Mr. Mani

The Conversation Partners

HAGAR SHILOH Born in 1962 in Mash’abei Sadeh, a kibbutz thirty kilometers south of Beersheba that was founded in 1949. Her parents, Roni and Ya’el Shiloh, first arrived there in 1956 in the course of their army service. Hagar’s father Roni was killed on the last day of the Six Day War as a reservist on the Golan Heights. As Hagar was five at the time, her claim to have clear memories of her father may well have been correct.

Hagar attended a regional high school in the nearby kibbutz of Revivim and finished her last year there without taking two of her matriculation exams, English and history. She began her army service in August 1980 and served as a noncommissioned counseling officer with a paratroop unit stationed in central Israel. Because her base was far from her kibbutz, she spent many of her short leaves in Tel Aviv, where she stayed with her paternal grandmother Naomi. She was very attached to this grandmother, from whom she liked to coax stories of her father’s childhood. The old woman, who enjoyed her granddaughter’s lively presence, sought repeatedly to persuade her to register at the University of Tel Aviv after the army. And indeed, upon finishing her military service, the last months of which were highly eventful because of the outbreak of the war in Lebanon in 1982, Hagar flouted the wishes of her mother, who wanted her to return home for at least a year before beginning her higher education, and persuaded a general meeting of the kibbutz to allow her to continue her studies. This decision was facilitated by the fact that, as the daughter of a fallen soldier, Hagar stood to have her tuition fully paid for by the ministry of defense.

Hagar hoped to study film at Tel Aviv University. However, lacking a high school diploma, she was not accepted as a fully matriculated student and was first required to register for a year-long course to prepare her for the exams she had missed. She was also asked to take courses in Hebrew and mathematics to upgrade her academic record.

In early December of that year, at the urging of her son Ben-Zion Shiloh, Hagar’s uncle and the Israeli consul in Marseilles, Naomi decided to take a trip to France. In effect this was in place of her son’s intended visit to Israel the previous summer, which was canceled when the consulate was forced to work overtime to present Israel’s case in the Lebanese war. Although loathe to leave her beloved granddaughter for so long, she could not refuse her only son, a forty-year-old bachelor whose single state worried her greatly. Indeed, she was so determined to help find him a suitable match that she stayed longer than she had planned in order to attend the various New Year’s receptions given by the consulate.

Hagar, a short, graceful young woman with the dark red hair of her late father, looked forward greatly to having her grandmother’s large, attractive apartment to herself. At first she thought of asking her friend Irees, whom she had met at the university, to stay with her. Irees’s father had also been killed in battle, in the Yom Kippur War, and she had an amazing knowledge of the various benefits and special offers that the Ministry of Defense made available to young people like themselves. In the end, though, she was unable to accept the invitation, which was just as well for Hagar, since at the beginning of that month she had struck up a relationship with an M.A. student named Efrayim Mani that could now be pursued in her grandmother’s apartment. Her new boyfriend taught Hebrew in the preparatory course, and their romance got off to an intense start before he was called up on December 9 for reserve duty in the western zone of Israeli-occupied Lebanon, a far from tranquil area despite the newly signed “peace treaty” between Jerusalem and the government in Beirut.

YA’EL SHILOH, NÉE KRAMER Born in a suburb of Haifa in 1936, Ya’el was highly active in a socialist youth movement and left high school in 1952 for a year of training in a kibbutz as a youth counselor, as a result of which she never graduated. In 1954 she began her army duty, serving with a group from her movement in the kibbutz of Rosh-Hanikrah near the Lebanese border. It was there that she met her future husband Roni Shiloh, a movement member from Tel Aviv. Trained as a paratrooper like the other boys in the group, he saw action in a number of border raids and in the 1956 Sinai Campaign. In their final months in the army Ya’el and Roni were stationed in Mash’abei Sadeh, a young kibbutz in the Negev desert. They liked it well enough to stay on and become members after their discharge, and in 1958 they were married. Both of them were employed in farm work, Roni in the grain fields and Ya’el in the fruit orchards. In 1962, after returning from a tour of Greece sponsored by the Israel Geographical Society, they had their first child, a daughter to whom they gave the biblical name of Hagar, as seemed fitting for a girl born in the desert. Four years later, in 1966, they had a second baby, a boy, who died several weeks later from acute hepatitis caused by his parents’ incompatible blood types, which the hospital in Beersheba had neglected to test them for. With proper precautions, the doctors assured them, all would go well the next time. However, there was to be no next time, because Roni was killed in the Six Day War along the Kuneitra-Damascus road.

Despite the pleas of her own, and especially, of Roni’s parents that she leave the kibbutz for Tel Aviv, Ya’el remained with her five-year-old daughter in the desert, which she more and more felt was her home. She knew of course that in a place so small and remote her chances of remarrying grew poorer from year to year, but she liked her work and was eventually put in charge of a special project to develop new methods of avocado growing. During the Yom Kippur War, when the general secretary of the kibbutz was mobilized for a long period, Ya’el was chosen to fill in for him. Although some of the members found her overly rigid ideologically, she stayed in the position for several years to the satisfaction of nearly everyone. Her relations with her daughter Hagar were intense but far from easy. Now and then, encouraged to get away by her friends, she attended kibbutz-movement workshops in education and psychology. Sometimes she even traveled to Beersheba for special guest lectures in the psychology and education departments of the university. In 1980, although by now a woman of forty-four, she let herself be persuaded to sign up for a singles encounter group, at the end of which she swore never again to do such a thing.

Ya’el feared that the close ties developed by her daughter with her grandmother, a widow since the mid-1970s, would entice her to leave the kibbutz, which was why she opposed Hagar’s studying at the university immediately after finishing the army. Indeed, when Hagar applied to the kibbutz for a leave of absence, Ya’el secretly lobbied against her. In the end, however, Hagar was granted her wish in accordance with the liberal policy then prevalent in most kibbutzim of giving young members just out of the army ample time to “find themselves” before pressuring them to return. The stipend offered her by the defense ministry was also a factor in mustering a majority in her favor. After settling in Tel Aviv, she kept in close touch with her mother via her grandmother’s telephone. The two made a point of talking twice a week even though the members of Kibbutz Mash’abei Sadeh did not yet have private phones in their rooms in 1982.

Ya’el’s half of the conversation is missing.

— But even if I disappeared, Mother, I didn’t disappear for very long. You needn’t have worried…

— But I did phone you, Mother. I most certainly did, on Wednesday evening from Jerusalem.

— Of course. I was still in Jerusalem Wednesday evening. Yesterday too.

— Yesterday too, Mother. And this morning too. But I left you a message.

— How could you not have gotten it?

— Oh, God, Mother, don’t tell me that another message of mine got lost!

— How should I know… whoever picked up the phone…

— Some volunteer from Germany.

— But what could I have done, Mother? It’s not my fault that no one in his right mind on the whole kibbutz will pick up the télé- phoné in the dining hall after supper, because no one wants to have to go out in the cold and run around looking for whoever it’s for. Why don’t you try getting the kibbutz some winter night, to say nothing of talking in English to a foreign volunteer who’s too spaced out to hold a pencil. If you did, you’d understand what a mistake you made when you led a crusade against private telephones as if the future of socialism depended on it. Lots of other kibbutzim have had private phones for years. They take them for granted as a necessity of life…

— I’ve yet to see the kibbutz that went bankrupt from its phone bills, Mother. That’s just your fantasy.

— But I didn’t disappear, Mother. I simply left Tel Aviv for three days.

— With him? Fat chance of that! He’s still with the army in Lebanon. But it was because of him that I went to Jerusalem to see his father, and I was stranded there until this morning.

— I stranded myself.

— But that’s the whole point, Mother. That’s the whole point of the story…

— No. It started snowing there Wednesday afternoon, but by yesterday it had all melted.

— No. That old coat was given me by his father. Mr. Mani.

— That’s how I think of him. Mr Mani. Don’t ask me why.

— But that’s the whole point of my story. That’s the only reason I came home today, because it’s crazy to be sitting here with you when I should be in Tel Aviv studying for an exam…

— I told you. I have an English exam on Monday, and the last thing I want is to flunk again.

— No. I left all my books and notebooks in Grandmother’s apartment in Tel Aviv. I didn’t take a thing with me to Jerusalem on Tuesday, certainly not any books. I thought I was only going for a few hours, to do Efi this favor. But once I was there I felt I couldn’t leave, and so I stayed for three whole days…

— No. I didn’t come via Tel Aviv. I came straight from Jerusalem. It was a last-minute decision. I was waiting in the bus station for the Tel Aviv bus when all of a sudden I saw this middle-aged redhead standing on the next platform. He was someone I recognized from around here, I think from Revivim, and it made me so homesick that I just couldn’t wait to get back to our own darling little boondocks and tell you everything, Mother. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I was always like that. Don’t you remember what you’ve told me about myself? I could be in the nursery, or at school, and if some child fell and hurt himself, or if the drawing I was working on tore, I had to tell you so badly that I would run outside to look for you and shout the minute I found you, “Hey, Ma, listen to this!”…

— Right. I always got away with it, because I had this knack for latching onto… how did you used to put it?

— Yes. Right. That’s it…

— Yes, that’s it. To some surrogate father who would do anything I asked, maybe — it’s a pet theory of mine you’re sure to like — because he felt guilty that it was my father and not him who was killed. And so everyone took me in tow and passed me on, from the dining hall to the laundry, from the chicken coops to the cowshed, from the stables to the fodder fields, and on to the orchards and to you, Mother, who I threw myself on and told everything. Which is just how it was in Jerusalem today, standing in line in that station among all those wintry, depressive Jerusalemites when suddenly the bus for Beersheba began pulling out and I saw that redhead looking out the window at me — maybe he was trying to guess who I was too — and suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer, I missed you so badly that I jumped over the railing and was on the steps and inside the bus before I knew it. But the first thing tomorrow morning, Mother, I have to get back to Tel Aviv and to my books, or else it’s another F for sure. You’ll have to find me someone who is driving there, and if you can’t think of anyone, think again…

— All right.

— No, wait a minute. Take it easy. I didn’t mean this second…

— But what’s the rush? I feel so cold inside. Let me warm up a little first.

— It will take more than just hot water.

— Don’t be annoyed at me, Mother, but for my part I can skip the Sabbath meal in the dining hall.

— I’m not at all hungry. Whatever you have in the fridge will be fine.

— That’s okay. Whatever you have. I’m really not hungry.

— If you’re so starving that you must go, then go. I’m staying here. I’m sorry, Mother, but I’m just not up to sitting in the dining hall and smiling at everyone all evening. Followed by that New Year’s Eve party with all its phony revelry… I absolutely will not take any chances and dance…

— All right, all right. Go. What can I say? Go. What more can I say?

— Go…

— Go. I’m already sorry I came here instead of going straight home… I mean to Tel Aviv…

— Because I didn’t think of it as coming to the kibbutz tonight, Mother. I thought of it as coming home. To you. To tell you about what happened in Jerusalem…

— I’m not being mysterious. Stop being so critical…

— All right, fine, so I am a little mysterious… maybe mysterious is even the best word for it… but so what? What’s wrong with a mystery? Suppose you open the door of a strange house and are so horrified by what you see there that your soul, yes, your soul, Mother, is sucked right out of you… but the mystery, you see, isn’t the horrifying part, because anything really horrifying has to be obvious and isn’t mysterious at all. The mystery is in the encounter, even if it just seems like a coincidence. And that’s what happened to me, that’s what I went through in Jerusalem, even if you’re not going to believe it…

— Because you’re not, Mother. You’ve been educated all your life not to believe in mysteries, and you’re certainly not going to believe in mine. In the end I know you’ll tell me that I just imagined it all…

— But there isn’t any quick version. There’s no quick way to tell it, Mother.

— Because if I did, it really would sound like a figment of my imagination…

— You know something, it doesn’t matter. Let’s forget it, it’s not important. Go have dinner, and I’ll take a shower. The whole thing really doesn’t matter, Mother. I was wrong and now let’s forget it… Just do me a favor and ask around in the dining hall if anyone is driving to Tel Aviv in the morning and has room for me…

— No, I’m just not in the mood anymore to tell you about it. Maybe you’re even right and I did imagine it all…

— I know. You may not have said it yet, but it’s not my fault that I always know what you’re going to say.

— I’m sorry.

— All right. I’m sorry, Mother.

— I said I’m sorry.

— No, I really thought you didn’t feel like hearing about it now…

— Are you sure?

— But maybe you shouldn’t miss the Sabbath meal in the dining hall. It’s a ritual you’re so attached to…

— Are you sure?

— Well, then, Mother, if you think you can skip it, how about doing it properly, so that we can sit here in peace and quiet? Let’s draw the curtains to keep the light in, and let me lock the door for once… Where’s the key?

— Please, just this once. I beg you, Mother, let’s shut out the world to keep it from knowing we’re here, so that no one comes and bothers us. We’ll put some water up to boil… and turn the heater on… but where’s that key?

— Later. I said I’d take one later… I’m bursting too much to tell you my story to take time to shower now… Why must you always make such a fuss about showering?

— So my dress is a little sweaty… it’s no tragedy…

— Fine.

— No, Mother, it’s the same.

— Maybe a little nausea now and then.

— No, it’s the same.

— Is that what you’re still hoping?

— But why? I’ve already told you, Mother, I knew right away it was real. I’m absolutely certain. I can feel it encoded inside me…

— This thing… the embryo, the baby… whatever you want to call it…

— You can do the arithmetic yourself. My last time was on the nineteenth of November. I’m exactly two weeks overdue… there’s nothing else it can be…

— But what do I need some doctor poking around inside me for? What more can he tell me? And anyway, I already saw a doctor in Jerusalem…

— An internist.

— I’ll get to that.

— Soon, Mother. Why can’t you be more patient?

— He did… just a minute…

— No. Just a quick checkup.

— Just a minute…

— Don’t kid yourself. It’s not psychological. It’s absolutely real… and I am pregnant. You’ve been so brainwashed by all those courses you’ve taken that you think everything is psychological…

— Right now I’m not doing anything. I already told you that. There’s plenty of time to decide.

— First of all, for Efi to come back from the army.

— In ten days. It’s not just his decision, though.

— There’s time… there’s time…

— It’s not up to me whether he wants to be a father or not, Mother… as far as I’m concerned, I can have the child without him, if that’s what I feel like doing…

— Because the defense ministry, I already told you, helps out in such cases, even if there’s no legal father. You’ll be surprised to hear that they’re very liberal…

— Well, they are about this kind of thing. Maybe they also have guilt feelings… who knows…

— Irees told me. Irees knows. She checked it all out.

— She knows everything, Mother. She’s become an expert on our legal rights. She keeps going back to talk to more officials, and each time she comes up with some new right. There are all kinds of rights for war orphans that you and I never even heard about…

— I know it annoys you terribly, but what can I do about it? It wasn’t me who raised the subject.

