The Lover

ADAM

How to describe her? Where do I start? Simple, the colour of her eyes, her hair, her style of dress, her habits, her manner of speech, her feet. Where do I start? My wife. So familiar, not only from twenty-five years of marriage but also from the years before that, childhood, youth, from the days that I remember in the first class of the little school near the harbour, the green and stuffy huts with their smell of milk and rotten bananas, the red-painted swings, the big sand pit, a derelict car with a giant steering wheel, the broken fence. Days of endless summer even in winter. Like in a blurred picture, no distinction between me and the world around me. She is there among the children, sometimes I have to search for her, there are times when she disappears and then returns, a thin girl with plaits sitting in front of me or behind me or beside me and sucking her thumb.

Until now, when I see her engrossed in reading or writing with her clenched fist to her mouth and the thumb moves restlessly with a slow movement, a relic of the days when she used to suck her thumb. She didn’t believe it when I told her once that I remembered her sucking her thumb.

“But I don’t remember you at all from that time.”

“I was in the class the whole time.”

The strange and funny stories about the many years when we sat as children in the same class, told mainly to satisfy the curiosity of Dafi, who sometimes asks us how we met, why we became involved, what our feelings were. She thinks it strange that we sat for so many years in the same class and didn’t know that in the end we would marry.

None of the mystery of a woman who springs suddenly out of the darkness and you remember the first time that you saw her, the first words that you exchanged. Asya was beside me always, like the trees in the yard, like the sea that was visible from the windows.

In the seventh or eighth grade when the boys began to fall in love, I fell in love too, not with her but with the two or three girls that everyone fell in love with. Falling in love not because you wanted to be in love but to be freed of some burden, as if it was a duty. Falling in love so as to be free for the really important things — trips, games, the events going on outside. The Second World War was at its height and there was a great army all around us, soldiers, artillery, battleships — all this demanded deep concentration. She wasn’t among those chosen for love. A quiet girl, not pretty, a serious and distinguished pupil whose homework it was sometimes necessary to copy. In the morning before school they used to wait for her, to have a look at her exercise books, which she handed over without protest but with such a scowl, watching them copy from her all the good ideas and the correct answers, sometimes having to explain impatiently what they meant. I didn’t copy from her, I copied from those who copied from her. Even then, at the end of primary school, my work was beginning to deteriorate, not because I was incompetent but because at home they were already telling me that I shouldn’t continue with my studies, that I’d have to work with my father in the garage. Already in the afternoons I was required to come and help him, to fetch tools, wash cars, change wheels. What point was there in making an effort in studies that were beginning to seem more and more irrelevant to whatever was real.

But I completed the fifth grade nevertheless. It was then that the children began to pair off in the classroom but it didn’t worry me that I was in love with somebody who already had a boy friend. On the contrary, it was a relief, it freed me from the obligation to court her, to demean myself with excessive compliments during break. I could love from a distance without any effort, only at times when the friendship was dissolved and the girl became open to new proposals did I become uneasy, feverish almost, as if it was now my duty to try, but I used to hesitate, delay, wait, maybe someone else …

It was then that an immigrant joined the class, one of the children from Teheran, an orphan, his name was Yitzhak. The teachers gave Asya the task of making him feel at home, helping him with his studies, with his homework. He fell in love with her immediately, openly, always following her, admiring her. For us there was something perplexing about so obvious a display of love, in an old-fashioned, European style. She treated him with patience, rumour said that she “pitied” him, but she sure devoted a lot of attention to him. Standing with him during break and having long conversations with him. I had no contact with her but in the class there was a feeling that this love gave her strength, improved her position. I remember that during the girls’ gym class we boys used to sit on the fence and watch them playing volley ball. We were already looking at them differently, studying them closely, constantly. It was then that I noticed for the first time that her legs were long and attractive, but she didn’t yet wear a bra, and we were interested only in breasts, they were what mattered most, sometimes in class we used to move our chairs around to catch a glimpse through an open sleeve of this desired piece of flesh.

At the end of the fifth grade we went to a camp in the mountains of Galilee, with the teachers and the headmaster. It was a big camp and children from all the fifth grade classes in the city were there. The official purpose was to familiarize us with nature, with our surroundings, but they took the opportunity to bother us with some premilitary training. Most important was sentry duty at night. And since the girls insisted on standing guard too, it was decided that we should guard in pairs, and this understandably caused some excitement, particularly regarding the choice of partners. In the evening of the second day I saw that I’d been selected to go on guard with her, and then that boy, the immigrant, came to me and asked me to change places with him. Naturally I agreed at once. In the evening she came to me to show me her sleeping place in the tent. She asked me to wake her because she was a heavy sleeper and she might not be up when it was time to stand guard. I told her straightaway that I wasn’t on guard duty with her, that Yitzhak had asked me to change.

She blushed, angry.

“What do you mean? Did you agree?”

I mumbled, “I thought you’d want …”

“Why should you have to think for me? If you don’t want to go on guard with me that’s a different matter.”

There was something bold in her manner of speech, something not quite fitting this thin, quiet girl. It seemed to me that until then I’d never spoken to her as an individual, face to face. I was confused, scared of getting involved in the love affairs of this orphan immigrant.

“But he asked …” I added hesitantly.

“Tell him I’m not his wife yet.”

I laughed. Something in her proud and resolute stand appealed to me.

I told him. He looked miserable. I despised him for this open and self-torturing love.

At 1 A.M. they woke me to go on duty. I went outside the tent and waited for her. About ten minutes passed and she didn’t come. I went into the girls’ tent to wake her. Perhaps it was at that moment that the idea of felling in love with her first occurred to me. In the dark tent, among the girls lying huddled together, the smell of their femininity mingled with a light odour of perfume, touching the girl who lay there curled up, lifting away the blanket, seeing in the moonlight her legs in short trousers, the hair scattered about her, bending down to touch her face, perhaps now for the first time touching her intentionally, freely and simply, shaking her, whispering her name. Then it occurred to me that she was dreaming, that I was waking her from a dream. At last she opened her eyes and smiled at me. Then she switched on a big army flashlight that lay beside her. I stood there as if hypnotized, watching her put on trousers and a sweater, and she asked me if it was cold outside. The girls around me began to stir, mumbling. Someone suddenly woke up and saw me. “Who’s that?” she cried and I hurried out of the tent. A few seconds later Asya came out, wearing an army combat smock that impressed me. She had all kinds of genuine army equipment that her father had apparently given her. I had a vague idea that her father had something to do with the authorities, with matters of security. We began walking about among the big tents, now and then hitting at the grass and the bushes with the hard smooth sticks that they’d given us. Eventually we sat down on a rock at the edge of the camp, looking down into a dark wadi, she with the big army flashlight in her hand, from time to time shining it down into the wadi, playing with the strong beam of light.

We fell immediately into conversation, as if we’d planned it from the beginning. I was watching her all the time, studying her, trying to decide if it was worthwhile falling in love with her and beginning to fall in love with her even as I thought about it. She talked about the teachers, about teaching methods, asked my opinion. She had firm, clear, very critical ideas. About the system of teaching, against the material taught and especially against the teachers themselves. I was surprised, because in class she was very quiet and obedient, and very respectful towards the teachers. I had no idea that deep down in her heart she despised them. I told her that I was leaving the school, that I was starting to work with my father in the garage, and she responded to the idea with enthusiasm, jealous that I was going out into the world where great changes were taking place, when now, with the end of the war, total revolution was imminent. If only she could, she would leave school as well.

There was something obscure about her, ideas that were confused but daring, something strange to me, very intellectual, almost a chatterbox, but very interesting. We talked and talked and half of the next watch had gone by when suddenly we were attacked by the gym teacher who was in charge of the guard. He snatched the flashlight from her hand and threw it to the ground, told us to shut up, to lie on the ground, to move farther apart and to keep watch quietly for the enemy.

When he had gone and we were still lying on the ground, a little amused and a little annoyed, I said to her, “Did I wake you from a dream?” and she was amazed. “How did you know?” She insisted, she was determined to know how in the darkness of the tent I could tell that she was dreaming. And then she told me her dream, something about her father.

The watch was over and we returned to our separate tents. I took her flashlight to try and repair it. The next day, during the training and the excursions, we didn’t exchange a word. I still have time to decide whether to fall in love with her, I thought. In the afternoon I gave her the mended flashlight. She thanked me, touched my hand lightly, intentionally, wanting to start a conversation, but I slipped away, uneasy, still hesitant, afraid of making a fool of myself.

That evening Yitzhak disappeared. Apparently he’d been gone since midday, but it was only in the evening that he was missed. All the training and the activities were suspended and all of us, including the children from the other schools, went out to search for him. Walking over the hills in long lines, searching every bush and every crevice and all the time calling his name. The headmaster supervised the search, shouting excitedly, walking among us pale and desperate. Suddenly she was in the centre. They all looked at her accusingly, curiously. Even the children from the other schools came to see her, they all knew by now the reason for the disappearance. Again and again she was called to the headmaster to give more information about him. He stood and shouted at her as if she were to blame for not returning Yitzhak’s love.

