The next day Raymonde waited for her on the bench, with a piece of chicken and half a carrot she’d taken out of the soup and hidden in her kerchief. When Rivka saw what was in the kerchief she smiled broadly, and Raymonde knew that she had made the right move to get her attention. She’d never had to work for men’s attention, they always ran after her, but she really wanted Rivka to like her. That woman had the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen, a smile that went from her mouth to her cheeks, from there to her eyes, making them slant like a Chinese person’s eyes, and from there to her hair. It was all puffed up because her hairdresser teased it every week, even though she didn’t have anyone to tease for – her husband died a long time ago, the grandchildren hardly every came and the cats really didn’t care. Rivka had a soft, pleasant voice and she spoke correct Hebrew, like the kibbutznikim, because as soon as she came from the Holocaust they put her into a kibbutz, and she didn’t leave until her second child. After the first child, she decided she didn’t want them to put her babies in a children’s house, she wanted to hear them when they cried at night, she wanted to go to them and sing to them until they went back to sleep. So after her second child, she took her husband and they moved to Ramat Gan. From what Raymonde saw during visits, the children turned out a little screwy, the one from the children’s house and also the one from Ramat Gan, which shows that maybe it doesn’t make a difference, children’s house or not. What makes a difference, Rivka told her, is if you have a mother who’s afraid to love you the way she should because maybe they’ll take you away someday too. And if you have a father who’s a big shmuck. Raymonde didn’t know the father. He died of a heart attack a week before the surprise party for his ninetieth birthday. For months they planned how to surprise him, and in the end, death came and surprised him better than any of them. But she knew Rivka and thought she had no problem loving. When she said that to Rivka, Rivka thought a little and said maybe that was the only muscle that didn’t get ruined in old age, but got stronger. And maybe something falls out there too, like the way your teeth and hair fall out, something that’s been blocking it, so that, unlike the teeth and hair, it’s for the better.
It took a lot of time for them to convince Rivka to go back there. When she came to Israel, she swore she would never set foot in that place again. With their washing machines, she had no problem. She liked shoving her dirty underwear into the open mouth of her German washing machine. But she didn’t like the idea of visiting there. When people from all kinds of organizations came and talked to her about the educational value, she sent them to her survivor friends, who went and came back with endless stories about the camps and the children, and some Toblerone for her from the airport. While she shared the Toblerone with Raymonde on the bench – there was no point offering any to the cats – she talked about things she remembered from there. Raymonde sat and listened. She spread open her mind and collected the stories the way you spread large sheets of cloth under olive trees to collect the olives that fall. The time on the bench was Rivka’s time, and the night-time was Raymonde’s. If sleep runs away from us, Rivka would say, then instead of trying to catch it and never succeeding, let’s run away from it. So they had what their grandchildren called a pyjama party, but without snacks that give you heartburn. Raymonde would go to Rivka’s room and sit down on the couch, and Rivka would make tea and say, “Tell me, please.” Sometimes Raymonde would talk until almost morning, and then they would watch the sunrise together. Rivka said that was the most romantic thing there was between a man and a woman, or between people in general.
She knew that people grow to look like their spouses, or their dogs, so it didn’t really surprise her that they also start to look like their closest friends. When the residents of the home began to say that they looked like Siamese twins, it was half a joke, but a year later people really began to get them confused. Rivka took Raymonde to her hairdresser, where they teased her hair and dyed it exactly the same blonde colour that film stars have. Rivka’s skin had become darker because of age spots, and Raymonde’s had become yellower because a woman who’s spent so much time on her feet is like paper that’s been left in the sun for too long. Even their faces began to look alike, time had completely sanded them down. One day, when Raymonde came back from visiting her new great-grandchild in the nursery in Barzilai hospital, she told Rivka that they were all the same, Ashkenazi and Sephardi babies, wrinkled and red with a little bit of hair. Rivka laughed and said that the people who came to visit there, at the old people’s nursery, probably thought the same thing about them.
That’s why Raymonde didn’t go to Rivka’s funeral. It would be like seeing yourself lying there, wrapped in shrouds, being lowered into the ground. For the first few weeks she went out to the bench alone to feed the cats for Rivka, but after a while she got tired of it. If Rivka had wanted to feed the cats so badly, she should have stayed around longer. She shouldn’t have let something as small as the flu take her like that, in such a cowardly, old person’s death. But though she didn’t feel responsible for the cats, the school children were something else. She was the one who had talked Rivka into doing it, and it would be a shame to disappoint them.
