to Beer-Sheba left five minutes before he reached the station and he took a taxi. He went straight to the shop and his father was there completing the accounts of the day, preparing to go home. Dora came in and greeted him and Haim merely said, ‘You don’t visit us very often.’
‘I want to talk to you,’ Daniel said. ‘I have to go back tonight.’
‘We’ll go to the house.’
The night was cold and heavy with clouds. The clay road was muddy because it had rained in the morning and the misery of a winter night never became Beer-Sheba. Clad in coats and walking far apart from each other, an outsider would never have identified them as a family returning home.
The roof leaked that winter and two bowls were placed in the middle of the room to catch the raindrops. It was cold in the house and they sat in the kitchen which smelt of fumes from the kerosene stove.
‘How are you doing these days?’
‘Why should I burden you?’ Haim said, ‘We manage. It’s not what we expected to find, but we have enough to eat and clothes to wear. The rest is troubles.’ Daniel listened carefully for a while, and his father listed his complaints. The plumber was charging too much, people asked for credit in the shop and never paid, they were never prepared for the winter. Miriam had stopped coming every day since the child was born and the mayor was prejudiced against the Poles. Dora excused herself and he heard her wash and undress. He heard her enter the bed, he heard the bedsprings move under her weight and he heard her twist and turn. How could he talk to his father? He took an envelope out of his coat pocket. ‘I have been doing a lot of thinking.’ He was at a loss now. ‘It doesn’t work for you, so, I brought you something.’