In the morning two British policemen arrived with a dog. They were very much amused, inspecting the camp and taking advantage of the opportunity to search for weapons. After a few minutes he was found. He’d simply hidden in a little cave about a hundred metres from the camp. The dog flushed him out. He emerged weeping bitterly, shouting in his foreign accent, “Don’t kill me.” Down on his knees before the headmaster and before her. It was impossible even to scold him, he was so miserable. She was told to sit with him, to comfort him. I couldn’t get close to her now, until camp was over.

But it seems that his hopeless love infected me. In the holidays I thought about her constantly, walking by her house in the evenings, searching for some contact. I was already working full-time in the garage, I didn’t register for the new school year. My father was growing weaker, already there were screws that he was unable to turn. He used to sit on a chair beside the car and tell me what to do. Now and then when I had time to spare I would go to the school, just as I was, in my dirty overalls, sit on the fence and wait for break, to see my friends, to try to keep in touch with them. Searching for her, sometimes seeing her suddenly, hardly managing to hold a proper conversation with her at all, especially as Yitzhak was still at her heels and she was cautious because of him. It seemed that in spite of everything they were friends. After a while I stopped going to the school, I broke off, the work in the garage kept me more and more busy. My friends suddenly seemed childish to me, with their books and their note pads and their little stories about the teachers.

In the middle of the sixth grade she disappeared. Her family moved to Tel Aviv. Her father’s name sometimes appeared in the papers as one of the leaders behind the scenes, a security chief. The months leading up to the establishment of the state were upon us, there was turmoil in the land. I tried to study in the evenings, to prepare at least superficially for the matriculation exam, but I gave it up.

At the beginning of the War of Independence my father died and I joined the army as a mechanic, maintaining armoured vehicles. It was years since I’d seen her.

It wasn’t until after the war that we met again, at a school reunion. It was impossible to invite only those who had completed their schooling, many like me had left halfway through, had taken up employment, had joined the army or the Palmach. Some had fallen in the war.

It was supposed to be a big occasion. An assembly, parties, speeches, an all-night barbecue. At first I didn’t recognize the girl who approached me. In the years since we’d last met I’d grown taller, and she suddenly seemed small to me.

“How’s the revolution?” I asked with a smile.

She was surprised, then she smiled.

“It’ll come … it’ll come.”

And from that moment she didn’t leave me. We both felt a bit out of place there. We’d both left the school in the sixth grade. Many of the people there were strangers to us. Some of them were married and had brought wives and husbands with them. We sat apart from the others at the back of the hall and listened to the long speeches, she was whispering in my ear all the time, telling me about herself, about her studies in the teachers’ seminary. When we stood up to remember the dead, listening with bowed heads to the long list, and Yitzhak’s name was mentioned, I glanced at her. She stood there, her head bowed, not batting an eyelid. I didn’t know what to do, she stayed at my side all evening, going with me from place to place, unwilling to enter into long conversation with other friends. Her father’s name was in the news at the time, something to do with some obscure episode, a hasty decision taken with unpleasant consequences. Her father had been dismissed from office and there had been demands that he be brought to trial, but in the end they let him alone on account of his past service.

Perhaps this was the reason for her oversensitivity with the others, for her decision to leave in the middle of the party and return home to Tel Aviv. She asked me to accompany her to the bus station and I took her there in my car, my father’s old Morris, the back seat full of tools, automobile parts, oil cans. We stood and waited for a bus in the deserted bus station in the lower city. She grew closer and closer to me, talking about herself, asking me about my work. She remembered the night watch that we’d shared, and what I’d said then. The bus was late in coming. I decided to drive her to her home in Tel Aviv. We arrived there after midnight. A small, modest house with a neglected garden in south Tel Aviv. She insisted that I spend the night there. I agreed, I was a little curious to see her father. It was dark inside the house, huge piles of newspapers lay in every corner. Her father came out to meet us, a hairy man, older and smaller than he looked in the newspaper photographs, with a hard face. She told him a little about me, he nodded distractedly and disappeared into another room. I thought that we’d sit for a while and continue our conversation, but she made up a bed for me on the sofa in the living room, lent me some of her father’s old pyjamas and left me. At first I had difficulty getting to sleep, still thrown by the sharp transition from the noise of the party, the speeches, the meetings with old friends to this dark and quiet house among the sparse orchards of Tel Aviv. But finally I slept. At three in the morning I heard somebody moving about beside my bed. It was her father, in khaki trousers and a torn pyjama top. He was bending over the radio and fiddling with it, going from station to station, the B.B.C., broadcasts in Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, languages that I couldn’t even identify. All the stations of the awakening east. Listening for a while and then passing on to another station, his eyes tightly closed, perhaps it was a habit that he couldn’t shake off from the period when he was in charge of the Ministry of Information, or perhaps he was searching for something affecting him, some commentary on his case from a foreign and distant source. He ignored me, as if I didn’t exist. He didn’t care that he’d roused me from sleep, that I was exhausted, sitting beside him in silence, listening with him.

At last he switched off the radio. His face looked serious, severe.

“Do you study in a seminary too?”

I told him what I did.

“What is your father’s name?”

I told him.

He knew at once that he had died about a year and a half before, even though we hadn’t published an obituary in the newspapers because of the war. He added some dry, precise details about my father.

“Did you know him personally?” I was amazed.

No, they had never met, but he knew all about him, as if he had a personal file in front of him.

And he left me to myself — I couldn’t sleep anymore. At five in the morning I got up, folded the sheets, I had to return to Haifa to open the garage at seven. It was only a few months since I’d reopened the garage, which had been closed during the war. Competition was tough at the time and one had to work very hard not to lose customers.

I went outside. A hazy summer morning. I strolled about the neglected garden, hungry, drowsy after my uncomfortable night, watching the newspaper delivery boys arriving one after another and throwing at the doorstep all the morning papers, in all the languages. I wanted to leave, but not without saying goodbye, and I didn’t know which was her room. In the end I tapped lightly on one of the windows.

It wasn’t long before she came out to me, her hair combed, wearing a light morning dress, her face radiant. She came close to me and said seriously, almost solemnly, “I dreamed about you.” And she described a dream that was clear, orderly, logical, almost impossibly so. A dream that could be taken to mean that she was telling me directly — “I am willing to marry you.”

ASYA

The old cabin of the movement, but a little larger. The time early evening, winter twilight. They seemed to be preparing for a play, some of them were wandering about in patchwork costumes, straw hats, coats made from blankets, rope belts. Someone paced about with make-up on his face. One of the young men was writing the music for the play, and the girls crowded around him as he sat on the floor in an oriental position, bent over an exercise book, writing the words at great speed. They hummed a tune and he wrote words that were not just words, but words in which music was hidden. From the corner where I stood I could see above the heads of the girls the melodious words that were written at such haste. But they were still waiting for somebody to arrive. The star? The producer? Somebody important, somebody precious, without whom the play could not go ahead. Listen, the sound of a train approaching, stopping for a moment and continuing on its way. We rushed outside to meet him. And he really had arrived. The train that had stopped for a moment and disappeared again, leaving only the shining tracks behind it, had put down a big hospital bed on the platform. Somebody was lying in it. We crowded around him, he was sick, not actually sick, exhausted rather. Something had really exhausted him. Postnatal exhaustion, he had sired sons, but he was happy as well, proud of himself, a weak smile of triumph on his pale face, a combination of Zaki and somebody else, lying there in khaki clothes, under an army blanket.

And the group began to fuss around him, carrying the bed into the cabin, happy all, a collective happiness, because the babies were there too, like a pile of sacks. Piled to one side, quiet and smiling. They were little people already, not newborn infants, they had hair and teeth, and were dressed in little romper suits with buttons and buckles. They put them up on a wooden stage, under a baggage canopy, and there was general confusion and happiness, and only this solitary, independent childbearer was perplexed, sad even. And I stood to one side, feeling deserted. Did he not love me once? Lying now supported on a pillow, watching the crowd dance around the children born of no mother, the children borne by him for the sake of all, that was the point. I approach him cautiously, without looking at him, watching instead the children, who lie there immobile, their lower limbs tied tight. I know that they have some terrible, hidden defect. The people pick them up and put them back, choosing them, urging me too to take one of them, and I see there lying in the corner a child almost fully grown, an aged foetus, a cataract in his eye, stretching out his little hands to me.

“Quickly, quickly,” I hear around me —

ADAM

So at least I understood. Disturbed and excited, standing there in the withered, neglected garden, on a crisp summer morning, leaning on the wing of my little car, watching the girl who stood there in front of me, both strange and familiar, watching her serious face, the sharp face of a bird, the thick lock of hair falling on her breast, studying her body, her sandalled feet, the shape of her legs, while listening to a clear and vivid dream, which for a moment I was sure that she’d invented as a means of declaring her love. I didn’t know then what became clear to me after I married her, that such are her dreams, clear and lucid, that she always remembers them, to the smallest detail. So different from my dreams, which are rare and unfathomable.