This is how it happened that, after the funeral, Rivka’s phone stayed with her. The night before Rivka passed away, when Raymonde visited her in her room, Rivka gave her the phone because she was tired of the constant calls from her children. They didn’t have anything to say as it was, just asked how she felt, sounding like they were in a big hurry, and also she was sick of answering, “Everything’s fine.” For the first few days after the funeral Raymonde didn’t dare touch the phone, it lay in her bag like a dead black mouse, and the scariest thing was when it suddenly started to vibrate there – it almost gave her a heart attack. When she went to pay a condolence call, she tried to tell the children that she had their mother’s phone, but none of them listened to her, they were too sad or too busy with the other visitors. She could tell they were from work and had to be there not because of Rivka, but because it was the right thing to do. Then there were no calls at all for a long time, but she still charged the phone just because it made her sad to see it blinking with that weak light phones have before they die. Until one night there was a call from the school. They wanted to ask what time they should pick her up tomorrow to take her to the airport. Suddenly she remembered Rivka’s delegation, how she had encouraged her to go to Poland, but then was sorry, because what would she do without Rivka for eight days, and now she had a lot more than eight days to be without her, until she also caught that terminal flu. She had planned to say no, that something had happened, but the woman on the other end of the phone, exactly like Rivka’s children, didn’t really ask questions to get answers, but only so she could ask, “Does tomorrow at seven sound okay?” The words she had planned to say from the beginning. She’d only asked, “What’s convenient for you?” to be polite. Suddenly Raymonde heard herself reply, “Seven-thirty. I have T’ai Chi before that,” which wasn’t true at all, she didn’t do T’ai Chi, Rivka had done it, and look at how much that helped her. Those Chinese are good at public relations, but everything else is rubbish. The woman on the other end thought for a minute, then said, “Okay.” Raymonde could tell from her voice that she wasn’t happy, but she felt uncomfortable arguing with a Holocaust survivor.
She ended the call and went over to the suitcase with Rivka’s things in it. The same day Rivka died, the home took them out of her room for the new resident with the purple hair. Ten days earlier Rivka’s children had promised to come and take it, but they’d hurried off into their lives again, the way cockroaches scurry around after being sprayed, and the suitcase had been in Raymonde’s room ever since. Rivka’s passport was there, along with her identity card and credit cards. Her socks were still neatly folded, and that made Raymonde laugh. It made her laugh twice, once because Rivka folded socks – who folds socks! – and the second time because the socks stayed folded after the feet were gone. If she’d known earlier,
she would have had a good laugh at Rivka’s expense. They had always laughed at each other, but with a smile, like sisters. Now she couldn’t laugh at her any more, and anyway she didn’t have time to laugh. She had to pack. The first time abroad requires organization. She tried on the socks and saw that they were exactly her size. Siamese twins. And everything had that wonderful smell of Rivka, which made her tear up a little. She packed her things in the suitcase with Rivka’s, thinking that she was the only one who knew there were two women in it, one living, the other dead. She told the home she was going on vacation with her family and left them Eli’s phone number in case of an emergency. By the time her youngest son bothered to call them back, she would manage to go halfway around the world. When she finished packing everything, she looked at the passport again. Rivka smiled at her. She smiled back.
At night she couldn’t sleep and knew it was from excitement. She thought of what it would be like on the plane, and what it would be like to set foot in another country. She would have loved to talk to Rivka about it, but that was impossible. Maybe she’d leave a letter for the manager of the home, just so she’d have a fit.
On the way to the airport Raymonde wasn’t frightened at all. That was one of the few advantages of her age: you’re not afraid of anything but the one thing that no one dares to mention in your company, and if you yourself mention it, people say don’t be silly, as if you were talking about something completely imaginary, a demon from a fairy tale, and not about something as logical and expected as death. At the airport she met the children, who were very nice and polite, especially with all their parents standing around and taking pictures, like they’d never seen a plane in their lives. She walked around the duty-free shop and saw that everything was very expensive, but she put so much perfume and so many creams on her hands that they smelt like a bordello. She put on eyeliner and lipstick that cost thirty dollars, and when the salesgirl asked whether she wanted to buy anything, she said she would never buy anything for that price. As a matter of principle. Then she applied blusher, and when she heard the loudspeaker call her name, that is, Rivka’s name, she hurried out. On the plane her hands shook with fear of flying, and the guide, who thought she was emotional about going back there, held her hands and tried to calm her down. It helped a little, and the whisky the flight attendant brought also calmed her down a bit. Fifteen minutes later she felt well enough to look out of the window and see clouds from above for the first time in her life. They looked the same as they did from below, but completely different. When they landed in Poland her fear returned. Israelis bend the rules, but in Europe it’s no laughing matter. Who knows what they’d do to her here if they found out. They didn’t find out. With those sour faces of theirs they stamped her passport, and she said, “Thank you” in English, even though she was really saying, “Damn you all to hell.”