— Revolting? That’s going a bit far. What’s so revolting about it?

— But so far I haven’t asked anyone for anything and I haven’t gotten anything. What are you so worked up about?

— But I’ve already told you. It’s all in my story. You simply aren’t letting me tell it.

— No. Yes. It’s as if you were afraid of it and didn’t want to hear it. That’s why you’ve kept putting me off since I phoned that morning a month ago to tell you that I’d gone to bed with him… that I’d gone to bed with somebody… I mean that I’d finally done it. It’s as if something had snapped in your trust in me. You seem, oh, I don’t know, confused like, up in the air, as if you’d finally lost the reins to your pet colt…

— Yes, the reins. You always held me by these subtle reins…

— Subtle. Invisible.

— It doesn’t matter.

— Of course.

— Don’t get angry again. I really didn’t come here to anger you.

— Fine. Let’s suppose that what alarmed you, Mother, was not what happened but the hurry I was in to tell you about it the next morning. What was wrong with that? What was even so wrong about paging you from the orchards to break the news? Ever since then, Mother, it just kills me to see how threatened you are by all kinds of things that you used to like hearing about. I’ve even begun wondering if it’s fair to burden you with them and to tell you everything I’ve been thinking and doing without keeping anything back, as if we still had to obey that lady, that ridiculous psychologist sent by the army when father was killed, who said that you had to get me to talk, that you had to make me get it all out. How did she put it? To keep the pus of repressed thoughts from festering, ha ha. Ever since then, Mother, I swear, I have this fear of pus in my brain. That’s why I keep blabbing away and you have to hear it all… because if you don’t, who will…

— Efi? We’ll have to wait and see… who knows? What really do I know about him… and now, after this trip to Jerusalem, I seem to know even less…

— But I did mention him to you. Didn’t I mention him to you?

— How could I not have told you that two weeks after the semester began two of his classes were suddenly canceled? And I certainly mentioned him at the beginning of the semester when you asked me about my teachers and I told you how I liked him the minute he stepped into the classroom. He stood there looking hardly any older than we were, all flustered and curly-haired, and it was almost touching how hard he worked to convince us that we really needed his course in Hebrew expression, because some of the students were up in arms and even insulted at having to take it, as if we were some kind of disadvantaged children… so that when they told us that two of his classes had been canceled, I decided to go to the office and see if he was sick, because I thought that if he was I might visit him, and they told me that his grandmother had died in Jerusalem and that he had gone there to be with his father for the week of mourning. That’s when… but how could I not have told you…

— Well, to make a long story short, I wrote down his father’s address and went that same day to Jerusalem to pay a condolence call or whatever you call it in the name of our class, although “our class” is not exactly a feeling you have at the university. You can imagine how startled he was to open the door and see this four-week-old student of his whose name he hardly remembered coming all the way from Tel Aviv to express her sympathy for his grandmother, Once he got over his bewilderment, though, he got the point right away, which was that my condolence call wasn’t exactly a condolence call but a little signal I was putting out. And since he wasn’t used to being pampered with signals from women…

— Because he’s not especially good-looking or anything… just a plain-looking guy who’s nice inside… and he was so thrilled by the rope I had thrown him that he decided — after I had sat for a while, feeling like a fool, next to his father, who really did look pretty mournful, not like all those middle-aged people who become so much lighter and livelier the minute their parents die — to return with me that evening to Tel Aviv. As soon as we were on the bus we began to talk, and after he had asked me all about myself and my plans and the kibbutz and the Negev and seen how open I was, he began to open up too and tell me about himself. At first he told me about his dead grandmother, whom he really had loved, and then about being worried about his father. It seemed nice to me that he was, because his father had been very attached to his mother, I mean to Efi’s grandmother. He had lived with her since he was a child and had been saved by her during the war…

— Just imagine, they lived in Greece then. On that island, you know, Crete…

— Really?

— Of course I know about that trip you took with Father… it was before I was born…

— No, Efi’s parents were separated long ago, after his bar-mitzvah. He and his mother moved to Tel Aviv and she married again. He has a younger stepsister, but they’ve all been living in London for the past few years and it looks like they’re on their way to settling there for good. He lives by himself… he told me all this on the bus ride, although mostly he talked about having to serve soon in Lebanon. I could feel how frightened that made him, and how angry he was at the university for not helping to get him a deferral…

— No, he’s just a plain reservist, a corporal at most. He’s a medic… And that, Mother, is how we began getting close on that bus ride from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I found myself liking him more and more, and I could feel myself falling in love again, but this time so much more sensibly. By the time we reached Tel Aviv I knew that if I didn’t find some way of hanging onto him then and there all the effort I had put into going to Jerusalem that day would be wasted, because we would lose touch the whole month he was in the army, after which the semester had just one more month, and it was only a one-semester course, and he didn’t have any more grandmothers left to die for another condolence call. And so, although it wasn’t that late at night, I asked him to see me home, I mean to Grandmother’s apartment. Maybe it was the difference between the two grandmothers — one who had just died at the age of sixty-eight and one who had just flown off to France at the age of seventy-four like a young lady — that made him curious to come upstairs. At most I thought we might neck a little, but suddenly we grabbed hold of each other, and he was so gentle and yielding, even if he did undress in this awful hurry, and it was all so natural and hardly hurt a bit that I asked myself, Mother, what was I waiting for all this time? What was I so afraid of? Unless maybe there was just something special about him, although to tell you the truth, you’ll see what I mean if you ever meet him, he’s not at all handsome or anything, just this slim, curly-headed type with glasses and nothing spectacular about him. But anyway, that’s why in the morning, as soon as he left, I ran to the telephone to tell you…

— Why?

— I just wanted to make you feel good, Mother. What did you think?

— Yes, Mother, it was just to make you feel good. Even if I knew you would have to walk two kilometers from the orchard to the phone and back, I thought it was worth it, because I could feel how anxious you were beginning to get about my staying a virgin…

— I thought…

— But what do you mean, you never knew? Don’t act so innocent, Mother!

— You would have known the minute it happened. Haven’t I told you that I always tell you everything?

— Yes, everything So far.

— No. There were four more times before he went to Lebanon. Five altogether.

— He didn’t take any precautions. He must have thought that I was taking them. And I already told you that I got the dates confused, and besides, I thought that if you douched right away with hot water…

— Naturally. Don’t you always know exactly what’s going on in my subconscious?

— Yes, in Grandmother’s apartment. It was the most obvious place, and if you must know everything, it was even in her room, that is, hold on tight, in her big double bed…

— But what’s wrong with that?

— Deceitful? Toward who?

— Not at all… I’m sure Grandmother would be thrilled…

— Something drew us there… right into her bed…

— No, not especially. I just thought it might interest you.

— Oh, I don’t know… maybe psychologically… you must have some interpretation of it…

— But if I don’t mind telling you everything, why should you mind hearing it?

— Are you out of your mind? Who else could I tell? Only you, Mother, there’s no one else. You’re the only person in the whole world…

— But in what way…

— What doesn’t matter?

— I want you to tell me. What doesn’t matter?

— Coffee for me. But what doesn’t matter? Tell me!

— No. I don’t think I was making a fool of myself.

— No.

— No.

— Are you back to that again? Why must you keep rushing me off to the shower? I’ll take one later. It’s as if you kept trying to head me off…

— From telling you my story.

— But what are you afraid of? I didn’t do anything bad in Jerusalem, Mother. I only did good.

— Because that’s where my story begins. The rest is ancient history by now. Efi left for Lebanon two weeks ago, and I didn’t hear from him again until the beginning of this week…

— No. I couldn’t have told him before he left.

— Because I wasn’t sure myself yet.

— Of course. But late Sunday night he suddenly called from some mobile phone unit they had brought to this checkpost he’s manning near Beirut, and before I could make up my mind if and how to tell him, he asked me to get in touch with his father, because he couldn’t get through to Jerusalem to tell him he wasn’t coming to the unveiling, which the army wouldn’t give him leave for. Of course, I promised him to do it, and I even felt good that he was asking me so casually, as if I were the person he was closest to. But when I started dialing Jerusalem, it was the strangest thing, one minute there was no answer and the next the phone rang busy, although I kept trying all evening. The next day, which was Monday, I had a full schedule at the university and could only try dialing three or four times, and then Monday night Efi called again to ask if I had gotten hold of his father and how was he. I told him the phone seemed out of order, and then, Mother, he started up in this imploring tone, but really anxious like, begging me not to give up until I contacted his father, because he was very worried about him…

— No, I didn’t tell him anything. How could I? I could see how tense he was about his father, and there he was in Lebanon, standing out in the wind and the rain without even his glasses, because he told me he had broken them and wasn’t able to read… which is why I thought, why hassle him even more, what kind of a time is this to scare him with the news that he’s about to become a father himself? For the time being I owed him that much quiet… and so that same night, which was Monday, I began dialing Jerusalem again, but really thoroughly, nonstop. I kept it up until midnight, only so did Jerusalem. Either it was busy or else there was no answer, and the same thing happened the next morning, which was Tuesday, when I got out of bed especially early and started in on the phone immediately. In the end I called the telephone company to ask if the line was out of order, and they told me that no one had reported it and that to the best of their knowledge it was not, but they suggested I try information to see if the number had been changed, because sometimes, it seems, numbers get changed without notice. Well, I called information, and the number hadn’t been changed. And then, Mother, don’t ask me why, I felt that I just had to get through to that father, whom I actually remembered quite well from my brief visit the month before, unshaven and in his socks on the living room couch, this stocky, pleasant, Mediterranean-type man sitting next to two little old Sephardic ladies who had come to pay their respects and looked straight out of some Greek or Italian movie, and I went on dialing him from the university between classes, I even left my last morning class in the middle and dialed and dialed, because like I say, by now it was a matter of principle…

— No, Efi didn’t leave me a clue where else to look for him. I knew vaguely that he worked in the court system as a judge or a prosecutor, but I had no idea where or for what court, and when on a whim I tried calling the Supreme Court, the switchboard operator had never heard of him. All morning long I went on dialing like an uncontrollable madwoman — it was as if Efi’s sperm inside me was transmitting its anxiety around the clock. I couldn’t stop thinking of that apartment in Jerusalem with its three rooms connected by a long hallway like an old railroad flat. I kept imagining the telephone ringing away there, drilling down the hallway from room to room, and by two o’clock I was so beside myself that I decided to cut English and go to Jerusalem to see what was happening. After all, what is it to Jerusalem from the coast these days, barely an hour in each direction. And so I went home to return my books and change clothes, and it was a lucky thing that I took this heavy sweater with me at the last minute, because even in Tel Aviv I could feel a cold wave coming on. And Mother, I really did mean to call and tell you I was going, so that you wouldn’t worry if I got back late at night, but I knew the kibbutz office was closed and that no one but the cats would be by the dining-hall telephone at that time of the afternoon, and so I didn’t bother trying. I was halfway out the door when something told me to take my toothbrush and a spare pair of panties, and so I put them in my bag and started out for Jerusalem…

— I don’t know… I just did… I mean…

— Yes, yes, I know you’ve been taught that no one “just” does anything. Don’t get carried away, though. I’ve kept a spare pair of panties in my bag for the last two weeks just in case I got my period, although that still doesn’t explain the toothbrush. What did that mean? Well, I’ll leave that to you, you’ve learned all about psychological symbols in those courses of yours. Just don’t tell me that subconsciously I meant to stay in Jerusalem, because in that case I should have taken along some pajamas too, and I didn’t… unless my subconscious is dumber than I think… or maybe it has a subconscious of its own and that’s what made it screw up…

— Don’t take me so seriously.

— No, but it’s starting to annoy me, because you’re turning it into a religion.

— All right, all right, never mind… it’s not important. The point is, Mother, that I upped and went to Jerusalem that Tuesday, and that while I left Tel Aviv in broad daylight, it was pitch black when I arrived. It was foggy and raining with this thin, sleety sort of rain, and I was so confused by the darkness that I got off the bus a stop too soon and ended up in this neighborhood called Talbiah. Not that I regretted it, because it was like being in some city in Europe. I was in this big plaza surrounded by beautiful stone houses that looked absolutely splendid and magical in the light of the street lamps with their arcades and columned porticoes and courtyards full of cypress trees… it was just fantastic…

— Yes, exactly, how did you know? But it’s not just the President, Mother. It’s the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister too, they all live near that big, beautiful plaza, although I could have walked right by it without knowing if not for this policeman sitting in a little hut who I asked for directions. I also asked him what he was guarding, and he showed me the President’s house and even let me peek past the gate, and I had this most wonderful feeling, Mother, of having entered the true heart of the city…

— No, you’re wrong. I was never there. As far back as I can remember, I was always brought to Jerusalem in groups of schoolchildren or soldiers, always for some ceremony or field trip that took place in some museum or archaeological site, or else on the walls of the Old City, which we had to ran around on in this sweltering heat after some nuisance of a tour guide. And if we spent the night there, it was always in some youth hostel on the outskirts of town, either next to the military cemetery on Mount Herzl or in that frightening forest near the Holocaust Museum, never in the city itself, in the true inner heart of it. And so with the help of that policeman who was guarding the President, I didn’t have to get back on the bus but took a shortcut to this neighborhood called Ghost Valley through an empty field and a little woods that led me straight to Efi’s father’s street, which I entered contrariwise…

— I mean from the wrong end.

— You don’t know it. It’s called The Twenty-ninth of November Street. You have to walk down a hill behind the old leper hospital. It’s a long, narrow street you’ve never been on.

— The German Colony?

— I don’t think that’s its name, Mother. On the map it clearly said Ghost Valley. When I first looked up the address I had been given at the university, I thought that only a Jerusalemite could live in a place with such a scary name, because no Tel-Avivian would ever stand for it — and now this fog was drifting all around and it took me forever to find the building because I was coming from the wrong end of the street, and when I did I was so wet and cold from the rain, and my shoes were so full of mud, that I just stood there in a corner of the entrance, pulling myself together. And then, Mother, right there in that dark stairwell, it suddenly began, do you hear me? Do you?

— This strange feeling, which I kept having all the time I was in Jerusalem… as if, Mother, I wasn’t there just by myself but… how can I put it… as if someone had put me on the opening page of a book…

— A book. Some novel or story, or even a movie, for that matter. Mostly it was the feeling of eyes being on me all the time, even my own eyes, which kept watching me from the side as though tracking me. I don’t mean in reality, but in a book… as if I were being written about on the first page of some story, where it said… something like… something like… an old book that began like this: “One winter afternoon a fatherless student left her grandmother’s apartment in the coastal metropolis on an errand for her boyfriend, who had asked her to find out what had happened to his father in the inland capital, all contact with whom had been lost…” Something simple- and innocent-sounding that was about to become very complicated. Next you see her step into the entrance of a plain but respectable apartment house on a cold winter evening — where, after a few seconds, the light goes out, so that the camera shooting her from outside has to grope its way in after her and finds her standing before a greenish door on which is the single word: Mani. That’s how it starts, this story or movie or whatever you call it, Mother, with & light knock and a quick ring, and then a second ring and a third. But the man inside doesn’t want to open up, even though our heroine, the young lady from the metropolis, will make him do it in the end, and by forcing her way into his apartment, Mother, will save his life…

— Just a minute… listen…

— Just a minute…

— One minute.