We agreed to keep in touch –

But I returned to her that same evening, this time bringing pyjamas, shaving gear, a toothbrush and a change of shirt. Already in love with her, as if by secret orders, my love required no effort. It was enough for me to remember the girl whom I roused that night in the tent, who seemed to me infinitely more beautiful than this girl. In love not with her, nor with the other, but with something between the two.

She was a little surprised to see me returning that same day. Her father, who was pacing about like a caged lion, stopped for a moment and looked at me, then resumed his pacing. (He paced around the house like this for many years, hardly ever stepping outside, not wanting to see his friends. He was proud and angry with the world, sure that he was right, that an injustice had been done to him.) Only her mother, a gentle, delicate old woman with weak eyes, came to me and shook my hand lightly. Most of that evening we spent in her room. She talked about her studies and her plans and what was going on in the world. She was interested in politics, in equality, in socialist policies, she mentioned the names of leaders and events, in possession of all kinds of secret, unknown information which seemed to her of the highest importance. Then I realized how those long years of hard and solitary work in the garage had diminished my curiosity. At last I touched her, took her in my arms, kissing her lips and her breasts, tasting the bitter taste of soap.

That night once again a bed was made up for me on the old sofa in the living room. At two or three in the morning again the deposed leader came in, in his torn pyjamas, his face on fire, bending over the old radio set and turning the knobs, passing from station to station, searching for the mention of Israel or his own name in the distant void. I curled up silently, pulling the sheet over my head, asking myself if I really loved her. When he finished and went back to his room I couldn’t sleep anymore. In the end I got up, dressed quietly, shaved and went to her room to wake her, but she was in a deep sleep, curled up, probably dreaming. Do I really love her, I never stopped wondering, wouldn’t it be better to escape from here before it’s too late? I left a brief note and drove with the first light back to Haifa.

At noon she arrived at the garage. Her father must have given her the address. I was lying under a car changing the exhaust pipe and suddenly I saw her standing nervously in the doorway. I got up at once and went to her, oily and dark, but without speaking she signalled to me to carry on with my work. She looked at me with a scared look that pleased me and put me at my ease. It seemed appropriate. I lay down again under the car, working quickly and with concentration, to be rid of the owner of the car, who was watching her now as she paced around among the heaps of junk, glancing at the tools that were scattered about, examining a picture of a nude girl that I’d cut out from a newspaper and put up on the wall. She examined everything carefully, with great interest, even putting her head inside an old engine that lay on the workbench. At last I succeeded in fixing the exhaust pipe and the customer disappeared with his car. I went to her. She didn’t explain why she’d come so suddenly, nor did she ask why I ran away in the morning without saying goodbye. She just wanted to know how an engine works. I explained it to her. She listened gravely, her eyes sad, her voice shaking a little, on the verge of tears. But she asked intelligent questions and let me talk of nothing else. And I talked, I even dismantled an old carburettor to show her its parts, explaining and explaining. I never thought it possible to say so much about the workings of a simple gasoline engine.

Three months later we were married –

She transferred her studies to Haifa and we lived for the first few years in my mother’s house.

I didn’t know if it would last long, sometimes I was sure that in a while she would leave me, would regret it, find someone else to take her in. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she’d betrayed me within a short time. But our life went smoothly from the start. She was engrossed in her studies and we lived an orderly life. In the mornings she went to college, then to the library. And when my day’s work was done I went there to pick her up. With my old invalid mother she got on splendidly, attentive to her endless chattering, going shopping with her, sympathetic to all her silly ideas, heedful of her advice. When my mother and I realized that she was a very poor cook we gave her other chores around the house, the washing of the dishes or the scrubbing of the floor, tasks she performed with great efficiency, not turning up her nose at any work. Even then I noticed her strange liking for older women. She had several elderly aunts in Haifa to whom she was devoted and frequently visited.

And studying, studying. Always with books, note pads and files. While at the seminary she also enrolled for evening classes at the university. She seemed to be taking an exam almost every fortnight, preparing for it with her fellow students. She would leave me an address where I could pick her up at the end of the day: a library, a private house, a café, sometimes even a public park. And I would arrive there after work, grimy, my clothes dirty, walking heavily through the reading rooms of the library, between the tables, drawing the attention of the readers, finding her and touching her lightly on the shoulder. She would nod her head and whisper, “Just let me finish this page.” I would sit down beside her and leaf through a book lying open on one of the tables, reading and understanding nothing. Once I said to her with a smile, “Perhaps I ought to study something too, change my profession, it isn’t too late.” She was astonished. “Why you?” Why me, indeed. Nothing in her world attracts me particularly.

Although she suggested we abandon these meetings, that she was quite prepared to make her own way home, I insisted on always going to meet her. I wanted to know where she was, who she was seeing, what her daily routine was. Sometimes I was gripped by a strange jealousy, hurrying to close the garage before my work was done, leaving early, deliberately arriving an hour or two before the time we’d agreed on, lying in wait for her on the stairs, or spying on her from a corner of the library. But all in vain. She had no intention of leaving me, it never occurred to her to fall in love with anyone else. Now that she’d found herself a husband and a home, she could be free for the things that really interested her, she could even take a mild interest in public affairs. She was a member of the Students’ Committee and once she organized a successful strike.

In the second year of her studies she’d already found herself a part-time job, teaching in a primary school. At first she had a difficult time there. The children drove her mad, although she never said exactly what the trouble was. She used to come home a little dazed in the evenings. But she tried very hard, preparing for her lessons with care, sometimes even shutting herself up in the bathroom and reciting the lesson aloud, asking questions and answering them. She used to draw illustrations and charts as well, painting big sheets of cardboard, sticking them with dried flowers and making cheerful patterns. As in all practical matters, she had two left hands, and I used to help her a little with these preparations.

All in all, as I saw at once, a complacent and agreeable woman. At pains not to argue with me, treating me with respect, even with a trace of fear. Perhaps a little too talkative, but since I had a habit of subsiding into prolonged silences it was only natural that she should sometimes talk on my behalf as well. We used to make love almost every day or every other day, but for some reason I was usually the only one who was satisfied. Mother was with us all the time, and since we were both out all day, she used to look forward very much to the evenings when she could talk to us. She never left us alone. She used to come into the room without knocking, while we were undressing. If I tried to lock her out she hammered on the door, calling to me in panic. At night she left the lights on in the house, she was a light sleeper and we were sometimes visited in the middle of the night. Sometimes I was forced to wait until the early hours of the morning before waking Asya.

She obeyed me. Sometimes she would whisper in her sleep, her eyes still closed, “One minute, just let me finish this dream,” and I would sit on the end of the bed waiting for her to wake up by herself, and she would smile a final smile, open her eyes and help me to undress her. In the second year, when she started working, it became harder and harder for me to wake her early in the morning before I went out to work. I made love to her while she was still asleep, interfering with her dreams. Then I hired my first Arab worker, Hamid, and I gave him the key to the garage so that he could open up in the morning and receive the first customers. He was the first worker I ever employed, on a temporary basis of course. I paid him a daily wage and could dismiss him if I found him too expensive, but business began to prosper and it wasn’t long before I took on another worker. So we could take our time in the mornings, and listen to her dreams, which were becoming for me increasingly strange. Sometimes we talked about ourselves, how and why we had got married, if we regretted it. She was shocked. “Do you regret it?”

No, of course not, why should I regret it. But sometimes when it seemed to me that I no longer loved her I became terribly depressed. Still, as I say, she was an agreeable woman, she did what I wanted, but I wanted nothing special. That’s it — she aroused in me no special wants. I worked very hard in those days, difficult physical work, but it wasn’t for that reason alone that I was so tired in the evenings.

Something in her fatigued me, something unclear. I’m not talking about the little speeches that she used to make to me, it wasn’t that, I was quite willing to listen to them, though there did seem to be something unreal about them, not because she inhabited a reality different from mine, no, it wasn’t that … something else … something that I didn’t know how to express, and so I said nothing. More and more it seemed to me that she was missing the real world, drifting away from it, but what the real world was of course I couldn’t say. And clearly she was no dreamer. She organized, worked, studied, rushed about, had contacts with all kinds of people. She tended to walk quickly, decisively, with a slight hunching of her shoulders. Elderly movements. No, not elderly, greyish, not greyish, something else, these aren’t the right words. But how to describe her? I want to describe her. Where to begin? It seems to me that I still haven’t begun.

DAFI

But do I complain? Lately they’ve both been leaving me alone, in their different ways. Osnat’s always telling me “They leave you alone, your ageing parents.”

Your old parents?