32
MEANWHILE, IN THE SEASIDE CITY, Lavi was learning the slow pleasure of anticipating Nofar’s return. Anticipation is an acquired taste. At first it’s sour and bitter, but later, as you get used to it, it becomes difficult to stop. He had left his computer games almost entirely. Missing Nofar was now his major hobby. She had become increasingly beautiful in his mind. Every day she was gone added another centimetre to her height and the size of her breasts, deepened her smile and the blue of her eyes. In his memory, he kept replaying their meetings in the alley, and every time they seemed to be more thrilling, more passionate, funnier. It was true that those meetings had been wonderful, but there was no way they could compare to those he recreated in his imagination, and even more so, the ones he was planning for them when she returned from her trip. In order to meet the girl who returned from Poland, he first of all had to give up the one he carried around in his mind. Unintentionally, he had a mistress, the perfect one of his fantasies. But now she was there, 2,540 kilometres away, if the computer was right. Every morning he asked his father what the weather was like in Poland. Arieh Maimon was moved to the depths of his soul by the affection for synoptic charts he shared with his son. He also told him what was happening in Berlin. He didn’t know that it wasn’t Warsaw his son was interested in, but the girl who was walking around on its streets. But he did notice a new spark in the boy’s eyes, as if someone had finally turned on a street light that had been broken for too many years. And so, while touring the ghettoes and the camps, Nofar unknowingly contributed to their father-son bonding, which was no small thing.
On the flight there she dreamt about Lavi and woke up with dampness between her legs. The air hostess walked through the plane, offering drinks, and their teacher, Lilach, said, “God help anyone who asks for liquor, even as a joke.” Everyone giggled, and although Nofar knew for sure that they were giggling at what Lilach said, and that no one could read on her face what she had dreamt, she still felt they were laughing at her. She pressed her nose against the window of the airplane and looked out. The clouds under her were white and fat. The day before the flight, she and Lavi had sat in the alley and looked up. There was a cloud in the sky that Nofar thought had the shape of a peacock, and when she asked Lavi if he saw a peacock there too, he said of course he did. Then Lavi had pointed to a different cloud and said it looked like a hammer, and when he asked her if she saw a hammer too, she said of course she did, even though she wasn’t sure about it.
They both knew she was flying the next day, and that gave their meeting a special and slightly strange feeling. Every few minutes a plane flew above them, and Lavi said it was because the ice-cream parlour was on the flight path for take-offs and landings. They looked at the sky and tried to guess where each plane was going and where each plane was coming from. Then they tried to guess who was sitting inside and if they’d had fun on their trips or if they’d fought the whole time, the way Lavi said his parents had fought on the last trip he’d taken with them.
When Lavi was silent for a bit, Nofar knew it was because of what he’d said about his parents, and when the next plane passed above them she said that maybe there’s a couple doing it right now up there, in the airplane toilet, and they both laughed. On her flight she dreamt that they were the couple, and when she woke up, she was mortified. Her face remained red long after the air hostess had gone and the kids had stopped giggling. Maybe when she came back to Israel they should just do it. Maybe she wanted to. But the best thing would be if he blackmailed her.
How does it feel when someone’s inside you? And how strange it is that she has that kind of hole in her body, a space that someone else is supposed to enter. Whatever she does in the world, when she moves and walks and speaks, her body holds that possibility. Waits for it in some way. She turned her head from the window to look at the other girls on the plane, peeked at them from under her almost closed lids. She knew that most of them had already been there. Most of them already knew how it felt when someone entered you. Your body could take someone else into it if you wanted to, and although she knew it didn’t change anything, maybe it actually changed everything.
33
THE FIRST THING Raymonde encountered when she walked out of the airport was the cold. It hit her like a slap in the face. It was unbelievable that people lived in such a cold place. And it was even more unbelievable that Rivka, who wrapped herself in shawls even in August, had lived in this cold for years. Or maybe that’s why she had all those shawls, because if you’re born in such a frozen place, the cold gets inside you and never comes out, eighty khamsins can’t rip it out of you.
The guide put them on a bus and started counting them. She counted them four times because she got a different number every time. Raymonde was a champion counter from her days in the grocery store, but she didn’t feel like helping, not after the guide had called her in the middle of the night and asked if she could give up her T’ai Chi because they wanted to get to the airport early. Then she saw her buy 200 euros’ worth of perfume and make-up in the duty-free shop and thought that asking an old lady to give up her Chinese exercise so some idiot could go shopping wa
s really chutzpah. So she sat there and let her count, and in the meantime she looked at the children. How young and beautiful they were. Not all of them, of course, some were young and ugly. But even ugliness, when it’s young, is a little less ugly. As if there’s still hope for improvement. She saw right away who the king and queen of the class were. She had a real sense for things like that. Even in the retirement home, as soon as she arrived she knew right away whom to get friendly with and whom not to. Rivka always said that the home was like a high school for elderly people, and Raymonde agreed with her, although she didn’t really know what it meant because she never went to high school. Now, as the Holocaust survivor of a highschool class, she understood how right Rivka had been. It was exactly the same thing, only noisier. The intrigues, the fights, the games. Before they reached Auschwitz, she already knew exactly who was against whom and who wanted whom. Like when she watched The Young and the Restless, she could predict the romances even before the characters knew they were about to fall in love.
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