The Extra

Two

THE SINO-JAPANESE MAN was seventy-five when he died, amiable and funny to his last breath. One night his wife woke up to complete a thought she’d had before falling asleep, but was met with silence. At first she interpreted the silence as agreement, until she grew suspicious, tried shaking her husband and, while shaking him, realized that her lifelong companion had left the world with no pain and no complaint.

During the mourning period, as she grieved with relatives and friends, she spoke with amazement but also resentment about his silent and rude exit. Since her husband had been an engineer, the supervisor of the water department of the city of Jerusalem, she joked that he had secretly engineered his own death, blocking the flow of blood to his brain the way he had sometimes blocked the water supply of ultra-Orthodox Jews who refused to pay their water bills to the Zionist municipality. “Had he revealed to me the secret of an easy death,” she complained to her son and daughter, “I would spare you the ordeal of mine, which I know will take longer and be harder for all of us.”

“We’ll manage the ordeal,” her son solemnly promised, “on condition that you finally leave Jerusalem. Sell the apartment — its value goes down by the day, thanks to the Orthodox — and move to a retirement home in Tel Aviv, near my house, near your grandchildren, who are afraid to visit Jerusalem on Shabbat.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“That some religious fanatic will throw stones at the car.”

“So park outside the neighborhood and walk with the children, it’ll be good exercise for all of you. Fear of the Orthodox is unbecoming, in my opinion.”

“It’s not exactly fear… more like disgust.”

“Disgust? Why disgust? They’re simple people, and like anyplace else, there are good ones and bad ones.”

“Of course, but you can’t tell them apart. They all look alike, and even if they’re all angels, they’re not going to look after you. So they should stay where they are, and you, now that you’re alone, should come and live near us.”

His sister kept quiet, not because what he was saying wasn’t logical, but because she didn’t believe that their mother would consent to leave Jerusalem — that she’d agree to give up an apartment, old but comfortable and large, where she had spent most of her life, to imprison herself in a tiny flat in an old folks’ home, in a city she considered inferior.

But Honi pressured his sister too. Now, after their father’s death, it would be hard for him to look after his mother. “If you’ve left the country to escape responsibility for our parents,” he accused his silent sibling, “at least help the one who stays on duty.”

Now she took offense. She had not left Israel to escape responsibility but because she had not found a position with any of the local orchestras.

“You would have been accepted by many Israeli orchestras if you hadn’t insisted on playing an aristocratic instrument instead of a democratic one.”

“Democratic?” She laughed. “What’s a democratic instrument?”

“Flute, violin, even trumpet.”

“Trumpet? You’ll regret it.”

“I regret it already, but before you leave the country again, help me convince Ima to leave Jerusalem. That way, you can stay in Europe with your mind at ease till the end of your days.”

Despite their gripes and acrimony, mutual trust and affection prevail, and when he teases her, she retaliates with embarrassing episodes from his childhood — telling everyone how she’d be summoned from her class in grade school to her brother’s kindergarten, where he played pranks on his friends and had to be confined to the bathroom until his sister arrived to walk him home as he bawled the whole way from the Street of the Prophets to their apartment on Rashi, while she tried to calm his stormy soul.

Now Honi is thirty-six, with his own media company, producing documentaries and commercials, a man struggling and mostly succeeding to sustain himself and his staff with new ideas. But his life is not easy. His wife, whom he adores, is an artist who enjoys a modest reputation among cognoscenti, but her works are too intellectual and complex, and buyers hard to find. This may be why she raises their three children with a certain bitterness, which has led to attention deficit in the older boy and chronic crying in the younger girl. And so, when Honi again urges his mother to leave Jerusalem and move to assisted living near his home in Tel Aviv, it’s not for economic reasons, but because he demands of himself, especially after his father’s death, that he be a devoted and helpful son, without making his already hard life harder.