I was a bit surprised, but I didn’t say anything. Is it true? Poor Osnat, she gets no peace. Her ten-year-old sister shares a room with her, she’s exactly like her, only uglier, and apparently more intelligent. She gets on Osnat’s nerves, prying in her drawers, trying on her clothes, butting into every conversation. There’s no getting away from her. Then there’s the little baby, who was born a year and a half ago, causing a lot of excitement in the class because we were all invited to the circumcision to see what they’d do to him. Such a sweet little baby, already starting to walk on his twisted little legs, getting everywhere, Osnat calls him a moving disaster. Always catching colds, wiping his runny nose on blankets, on sheets, on the clothes of guests. His hands covered in black ink, and if they try to get it off him he shrieks so loud you’d think someone was murdering him. He scribbles on the walls, on books and note pads. And always howls and tears and confusion. Bedlam, this house. In addition to all this they have guests from all over the world coming to stay with them, and Osnat has to give up her bed and sleep on a mattress in the living room.

“It’s so quiet in your house. Dafi, let’s switch places.”

True, it is quiet in our house. In the afternoon when Mommy’s not at home and Daddy’s still at work, it’s so quiet in the dark, tidy house you can hear the ticking of the thermostat. It’s not natural. It’s lucky that I’ve got a room of my own, my kingdom, where I can be as untidy as I like. My bed’s always in a mess, my clothes scattered about, books and note pads on the floor and posters on the walls. There was a time when they tried to force me to keep my room in order but they gave up in the end. This is my order, I said, my rhythm, and I took to shutting myself in, so they wouldn’t come in and look for disturbed things.

In general this trick that I’ve adopted over the last year of shutting myself in my room has proved a great success. When guests arrive I can ignore them. But we don’t have many guests visiting us. Sometimes when the bachelor uncle from Tel Aviv is passing through Haifa he stays to eat supper and then goes. Now and then, on a Sabbath eve, four or five couples come to eat with us, dull people usually, with fixed expressions, their childhood friends or teachers from the school, sometimes even the ones who teach me. Once they even invited Shwartzy to the house on a Sabbath eve. I came out to see how he behaved in his natural surroundings, and I saw that there wasn’t much difference — pompous and bossy as usual. These evenings are so boring, they never really talk about themselves or discuss personal things, they argue about politics or the price of apartments or the trouble caused by children. There’s always one of them who dominates the others, who bears down on everyone. Daddy’s very quiet, passing around the plates of biscuits and nuts and sitting there not saying a word. Working in the garage dulls him a bit. Sometimes I used to go in quietly and sit down among them, making sure to eat a cake that I’d had my eye on since lunchtime, before everything got eaten. But lately I’ve decided that I see enough of the teachers in the morning at school, I don’t have to meet them in the evening at my home as well. So I’ve taken to shutting myself away in my room and showing no sign of life. Sometimes a guest opens the door cautiously, thinking it’s the bathroom, and he’s surprised to see me sitting there quietly, thinking thoughts. He smiles at me ingratiatingly, starts talking to me, asking questions. They’re always amazed at how much I’ve grown, listening to them you’d think I’d grown right there in front of them.

Then I took to locking the door, sometimes even in the daytime. But there are times in the afternoon when Mommy knocks loudly on the door, Aunt Stella, Grandfather’s sister, has come to visit us with one of her friends, she wants to see me. So I go out to meet them, kissing her, sometimes kissing the other old woman, who I don’t always know. Sitting with them and answering questions. Aunt Stella, erect and tall, with a long mane of white hair and a wrinkled face, beside her another old woman, a dried-up midget, with dark sunglasses and a thick, short cane. And the interrogation begins. She knows a lot about me, she even nursed me when I was a baby, when Mommy was studying. She asks me about my marks in school, she knows I have problems in maths, she remembers the names of Tali and Osnat, she even knows something about Tali’s father, who left home. I answer her quietly, smiling. I listen as she interrogates Mommy as well, asking her what she’s been doing over the last month, scolding her for being involved in so many activities, she’s interested in the back pains that Daddy had years ago, she passes on the good wishes of friends of hers who’ve had their cars repaired in his garage. Hardly saying anything about herself, interested only in us, or in others. Mommy sits all tensed up on the edge of the armchair, blushing like a little girl, laughing an unnatural laugh, running to show them a new dress that she’s bought, all the time fetching biscuits, sandwiches and salads from the kitchen, but Stella doesn’t touch anything, only the other old woman sits there, munching away. She really admires these old women, waiting on them humbly and eagerly, and when at last they get up to leave, she pleads with them to let her drive them home.

At last they go. Mommy drives them to the centre of town. I open the little box of chocolates that Stella brought, very superior chocolates. Mommy comes back half an hour later in an agitated mood, sits down in the chair that Aunt Stella sat in, dazed from the experience, incapable of doing anything. I take a good look at her, her hair that’s going grey, the wrinkles in her face, the slight hunching of her shoulders, she’s ageing happily, soon she’ll get herself a cane.

ADAM

But how to describe her? Where to begin? With her feet, the graceful legs of a girl set in solid, low-heeled shoes that hide most of the foot, comfortable shoes perhaps but lacking style, even a bit shabby.

She had strange taste in clothes. A taste that became depressing. In the Carmel Centre she found a shop belonging to a pair of fussy little old women who dressed her in grey woollen dresses with white poloneck collars and half-length sleeves. Pretty masculine-looking clothes with padded shoulders. They used to give her a discount and this delighted her, even though sometimes she had to take a dress with some slight fault in the material. When Dafi was little the old ladies used to bring her little dresses of the same design and the same material, and Dafi looked like a little old woman.

I don’t know much about these things but it always seemed to me there was something wrong with the match of the colours in the clothes she wore, apart from the fact that she had a number of old dresses that she was fond of, that she was always lengthening or shortening, according to her notion of what fashion demanded. She would even set to work on the new dresses that she would buy, trimming and adjusting, and all this with hands that weren’t all that skilful.

For some reason it was important to her to save money. She had an obsession with money. Her tightness amused me, she was almost miserly, and especially hard on herself.

I’d noticed this years ago in her house, seeing them dividing up the food at meals into exactly equal portions, eating up the leftovers, frying them up a second time. Seeing the way they used old envelopes, the way her Ether filled up notebooks with his memoirs, writing on both sides of the page, filling up the margins, even writing on the cover. But in that house there was perhaps a good reason for such an obsession, because since the establishment of the state her father hadn’t worked and they lived on a small pension from the Ministry of Defence. Such was his pride that he refused to accept any employment after his dismissal.

But in recent years we’ve had money, more and more each year. It’s true that in the early years we went short of things, it was a struggle to keep the little garage going. And to make things worse my father’s partner, Erlich, decided to leave and I had to buy out his share and so I was plunged into debt. When the first profits began to come in I invested every cent in new equipment, in enlarging the site. She didn’t understand the business, she was content with what I gave her. She never asked for more and when she started working her salary went straight into the bank and became mixed up in the garage’s assets. I doubt if she herself knew how much she was earning. It’s strange, but the topic of money didn’t generally interest her, she just continued with her frugalities as if it was her duty. After a few years she began supporting her parents a little. I of course said nothing and she was so grateful she went even further with her frugality and her self-denial.

We never had any professional help in the house. In the first years after the boy was born and before he went to the nursery her mother used to help us, she came over especially from Tel Aviv at the beginning of the week to help us, and an old aunt who lived in Haifa used to help her at the end of the week. Sometimes she even took the child to her own house. And Asya was rushing about between the school and classes at the university, studying and teaching. When something went wrong in the house, the fridge or the electric oven, I used to repair it myself, then I got tired of this and without consulting her I’d replace them with new ones. She was shocked, astonished by my extravagance. “Can you afford it? Are you sure?” When we changed houses and incurred new debts she decided on her own account to take on another part-time job in a night school, although we could pay off our debts without difficulty. But I said nothing, I was used to letting her do what she wanted. At that time the garage began to prosper, the profits began pouring in in increasing volume. Erlich, the former partner, returned to the garage, this time as an employee, as chief cashier, and though he’d been a poor mechanic, he proved to be a financial wizard. He had a special way of playing with payments, of manipulating bills. If a new customer came along with a problem that wasn’t too complicated we’d charge him very little, and sometimes we even did the repair for nothing, and naturally he’d come back, and after a few times we’d clobber him, not too excessively but at least twenty per cent above the tariff. And he’d pay up quietly, without thinking twice. Erlich also devised a system of sending bills through the mail. We didn’t demand immediate payment but gave the car back as soon as the repair was done, giving people the impression that the question of payment was a side issue, that the important thing was the repair of the car, the service. We didn’t mention the bill. And after a week or two, when the customer had forgotten all about it, the bill would arrive in the mail. And people paid up without protest, as if settling an electric or a telephone bill. More and more of the bills were paid by insurance companies and industrial concerns, which of course didn’t protest, but only demanded receipts. Erlich knew how to make the most of this as well. Although he was no longer a partner he still thought of the garage as his own and he fought over every cent of mine, learned all sorts of complicated practices, studied the tax system in detail, consulted lawyers. We began to expand, to employ more and more workers, opening new departments, selling spare parts. We began to make a clear profit of ten thousand, fifteen thousand pounds a month. In my wallet alone I used to carry some five thousand pounds all the time, just like that, for no special reason.