— One minute. No, there was no answer. And maybe, Mother, it was that feeling I had on the stairs that I was in a story and not in real life that kept me from giving up, because I was sure that he was hiding there inside the apartment and not coming to the door for the same reason he hadn’t answered the telephone. In the end, after ringing and knocking in every possible way for a good ten minutes, I pretended to leave by walking back down the stairs, and then I tiptoed up again as quietly as I could and stood pressed against the door in the darkness, almost hugging it while holding my breath, just like in one of those thrillers, until I heard faint steps and realized that he was coming to the door, that he was standing right on the other side of it. And then, in this soft, friendly voice that wouldn’t scare him, I said, “It’s me, Mr. Mani, I’ve brought you an important message from your son Efi”—at which point he had to open up…

— Just a minute. Listen…

— Will you wait one minute!

— Not at all, Mother. He’s only your age, maybe even a little younger, somewhere in his middle forties. He could look pretty good if he wanted to. But when he opened the door that evening he was scary-looking, like some kind of depressed animal coming out from deep in its burrow, with this month-old mourner’s beard and a raggedy old bathrobe, all red-eyed and wild-haired. He was in his socks, and the apartment behind him was dark but heated like a furnace, and he seemed so surprised and upset by my having gotten him to open the door that all he could do was stand there blocking it and looking hostile. I could see there was no point in reminding him who I was, or in telling him I had been in his apartment a month ago on a condolence call, because he was so into himself that a month might have seemed to him like a hundred years or more. And so I just mentioned Efi again and gave him the message as quickly as I could before the door was shut in my face, and he stood there listening without a word, just shaking his head absentmindedly while beginning to close the door. But as luck would have it, Mother, just then the telephone rang — you would have thought that part of myself had stayed behind in Tel Aviv to keep on dialing. He looked around as if pretending not to notice it, or at least hoping I would go away so he could answer, but when he saw I had no intention of doing that and that the telephone wasn’t stopping, he went to pick it up in the living room — and then, Mother, perhaps because of the book I was in now, or because I knew I’d be protected by the photographer and the director and the whole camera team that was following my every movement, I decided not to take that head shake of his for an answer and I slipped inside uninvited, because I knew I had to find out what was going on in there…

— Because there must have been something if he was that determined to keep me out when I had come all the way from Tel Aviv with a message from his son and was standing there on the landing, soaking wet and half-frozen…

— You don’t say! I was waiting for that, Mother.

— I was waiting for it. I was wondering when you’d get around to that, so why don’t you just spill it all now… I’ve been expecting it for the last quarter of an hour, so if you must say it, this is the time…

— Yes, yes, why don’t you say it, go right ahead. There goes our Hagar looking for a father figure again… as usual, she’s latched onto some older man… I know that routine by heart… every time I would tell you when I was in the army about some officer a little older than me whom I happened to like, you’d get that pitying smile of yours right away…

— Yes, I know you didn’t, but it’s what you wanted to say, why not admit it, goddamn it? It follows logically from all those trite, pathetically shallow clichés you’ve been taught about the psychology of orphans…

— You mean there’s no special field of Orphan Psychology?

— How come?

— Well, you can be sure they’ll invent it soon…

— No, I already know all that…

— Just a minute. Listen…

— But that’s what you want to say, I know you do, so say it…

— Say it… what’s stopping you?

— I’m not angry.

— Because the truth may be very different. So why don’t you try, Mother, for once in your life, to think differently too. Did it ever occur to you, say, that what I’m looking for is not a father for me but a husband for you?

— Yes, a man for you… an honest-to-goodness man who could rescue you from this sterile life you’ve chosen to live, which is drying you up without your knowing it, so that even your best friends, as kind and sweet to you as they are… yes, they too… for all they admire you… are a little… what’s the word… tired of you, and worried about your growing old on them here in the desert — where, as long as you insist on working out in the fields, there’s not the ghost of a chance of meeting anyone, anyone, with some life in him whom you might feel close to and love… because one day I won’t be here anymore, either… so that maybe it’s not just for my sake that I sometimes, let’s say, suppose we just say, latch onto older men, if that’s really what I do, but also for…

— Yes. I’m finished.

— Exactly. To marry you off…

— You find that funny? I’ll bet you do! What’s wrong with it? It’s time you stopped being so stubborn and…

— What’s the same thing?

— How is it the same?

— Maybe…

— It’s possible…

— It’s possible… but so what? It may end up having the same result, but it’s not the same thing…

— No, don’t turn on any more lights. There’s enough light.

— Maybe, but so what? And this time in Jerusalem I didn’t thrust myself on anyone, Mother, because I had a perfect right to barge in…

— The right of the formula inside me, Mother, even if you don’t take it seriously… of the little tadpole that’s swimming inside me and nibbling away at my cells to create someone new… of this teensy little bloodball, which, say what you will, is going to burst out of me screaming at all of you next summer whether Efi owns up to being its father or not. And that, Mother, is why it was not only my right to enter that apartment without permission, it was my duty to the future Mr. Mani, who was curious to meet his ancestors on their own turf, because for the time being, until he’s old enough to represent himself, I’m his only representative, do you hear me?

— As a matter of fact, I understood in a flash what drew me to that apartment — and don’t tell me it was my imagination, because I know better, Mother, and it was not. It was absolutely, definitely not my imagination! I’m telling you right now that I don’t agree with a word you’re going to say, because I saw at a glance, Mother, the true horror of what was lurking there, which fully explained his strange behavior, and Efi’s anxiety, and the errand he had sent me on, and all my determined telephone calls, and there not being any answer, and most of all, the unfriendly way he blocked the door and tried forcing me back out into the foggy cold even though I had come on a mission of good will, because I, Mother, listen carefully, I literally stopped that man, Efi’s father, this Mr. Mani, from taking his own life…

— No, I’m not imagining it.

— Yes, I mean it. Listen to me, because it’s the truth, and it can happen in life too and not only in books, and by the simple act of going to Jerusalem on Tuesday, and not budging from the door, I kept that man from killing himself… yes, killing himself… because that’s exactly what he was going to do, it was clear to me then and it’s clear to me now. It all adds up… and if I hadn’t come along just then… when I think of it… and… and…

— No…

— No.

— I’m all right.

— I’m all right…

— No. I’m crying and trembling because I’m thinking of what happened then, because I know you can’t believe me…

— Because you don’t want to… you simply don’t want to… you’ve been educated not to…

— Here, give it to me.

— No…

— All right… that’s enough… I’m through…

— All right.

— All right…

— Because while he was standing there in the living room, wishing he didn’t have to talk to whoever was on the telephone, I breezed right in on a blast of all that hot air, and instead of stopping politely in the living room, I kept heading down the hallway until I came to an open door through which I saw, in that dead grandmother’s bedroom, which was pitch black except for a bit of light shining through the window from the night outside, something so awful that… I can hardly talk about it even now…

— There was this hangman’s scaffold there…

— Yes. A scaffold.

— Just what I said. I mean, at first all I saw was that the room was in this absolutely frenzied state. The bed was a mess, but really crazy, as if someone had gone berserk in it: the pillows were thrown everywhere, the sheets were ripped, there were books all over the floor, and the desk was littered with crumpled papers… but the worst thing, Mother, was the blinds on the big window, which were shut so tight there wasn’t a crack in them. The blinds box above them was open, so that you could see the bare concrete and the unpainted wood, and in it, Mother, the belt was dangling from its rod — it was like the one in this room but wider and stronger-looking, yellow with two thin, red stripes down its sides — it was off the pulley and hanging free, with this big noose knotted at one end of it… You’re laughing at me…

— No, that is not all. Beneath it was standing a little stool, just waiting to be kicked away… everything was ready, I didn’t have the slightest doubt… it couldn’t have been more obvious… and if any more proof was needed, it was his own behavior, because the minute he saw me follow him inside and head past him for that room, he went absolutely wild. He threw down the phone in the middle of a sentence and ran to stop me, to get me out of there, or at least to shut the door and keep me from seeing. I could tell by how frantic he was, all panicky and confused and I guess embarrassed too, that he realized I had understood everything, everything… are you listening, Mother?

— No. Yes. I was already inside that dark room. I was too stunned by that scaffold to move, and he grabbed me from behind and tried wrestling me out of there…

— Nothing. He didn’t say anything… that’s the whole point. If we had spoken to each other it might have been different. And by now I was good and scared too, not only because of this terrible rage he was in, but because I could feel he was naked underneath his bathrobe, although at the same time I knew that if I wanted to save him, I had to resist. And so, Mother, I wrestled with him and even tried grabbing the blinds belt and tearing it down, but he started dragging me out of there, pulling me toward the front door, and I knew that if I didn’t dig in my heels by finding something to sit or lie down on, I would be outside in a minute, out of the apartment and out of the picture… And so all at once I made believe, it was just a trick, I pretended to pass out in his arms, and he was so scared that he let go of me for a second, and I threw myself into this little armchair that was standing by the living room door. We still hadn’t said a word to each other, because we were too dazed and surprised to, but when he saw me all scrunched up there like some kind of frog, he simply gave up and left me, he went back to the bedroom and shut the door behind him…

— That was all.

— How should I know? I guess he was waiting for me to go away.

— I just sat in that chair, Mother, and I didn’t move.

— I sat there.

— I didn’t look at the clock.

— Several hours.

— Yes. Several hours.

— It wasn’t ridiculous at all, Mother.

— I know what you’re thinking…

— Say it, I’m listening…

— Yes.

— Yes.

— Yes.

— Of course. Every word.

— Yes, I understand…

— That’s your explanation, Mother, but it isn’t mine.

— I already told you…

— Because I knew that my being there was enough to keep him from doing such an awful thing, even though theoretically he could have killed himself behind the locked door without my being able to do anything about it, I might even have been suspected afterward of murder…

— Just a minute… I know you don’t believe me… but there’s more…

— I’ll get to that… it wasn’t my imagination…

— I sat there without moving, soaked in that overheated apartment, which felt like it hadn’t had any fresh air for days and staring at the receiver of the telephone, which was still lying on the table next to a figurine of a horse and a row of little pottery urns. That was, I realized, why it had rung busy for two days — that is, what it was busy with was lying off the hook by that horse, which actually looked more like a mule…

— I sat there.

— No, Mother, there, in that chair. I didn’t move.

— I don’t know. I felt like a fossil, as if all the life had gone out of me… as if the author writing me, or the director photographing me, had put down their pen or camera and gone out for dinner, or maybe just for a breath of fresh air while waiting for some inspiration what to do with me…

— But what should I have done?

— You must be joking!

— You’re not serious…

— No. I simply waited.

— I suppose for him to come out of the room. The one thing I knew for sure was that I musn’t leave him… it would have been absolutely immoral to get up and walk out…

— Yes. Immoral.

— Exactly, Mother. That was all. I just sat there… I didn’t touch anything… I didn’t even put back the receiver. At first it buzzed a little, and then it stopped. The front door was slightly open, and now and then I heard voices outside. People went up and down the stairs and the stairway light kept going on and off until in the end it got so quiet that I could hear the neighbors talking in their apartments or listening to their radios and TVs. Mostly, though, I heard the wind, which was howling like crazy outside.

— No. I just sat there without touching anything… as if something inside me, Mother, were keeping me from moving, because that was the condition for staying in this house I had barged into. I even forced myself to sit with my hands clasped, because I didn’t want to leave any fingerprints, anything that might incriminate me if he went and hanged himself in the end…

— Incriminate.

— I don’t know, Mother. I thought someone might blame me… for encouraging him, or not stopping him…

— I don’t know, I do not do not do not! Why must you keep cross-examining my insides, Mother? All I know is that I kept sitting in that armchair in the corner of the living room. I didn’t even get up when I began feeling hungry and thirsty, because I hadn’t eaten or drunk since lunchtime. There was a little basket with some sucking candies there, and I didn’t take a single one of them. I didn’t take my sweater off either, although I was roasting from the heat. I just sat staring at the black screen of the television across from me, or reading the same lines over and over in an open book that was lying diagonally in front of me and that I didn’t even dare straighten out, some book about old neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The more time went by, the quieter the building became and the more I felt that I was being embalmed like a mummy by some invisible hand. I began dozing off in that chair, in which I seemed fated to spend the rest of my life, a fossil waiting for my author or director to return, resigned even to the possibility that my Mr. Mani might already be dangling at the end of the belt, when at last — it must have been about midnight and I was in a total fog — I saw him come out of the room, a new man. He had taken off that raggedy bathrobe and was wearing a sweater and pants, and his hair was combed too, so that instead of some wild, morbid animal preparing to die, he looked like a man who had just woken up and gotten a new lease on life. He didn’t even look surprised or angry to find me there. He just looked at me with this slightly embarrassed smile, closed the front door, replaced the telephone receiver, and very politely asked me what my name was and what exactly I wanted from him…

— I don’t suppose he really heard me the first time.

— No, Mother. Just wait. It was not my imagination…

— Wait, Mother, wait… hold on…

— Not every detail, but still… the details are important…

— But for God’s sake, why can’t you be patient…

— No. I’ll make the other days shorter.

— No. No, there wasn’t a word about our little wrestling match. You would have thought we’d never touched each other… Anyway, I gave him Efi’s message and this time it got through to him, although he didn’t seem particularly disappointed to hear that his son couldn’t make the unveiling. He began asking me all kinds of things about Efi, as if it were obvious that I knew more about him than he did, and so I told him about his breaking his glasses, and he was so concerned that he wanted to look for another pair. And so perfectly naturally, as if nothing at all had happened, he invited me back into the same bedroom he had thrown me out of before, only now the room was neatly arranged and looked more or less normal. The bed was made, the sheets were folded, the papers were in a neat pile, and most of all, the blinds were opened and raised, so that I could see the trees tossing in the wind outside. The blinds box was closed and the belt with its noose was back inside it. He began rummaging through the drawers of his desk until he found a few pairs of glasses and asked me if I thought they were Efi’s, because he didn’t know whose they were. In the end he put them all in a little cloth bag and said, “Here, send these to him in Lebanon, maybe he can get by with them until he comes home.” By now he didn’t seem in such a hurry to get rid of me anymore. He gave me a long look and asked, “But where do I know you from? Where can I possibly remember you from?”—and when I told him with a little smile that I had been in his apartment a month ago to pay him a condolence call, he didn’t seem satisfied with the answer. I don’t think he even remembered it, because he kept trying to discover where else we might have met. He was all full of this sudden curiosity and wanted to know if I had ever lived in Jerusalem, and all about my family, and about you, Mother, and about father, and about who your parents were, and about where they came from, and if there weren’t some Jerusalemites among them. It was so strange, Mother, this family interrogation that he suddenly began with great patience in the middle of the night, as if there were no clocks in the world and time itself didn’t exist. And since I really don’t know much about our family history, and I was very tired, in the end — but only in the end, Mother — I blurted out that… I mean… I did it again… I just couldn’t help myself…

— Right. Yes. That I lost my father in a war…

— I knew you’d say that. But this time I didn’t mean to do it. I’d sworn to myself to stop mentioning it all the time.

