Don't Call It Night

14

THERE is a God after all, chortled Muki Peleg, in baggy burgundy trousers and a sky-coloured shirt, with a violet silk scarf round his neck, as he opened the door of his new Fiat for Noa. Come and see for yourself what's fallen down from heaven for us, as the carpenter said to his virgin wife. Noa put her straw handbag down by her feet, then changed her mind and put it on her knees. And they set off for the Josephtal district to look for the apartment that had belonged to Immanuel Orvieto's aunt. Ron Arbel from the law firm of Cherniak, Refidim and Arbel had received instructions in a wire from Lagos to clear up the deceased's estate. That morning he had announced on the phone that his client authorized Muki Peleg's agency to sell the aunt's apartment and its contents and to use the money to repay Theo part of the loan he had advanced to the Immanuel Orvieto Memorial Fund for fear that the opportunity to buy the building might be missed.

On the way, he told Noa about a red-headed beautician who he was a hundred percent sure was attracted to him, more than attracted, wild about him, and he asked her advice about which of four possible approaches to adopt so as to get her into his bed. Noa suggested he try scenario number three. Why not? And would the same approach work, for instance, with her? Noa said sure. As he described to her what he termed the tactical scenario, and went on to tell her about eleven thousand dollars he had just put into a new partnership for importing ties from Taiwan, sexy fluorescent ties that glowed in the dark like cat's eyes, she detached herself and tried to imagine what it is like when you are dead: a dark non-being where eyes that are no more see nothing, not even the total darkness because they are no more, and the skin that is no more does not feel the cold and the damp because it, too, is no more. But all she could imagine was at most a feeling of cold and silence in darkness, sensations, and sensations are life, after all. So this too has vanished. Plunging to its own seabed.

Elazara Orvieto's apartment had been shut up and locked since her death. They were met by a faint smell of dusty books and unaired wool. The blinds were closed so they had to switch on the light. In the living room there was a sofa and a coffee table and two wicker chairs, all in the style of the austerity years, and a reproduction of a landscape in Galilee by the painter Rubin. In a blue glass vase a bunch of oleander flowers had already withered and started to disintegrate, and beside it, face down and open, was a book on the last ten days of Jewish Bialystok. A pair of brown glasses lay on top of the book and beside it was an empty cup, also brown. On a shelf were a Bible with commentary, some novels and books of poetry and picture books, among which stood a china figurine of a young pioneer holding a tiny stringed instrument that Noa was unable to identify for certain as a lyre. At the bank she had sat on the left, behind the last window, at the savings schemes counter, a woman in her fifties, efficient, desiccated, freckled, with flat-heeled shoes, her short hair fixed close to her head with a plastic bow. Noa could almost hear the flat tone of voice in that set phrase with which she ended every conversation: "That's one hundred percent okay."

In the low-ceilinged bedroom there was an iron bedstead covered with a plain rug and a dark cupboard of a type that Noa seemed to remember from her childhood used to be called a "commode". Dried desert thistles were turning grey in a Bedouin earthenware pitcher that stood on the floor in a corner of the room. On a stool beside the bed stood another empty brown cup and a little jar of pills, and a work about Baha'ism with a photograph of the temple in Haifa and a partial view of the bay.

From the bedroom they reached the balcony, which had been closed in to make a tiny room, little more than a storeroom. Here, there was only an iron bedstead, a shelf, a map of southern Israel on the wall and a wooden packing case, on its side, in which, meticulously folded, lay Immanuel's clothes: four shirts, two pairs of trousers, one khaki and one corduroy, underwear, handkerchiefs and socks. And also a brand-new leather bomber jacket with a mass of zippers and buckles that Noa could not recall ever seeing the boy wearing. On the top surface of the packing case that apparently also served as a desk were various textbooks and exercise books, a ballpoint and a small electric lamp with a blue shade. A few paperback novels in translation, a dictionary, a dried-up sprig of pine in a glass whose water had evaporated, and some poetry books. The green sweater that she remembered from last winter was lying on the bed. And at the foot of the bed an old, tattered blanket that Noa peered at for a while before she realized that it was where the strange dog used to sleep. This was where they both slept. This was where they sat indoors on winter days. Rolling up the blind and opening the window, she saw in front of her only a grey concrete wall, depressingly close, almost within touching distance, the wall of the next block. She nearly wept. Muki Peleg hesitantly laid his hand on the back of her neck, not quite stroking her, his nostrils quivering at the faint scent of honeysuckle, and said to her gently: Noa?

She reached up to push away his hand but changed her mind halfway and clutched it; she even leaned against him for a moment with her eyes closed.

As though releasing a repressed tenderness that he normally struggled to keep under control, Muki Peleg whispered to her: Okay then. There's no hurry. I'll wait for you in the other room.

He touched her hair and left.

Bending over she picked up the sweater and pressed it to her breast to fold it properly. She did not manage to fold it right, so she laid it out on the bedspread and folded it on itself like a diaper, then carried it slowly over to the packing case and placed it among the other clothes. Then she closed the blind and the window and was about to leave, but instead she sat down on the bed for a few moments, drained. She closed her eyes and waited for the tears. They refused to come. All she felt was how late it was. Rising to her feet she wiped the top of the packing case with the back of her hand and smoothed the bedspread, straightened the pillow, drew the curtain and left. In the next room she found Muki, in a wicker chair, with his glasses on, waiting for her, quietly reading the book about the end of the Jews of Bialystok. He got up and fetched her half a glass of water from the kitchen. Then, in his Fiat, he told her how much he hoped to sell the apartment for: naturally he wouldn't dream of taking a commission for this sale either, but the fact was that the money from the apartment would not be enough to repay Theo, and on top of that we still had to make what we wanted of the Alharizi house, though actually that depended on what we did want, and in fact we had never really discussed what we were going to do, as the Empress Catherine said to her pet Cossack.

Noa said: All right. Listen. It's like this. Bear in mind that if this inheritance turns out not to be enough, I had an aunt of my own and there might be another inheritance, hers, mine, that went to some ultra-Orthodox cousin in Brussels and I gave it up even though I didn't have to and I was wrong to do it. Maybe I could still put up a fight for it. Now take me to the California and treat me to an iced coffee. Iced coffee, Muki, that's what I want right now.