Don't Call It Night

7

THE school year will be ending in another week. In the early years she used to be smitten from the middle of April with the urge to migrate, and start putting her name down for summer activities, a conference in Jerusalem, a festival in Galilee, a nature lovers' ramble in the Carme! range, a refresher course for teachers in Beersheba. This year she is too caught up in this crusade of hers to think of putting herself down for any summer sortie. I asked her on Saturday, apropos of nothing, what plans she had for the long holidays. When she said, We'll see, I dropped the subject.

Most people are always busy with arrangements, preparations, leisure activities. I am happy with my home and the desert. Even my work is gradually becoming superfluous. I'll give it up soon. My pension, our savings, and the rent from the property in Herzliyya will be enough to keep us going to the end. What will I do all day? I'll examine the desert, for example, on long walks at dawn before everything starts to blaze. During the hot hours I'll sleep. In the evening I'll sit on the balcony or have a game of chess with Dubi Weitzman at the California Café. At night I'll listen to London. Those hills over there, the mouth of the wadi, the scudding clouds, two cypresses at the end of the garden, oleanders and that empty bench next to the bougainvillaea bower. At night you can see the stars; some of them change their positions after midnight according to the seasons of the year. Not according to the seasons, parallel to them. There is a field of golden stubble on the nearest part of the plain, just behind the garden wall. An old Bedouin sowed it with barley in the autumn and harvested it in the spring and now the goats come and chew the stubble. Beyond, there are barren wastes extending to the top of the hills and further, to the mountainous mass that sometimes looks like mist. The slopes are a jumble of brown-black lumps of flint and paler rocks of chalk that the Bedouin call hawar, between patches of sand erosion. All in black and white. Everything in its place. Forever. All present and silent. To be at peace means to be as much like the mountains as possible: silent and present. Vacant.

This morning on the news they broadcast an excerpt from a speech by the Foreign Minister, who talked about the hoped-for peace.

The phrase "hoped-for" is mistaken here. Either hope or peace: you can't have both.

Today she said she's going to Beersheba again after school. She promised to fill up with gasoline and to try to be back not too late. But I hadn't asked what time she was thinking of getting back, nor had I asked her to be back early. As if she'd flown into this room by mistake and now she's in such a panic she can't find the window. Which is open as it always has been. So she flutters from wall to wall, crashing into the lampshade, hitting the ceiling, bumping into the furniture, hurting herself. Just don't try to point her towards the door: you can't help her. Any movement from you makes her panic worse. If you're not careful, instead of guiding her outside to freedom you'll scare her into an inner room where she'll keep on beating her wings against the glass. The only way to help her is by not trying to help. Just shrink. Freeze. Blend into the wall. Don't move. Has the window really always been open? Am I really hoping she'll fly away? Or am I lurking in wait for her, motionless, fixing her with a blank immobile stare in the darkness, waiting for her to drop from exhaustion?

Because then I can bend over her and look after her the way I did at the beginning. From the beginning.