— That’s easy to say. It’s very easy.

— Naturally. You always know everything.

— No…

— No, no, but it’s beginning to get on my nerves how you’re always so sure that you know just what I’m going to say and just what I’m going to do. Well, hang on, because you’ve got a surprise in store for you tonight…

— Hang on. Have a little patience.

— Yes. A surprise.

— Then? Naturally, Mother, it wasn’t my fault. He started gushing with compassion like they all do…

— That’s what you think. I might have liked it once, but I don’t anymore. It aggravates me the way everyone feels they have to be so protective, him too. Not that he wasn’t tactful about it, but you could see how worried he was about my going back to Tel Aviv in such weather, especially since he was sure it was going to snow. It was his idea that I spend the night there and let him take me to the train or bus station in the morning — and though I knew it made sense, I took my time answering because I wanted to be sure he really thought so himself and wasn’t just trying to be nice… only before I could make up my mind, he was already making the grandmother’s bed for me and primping the room in whose doorway we had wrestled like two savages, as if trying to prove to me that that scaffold had never existed…

— No. Efi doesn’t have his own room there. It was that dead grandmother’s. You could tell the minute you walked into it.

— By everything, you name it. By the furniture. By the pictures on the walls. By this weird old doll of a Turkish dancer with shiny pants and a fez on her head. By the dresses and slips still hanging in the closet. Even by the sheets he made the bed with, which were yellowed from so many laundries He took a nightgown from a drawer and handed it to me, this heavy old flannel antique covered with hand-embroidered red flowers no two of which were alike, and for a minute, Mother, it gave me the creeps, not so much because it was that grandmother’s as because I felt sure that seeing me in it was what made him so glad to have me stay for the night…

— You’ve got to be kidding!

— What an idea, Mother. He only came back into the room once to lower the blinds when I was already under the blankets and to ask me if the nightgown fit, and I could see how happy I made him. He was actually glowing, and with one easy yank he lowered the open blinds, no doubt to prove that there had never been any scaffold but just some blinds that needed fixing…

— It was not a figment of my imagination.

— Because I saw it.

— I know exactly what I saw…

— But just wait a minute. Why can’t you have a little patience?

— So what? We have all night.

— But you agreed to skip the New Year’s Eve party.

— Then what are you so tense about?

— That?

— Suppose I did? So what?

— Yes, that’s right, Mother. It didn’t bother me in the least… why should it have? If Efi didn’t mind getting into my grandmother’s bed, why should I have minded getting into his grandmother’s bed?

— Suppose she did? What of it? That was a month ago… you don’t think something was still left of it, do you? Death isn’t something slimy and catching like life. It’s not like you, Mother, to suddenly start believing in ghosts!

— Never. It was perfectly natural. You know I always had a thing about grown-up’s beds, maybe because of that disgusting children’s dorm I had to sleep in on the kibbutz… and in fact I climbed right into it and fell asleep at once, without any problems, even though he was still fussing about in the apartment and the wind was blowing harder outside. But after an hour or two, Mother, I woke up, not just totally disorientated, but starving, as if he were beginning to eat out my insides down there. I had to get up and look for something to eat, and so I groped my way up the hallway of that dark railroad flat, tiptoeing past Efi’s father’s closed door and into the kitchen, where I didn’t turn on the light or even open the fridge but just found a loaf of bread and cut a few slices and poured a little oil on them and sprinkled them with salt and some spices lying there and wolfed down half the loaf before I was full. As I was heading back down the hallway I saw his door open slightly, as if he had been waiting for me. And so I stopped for a second, Mother, and I heard him drowsily calling my name in this low voice, as if I were already a member of the family. He wanted to know if it was snowing already — and all of a sudden, don’t ask me why, I had this terrible fear of him…

— I don’t know. Maybe that he was going to start wrestling again. I couldn’t say a word, and so I slipped back to bed and tossed and turned until I finally fell asleep again. In the morning, when he came in to wake me at seven-thirty, he was in a hurry. He was very nattily dressed, in this black suit and black tie, because he really is a judge, a justice of the peace. I even saw him presiding…

— In a minute. I’ll get to that too. Just let me tell it in my own sweet time…

— Don’t rush me, Mother. He woke me by letting some light into the room and tapping me lightly on the shoulder, and the first thing he said was, “Forgive me. It’s my fault you were hungry last night. I forgot to give you supper…”

— I hadn’t breathed a word of it, Mother. Heavens, no, not a word yet…

— Because I didn’t want him to suspect me or to think, who knows, that maybe I didn’t come to Jerusalem to bring him Efi’s message but with some secret plan to extort…

— Oh, I don’t know… some promise having to do with the baby… or maybe money…

— How should I know what he might have thought? For a doctor maybe… or an abortion… that’s why I was so careful not to say anything. Even though he was very quiet and in control of himself, standing there and spreading a slice of whole-wheat bread with goat cheese for me while looking out the window to see if the rain had turned to snow yet, I kept reminding myself not to forget for a minute that this was the same man who had tried ending his life the night before like some kind of stricken animal…

— No, just a subtle hint, to keep him on his toes… I only said, real innocently, “I see you managed to fix the blinds and unknot that belt,” because I wanted to make sure that he knew that not only had I seen it all, I had understood everything I saw…

— No. He didn’t react. He just nodded and kind of smiled to himself, and then he began prodding me to leave — and suddenly, Mother, I felt sure that all his being so nice and polite was just a ruse to get me out of Jerusalem and make sure I didn’t stick around to keep an eye on him, which must have been why he invented some important business he had to see to not far from the bus station, so that he could drop me off there. For a minute I thought that that was good-bye and that I had better get back to Tel Aviv. I had already missed enough classes because of the whole crazy adventure. But in the car on the way, which was crawling through the rain in this terrible traffic, I began studying his profile in the silence that had come over us, and what I saw was this depressed Sephardic gentleman with breath that smelled like old wine who seemed all alone in the world — and suddenly I thought, Mother, why, this is the only grandfather that the little formula swimming in my fluids will ever have, shouldn’t I get to know him a little better? And so I began asking him about himself. I even mentioned that book on old neighborhoods in Jerusalem next to the figurine of the horse that I diagonally read a page of, and he brightened up right away and started telling me about it, and about how he enjoyed reading it, and about this neighborhood he was on his way to now, which was called Abraham’s Vineyard, where he rented out an old house that he had inherited from his great-grandfather, a famous gynecologist who ran a maternity clinic ninety years ago in which all the women of Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs, came to give birth. Well, no sooner had he told me that, Mother, than something seemed to burst inside me. I was actually red with emotion, because despite the traffic jam and all that annoying gray rain dripping down the windows, there was such a marvelous fatedness about having met him and about driving with him now to this place where women gave birth a century ago that it seemed the most natural thing to want to go with him and see it for myself. He was a little taken aback by that. There was nothing to see there, he said. It was just a house with a few small apartments whose tenants’ leases he had to renew, because that was the money that paid for Efi’s studies. I didn’t back down, though, I almost begged him: if I didn’t go with him to the house, couldn’t I at least take a look at the neighborhood? He kept trying to convince me that it wasn’t worth it, that it was just another neighborhood of super-religious Jews in black coats. But I stuck to my guns, Mother. Suddenly it mattered terribly to me, and in the end he had no choice, he couldn’t just throw me out of the car — and so he didn’t stop at the bus station but drove straight to this crowded neighborhood, which really was full of Jews in black clothes. It seemed very colorful, though, and we parked in a street by an old stone house that didn’t look small at all, it had two stories and a red tile roof. But he must have felt very embarrassed, because he said, “This is the house, you can see there’s nothing to see”—and he politely asked me to wait outside while he went in, because the tenants were very religious and wouldn’t approve of me or my being there… Well, Mother, that made me laugh, as if they had any idea who I was, but I agreed to wait outside, and he said, “It may take a while. If you get tired of waiting you can take a bus to the central station.” He began warning me about the snow again, how it would cut the road to Tel Aviv if it started falling, and then he shook hands and apologized for all the trouble he had caused me by leaving the telephone off the hook and disappeared through this big iron door. I went for a stroll around the neighborhood, trying to imagine what it had been like a hundred years ago. It must have had nothing but empty space all around it, just like the kibbutz does today. After a while I began to think about the baby, because once it was born that house would belong to it too, and through it to me, a whole big house with a red roof when here on the kibbutz we don’t even have a shack we can call our own. All around me religious men were walking in stiff, straight lines with these transparent plastic covers on their hats and these black umbrellas that they carried like rifles, and the raindrops were becoming long and sticky, all smeary-like, although I knew they weren’t snow yet, even though I had never seen snow in my life, and so I went back and stepped into the house, which had these mailboxes without lids and these dark, narrow stairs with lots of baby carriages tied to the banister. I climbed them to the second floor, where there was a corridor that you could see had once been the veranda of the original building, part of which had been torn down and redone in a whole hodgepodge. There were doors there that might have belonged to apartments or maybe just to some sort of storerooms, and for a second I had the strange thought that perhaps this Mr. Mani of mine had gone off into one of those little rooms to finish killing himself quietly, but I kept walking along the hallway to a back stairway that led down to a little courtyard paved with stones and surrounded by more small rooms and apartments, at one end of which was a patch of earth where some dear soul was trying to get something to grow — it was touching, Mother, to see how these city people had planted pepper bushes and tomato vines in some big old basins and potties. By now I felt lots of eyes on me. Windows were opening and heads were sticking out of them, and finally a pregnant young woman stepped into the courtyard and tried tactfully finding out what I was doing there. She seemed very worried when I said that I was waiting for the landlord. She must have thought I wanted to rent something, and so right away she began explaining that I must be mistaken and that there was nothing for rent. It was obvious, Mother, that the idea of someone like me wanting to live there was too much for her, which made me so mad that I said, “But maybe something will become available,” and she said, “Oh no, there’s a long waiting list and no one ever moves out”—and all at once, Mother, I realized how uncomfortable I made her feel. She couldn’t stand the thought of my even looking for an apartment there. I saw her signal some neighbors to come help persuade me that it was hopeless, and so I told them angrily, “I’m waiting for Mr. Mani, I came with him,” and they said, “But the judge has already left,” and so I hurried back out to the street and saw that his car was really gone. Well, I thought, at least he hasn’t killed himself, he’s just run away — and at that point, Mother, I don’t know what got into me, but I decided I was going to go after him…

— To the Russian Compound, where the courts are.

— There you go again…

— I hear you… I just wish you’d say something original for a change…

— Fine, suppose you’re right, Mother, and that I’m always looking for a father, which is the psychological, the trivial, the technical way you’ve been taught to think of everything, always looking for some simple, superficial, dumb little subconscious motive to get your hands on and criticize. So what? What made me choose him, of all people? Why this Mr. Mani and not someone else? I swear I could find myself a thousand fathers a day, there are middle-aged men just waiting from morning to night — not all of them even want to go to bed with a girl, Mother, some of them aren’t even capable of it, all they want is a few hugs and kisses in return for being warm and protective. Why go all the way to Jerusalem to end up with a depressive Mani? What does he have that anyone else doesn’t? I’m sorry, Mother, but you’ll have to do better than that…

— Incredible! You’re bringing that up now? And all this time you’ve been saying it was just my imagination…

— But what does that have to do with Father? Now I really don’t get it…

— I don’t get it…

— I still don’t get it.

— Now you’re frightening me…

— Fine, but later, later… I’m begging you, give me time before you start bombarding me with all your interpretations…

— Okay.

— Okay.

— Okay. Later we can talk about everything — all evening, all night, as much as you want, but first let me finish my story, all of it, to the end. That comes first. Because I’m still back there, Mother, in that place called Abraham’s Vineyard…

— Right.

— Yes, down the hill from that army base, Camp Schneller. Do you know what it once was?

— No, before that.

— No. A German orphanage.

— Exactly, off to your left — which is from where, instead of taking a bus to the station and from there back to Tel Aviv and the university, I set out in the opposite direction, contrariwise…

— Contrary to what I should have done, which is gone back to Tel Aviv and studied for my exams instead of taking a bus back into town to the Russian Compound and walking through the cold and the rain past all those old court buildings with their long, dark corridors full of people in black robes — who were actually very kind and helpful when it came to giving directions — until I found him, our Mr. Mani, sitting in the courtroom of the justice of the peace, which was such a tiny room that I had to laugh at first, because I never knew that courtrooms were so small. It wasn’t any bigger than this room, Mother, with three or four benches facing a big black platform, and there he was on it, sitting in his black robe with his back to a big arched window sunk into the stone wall and judging away. He was so flabbergasted when he saw me come in, slipping into the room with my head down and moving some wet coats to clear a place for myself on the last bench, behind the defendant and his lawyer, that he blushed, took off his little reading glasses, and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed me. Right away, though, he recovered, and for the rest of the morning he ignored me completely and went on presiding with this kind of stern humor that I hadn’t realized he had. Mostly, he teased and scolded the lawyers. When the defendants took the stand he was much more patient, shutting his eyes and playing with that little mourner’s beard of his, which he still didn’t seem to be quite used to…

— Yes. I sat there for a couple of hours, until noontime.

— It can be very interesting, Mother. It’s very dramatic when the defendant stands up to be identified, and the prosecutor reads the charge against him, and he has to plead guilty or not guilty, but there’s also a lot of haggling with the lawyers about all kinds of petty little details that didn’t mean a thing to me, and all this coming and going to the judge’s bench with documents until he’d lose his temper and call a halt to the proceedings and go off with the lawyers to his office, which was right off the courtroom, leaving me, Mother, all alone with this Arab defendant accused of stealing a Jewish ID card, who suddenly turned around and began talking to me…

— I don’t know what kept me there… But this time too, Mother, I had this sinking, frozen feeling that wouldn’t let me move. And of course, the weather outside was awful, you could see the rain getting worse all the time through the window and the sky getting grayer and lower. And nobody seemed to mind me, because nobody knew I was there to keep an eye on the judge, who seemed very lively and energetic and so far from suicide that I began to think what you’re thinking right now, that everything that happened the night before was just a fantasy of mine…

— Wait… just wait…

— No, he never acknowledged my existence, not even with a glance. You might have thought he didn’t know me. I went on sitting there until noon, feeling like a stone. Finally, he disappeared with the lawyers into his office for such a long time that the last remaining defendant got tired of waiting and walked out too, leaving me all by myself in that little room, looking out at the rain, which had turned into these icy pellets of hail bouncing off the window, and I thought, damn it, Hagar, what on earth are you doing here when you could be back at the university, on a campus full of life? But just then, Mother, the bells began ringing in the Russian church, pealing away in the courtroom… it was so solemn and primitive… and once again, Mother, I had the same strange sensation I had had the night before, on the stairs to his apartment, like I told you…

— Yes. Exactly. That someone was standing off to the side and writing or filming me…

— Right. It was the weirdest feeling.