But she didn’t exactly understand what was going on, or rather she didn’t want to understand, and I made no particular effort to explain. She still saw the garage as some sort of co-operative, unaware that all the profits ultimately accrued to me. She didn’t often visit the garage, as if she was afraid to wander about there. I doubt if she knew where it began and where it ended. But she was full of respect for my work, seeing me get up at dawn and return in the evening. True, I no longer came home black and oily like in the early years.

“Do you need more money?” I used to ask her from time to time.

“No,” she’d reply quickly, without even thinking, advising me to put money aside for the garage, in case something happens. Precisely what could happen I can’t say, perhaps they’ll stop using cars and take to horses.

She didn’t want a car for herself under any circumstances. For what? She was perfectly happy to use the buses. But sometimes when I had to collect her from the school or the university, and I saw how the teachers or the students looked at me, walking beside her in my dirty working clothes, lightly touching her arm — she didn’t care, but I did. I bought a small second-hand car and parked it outside the house and I insisted that she learn to drive. She failed her test the first time but after that she mastered the thing, even began to enjoy it. Now she could rush about even more, could take on extra obligations. She understood nothing about the engine, nor did she need to understand it, I always made sure that everything was in order. Once she arrived at the garage in the middle of the day. The fan belt had broken and she’d almost burned out the engine, and was scared out of her wits. I wasn’t there and the workers didn’t recognize her and ignored her. She sat there in the driver’s seat, at the end of the line, marking exam papers as she waited. Eventually Erlich saw her, ran to her, took her into his office and ordered the workers to repair the car immediately. I remember, when I arrived and she was standing beside the mended car, the curious glances of the workers, studying her critically, with a sort of smile of disappointment, now that they knew she was my wife. “Is that the old lady?” one of them asked his friend in a whisper.

To hang around the shops looking for things to buy always seemed to her a waste of time, an unnecessary effort. Sometimes she postponed essential purchases, making do with articles that were completely worn out, a purse, gloves or an umbrella. For a long time she went around wearing a shapeless straw hat of which she was very fond. Whenever I commented on it, she’d promise to buy a new one, but postpone it from day to day. Eventually I just took it and threw it away, without telling her. She’d been looking for it for a day or two before I told her.

“But why?” She was amazed. “You’re just throwing away money.”

And then I decided to go shopping with her. We met in town after work and walked around the shops looking for what she wanted. As a customer she wasn’t hard to please, she liked everything she saw. All the time studying the price tags, torn between a purse costing a hundred pounds and one costing a hundred and forty, and I stood beside her with three thousand pounds in my pocket.

“Not too expensive?” She asked my advice.

“No, not at all. That’s all right.”

In the end she bought the cheaper one after all.

I said nothing, but I was livid.

I deliberately took her from there to a fashionable and expensive restaurant and ordered coffee, cakes and sandwiches, a light meal. She refused to eat anything and just drank coffee. “I’m not hungry, not hungry,” she insisted, but she watched me hungrily as I ate sandwich after sandwich.

“Sure you’re not hungry?”

“Quite sure.” She smiled, looking at the purse that she’d bought, trying to convince herself that she’d got a bargain. “It’s bigger than the more expensive one,” she explained, and I said nothing, smiling to myself, paying the waitress with a hundred-pound note and leaving a generous tip. But she ignored the fat wallet lying there on the table, she didn’t care how much money I carried about with me.

“Is that the old lady?” I remembered what the Arab worker had said and my heart missed a beat. But she smiled at me good-naturedly, picking up the crumbs from my plate and putting them in her mouth, finishing her coffee, glancing at the clock, always in a hurry, always thinking about something else, history, exams, teachers’ meetings. Am I getting her right?

ASYA

Driving Adam’s car and driving it well, though I’ve never driven it before. I feel the dreadful weight of the car, I never imagined it would be so heavy, the engine roars like a tractor, even so I make progress, changing gears smoothly. It’s hard for me to see the road, my seat’s so low, through the front window I see only the roofs of houses and the sky. I drive by instinct, feeling all the time that parts of the car are outside my control, slightly misjudging the turns, hearing the dull thuds as the car collides with the corners of the houses, but the car goes on, like a tank, no obstacle can stop it. I arrive home and it’s already evening. I park the car under a streetlamp, get out to inspect the damage. Nothing too serious, vague dents here and there but the paint hasn’t been chipped off, the metal has just sunk in, little pools forming in the surface. He’ll repair it himself, I think, and I run up the stairs. The door is open, there are people in the house, in armchairs, on the sofa, some of them sitting on the floor. Plates of cakes and nuts, dishes of olives and pickled cucumber. Who’s prepared it all? Perhaps they themselves. Sitting and whispering, not yet touching the food, waiting for me. But I go looking for Adam. Where is he? I go into the bedroom, he’s sitting there on the bed in his overalls, alone, as if he’s hiding. He looks strange, pale, younger, something’s upsetting him.

“What have you done to the car?”

“What have I done? Nothing …”

But he moves the curtain aside and shows me the car, lying capsized under the streetlamp, wheels in the air, turning slowly, like an insect pinned down on its back, flailing its legs, hissing softly. I’m really surprised, a little amused, from the next room the voices of the guests grow louder, they’re losing their patience.

“Hurry now, get dressed and go out to them, you can straighten the car out later … what’s the trouble?”

And he goes to the bed, stripping off his shirt, such pain in his face, and all the time I’m asking myself, how has he changed? How is he different? And suddenly I realize — he’s got no beard, he’s pulled off his beard, torn it out by the roots, scalped himself. It lies there on the pillow, lies there intact, I can’t bear to look.

ADAM

So how to describe her? Where to begin? With her smooth little feet at which I fell one night after the disaster, gripping them hard, hurting her, covering them with kisses, pleading in a confusion of lust and terror that we have another child, that we do not lose hope. This was perhaps the only time that I lost control.

It was about three months after the disaster, from which it seemed she was recovering rapidly. After only a week she went back to work full-time, to all her activities, but at night she didn’t sleep, didn’t even undress, sitting down instead to correct her pupils’ work, or reading, or dozing a little in her chair, or getting up to wash the floor, to wash dishes, sometimes even cooking at midnight. And she never put out the light until dawn. Quiet, businesslike, behaving sensibly but wary of me, recoiling slightly when she saw me approaching, as if I was to blame, or she was to blame, as if there was any question of blame.

For I refuse to attach any significance to a disaster that was nothing more than an accident. I’m not capable of listening to the arcane explanations — a deliberate accident, he sought his own death, subconscious intentions. I have some experience with car accidents. Every week cars are brought into the garage after accidents on the road and I’m forced to listen to explanations, even though I never ask questions, how it happened, what happened, who was to blame. It’s not my job to judge people, just to assess the damage and repair it. But the drivers are excited and they can’t restrain themselves, they must tell me what happened, thinking that I’m blaming them as I walk around and around the wrecked car with paper and pencil in my hand. As if I cared. They start describing the accident, detail by detail, in complicated language, sometimes even drawing a little sketch, ready to admit responsibility too but only in a very partial way, a very limited responsibility. The other man was driving too fast, the traffic lights were defective, or they start unfolding strange theories about blind spots in the field of vision of this type of car. The road, the sun, the government, explanations upon explanations, anything but — I drove like a lunatic, stupidly, carelessly, I am to blame. There are bloodstains on the car and still they continue to describe their expert manoeuvering — at the last moment they turned right, left, reversed, it could have been much worse, there could have been another death. Only occasionally is anyone prepared to say — A miserable accident, without meaning.

And that’s how it was –

After five years we had a son. He was deaf. We called him Yigal. His deafness was detected very soon. In the maternity hospital they gave us a special letter for the children’s doctor at the clinic. They explained it to us: “There’s something a little defective in his hearing, you’ll have to be careful, he can’t hear.” I won’t start going into detail, there’d be no end to it, a man gets to be an expert on his grief, learns the terminology, becomes acquainted with mechanical aids, compares notes with others in a similar plight, makes friends with other parents who have deaf children. Nor is it really such a terrible catastrophe. There are worse disabilities: blindness, severe blood diseases, brain damage. In general he was a healthy child, with a handicap that he could overcome. They were always giving us hope for the future. In the first year there were even certain advantages. He slept a lot, noise didn’t disturb him, it was possible to switch on the radio beside his bed, the sound of the vacuum didn’t worry him, in the street he slept peacefully through the roar of the traffic.