— What’s so funny?

— What kind of delusions of grandeur? As a matter of fact, it wasn’t that at all. This wasn’t my own personal story. It was other people’s too. I wasn’t being asked to go off to some corner with my own little self but on the contrary, to have patience for everyone — for Efi, and for the baby, and for everyone — so that they could all make some sense of it…

— Wait… just wait… why are you in such a hurry tonight…

— You needn’t worry, nothing bad happened to me. Anyway, when I finally got up and peeked into his office to see what was doing there, all I found was a neat, quiet room. His coat and briefcase were gone, which meant that he had given me the slip again, this Mr. Mani of mine. But I didn’t give up this time either, Mother. I hurried back out into those dark corridors and began looking for him, asking all the black-robed people if they had seen him, until finally I found him standing in a large entranceway, bundled up in his heavy coat with his robe folded over one arm while having a friendly chat with a young prosecutor who had argued a case before him. He must have been waiting for it to stop hailing, and at first I didn’t know if I should approach him, but as soon as he saw me he turned to me warmly and even took my hand and said, “Well, Hagar, how was I?” He wanted to know what I thought and if I liked it, he even introduced me to the young lawyer standing next to him as his son Efrayim’s girlfriend — and I, Mother, don’t ask me what came over me, I actually had tears in my eyes. Maybe it was his calling me Hagar and maybe just his being such a darling, but I wanted so badly to cling to him and snuggle up against that big, hairy coat of his that if there actually was a minute, Mother… I mean a moment when maybe… maybe the thought crossed my mind… yes, I admit it… that he could have… just for a second… maybe…

— I mean… that he could have soothed that deep sense of loss that maybe I really do go around with all the time…

— Yes, like a kind of father… but it was only for a minute, no more than that, believe me…

— But he didn’t. That was the confusing part, Mother. Because all this time I had the feeling that he too was sending these hidden distress signals, as though he were whispering to me, Yes, you’re right, what you saw last night was no mistake but something that almost happened, don’t leave me, while at the same time I had the feeling that he wanted to get rid of me. Anyway, he offered to drive me to the bus station again — it was as if he wanted to make sure that this time I really left Jerusalem. He walked me under his umbrella to his car and opened the door for me like a gentleman to make up for jilting me and even stopped in some little street in the marketplace and took me to a tiny joint where he ordered this special Jerusalem hummus for me with a hard-boiled egg diced into it and behaved really sweetly, even if he did fade out from time to time as though the lights had gone out inside him and there was a power failure there. But each time they came on again and he asked some new question, whose answer didn’t really interest him, about Efi, who he seemed to think I knew more about than he did. There was a point in all that noise and winter weather when I had an urge to tell him what was in store for him in this little stomach of mine that he was stuffing with hummus, but I controlled myself and didn’t. And when we left the restaurant, he not only drove me to the station, he went out of his way to buy me a ticket and bring me to the platform and stand me in line as if I were a retarded child — and even then he didn’t say good-bye but waited patiently until I got on the bus and it began to pull out, which was actually very nice — I mean, all that being taken care of and being chaperoned, especially since I really did want to get home and out of the cold and the rain, even if it was also a little humiliating to see how he was manipulating me back to Tel Aviv, as though I were a mental case that had walked into his life instead of a perfectly innocent messenger on a mission of good will…

— Wait.

— No, just a minute, Mother, wait…

— Yes, it was two days ago, on Wednesday afternoon. I actually did leave Jerusalem…

— I really did leave it. It was storming outside, and everyone in the bus kept talking about how it was going to snow… about how it just had to snow… and I thought, well, that’s it, it’s over with, what do I care, maybe I really did just imagine it, and anyway, I have to go home, I can’t spend the rest of my life chasing after him. The bus was already speeding down the mountains toward the coast, there was nothing but fog all around, and right outside the city we drove into such a thick cloud of it that you couldn’t see a thing… at which point, the bus suddenly turned off the highway into a side road. Mr. Mani, it seemed, had been so eager to get rid of me that he had put me on the local instead of the express! We started winding through the fog, in and out of all kinds of villages. Everything was dripping wet outside, it was all so green and damp, and every now and then some hillside popped out of the fog into the window. It was sleeting too, and I thought, if it’s like this halfway to the coast, there must be snow in Jerusalem — the same snow Mr. Mani warned me about but was also looking forward to, maybe because then he could lock himself up in that railroad flat, and switch off all the lights, and turn up the heat, and take off his clothes, and open the blinds box in Grandmother’s room, and take the belt off the pulley, and knot one end of it, and kick away the stool, and bye-bye Mr. Mani…

— Yes, Mother. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The more we drove in and out on those roads outside of Jerusalem, the more it haunted me, so that when the bus finally rejoined the main highway and picked up speed again on the soft curves of those woodsy hills near the bottom of the mountains, and I knew that in another minute we would be flying over the coastal plain, something rebelled inside me, Mother, and I stood up in my seat…

— Yes. What rebelled was my desperation at having been made to leave Jerusalem against my will. I stood up all at once, and something propelled me to the front of the bus, and I said to the driver, “I’m very sorry, sir, but I’ll have to ask you to stop and let me out, because I’m pregnant and all this speed is bad for me and the baby…”

— Yes, the baby too. Don’t ask me what made me say it…

— I’m telling you, I did. What’s wrong with it?

— But what did I say?

— No, he was very nice about it. He slowed down a little and suggested that I move to the front of the bus, because it’s not as bouncy there, but when he saw that I was determined to get off, he didn’t argue. He stopped right at the bottom of the mountains, near that gas station there, and opened the door and said “Watch your step” and drove off into all that rain and fog. There was this total silence all around, and without thinking twice about it, Mother, or knowing what made me do it, I crossed to the other, the contrary side of the road, and headed for that old ruined building there, you know, the one where the road starts climbing back into the mountains…

— Yes. Someone once told me it was an old Arab khan where travelers to Jerusalem stopped to rest their horses. Anyway, there they were, waiting for me in the stillness… I mean that author or that director with his big black camera. Apparently, I had forgotten that we had arranged to meet there, and they were sitting on a stone terrace next to some dripping-wet trees, their heads in their hands just like yours is — don’t look at me that way, Mother, I promise you I’m not going crazy… Shhh… shhh… someone is knocking… don’t move…

— No. Don’t move. Who can it be?

— It doesn’t matter. Never mind. So you won’t answer for once in your life… so what?

— No, don’t get up…

— Would you rather I stopped?

— But what’s the matter?

— No… no… don’t be so worried… it’s just that I keep trying to explain this new feeling to you that I’ve never had before, which is that I’m not so alone anymore but part of a much bigger story that I don’t know anything about yet because it’s only beginning, although if I’m patient, I’ll find out. It was simply a way of calming myself, Mother, and I was even beginning to enjoy that old ruin, which everyone sees from the highway but no one ever bothers to explore. There was a sound of running water all around me, and I began to imagine all the travelers who must have stopped there on their way from Jaffa to Jerusalem, because a hundred years ago it was the place in which they all spent the night — and all at once, Mother, I had this feeling of great peace inside me…

— Yes. Of a lull in all the running around and studying for exams and other headaches. I could have gone on sitting there, hidden in that old ruin while watching the cars fly by in both directions and looking out over the valley, where the sun was fighting for its life with a black sky, only just then I thought to myself, even if you only imagined it, why don’t you put your mind to rest by making absolutely sure, this Mr. Mani-Depressive can be a grandfather soon if he doesn’t do anything rash, and so I left the khan and tried hitching a ride back into the mountains, and half an hour later I was in Jerusalem again, the streets of which were whitened by real snow…

— Yes, honest-to-goodness snow. That was Wednesday afternoon. Wasn’t there anything about it on the radio?

— It was wonderful.

— I know you haven’t. That’s why I was so determined not to miss it, so that for once I could be one-up on you, Mother…

— It was real but just beginning, you couldn’t tell if it was going to stick. And yet there was already something grand, something noble, in all those long feathers fluttering quietly about. It made me feel that I was in Europe — and what made that lovely European feeling even stronger was the fact that I soon found myself back in that circle near the President’s house, walking down streets whose houses were familiar and watching the snow settle over them. I went to have a look at the Prime Minister’s house too: next to it was this little tent with posters against the war in Lebanon and two demonstrators wrapped in a big bright blanket taking shelter inside from the cold, while across from them was an abandoned table with a torn sign that must have belonged to a counter-demonstration. I kept on walking, looking for drifts of snow I could step in and praying they would not melt overnight while working up the courage to go back to his apartment, because how could I explain it without making a fool of myself — and I absolutely did not want to make a fool of myself and give him an excuse to ditch me again, even if he did it like a Sephardic gentleman. And so I followed my legs past the Jerusalem Theater, which was completely dark, crossed the empty parking lot below it, and cut across the field behind the old leper hospital, where I was thrilled to see that the snow, which had melted on the streets and sidewalks, was sticking and piling up among the rocks. There was even enough of it to make a big snowball that I threw at some whooping children who had thrown one at me. I kept walking until I reached his long street, but I didn’t go into his building. I passed it and stepped into the next house to get out of the snow and warm up, because I was chilled to the bone and my sweater was soaking wet, and suddenly I felt afraid that all the games I was playing might freeze that teeny thing inside me and spoil its formula, which would have made it a criminal act not to have gone somewhere to warm myself…

— I knew you’d say that…

— Fine. Fine. So it was just a rationalization…

— Fine. I admit it. That didn’t make me any less of a fool. Of course, I wasn’t thinking of myself right then but only of what was inside me, but still…

— All right, all right. It doesn’t make any difference. In the end I went up there like a fool and rang the bell. There was no answer, and I said to myself, this time I am not making an issue of it, I don’t care if it’s my imagination or not, I’ve had enough. When I went back down to look for a bus stop, I saw his car parked in the street. I could tell it was his by the robe in the back — but still, Mother, I told myself: it isn’t your business, if he wants to kill himself you can’t stop him, you can’t come running to the rescue every night from Tel Aviv. And so I started to walk and turned into this little shopping center, where there was a café I went into to warm up and eat something. I sat there thinking about you and wondering if you were worrying — that’s when I called the kibbutz and left that message that the German volunteer never gave you. I sat by the window and had something to eat and drink while watching the snow to see if it would stick, because all those cars and people were very hard on it. I had begun to care about it as much as Mr. Mani — not that I knew why he cared about it either… By then it was nine o’clock. The evening news was on the television in the café, and there were shots of the snow in Jerusalem, and everyone sat there staring at it as if they knew that even if it melted, it would still exist on television. It wasn’t too late yet, Mother, to take a bus back to Tel Aviv, and I went to pay the bill with every intention of doing that. Before I did, though, I decided to make one last little telephone call, just to see if he had made up his mind to hang himself yet, and it was the same story now too — there wasn’t any answer — and I said to myself, he can’t possibly be playing these revolting little games again unless he’s already dead, and I sniffed and thought, well, there goes Grandpa number two, this little Mani of mine will have nothing but women around when he’s born…

— Efi won’t be there either.

— He just won’t…

— Because I have no illusions about him.

— I don’t… it’s just a feeling that I have…

— It’s nothing specific, but I have no illusions…

— I’ve already told you. There was no chance to tell him. I’m sure he won’t like it, though — I mean having a baby and all…

— Because I think he has other plans. He wants to study abroad, and the last thing he needs is a baby. Besides, who knows if we’re really in love or if it isn’t just one of those things…

— No, for goodness’ sake, Mother, not now… there’s time… I’ll get to that… if you’ll only wait… because now I left the cafe and went back to the street and into the building just to see if I would again get that solemn feeling of not being alone and of following someone’s instructions, but nothing happened. No one was waiting for me there — no author or director or photographer. It was as if I had run out of sponsors and was back on my own again — and that, Mother, was when I began to feel a little desperate, to say nothing of exhausted from my first time in the snow, which can be very fatiguing if you’re not used to it, and so I said to myself, I’ve had it, it’s time to say good-bye to this Mr. Mani once and for all. I climbed the stairs to his apartment, but I didn’t knock or ring. I just sat there quietly by the door to warm up a little before leaving. I must have been feeling kind of angry for letting everyone abandon me there in the dark…

— Everyone… everyone…

— Everyone… all of you… everyone who wants to ditch me…

— Never mind. Forget it. Later…

— Wait… wait…

— Forget it… I didn’t mean it. Anyway, Mother, just then the stairway light went on, and I saw this middle-aged woman coming up the stairs, this plump, nice-looking woman who turned out to be the next-door neighbor. And when she saw me sitting like an outcast by the door, she asked me, perfectly matter-of-factly, as if she knew who I was and that I belonged there, “Well, what’s the matter: did you lose your key again?”

— Yes. She must have confused me with someone else, or else seen me coming out of there that morning. And so I quietly said “Yes” in this passive kind of voice, which was enough to make her go get the extra key she had in case Efi forgot his — which put me, Mother, in this awkward situation, with the key to the apartment in my hand…

— No. Yes. I thought I’d stall for time and slip away the minute she went back inside, but she just planted herself in her doorway and waited for me to open the door. She gave me no choice, Mother. I even turned the key quietly and gave the door a little push and said thank you with a smile in the hope that she would be satisfied and go away, but she just went on standing there as if it were all too fascinating for words, so what could I do but go inside and shut the door behind me…

— No. I didn’t mean to go any farther.

— Of course, Mother. How could you even think it? I thought I’d stand quietly by the door for a minute and step back out again without being noticed — assuming, that is, that there was anyone in there to notice me. But the apartment was so exactly like the night before, just as dark and overheated and quiet, that I began to wonder: what is going on here? Is it happening all over again or am I traveling backward in time? I was getting to be too contrary for my own good, because this time I was sure that he had really gone and done it — and I had to give him credit, Mother, for being civilized enough to turn off the lights and do it in the dark…

— Good God, no, Mother, why would I want to frighten you? What for? I’m just telling you my thoughts. I hadn’t seen anything yet, and though I knew the apartment by now, my eyes were still getting used to the dark and I was just beginning to make out familiar objects, like the telephone in the living room next to the figurine of the horse, or the row of little Greek urns. I could see as far as the closed door of the grandmother’s room, and I remember thinking, Mother, all right, Hagar, this is the time if you feel like it to let out one of those screams, you know, those blood-curdling screams that people go to the movies to hear, except that this isn’t a movie, it’s not even a book, and no one will hear it or share it with you, you’ll be screaming purely for your own pleasure, purely for your own terror, so what’s the point? As long as you’re here anyway, and there are witnesses who have seen you, which means that you’re sure to be investigated, you may as well know what to answer, so why don’t you go see what’s happened… And so I began inching my way down the hallway, still in the dark, Mother, because I didn’t want to see the full horror, just its shadow, although plenty of people are more frightened of shadows than of what casts them, and as soon as I opened the door I saw that the room, which I had left neat and orderly in the morning, was…

— No, listen! Listen. You have to…

— No, you have to. You can’t just keep saying I imagined it all and leave me with this story that’s overwhelming me so I can’t breathe, Mother, because the room looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane, as if some madman had run amuck there, attacking the bed and ripping the sheets and throwing around old clothes and old papers and pictures. And this time too, Mother, like in one of those recurring nightmares, the little scaffold was set up again: the blinds were shut tight, the blinds box was open with the belt hanging from the rod and knotted in a noose at one end, and even the stool was back in place. It was a repeat performance. Maybe, I thought, he put it on every night to rehearse his own death until it became so obvious and convincing that he could stop fighting it… and then, Mother, for the first time I felt so sorry for him that I really wanted to help, so that instead of walking away from that scene, which — you’re perfectly right — was much too private and intimate for me to have any business being there, I wanted to work my way deeper into it, to keep moving in that contrary direction that was pulling me like a magnet, and so I walked down the hallway to the back of the apartment, to this little bathroom off the kitchen, because I thought that if everything was happening again, he was probably in there washing himself as part of his suicide exercises…

— I’m glad I finally got a laugh out of you.

— Yes, Mother, it was definitely funny, my walking around that dark apartment like some kind of sleepwalker so as to find him and talk him out of this suicidal frenzy he was in. I would have broken down the bathroom door too, but it already was open, as was a door behind it that led to this little rear terrace that I hadn’t noticed before — and there, on the terrace, which was cluttered with all kinds of brooms and buckets and what-not, was my suicidal Mr. Mani in his big, heavy overcoat looking more like a ball or a closet than a man, peacefully smoking a cigarette in the fresh air beneath this sky that had suddenly cleared and even had stars in it, so absorbed in himself that he didn’t even notice me come in. I was still wondering how to let him know I was there when suddenly he turned around — and all at once, Mother, he went into the most terrible shock. The cigarette fell from his mouth and he let out this strange, painful cry as if he too were in some movie or book and the director had asked him to give it his all. Right away, though, he realized who I was and pulled himself together. He even laughed and tried making a joke of it and said, “Good God Almighty, don’t tell me it’s you again! You’re really something! I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. Just tell me this, though: how in hell did you get into this apartment? Did you steal the key this morning when you left?”

— Yes, but not in anger, Mother. He was perfectly good-natured, as though he were secretly happy that I had come to save him again. I began to mumble something about the neighbor who all but made me enter his apartment, and right away he said, “Yes, that Mrs. Shapiro, she’s always worrying…” There was this vague resentment in his voice, as if Mrs. Shapiro took so many liberties he wasn’t even sure what they were, and then calmly — he was still standing on the terrace — he began talking about the snow, as though trying to convince the two of us that that was what had brought me back to Jerusalem, that I wanted to see it while it still was there, because the weather was clearing, and cold as it was, it wasn’t cold enough to keep the snow from melting. Well, Mother, when I saw him all squirming and embarrassed like that I felt so weak myself that instead of confronting him with the horrible truth of what I had seen and understood, I began to murmur something about the snow too, to which I added that I really had come back for Efi’s sake, because I wanted to go to the unveiling in his place…

— Yes, that’s just what I said. I didn’t want him to guess that I had been following him around to keep him from killing himself. At first he looked very surprised, as if he had forgotten all about the unveiling… and in fact, if he had really meant to die that night he couldn’t have been planning on going to it, since the dead don’t attend ceremonies for the dead. Gradually, though, the idea seemed to please him. Maybe he really wanted to believe that that was the reason I had crashed his apartment again. Anyway, he bowed his head with this sort of doleful acknowledgment and only said with a strange smile that it was a shame I wasn’t a man, because he needed ten men for the cemetery, without them he couldn’t say the mourner’s prayer…

— It would seem so.

— Yes, it’s very odd… you would think it was this intimate thing that you said whenever you felt like it, but that isn’t the case at all. He even tried explaining it to me… but suddenly — he was talking about it and I was looking out at that field by the old leper hospital, which was covered with these white splotches of snow — suddenly he said something, Mother, I don’t remember what, that affected me so that I got this big lump in my throat and burst into tears, don’t ask me why, right there on that little terrace between the brooms and the laundry rack…

— Yes, real tears. They came from deep down and kept coming. I couldn’t stop them even though I knew they were making me look ridiculous. He didn’t say a word, though. He just stood there listening to me cry and calmly smoking another cigarette, as if I were getting what I deserved for hounding him and intruding on him…

— No, Mother. He was not right.

— No, he was not, and neither are you. Because what you think of as presumption, or even total irresponsibility, was simply my duty, Mother, a duty that was being spun out of me like the thin web of a spider…

— The spider inside me right now.

— The one made by the formula.

— That’s what we learned in school about the development of the embryo…

— I’m telling you we did… I remember… there was even a chart with all these pictures…

— You must have forgotten. Or else you never studied it.

— Don’t worry.

— There is nothing the matter with me.

— I’m imagining that too? You’re certainly making life easy for yourself tonight!

— Why hunt for what doesn’t exist?

— There’s nothing beneath the surface but what you put there.

— Maybe beneath the avocado trees in your orchard, but not beneath the surface of my story…

— I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings… Good God, Mother…

— I’m sorry… I’m sorry…

— I know perfectly well what I said.

— I don’t care. That’s not what I meant.

— What?

— What did you say?

— No, what an idea! You’re too much…

— Of course not. How could you even think it?

— So that’s what’s been bothering you…

— Then why didn’t you say so?

— You can calm down then… not in my wildest dreams…

— Incredible!

— Although I must say in parenthesis — and only in parenthesis — that Mr. Mani’s charms are considerably greater than his son’s…

— I can’t easily explain it. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them…

— No. Just in passing. As we were walking back up the hallway past the grandmother’s room, I said, “I see that the blinds belt is broken again, it looks like a hangman’s rope.” He let out a big laugh and reddened and said, “So it does, and the room’s a mess too, because I’ve been looking there for something I can’t find. You’ll sleep in the living room. The couch folds out into a bed… that’s where Efi always sleeps when he visits.” And without another word we passed that self-destructing room and went to the living room, where he pulled out the bed and brought me that old, embroidered nightgown again and all those half-torn sheets — I couldn’t tell if I or someone else had last slept on them — and quietly and not at all angrily went about setting me up for another night’s stay…

— No. We hardly spoke. We didn’t even bother to wrestle, because we had arrived at what seemed like a temporary alliance, or maybe it was more of a truce. He pulled out the telephone plug and left me in the room with the warning that we had to rise very early, and I told him not to worry. “I’m a kibbutznik from the Negev,” I said, “and we’re the world champions at early rising.” Well, he just smiled at that and shut the door and left me all by myself in what was beginning to seem by then like home. I turned out the lights and opened the window to let in some air, and I could see that it was getting clearer and calmer outside. I moved the pillow to the other end of the bed and tried reading something, but I was too tired, and so I switched on the television without the volume until the news was over, and then I turned it up a bit to watch the movie, I don’t know if you saw it, it starts out nicely and then gets worse and worse…

— You did? I thought it started out nicely.

— No. I didn’t want to bother him with another request, and I didn’t know if there was hot water or if I would have to wait for it to heat. I knew I’d be on my way back to Tel Aviv early in the morning, straight from the cemetery, and I thought I’d take a big bath and wash my hair when I got there, because I was getting tired of living like a nomad…

— Soon… in a minute… I’ll wash up soon…

— If the water’s so hot, why don’t you turn off the boiler?

— Soon… in a minute… there’s plenty of time. And so, Mother, I slept over there another night, and at 5 A.M. I looked up to see him standing over my bed all in black. He had this black suit and this black tie and this black beard — only his eyes were red from not sleeping. I had no idea why he was in such a hurry to get to the cemetery — you might have thought he didn’t want to keep his dead mother waiting. Breakfast was already on the table, a loaf of bread and some olives and these different goat and sheep cheeses, but he was looking awfully worried, and suddenly he said to me, but really serious, as if he were sounding some kind of a warning, “If anyone asks who you are, tell them the truth, I mean that you’re Efi’s girlfriend, and that you were supposed to come with him, and that at the last minute he couldn’t get away from the army…”

— Yes. It was such a weird thing to say, “Tell the truth”—as if otherwise I might tell some lie that would get him into trouble…

— How should I know? Maybe that I was his new mistress and that he wanted to do it with me in the graveyard…

— No, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he was talking about I was too taken aback to do anything but nod. I was sleepy too, and I was having this new kind of cramps, which went from my stomach down into my knees…

— No. Yes. Cramps like when you have your period, only worse. We left the house at about six. It was very cold out, but dry and clear, with just a little snow left on some of the cars and fences. And then I realized what the rush was about, because two big taxis were already waiting in the street to drive behind us and pick up all the others…

— No. I asked him about them afterward. They weren’t relatives at all.

— Yes. He belongs to an old Jerusalem family that moved to Crete and back again, but he doesn’t have much family in Jerusalem. Mostly he stopped for a lot of old women, all these widows who were friends of the grandmother and didn’t want to miss the ceremony, weather permitting, which it was. They looked like something out of a Greek movie, all these quiet little early birds all bundled up and dressed in black, waiting like lonely crows on the corners for Mr. Mani to pick them up and usher them tenderly, respectfully, into one of his taxis. A few of them were accompanied by old men wrapped in scarves, who made Mr. Mani so happy that he hugged them for joining his prayer group. Everyone kept saying how lucky it was that the snow had stopped, and after an hour of cruising the streets, which were just beginning to wake up, Mr. Mani had filled his taxis with old women and put the rabbi and the tombstone carver in his own car, plus the young lawyer who had argued the case before him in court. He was very worried, though, because he was still short three men. No matter how much the rabbi and the stone carver promised him he would find them in the cemetery, he couldn’t relax. “You’re forgetting,” he kept saying, “that it’s such an old cemetery that it’s hardly seen a funeral for forty years…”

— It seemed strange to me too. You would have thought he’d have had some friends he could bring instead of depending on taxi drivers and stone carvers. I wasn’t sure if he was really such a loner, or if he just didn’t want his friends to have to get up so early and travel all the way to the east end of Jerusalem, beyond the walls of the Old City…

— No, it wasn’t on the Mount of Olives, it was beneath it. To get there, Mother, you don’t go by way of Mount Scopus. You have to travel through the Arab part of the city and start out on the road to Jericho, which dips down to a bridge over a wadi in this lovely valley with olive trees, after which you turn into a big, beautiful church that has this bright relief over its entrance…

— He told me its name, but I’ve forgotten… It’s a church with another church above it, farther up the hillside, full of turrets and little golden domes that look like flowers or onions. You have to drive down this narrow, awfully steep lane with stone walls on either side that’s hardly any wider than the paths between houses on the kibbutz, only — I swear, Mother — it’s, like, tilted in midair, I’ve never seen such a street. You could feel the cars go tense with fear but also pick up speed, honking warnings to each other until suddenly we’d squeezed through and were in this old, old cemetery…

— No, I just told you, it’s not on the Mount of Olives, it’s below it. It’s much farther down, a huge expanse of old graves on this bare, pinkish hill. There’s a fantastic view from there. You can see the whole Old City with its big mosques in their huge squares, and the church spires, and David’s City, and the white towers of Jewish Jerusalem in the background. It was such a clear, clear day, Mother, and we had the sun at our backs. It’s this terribly old cemetery, without paths, without flowers, without a single tree, perfectly bare and full of broken tombstones. It’s a really captivating place…

— No, you were never there.

— You couldn’t have been. You’re wrong. I can’t believe you ever were there…

— No. It’s not a place tourists get to. There’s something unworldly about it. I’ll take you there some day and you’ll realize you’ve never been there. It’s awfully captivating…

— Captivating… you’ll understand when you see it. Even that young lawyer, who was born in Jerusalem and knows the whole city, was so excited to be there that he couldn’t thank Mr. Mani enough for drafting him into his prayer group. We began moving forward in this slow little line with the stone carver leading the way, because there are no signs there or anything. The rabbi ran up the hill to look for some more men, and the lawyer and Mr. Mani and me lent the old ladies a hand and helped them past the broken tombstones, some of which still had a little snow on them, because we didn’t want them to slip and break their necks…

— It was an experience, Mother. If only those cramps in the pit of my stomach hadn’t kept getting worse…

— Just a minute, wait… that’s part of the story…

— No… yes, like the cramps when you have your period, but not exactly. Listen, though. In the end we came to this new tombstone, and the old women stood around it all agog to read the inscription, one of them even started sobbing a little to herself, and we waited for the rabbi to find two more men while the stone carver tidied up around this grave where there were bits of cement and gravel — not Efi’s grandmother’s grave but the one next to it, an old headstone half-buried in the ground that Mr. Mani had asked him to uncover. He even cleaned it and made a mound of dirt to prop it up on and started explaining something to Mr. Mani and the lawyer, who bent down to get a better look. I went over to look too, but I could hardly read what was written there. I couldn’t even figure out the dates. All I could make out was the name Yosef Mani in big letters. Meanwhile, Mr. Mani was explaining to the lawyer, who was so fascinated that he was practically face-down on the headstone, how he had found it and intended to restore it, and so I asked him if the grave was his father’s. He gave this startled laugh and said, “Good lord! Can’t you see how old it is? Look carefully, it’s from the nineteenth century. It may even be my grandfather’s grandfather’s…” When he said that, I actually felt for a moment that that stone was his grandfather’s grandfather, who had turned into a pink slab that was rounded at one end…

— No. I don’t remember any other graves there belonging to his family. He would have showed them to me if there were any, so that must have been the only one. Still, Mother, standing there off to one side, because I didn’t feel like mingling, I had this feeling of taking part in a ceremony like you see in one of those family graveyards in the movies. These little old ladies in black were all around, and Mr. Mani started reading from some book in his natty black suit and hat, and I thought, I must be crazy to have imagined he wanted to kill himself, why, just look at all these people who are here in his honor! You could see they thought a great deal of him, even the two workers I first mistook for Arabs that the rabbi had come back with, who already had skullcaps on their heads and were holding these little prayerbooks he had given them and rocking back and forth in prayer. And even if I was keeping my distance, by now I felt like one of the family, although it wasn’t exactly a family yet but only a formula for one… at which exact moment, Mother, without turning around, I knew that they were back, that author or director or cameraman or whoever. I had thought they had left me for good, but they had been following me from a distance, or from high up, and now they took charge of me again. The rabbi sang the prayer for the dead real rhapsodically, in this oriental scale, and Mr. Mani finally got to say his mourner’s prayer, his voice catching and then breaking without warning into these sobs that made all the old ladies burst into tears too. One of them began calling out some name — it must have been the grandmother’s — and screaming something. But she seemed more moved by duty than by grief, as if she were only trying to get us into the spirit of things, and meanwhile the rabbi was crooning away again — and I, Mother, I stood there entranced by it all, intrigued by all those ancient Sephardim, although it was really that little thing inside me that felt that way, because by now I was dizzy and had a headache, and I felt that not only was I getting my period but that something more serious was going on. Something down there was squirming to get out, I was sure of it now. All the exertion of running after Mr. Mani to keep him from killing himself was making Mani Junior flop around like a fish on dry land — and, Mother, I was so afraid that I was going to lose him right there and then in front of everyone that I sat myself down on a grave to hold him in or at least to keep everyone from seeing…

— No, just a minute… please… please…

— No, listen… please…

— Later… later…

— No, it wasn’t blood. It wasn’t that sticky feeling. It wasn’t a liquid feeling at all. It was more like these light little legs running up and down, over my crotch and my thighs…

— Yes, like someone’s legs. I called it a spider before, which made you wince, but that’s what I was thinking of. Is it really so disgusting or upsetting to you, Mother, if I call it a spider? But who can I tell my feelings to if not you?