It was a full-time occupation. Asya spent a lot of time with him, and I, at that time working from morning till night, made an effort at least not to miss his bedtime. Standing in front of him and speaking in a loud voice, my mouth wide open, moving my tongue slowly and teaching him to say “daddy” or “head,” and he watching me with deep concentration, repeating the words after me with a strangely fluctuating volume of sound, very quiet or very loud, producing other words: “gaily,” “sed.” You begin to grasp another language, indistinct expressions, strange sounds, your own hearing gets sharper, you begin to take in nuances. He used to talk with broad gestures, and when a child does this he has great charm. It’s interesting that I understood him better than Asya did. I developed a special sense for understanding his words, which, peculiar as they were, still had a logic of their own.

When he was two years old they gave him his first hearing aid. When guests come to the house and see him, you immediately start to explain, even when they ask no questions. It’s the first topic of conversation and sometimes the last as well. Just don’t let them think he’s mentally deficient or backward or abnormal because of the way he expresses himself. You begin to get used to the handicap, it seems natural. There are some educational and social problems, but with good will they can be overcome. The crucial thing is to treat him as if he’s normal, even to hit him from time to time, which I did, sometimes without really sufficient reason.

For he was an intelligent child and at the age of two he was already chattering constantly, looking at your face all the time, at the movement of your lips. If you forget and turn away from him when you’re talking, he touches you to remind you, to make you turn and face him, or he shakes his head with an endearing gesture so sweet it would melt the devil’s heart. All in all, a happy child. Minor problems — like calling him back home when he’s playing outside. No use just shouting, you have to go down and touch him. What exactly did he hear? Even this we were able to discover, thanks to the clever instruments in the clinic. They think of everything there, even educating the parents. They gave us headphones and played us the sounds that they reckoned he heard, so we could understand better, identify with him.

At the age of three we sent him to a nursery near our home. A charming old nurse took care of him. There were maybe five children there altogether and he got along fine. She didn’t really understand him very well, because she was a bit deaf herself, but she gave him warmth and love. She used to put him on her lap and kiss him, carrying him around from place to place as if he were crippled, not deaf. He loved her very much, and always talked about her with love, with enthusiasm. From time to time I found an opportunity to leave the garage for a while during the day and go to the nursery, to try to explain to her and the other children what he was saying, training the children to stand directly in front of him, to open their mouths wide and to speak slowly and distinctly. The children were a little scared of me, but basically they were friendly and helped out. Perhaps I overdid things a bit. Asya told me to abandon these visits, she herself had gone back to full-time work, a little too early perhaps, but it’s hard to judge. At first we were interested in special schools, Asya even thought of trying to find a job in a school of this kind, but we soon saw there was no need. He showed independence and was capable of normal relationships with other children. His ability to express himself was improving all the time. In the evenings I used to remove his hearing aid and talk to him face to face, through lip movements only. There was a time when the hearing aid made him self-conscious, we let his hair grow and he was able to hide it. I made him a smaller earpiece on the lathe in the garage. The business of the hearing aid brought me particularly close to him at that time. Together we dismantled it, I explained to him how it worked, he examined the little microphone, the battery, he seemed to have inherited a technical sense from me.

It was essential not to take him too seriously, essential to joke with him even about his deafness, to expect him to help with the chores, to take out the rubbish or dry the dishes. We were already planning another child. When he was five years old we moved to another house. To his sorrow he was forced to part from the old nurse, he was so at home there. He found it hard to get used to the kindergarten. There were tears in the mornings. But it seemed that things were working out. The Passover seder before his death we celebrated in our new home. Asya’s parents came and various other elderly relations of hers and he sang his part without a single mistake, rolling out the tune in a strong, jaunty voice. We clapped our hands and applauded him. The gloomy, taciturn old grandfather looked at him with great interest, with astonishment, then wiped away a tear and smiled.

Sometimes he used to take out the hearing aid when he wanted to read a book or when he was building something, a tractor or a crane. We used to call him and he wouldn’t hear, buried deep in his own silence. I envied him this ability to break off contact with the world, to enjoy his own personal silence in his own way. There can be no doubt that the handicap speeded up his development. He also knew how to exploit the advantages of his situation. Sometimes he complained of pains in his ears because of loud noises from the hearing aid. We consulted the doctors and they saw this as a good sign, some of the nerves were showing signs of life, but the doctors were able to predict his condition only for the next few years. There was no way of knowing if the noise really disturbed him or if he just enjoyed having silence around him. I agreed to make him a little cut-off switch, to wear under his shirt, beside his heart, so he could now and then switch off the hearing aid without removing it. Of course this was intended only for use in the house.

In the meantime we bought him a little bicycle to ride on the pavement outside the house. We found him new friends in the neighbourhood. He settled down well with them, but sometimes when they got on his nerves he simply switched off the hearing aid. One of the children even came to me once to complain that “Yigal makes himself deaf on purpose when he doesn’t want to give something or join in a game.”

I mentioned it to him, though I was pleased with this evidence of independence.

Why not?

On that Sabbath afternoon, a week before the beginning of the school term, he went to visit a friend of his who lived just four blocks away from us, on the same street. His friend wasn’t at home so he decided to come back, and it seems that he switched off his hearing aid on the way, though I can’t be sure. Suddenly he saw his friend on the other side of the road playing with some children. They beckoned to him to join them, and so he crossed the road, still in total silence. The car coming down the hill, not all that fast (the skid marks were checked), sounded its horn, confident that he’d have time to stop, but Yigal went on crossing the road, in his silence, not running, but at a slow walk directly into the path of the car.

It all happened for him very slowly and in total silence.

The children woke me from my sleep, a dozen little fists hammering at the door. I ran out into the street barefoot and half naked. The ambulance was already there. The children shouted wildly, “Wait, wait, here’s his daddy.” He was still breathing, his eyes were full of blood, the hearing aid was broken, he could no longer hear me.

The two of us are realistic, rational people, we tried to behave reasonably, not to lay blame, not to make accusations. I thought she might say something about the cut-off switch that I’d made for him, but it didn’t occur to her. I hinted at it, and she didn’t understand what I was talking about.

The strange thing is that for a long time, for two or three months after the disaster, we were hardly ever alone. Her parents came immediately from Tel Aviv and at our request they stayed on with us. The father was himself very ill and had to be cared for. Elderly aunts came to help, to cook, to clean the house. It was all taken out of our hands, as if we’d both gone back in time and were children again. I slept in the study, Asya apparently on the sofa in the living room, and all the time there were people moving about the house. Practical matters took on great importance, they absorbed the grief, diverted it. Concern with her lather’s medicines, special diets, above all with the constant stream of guests passing through the house who came not to visit us but Asya’s father.

I remember it well, the last days of summer, mild and clear, the house full of silent people, most of them old. All the time the door opening and someone arriving on a visit of condolence. All his friends, former officers in the secret service, labour leaders, all those who had shunned him after his disgrace, those with whom he had most of all lost touch, decided now to come and be reconciled with the dismissed former leader whose grandson had been killed in a road accident and who was himself slowly dying. They arrived diffidently, nervous about seeing him, and he received them in groups of two or three, sitting in a big armchair on the shaded balcony, in the light of the approaching sunset, all white, a light woollen blanket covering his knees. His face calm, his eyes uplifted, staring out to sea, hearing words of self-justification, of loyalty, words of consolation, even secret information. And to one side, at a distance, sat the old ladies, drinking tea and whispering in Russian. The days of mourning were for him the days of great reconciliation with his enemies.

I walked about the house like a stranger. Afraid even to go into the kitchen. Coming home from work and after a while they call me to eat a meal cooked by one of the old ladies. Erlich, my father’s former business partner, arrived on a visit of condolence and offered to help out in the garage. He began to work with me on the accounts and he gave me some good ideas. After a while I suggested that he return to the garage as an employee and to my surprise he agreed. I used to sit with him after work, waiting until dark, going home late in the evening and finding the house full of people and Asya sitting in a corner, and they bringing her a meal, and scolding her for something.

After months her parents left, though we implored them to stay. Her father was now in a critical state.

Only then did we realize how empty the house was. The nursery was bare. We went back to sleeping in our bedroom, though in fact I slept alone, she continued in her insomnia, her night wandering. I had no thought of touching her, but it was a little strange that she didn’t want to sleep in her own bed. A week went by, two weeks, she was growing very thin, her face was pale, but she went out to work, organizing herself as usual, only continuing to doze in armchairs, fully clothed. Perhaps now is the time to part, I thought, perhaps the time has come to leave her, but my longings for a son were painful, I wanted another son, even another deaf son, I didn’t care, I wanted to start again from the beginning, to bring him back. But there was to be no touching her, none at all. She said, “I don’t have the strength to start again.”

I was unshaven and untidy, she looked pale and neglected, we were in no fit state for love. I gripped her forcibly, without desire. She resisted: “What is it that you want?” Then I fell on my knees, kissed her feet, trying to arouse my desire for I had no desire.