— All right… never mind…

— No, not at all. It wasn’t strange or disgusting. It was this feeling of being about to lose something oh-so-lovely that I was attached to, of… oh, I don’t know…

— A fantasy… maybe… but how can you know if you never miscarried yourself?

— I was scared to death, Mother. I just froze and decided not to move… And so when the ceremony was over, and everyone got ready to go, and they all put these little stones on the grave, and Mr. Mani remembered me and came over, all contented-looking and full of his mourner’s prayer, I told him that I wanted to stay and look at the view. It was such a beautiful day, I said, and I would find my way back to the bus station by myself. He seemed to have no idea how frightened I was, and he wasn’t afraid to leave me there because the stone carver was staying behind to do some things too, and so he said good-bye in this casual manner, as if it were the most natural thing, maybe because he felt sure that in any case I’d come bouncing back to him like a yo-yo, and started to lead his little band of old ladies back to the taxis…

— Wait… wait…

— Yes, all by myself… But it was the middle of the morning, and everything seemed so quiet and safe there, and up on top of the hill, in the cemetery on Mount Zion, right below that big hotel, there were lots of Jews and tourists — and anyway, I had to wait for the contractions to stop, I had to do what I could to save a life…

— Of course I’m not in control of all that happens down there, but I had to do what I could, Mother… and after half an hour or so it really did let up and I was just left with this terrible heaviness in my arms and legs. I looked around and saw I was alone, because the stone carver had taken off somewhere down the hill, and so I decided to take the contrary route again, and rather than head back down toward that crazily steep, narrow lane by the walls of the church, I started up toward the hotel and all those people… and anyway, going up was better and less bouncy for him.

— Right, right, exactly, the Intercontinental, the one with all those nice arches. It looked so close from below with the sun shining down on these slabs of white graves, much closer than it really was. It was only after I had started up the path from the old Sephardic cemetery to the Ashkenazic one above it, past all those tombstones whose inscriptions kept getting jumbled in my head, that I realized that it was a steeper, longer climb than I had thought, especially since I had to keep stopping, because the cramps kept coming back. There were still little patches of snow here and there, and I felt I might start bleeding any minute — this whole miscarriage was beginning to seem more dangerous to me than to him. I was getting good and frightened, Mother, and so I walked faster, using every ounce of strength to reach the road in front of the hotel where there were all these German tourists standing around a camel and a little horse decked out in bells and bright saddlebags and some children selling souvenirs. I can’t tell you how exhausted I was. I must have looked a wreck too to judge from how people were looking at me, because before I had even reached his taxi, a driver jumped up to open the door for me. He stepped on the gas while I was still getting into my seat, so that by the time I saw he was an Arab we were already driving off and it would have been awkward to stop him and get out…

— No. I thought it might have to do with my being alone, but I only had to say one word to him, which was “hospital” in English, for him to nod right away, as if that were the very word he had been waiting for, and start saying “Okay, okay” to calm me down, although he drove like such a madman that I thought I would miscarry right there in the back seat of his taxi. It was just a two-minute drive, though, and before I knew it he was pulling into this inner courtyard of a church, that big, massive building the other way from Mount Scopus, I had never known it was —

— Yes, exactly, Augusta Victoria, how did you know? I can see you know your way around there… but it’s not a church like everyone thinks it is, it’s a hospital…

— Right, right. The lower tower, the squat one, with those dark walls, not the tall, thin one…

— Yes, that’s it. Did you know it wasn’t a church but a hospital?

— Yes, a hospital. You enter this huge inner courtyard with trees and stone benches and gardens and fountains and the wings of the building all around them, just like in those TV series about the British Empire in India or Egypt, with these immense, silent corridors and these big rooms with high ceilings. Every movement that you make has this somber echo, and the taxi driver, who was falling all over himself to help, kept saying “Hospital, hospital” to prove that he had brought me to the right place despite the ride’s being so short. He even helped me out of the taxi and began walking me carefully to the emergency room…

— What should I have told him? “Leave me alone, get me out of here, I don’t want your Arab hospital”?

— No, tell me! What should I have told him? You want me to have told him right to his face, “Take your dirty hands off me”?

— Then what are you trying to say?

— No, I know that’s not what you said, but it’s what it’s beginning to sound like. You always give me the feeling that if I tell you anything the least bit strange about myself, you right away think there’s something wrong with me…

— Wait… wait…

— Yes, Mother, I was admitted as a patient…

— Wait… just a minute…

— No. Just until the evening.

— I wasn’t out of my mind at all. I still had these cramps, I felt weak, and something down there was still moving and walking around. I was afraid I might start to bleed any minute. You have no idea how exhausted I was, I had gotten up exhausted that morning, and so the minute I saw some beds in this room the man brought me to, which wasn’t the emergency room at all but just an empty room belonging to some ward that he took me to by mistake, all I wanted to do was to flop down on them. It was so quiet under those high ceilings and those big, arched stone windows that I felt not only back in my story, in that movie or book that went wherever I did, but that the story had ended and I was now being shown or read, which fit perfectly with all that had happened since the minute I arrived in Jerusalem. And so I took off my shoes and lay down on a bed, and the taxi driver, who was wearing this bright cap and seemed to like taking care of me, put a pillow beneath me and covered me with a blanket and went to look for a nurse…

— What’s the matter?

— What was crazy about it? It was actually rather nice to be lying there quietly under that warm blanket, facing this huge stone window that looked out on the Wilderness of Judea. It was like being outside the world. The driver took a while to find a nurse, who realized as soon as she came that I was an Israeli and not just some tourist and gave me this disapproving look. I began to stammer something in English, but that taxi driver was driving me crazy, he wouldn’t leave and just went on standing there — I tell you, it was like out of some comedy, the way he listened without the least embarrassment… and the worst part was that after all those years of studying English I couldn’t get out the simplest word like “pregnant” or “miscarriage” or “bleeding,” so that soon the driver began butting in and explaining things in Arabic, which made the nurse even madder at him for bringing me uninvited instead of taking me to Hadassah…

— Yes, exactly. I could see that she didn’t even want to examine me. She wanted me out of that bed and back into that taxi and out of that hospital. But since her English was no better than mine she had to use sign language, saying “Hadassah” over and over while pointing to the driver, who began making these big, desperate gestures himself, because by now he was frightened of what he had done and kept urging me in this excited voice, “Hadassah, Jewish hospital.” Except that, suddenly, Mother, I had this need to stay put and absolutely not to move, because not only was I exhausted by that whole adventure in the cemetery, I felt that I might start bleeding any minute and musn’t get up if I wanted to keep my baby. And so I just shook my head and curled up like a fetus myself beneath that blanket, holding onto it for dear life…

— Yes, they would have had to tear me away from it, why not? And besides, my feelings were hurt too. Why not? If I had landed up in their hospital, the least they could do was examine me and see what was wrong. What were they so afraid of? That they might have to take care of a Jew for once in return for all the Arabs we take care of in our hospitals…?

— But what kind of complications, Mother?

— But how? That’s ridiculous…

— That isn’t so. There was nothing disturbed-looking about me. Don’t try defending them, they just didn’t want to… Anyway, when that nurse saw I wasn’t budging, she stalked out of the room with the driver, who had this hangdog look. She must have gone to get someone else, but in the meantime an hour went by and there still was no bleeding. I felt cold and fell into this really delicious sleep, opening half an eye now and then to look out the window at the desert, off which this dry eastern light was glinting, while thinking that the worst was over with. I even decided to go to the bathroom to see what had happened down there, maybe there was some sign, and out in the corridor I saw the driver looking depressed. God knows what he was waiting for, maybe to take me to Hadassah or for his fare — and so I went back to the room and brought him some money to cheer him up, after all, it wasn’t his fault, “It’s not your fault,” I said to him with a friendly pat on that bright cap, and he understood what I said and even gave a wave of his hand. From there I went to the bathroom, which was very old and big and full of light. It was incredibly spic-and-span, with these gleaming copper faucets and giant sinks, and I went into a toilet to check my underpants, and there wasn’t any blood but there was this scary stain, Mother — it was black with something smeary in it, maybe some part of him, and I felt so desperate that I began to cry inside of me. I wrapped the underpants in an old newspaper that I found there, and then I put the dress back on and returned to the room. The driver was gone. There was just the echo of his footsteps down the corridor, and so I got back into bed and lay there in despair, dozing on and off, until the nurse shook me a little to wake me. She had a dark young doctor with her who spoke a little Hebrew, and he began asking me questions in this dry manner, and I answered everything and took out the newspaper and showed him the stained underpants, and he glanced at them without a word and took them to the window to get a better look while I went on telling what I felt. All the time he didn’t touch me or write anything down, he just interrupted me once or twice to ask — I couldn’t tell if he was angry or laughing — “But what makes you so sure you’re pregnant? Who told you?” No matter how much I explained it to him, the dates, and missing my period, and everything, he wouldn’t believe me. Not that he was an extremist like you, Mother. He never said it was only my imagination. But he kept aloof and didn’t even take my pulse, although I would have been happy for him to examine me, I knew he was thinking, these Israelis, they only come to our hospitals to make trouble, even if he wasn’t sure yet what kind of trouble I was making. Whatever it was, he was going to avoid it like the plague — and so when I asked him again about the stain and did he think it was dangerous, I saw he wasn’t taking it seriously, “It’s nothing,” he said, “it’s just — “ and I knew he wanted to say “dirt,” but he didn’t, he caught himself and said “mud,” he was so pleased he could say it in Hebrew that he said it over and over…

— Yes, that was all. He wrapped the underpants back up in the newspaper to take them for a lab test and pointed to the west and snapped rudely, “Why don’t you go back there? Go back to your mother, go back to your father, go back to your health fund, you people have health funds,” he pronounced the word, Mother, with this really weird hatred, you would have thought that the whole trouble with us was our health funds, and not even them but the word for them. Afterward, though, he became a little kinder. He said I could stay and rest a while if I wanted, and then he said something to the nurse in Arabic and they left, and a while later she came back with some lunch…

— I don’t know. I wasn’t in any rush. I wanted to rest some more, and I had already warmed up the bed so nicely, and outside that arched window was the desert with this lovely blue patch of the Dead Sea, and I knew that I’d never again in my life have such a private view of it…

— Yes, Mother, the desert, of all places… the good old desert… I’ve always loved it and I always will, take my word for it. And now it had this fabulous patch of blue right in the middle of it…

— But I was under a blanket, Mother, taking in a desert just like the one we have here, with this extra scoop of blue that we always used to dream about, and all of a sudden it had this flock of black goats in it too, a huge flock of them on a hilltop flowing on and on, you couldn’t see the goatherd for the goats, they kept moving toward my window and disappearing beneath it as if they were entering the hospital…

— Around five or six. It was already getting dark. Some patients began drifting in, these elderly Arab women, and I hurried to put on my shoes and get out of there. I walked to the street, which was dimly lit by a street lamp, and there on that fading horizon, Mother, were the blurred, jagged skylines of the two cities, the Arab and the Jewish, all jumbled up with each other, and men were selling vegetables and groceries from stands, and I saw them all look at me and point to someone who was calling to me from an ambulance that was taking some hospital staff home, and it was the same nurse who had taken care of me, she had just come off her shift and was in her street clothes, wearing makeup and all spiffed up. She must have felt guilty for not wanting me in her hospital because now she offered me a ride, or maybe she was worried that one of those men might start up with me. But anyway, she said she would be happy to take me “to Jerusalem”—as if we weren’t in Jerusalem already but somewhere else, on our way there, and there were no other place in the world I could hope to get to. And really, right then and there on that hill, looking out on those two cities stewing in the same twilight, Tel Aviv, Mother, seemed as far away as could be, it seemed unreal, and so I started back down into Jerusalem from the opposite direction, and it was the most wonderful ride, Mother, through all these places you’ve never been in, all these Arab neighborhoods and villages inside the city. We kept crossing these empty wadis that still had bits of snow in them and coming out in these dark streets full of potholes and puddles that suddenly opened up into these lively little village centers full of people and children and shopping baskets and donkeys. It all looked so nice and cozy, Mother, as if they really had themselves a good life, and had maybe even gotten used to us, and the driver, who was driving as slowly as he could up and down these narrow streets, kept sticking his head out the window to talk and joke with all the people. He brought all the passengers home to their front door, making this big circle until he dropped the last nurse off by Jaffa Gate. I thought I would get off with her, but he said he would take me to the Jewish part of the city, he even asked the address to show me he knew his way around there, only I didn’t want him to have to look for it, so I said, “It doesn’t matter, just drop me off by the Jerusalem Theater,” and for the first time in three days I felt that I wasn’t going against the current anymore but flowing right along with it. We drove through the same streets that had been so empty early that morning, and now they were full of life. And even though there wasn’t a snowflake left in them, Mother, you could see that the memory of the snow was making everyone happy, it was as if they had survived some great ordeal of nature. And so I was back at the Jerusalem Theater again, and at the exact same time of day too, because it was exactly six-thirty. But this time the theater was all lit up and people were waiting outside it, and without thinking twice about it, Mother, as if it were something I did every evening, I cut across the field behind the parking lot by the old leper hospital like an ordinary person going home. The day had made a real Jerusalemite out of me, an old-time Sephardi with a touch of Arab! I wasn’t even thinking of his suicide anymore. I only wanted to say good-bye and make sure he hadn’t been hurt by my leaving him so abruptly that morning. As soon as I turned into his street, though, I saw there was a power failure there. Everything was blacked out, the houses, the streetlights, everything — and so I climbed the stairs in the darkness and knocked on the old door, and as usual, Mother, there was no answer, but I thought, he’s just forgotten how to open it, and so I took out the neighbor’s key that I still had and opened the door, and this time the apartment wasn’t hot, it wasn’t dark either, because these little candles were burning everywhere, and I saw him come out of the bathroom, all pale and frightened in his pajamas. He was holding a big razor blade and his face, Mother, was shaven. The beard was gone from it, but it was all cut up too, and he was bleeding from the throat…

— Yes, bleeding…

— The hell it was! It was not my imagination… absolutely not… and as soon as he saw it was only me he smiled like a naughty boy with this sheepish sort of smile, although maybe it was also a little mocking — I don’t think it was, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there was a bit of mockery in it — and he said, “Honestly, young lady, I was beginning to worry what was taking you so long…” And, Mother, I was so thrilled by that new tone of his, which was so much freer and easier, and especially by that darling “young lady,” that I walked down that hallway in a trance and grabbed his hand and said quietly but firmly, “Please, don’t do it again.” Well, Mother, this shocked look came over him. He was completely taken by surprise. He ran his hand over his face and throat and was alarmed by all the blood on it — and all at once, Mother, I stopped being angry with him, the truth had finally dawned on me, which was that he couldn’t control this impulse he had to do away with himself every evening, because he had no reason for doing it, Mother, he only thought that he did, and even that thought wasn’t his own but came from someone or somewhere else…

— Maybe that grandmother had left something behind in her room that was haunting him without his knowing it…

— No, listen, Mother, please. Don’t just laugh off everything I say. Listen to me…

— Yes, from someone or somewhere else… shhh… shhh… don’t move…

— No, wait… don’t move…

— No, don’t open the door… not now…

— You can always say we were sleeping… you’ve a right to…

— You don’t have to lie… but you can’t just open that door automatically for this whole kibbutz as if it were the door of a bus…

— Shhh… shhh…

— What’s not nice about it?

— There, thank God, they’re gone… Who could it have been?

— Then I’m turning out the light… Are you listening?

— Yes, a real mystery, that’s what I felt. Except that instead of getting all uptight, which is what you would have done, I did just the opposite and began to feel this great calm…

— Impossible. His mourner’s beard, Mother, was just an excuse…

— To go on cutting himself…

— I do know… I do know…

— I saw it… and I know…

— You don’t believe me, Mother, because you don’t want to believe. You have this great mass of collective wisdom behind you, and maybe here in the desert you need it to bolster you, but you’re so pitifully spooked by the least hint of mystery, which is why you have to root it out so ruthlessly with the iron logic of broad daylight… But it doesn’t spook me, Mother, any more than Mr. Mani and all his real or imaginary suicides. I found some towel to staunch the blood with, and we sat in the kitchen while waiting for it to stop, and I lit some more little candles and we drank some milk, because we couldn’t boil water on account of the power being off, and we had a real face-to-face talk at last, and suddenly I realized, Mother, that over the past three days we had made a secret pact, it wasn’t anything written or clear, but it was enough to make me tell him what had happened to me in the cemetery, and how I got to Augusta Victoria, and he sat there hanging on each word. I could see that the idea of someone’s seed inside me didn’t bother him in the least, not even if it was his own son’s, which was why he didn’t rush to turn everything into a hallucination like you do, because psychology is just a parable for him and not reality itself. He simply sat there daubing the blood on his throat and looking at it now and then on the towel, and we began to be friends. He told me all about Augusta Victoria, and the German Kaiser’s visit to Jerusalem, and how and why the place was built — and when I told him about my ride in the ambulance and all those neighborhoods I never knew about, he said how sorry he was that I was going back to Tel Aviv without seeing the real Jerusalem, by which he meant the Jerusalem of his ancestors, and he mentioned how he goes every Friday to the marketplace in the Old City, because the courts aren’t in session then… and I was so touched, Mother, by his faith in my ability to extricate myself from Jerusalem in the end and get back to the coast or the desert without compulsively walking in on him every night that I said to him on the spot, “As a matter of fact, I’d love to see the Old City with you tomorrow morning, because not only don’t the courts sit on Fridays, the university has no classes either…”

— Nothing special. We waited for the lights to come back on, but they didn’t until eleven, and meanwhile there was no television and no radio and no hot water to drink or wash with. We just sat and shivered in the dark, wrapped in blankets like in some tent city, reading the newspapers by candlelight. From time to time I tried getting him to talk about his childhood in Crete, and he showed me some photographs of his family, and of Efi as a little boy, and in the end he put me to sleep in that grandmother’s bed, the same one I slept in the first night…

— No, the room was perfectly normal. Maybe now that he was into razor blades, he didn’t need scaffolds anymore…

— I’m not laughing, Mother… I didn’t laugh once in the course of those three days, and I’m perfectly serious now too. It’s all I can do to keep myself from running to the dining hall this minute and phoning to see if he’s dead or alive… shhh… shhh… I swear, there’s someone outside the window… it’s unbelievable… maybe it’s me they’re looking for, not you…

— A couple of people saw me get off the bus.

— Oh. Yes, of course. Anyway, it must have been toward midnight, I had been tossing and turning, because I couldn’t fall asleep after spending most of the day in bed. I kept thinking of that wonderful view of the desert with the blue scoop of the Dead Sea and that flock of black goats trooping into my window. In the middle of the night the phone rang, and this time Mr. Mani was good enough to answer it, and I realized at once, just from hearing his end of it, that it was my poor darling Efi, who’d had a visit from the mobile telephone unit at that checkpoint he’s stuck in outside Beirut. I listened to his father tell him about the unveiling, but he didn’t say a word about me, not one single word about my having telephoned or come to Jerusalem or stayed over or gone to the cemetery. It was as if he were afraid to admit that I was there on the other side of the wall, afraid of being suspected of trying to be his own son — and I was devastated, Mother, not by him but by myself, by what this terrible need for a father has done to me…

— Yes… yes…

— It’s true… I admit it…

— Yes, yes…

— Maybe you’re right, maybe it was just some fantasy of mine… there, are you happy? Does that make you feel better?

— For me? For me? Do you really have doubts about my sanity?

— Yes, you do… why don’t you admit it.

— No, I’m not crying. I’m really not…

— It’s nothing…

— Dearest Mother… Mother…

— The next morning? Nothing. I couldn’t go back on my promise to let him take me to the marketplace, and it was a bore. He put on these old clothes, not even a tie, just a sweater and an old jacket, which made him lose all his presence and his charm, and we went with these baskets to buy all sorts of things for a few shekels less in the alleys of the Old City. After that he took me to the Wailing Wall, as if I hadn’t already been there, and then he wanted to visit some Arabs he knew in Silwan. The more he talked about them, the less I knew what he was saying about them, whether they hated us or loved us or wanted to get rid of us or were attached to us or were peaceful or were up to no good. I couldn’t tell what he needed them for, and by then Jerusalem was getting me down. You could already smell that awful Sabbath of theirs coming on, and I was afraid that the bus station might shut down early and leave me stranded there again, so I tried tactfully telling him not to get too carried away with all those back alleys of his. “Don’t forget my bus,” I said, “I have to get home,” and he finally got the hint and brought me to the station and put me in line for the bus to Tel Aviv, and I jumped the railing at the last second and caught the bus to Beersheba, because I wanted to be with you, my one and only mother, and to say, Hey, Ma, it’s me, listen to this, even though I knew you’d say, There goes Hagar, looking for a father again, and you’re right, you’re always right, Mother, what can I say, I know you are, but I also know there’s something deeper than your psychology, maybe even something astounding, why is it that you never remarried all these years, what made you stay faithful to that man over there whose photograph glows in the dark, more peaceful than the bookcase that it’s standing on, never moving, never changing, our impossible, our dead hero, who exists more than any of us in a single photograph, which follows us everywhere like some ultimate test, staring out with me into the darkness like a ghost, and that’s not my imagination, maybe he’s inside me right now, straddling, how do I know, the thin line between life and death…

Biographical

Supplements

HAGAR SHILOH Hagar returned to Tel Aviv the next morning but could not concentrate on studying for her English exam because that Saturday evening she got her period, which was accompanied by strong cramps and heavy bleeding. She preferred to think of it as an “early miscarriage” rather than as a “late period,” and her mood improved when Efrayim Mani returned from the army and their relationship resumed. Since Efrayim, who was fresh from the harsh experience of serving in Lebanon and bitter over a new stint of reserve duty already scheduled for him, did not seem eager to hear about Hagar’s visit to Jerusalem, she told him only briefly about it. Not wanting to scare him off, she did not mention her “pregnancy” either. A few weeks later, however, she became pregnant for real, although less enthusiastically than the first time and more as if in fulfillment of an obligation to Efi’s father.

When he found out that Hagar was pregnant, Efrayim was both alarmed and furious. At first he broke off with her completely. Eventually, however, on the advice of his father, who thought that Hagar was a bit strange, he agreed to acknowledge paternity.

The child, a healthy baby boy, was born in the autumn of 1983 and, despite Hagar’s mother’s objections, named Roni after her father. Although by then Hagar had successfully finished her preparatory course at the university, she did not begin her studies in the film department because her grandmother Naomi, young in spirit though she was, could not cope with a baby in the house; Hagar was a heavy sleeper, and when the child cried at night Naomi had to take care of him, which soon brought her to the verge of collapse. And so Hagar was forced to move back to the kibbutz, especially since the rehabilitation department of the defense ministry was not liberal to the point of supporting a child born out of wedlock. The best Hagar could do, after knocking on many doors, was to obtain an increase in her monthly stipend.

Efrayim Mani not unjustly felt deceived and refused to marry Hagar. He was willing to take formal (but not, as he put it, “emotional”) responsibility for the infant, and he agreed to allot a third of his salary to its support. Gavriel Mani, on the other hand, or Mr. Mani, as Hagar continued to think of him, became attached to his fatherless grandson and sometimes traveled to the Negev to see and play with him. These visits, which became more frequent when Efrayim went abroad to study in London, deepened the tie that had already developed between the child’s grandfather and grandmother.

Once her son was six, Hagar, who had felt isolated and neglected during her first years on the kibbutz, found it possible to resume her studies. In 1988 she registered for a joint major in the Jewish history and education departments of the University of Beersheba, where she was accepted without a high school diploma on the strength of her preparatory year in Tel Aviv in 1982. Today, at the age of twenty-eight, she is still not married. Despite pressure from her mother and her friends, she refuses to go for therapy or even for psychological counseling.

YA’EL SHILOH Although she sought to conceal her pleasure over the telephone, Ya’el was greatly relieved when, twenty-four hours after their conversation, she learned that Hagar was not pregnant. But Hagar, who went on seeing Efrayim Mani, was less candid with her mother when she really did become pregnant several weeks later, and by the time she broke the news to Ya’el it was too late to take medical measures.

Ya’el felt deeply hostile toward Hagar’s pregnancy, which seemed to her completely uncalled for and a source of future aggravation. She also felt sure that Hagar’s becoming pregnant was a provocative act aimed at herself. Moreover, although her progressive views compelled her to admit that it was his right, Efrayim Mani’s refusal to marry Hagar seemed a slap in the face to her. In the earlier stages of Hagar’s pregnancy she still hoped for a spontaneous abortion, but this did not materialize. When the child was born in October 1983, Ya’el was secretly pleased that Hagar did not return to the kibbutz with it and sought to continue her studies in Tel Aviv. Within a few weeks, however, once it became clear that Hagar’s seventy-five-year-old grandmother could not manage with an infant in her apartment, Hagar was forced to come back to Mash’abei Sadeh. The moment Ya’el saw her and her baby get out of the truck that had brought them from Tel Aviv after delivering avocados there, she underwent a change of heart. It was as if all at once she understood that there might be a deeper reason for the child’s existence, and from then on she did all she could to care for it and help Hagar.

Although the young father, Efrayim Mani, traveled to the Negev now and then to see his son, he was so aloof toward him and Hagar that his infrequent visits were a burden. Once, in the early spring of 1984, when Efrayim was again doing reserve duty in Lebanon, his place was taken by his father, Justice of the Peace Gavriel Mani, who wished to have a look at the grandson he had not seen since the circumcision.

Indeed, it proved to be an unusual and memorable visit, not only because of the lovely presents that the grandfather brought, but even more so, because of the warmth he displayed toward Hagar and her mother and the interest he took in their surroundings. Upon hearing, for example, that the grave of Ben-Gurion was in the kibbutz of Sdeh Boker some, twenty kilometers away, he insisted on seeing it and was accompanied by Ya’el.

Their trip there and back took longer than expected, and when they returned to the kibbutz that evening Hagar noticed a new glow in her mother’s face. As soon as Mr. Mani drove off, she demanded to know what had happened. Although taken aback, Ya’el was forced to admit that she found Roni’s grandfather quite attractive, even if he did come from an unfamiliar world.

Two weeks later Mr. Mani arrived again, dressed in black as was his custom with a thin red tie. This time he asked Ya’el to take a trip to Mitzpeh Ramon, because he wished to see the famous canyon there.

Their excursion, which was even longer than the previous one, brought them closer together. On their way back indeed, although she tried making light of it, Ya’el mustered the courage to ask the judge whether there had been any thought of suicide in his mind at the time of Hagar’s visit to Jerusalem in December 1982. While he did not seem surprised by the question, which he in fact appeared to have anticipated, Mr. Mani answered it vaguely, almost as if it concerned someone else. In practically the same breath he mentioned that Hagar’s behavior during those three days had seemed rather odd to him, although perhaps it had to do with her being in Jerusalem by herself for the first time. Once back in the kibbutz, he hurried to set out for Jerusalem and would not even stay for a cup of coffee.

Nevertheless, Mr. Mani maintained his ties with the Shilohs, and after his son Efrayim went to London for his doctorate, he regularly began coming in his place. Once every few weeks he would appear, a genteel man always dressed in dark clothes. After taking his grandson for a walk on the bare, tawny hills around the kibbutz, he would sit with the two women on their front lawn and tell them about his family or some court case while the toddler ran in and out among them. These conversations never touched on politics or social issues, about which he either had no clear opinions or preferred to keep the ones he had to himself, even though he was always curious to hear those of others. And yet as friendly and “judicially attentive” as he was, Ya’el soon realized that she must be patient and not expect any quick “romantic” developments. Fortunately, he did not mind the arid landscape. On the contrary, he often went hiking in it with her and seemed to relish the desert views.

When Hagar and her mother found out that Mr. Mani was driving to the kibbutz via the West Bank, along the road from Jerusalem to Hebron, they sought to talk him out of it. Mr. Mani, however, insisted that there was no need to take the long way to Beersheba, since the route through Hebron was perfectly safe and the villagers along it were peaceful. Once, at some gas station, he related, they had even tried selling him a horse.

Nevertheless, in the early autumn of 1987, a large rock was thrown at the judge’s car as he drove through Dir-el-Mana, a village some twenty kilometers south of Hebron. That evening he confessed to Ya’el that it would be wiser to stop coming via Hebron, even though he felt drawn to that route.