DAFI

Sabbath eve. No movement in the air. They’ve gone out to visit friends. When they’re at home you hardly notice them, but when they go out you know that they aren’t there. I walk around the house, alone. It’s very unusual for me to be alone on a Sabbath eve. But there’s no chance of getting together with Osnat, because they’re having a big party at her house. Her brother has suddenly got leave from the army. I phoned her at nine o’clock to arrange something but she said, “We’re in the middle of a meal, my brother’s home and he’s got a lot of stories to tell and I’ll phone you later,” and she hung up, and she hasn’t rung yet. Tali’s gone with her mom to visit her Grandma in Tel Aviv. Every two months her mom takes her to see her Grandma, to show her how well Tali’s growing up and how well she’s being looked after, and perhaps she’ll increase the maintenance that she pays in place of her son, Tali’s dad, who ran away. I’ve got so used to spending all my time with those two that when they aren’t there I’m completely lost. I shouldn’t have quit the Scouts so soon, they’re always good for dead evenings like this.

Ten o’clock. I phone Osnat. They’re on the last course. A real feast. She sounds impatient, doesn’t think she’ll be able to come over tonight. I hinted that I could go around to her house but she pretended not to understand, guarding her brother so jealously, not wanting anyone else to have a share in him.

Such heat. From the balconies of nearby houses come voices and laughter. The students who are renting the house opposite have turned the lights out, they’re dancing now to some sexy melody. There’s one couple hugging and kissing out on the balcony. I walk around the stifling house from room to room, turning out the lights, maybe that’ll make it a bit cooler. Stopping at the kitchen door so as not to see the pile of dishes in the sink. After supper there was an argument over the washing up. Daddy decided to interfere, insisted that I do the washing up, he snatched the sponge out of Mommy’s hand, even though for her it’s a two-minute job. In the end I promised to rinse them and I shall rinse them, but not yet, the night is long, the job requires a bit of inspiration. It’s so awful having to work on my own, if only I had a little brother or sister that I could talk to when I’m working, someone who could help me, drying the dishes beside me. These silences, this stillness, it’s all so depressing. To think that I could have had a brother too, he’d be nineteen now, in the army too. And they just let him get killed in the street. A boy of five, you can tell from the old photograph how sweet, very solemn, they couldn’t get a smile out of him, as if he knew he didn’t have long to live.

When I was ten they told me about him for the first time, and they said he’d died of an illness. It was only a year ago that Daddy told me about him for the first time, that he was killed in a road accident, he even showed me exactly where it happened. How is it that they kept no trace of him in the house, how have they managed to forget him all these years? Lately I’ve been more and more interested in him, my life could have been so different. I grieve for this brother. I talk to him in my imagination, sometimes he’s a youth of nineteen, sometimes he’s just five years old. Sometimes I help him to undress, make his supper and wash him, and sometimes he comes into my room, a tall smiling youth, to talk to me.

Ten-thirty. Not a breath of air, everything’s white-hot. The sky’s standing still, the moon and stars are covered with a milky mist. I move slowly from chair to chair. I’d take a shower and go to bed and set the alarm for seven o’clock in the morning and get up early to wash the dishes, but Daddy’ll go crazy if he sees the sink full. Why should he care who washes them? I glance at the newspaper. Life is all so intense, and around me are the music, the voices and the laughter. And I’m alone here, where am I in the middle of all this?

I get up and go hurriedly to the kitchen. How can such a small family use so many dishes? First I move aside the two saucepans and the burned frying pan. They aren’t my responsibility. On the rest of the dishes, without touching them, I pour out a lot of washing-up liquid, turn on the tap, a gentle stream of water, must soften them up first. What kind of a job is this for Sabbath eve? I go out of the kitchen, putting out the light, sitting down at the big table, listening to the water running in the kitchen, perhaps the dishes will wash themselves. Sitting and watching the flames of the two Sabbath candles. I’m the one who’s insisted on them lighting Sabbath candles this last year, they wouldn’t have thought of it by themselves, neither of them believes in God.

The heat gets stronger, I strip off my clothes, in my underwear, in the dark, I sit watching the flames, hypnotized. I could sit for hours watching them being consumed, wondering which one will burn longest. The siren of an ambulance in the distance. Long thin insects with delicate wings walking on the walls, on the table. I start to doze, the light dances in my closed eyes. The lapping of water at my feet wakes me. Water? Where’d all this water come from? Oh God, the floor’s flooded. The tap.

You didn’t want to wash the dishes and now you’ll have to wash the floor as well. It’s nearly midnight. They’re not home yet. I run to fetch rags, start to mop up, cleaning, bending down and scrubbing. Chasing the water as it runs under the cupboard, wetting a little old suitcase that’s hidden behind it. I clean, mop and scrub, streaming with sweat. Going to the kitchen and washing the damn dishes, scraping the saucepans and the frying pan as well, polishing them. Working like a demon, washing, drying, putting things away in the cupboard. At last I go and take a shower, putting on a dressing gown and sitting down to look inside that old suitcase that I never noticed before. Some moth-eaten old children’s clothes, mine or his? Who can tell? They can’t have thrown everything away. I put them back in the case, put the case back where I found it, dead tired but waiting up for them. What’s happened to them? Outside the voices are fainter. The music stops. A cool breeze passes through the house, the air stirs.

I only remember that suddenly they were beside me. I didn’t hear them open the door or come in. Daddy lifts me up, supports me, leads me to my bed. Through my sleep I hear Mommy say, “She’s gone mad, she’s washed the whole house.” And Daddy laughs suddenly: “Poor Dafi, she took me seriously.”

ADAM

So really, is that the way to describe her? Starting with her smooth little feet, so wonderfully preserved, the fleshy, smooth and silky curve, the feet of a pampered child, not belonging at all to this gloomy woman with wrinkles in her face, who seems to insist on growing old before her time.

If only someone was to touch me, quietly, out of genuine friendship, good will, interest, let’s say on a Sabbath eve at one of those social gatherings at a friend’s house, teachers from Asya’s school or friends from our school days, former neighbours with whom we’ve kept in touch. At one of those gatherings that we get invited to every few weeks, where most of the faces are familiar and after a while the conversation breaks down and the one who’s dominated the proceedings falls rather silent and starts to eat his cake, or gets up to go to the bathroom, and the great discussion of political problems, of the meanness of contractors or a visit to Europe is broken off and the minor conversations begin, echoes of whispers, the women discussing obscure feminine disorders, the men getting up, to stretch their legs, going out to the main balcony, someone even switches on the television at low volume, and I’m still marooned in my chair, picking at the shells in an empty dish of nuts, silent as always, already thinking of moving homeward, if only someone, a good friend, a childhood friend, was to turn to me, put a hand on my shoulder, touch me gently, with a good-natured smile, seeking a genuine connection, and whisper for example, “Adam, you’re always so quiet, what are you thinking about all the time?”

I’d tell him the truth at once. Why not? I don’t mind.

“You’ll be surprised, but I think about her, I can’t think about anyone else.”

“About whom?”

“About my wife …”

“About your wife? Very good … why not? Sometimes it seems that your thoughts are far away and all the time you’re thinking about her.”

“I’m busy with her constantly …”

“Has something happened?”

“No, nothing’s happened.”

“Because you seem so good together, I mean a steady sort of couple without bickering or strains. We were a bit surprised at the time when she married you … she’s such an intellectual type, sitting over her books all the time, and we thought it was strange that you, out of all her friends … you understand? No offence … you understand?”

“I understand, I understand, go on.”

If only one of our friends, and we don’t have many, one of the three or four that we see regularly, who’ve been close to us for years, was to touch me once with friendship, with sincerity, even with all the noise, even in a small room, there’s always an opportunity for a little private, personal conversation.

“We lost track of you in the middle of the school course, you went away to work, the years went by and suddenly — the two of you. It was a surprise.”

“For me too.”

“Ha ha, and we were sure that all the time you were secretly in love.”

“I …”

“Yes, you. We remember that affair of hers. But now the bond between you seems so natural, when we talk about you it’s always with good will, believe me, it’s always good to see you among us, even when you sit there without saying anything. No, don’t think it’s annoying, the opposite, really, I don’t know how to say it, Adam …”

“Thanks very much. Thanks very much. I understand.”

“So what do you think about all the time?”

“About her, I’ve already told you.”

“No, I mean what are you thinking about her, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Not at all. I think about her feet.”

“Pardon? I didn’t hear you. All this noise … about what?”

“About her little feet.”

“Is something the matter with them?”

“No, nothing in particular, I just wonder, incidentally, if you’ve ever seen them. The sweet girlish curve, the legs of a pampered child, she isn’t quite … as she seems.”

If someone was to lay his hand on my shoulder, taking me aside in a friendly way, with affection, with a whisper, with arrogance even, with curiosity, but still talking to me with genuine affection, looking me straight in the eye.

“But of course … how could I have known, forgive me. Her feet, you said? But how could anyone know … except for you of course … forgive me … she wears … forgive me … such heavy shoes with flat heels … I mean … I don’t know much about these things but I’m surprised … my wife mentioned it … that dress … something a bit shabby about it … I don’t think she does herself justice … when she was young she was so charming, not pretty but quite attractive and now she’s ageing so quickly, that is, not ageing, far from it, but she’s deteriorating a bit, perhaps because of that tragic business with the boy. I understand, but people mustn’t be allowed to age like that, we all have a responsibility, we must look after one another, warn one another, we still have a long life ahead of us …

“I know … I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Adam, forgive me. But I spoke as a friend. We’ve known each other for such a long time, right? You understand?”

“That’s quite all right, go on.”

If only someone was to approach me, casually, when it’s nearly midnight, even a little drunk, when they’re all getting up and moving about the house, because a young couple has to go and relieve their baby-sitter, and the rest are wondering whether to stay a little longer or to leave, starting to wander about the house, going into other rooms, weighing themselves in the bathroom, pacing about on the balcony, and the hosts run around after the guests, urging the undecided to stay, running to the kitchen and fetching hot rich soup and slices of bread, the leftovers from the Sabbath-eve supper, or what they’ve prepared for the Sabbath lunch, gathering the guests together, handing the plates around, pouring out the strong reddish soup, putting on a record of Greek songs, then the drowsy conversations begin, and if anyone comes to me it’s only to discuss car prices or to hear my opinion of a new model that’s just arrived on the market, or to consult me about how tyres should be crossed, they stand there holding plates and cups and listening with respect, on such subjects I’m the supreme authority.

Some of my friends were also my customers, though I never encouraged them to come to me, even in the days when the garage was small and I had to fight for customers. I wasn’t interested in them, but they were interested in me.

In the early days there weren’t many of them who could afford cars. Teachers in primary schools, minor officials, students, former kibbutzniks, just weren’t in a position to possess their own cars. But after a few years the majority of our friends began buying cars, second-hand ones of course, which they used to bring to me for inspection, consulting me before buying. I had to be careful not to foster illusions, above all not to take any responsibility. Otherwise they’d have been at my door constantly, imposing the most awful obligations on me. I was forced to take a detached view of their cars.

Naturally I did some jobs for them.

For the headmaster, Mr. Shwartzy, I did an entire overhaul. For some old school friends I changed the shock absorbers and tuned the engines. For a charming couple that we met at a party, a middle-aged university lecturer and his young artist wife, I cleaned the temperature control and replaced the clutch. For the school secretary and her husband I rebuilt their car after an accident and fitted a new generator. For the gym instructor, a bachelor of thirty-five, I relined the generator and charged the battery.

I expect they all felt they’d got a bargain out of me, and in fact they hadn’t really got a bargain at all, their only advantage in coming to me was that I didn’t do unnecessary work and I didn’t keep their cars in the garage for longer than was necessary.

There were a few who came back to me, especially when they needed a quick job, but the garage grew larger, I was often absent for long periods and the foreman wasn’t prepared to give them preferential treatment. Erlich made a point of not giving discounts to anyone and they themselves got to understand their cars better, changed them for newer ones, found cheaper or more convenient garages.

There was one friend of ours, a woman whose husband had deserted her. At one time she was always turning up at the garage. She was scared out of her wits, she was always hearing strange noises from the eugine, she was afraid there was going to be an explosion. She used to stand aside waiting until I was free to go out with her for a drive, to hear and to feel the vibrations and the mysterious noises. I used to drive with her to the main road by the sea, breathing in the smell of cheap perfume, stealing a glance at the short fat legs beside me, while she sat there looking at me with longing and talking about her husband and weeping, all this to the accompaniment of my technical comments. She was really hooked on me. Finally I decided to get rid of her and I sent Hamid to deal with her. He went out to test the car, drove once around the block, came back and said scornfully, “There’s nothing wrong, lady, everything’s quite all right.” After that she left me alone.

So among our friends I really was only a friend. They had no ulterior motive for inviting us to their homes. I used to arrive, sit down and say nothing. In some houses they already knew about my passion for nuts and they used to put a big plate in front of me, as if I were a dog, and I’d sit there in silence all evening, nibbling slowly. I had a special method of cracking the shells quietly in my hands. After the boy was killed they were wary of us. For a long time they didn’t dare invite us but eventually they made cautious advances and we responded. But my silences became deeper. Asya on the contrary talked more and more, she was especially active in political discussions, getting into arguments, always coming up with little-known facts, going into detail. Her knowledge never ceased to amaze me. Was it just the professional ability of a history and geography teacher, or a quality inherited from her rather? She knew, for example, the population of Vietnam, the exact location of the Mekong River, the names of all the ministers of France, the principal clauses of the Geneva Convention, when the troubles began in Ireland and how the Protestants came to be there, the date of the persecution of the Huguenots in France, and who the Huguenots were, and she knew that there were Dutch units in the Wehrmacht. In fact it wasn’t always clear exactly what she was trying to say, but she was always putting others right, or clarifying some point. Not that anyone was prepared to change his mind because of the information that she poured out in such a constant stream, but I saw that the men were a little nervous around her, as she sat there in the middle, a cigarette between her fingers, not touching the food but only drinking coffee and more coffee, at an hour when all the others were prevented from drinking coffee by fear of insomnia.

And I listened to her and also to the other women, who, weary of these arguments, whispered about their own concerns. One of them had a lover and everybody knew about it, it was a source of great interest although the details weren’t clear. Only her husband knew nothing, sitting there proudly in a corner, a contentious bastard, every time a view was expressed he said the opposite.

But Asya, how to describe her, I’m still trying to describe her, in the early hours of the morning, when we’re still among our friends, time for us to go but we’ve not yet found the right moment. And I watch her, thinking only of her, noticing the bitter, combative tone in her voice, the strange self-confidence. Just occasionally, when someone forcibly contradicts her argument, is she at a loss for a moment, putting her fist to her mouth in her old childish sucking movement, the thumb quivers for a moment at her lips, and then she realizes what she’s doing, and hurriedly returns her hand to her lap.

Sabbath eves at friends’ houses, old friends, pointless, meaningless conversations, but the bond remains and it’s genuine and deep. I watch my wife all the time, studying her sideways, with a stranger’s eyes, thinking about her, her mind, her body. Is it still possible to fall in love with her, some stranger who would see her just as she is, in these clothes, in the grey dress with the faded embroidery, someone who would fall in love with her for my sake too?

DAFI

One day at supper he said suddenly, right out of the blue, “I’m going to shave this beard off tomorrow, I’m sick of it.” He looked at Mommy.

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s up to you.”

But I leaped in at once. “Don’t you dare, it suits you so well.”

He smiled. “What are you shouting about?”

“Don’t shave it off,” I pleaded with him.

“What are you getting so excited about? What does it matter …”

But how could I explain to him why his beard was important to me, how could I tell him that without it he’d be feeble, he’d lose all his vigour, he’d just be a simple mechanic, a dull garage boss.

I mumbled something about his nose that would look too long, about his ears that would stick out, about his short neck, I ran and fetched a piece of paper and drew a picture to show him how ugly he’d look without a beard.

They were both amused, smiling at me, not understanding my agitation. But how could I explain that for me the beard was a symbol, a flag …

“Eat your supper.”

“Do you promise then?”

“I shall shave it off and grow another.”

“You won’t grow another one, I know.”

I couldn’t eat any more. They gathered up the plates, silent again. Why didn’t Mommy say something? Daddy sat down in front of the TV with his paper. Was it really that important? Mommy was washing the dishes but I paced around uneasily. After a while I went to him.

“Well, what have you decided?”

“What?”

“About your beard.”

“My beard? What about my beard?”

He’d forgotten, or maybe he was just teasing me and he never intended to shave it off.

“You must be mad. Haven’t you got anything else to worry about?”

“Then tell me.”

“You’ve never known me without a beard.”

“I don’t want to either.”

He laughed.

“So what have you decided?”

“Well, let’s wait and see.”

ADAM

What was my beard? A flag or a symbol, a way of telling the world that it can’t classify me that simply, or pigeonhole me, that I too have dreams, a different horizon, eccentricities, mysteries perhaps. Anyway, a complex man.

And in recent years the beard has grown long and wild.

There were certain distinct advantages in it. In the garage it helped me to keep my distance. People would hesitate a little before approaching me. Also, I was told, the beard made a great impression on the Arabs, they were very respectful towards it.

At first people think I’m religious –

And in fact that’s how it started. After the boy was killed an unknown relative of mine appeared at our house, not a young man, he came to supervise the religious formalities. He insisted that we sit shiva at home for a week, not leaving the house, I was forbidden to shave for thirty days, and every day for a year he arrived at the house at dawn to take me to the synagogue to pray. Asya thought he was crazy, couldn’t understand why I let myself be swayed by him, but the death of a child puts you into such a state of depression, bewilderment and fear that it’s comforting to have someone around who knows exactly what to do. In a month the beard grew very quickly, it already had a shape to it, and as I had to get up early in the morning for the journey to the synagogue, it was a relief not having to shave.

Then Dafi was born and she was fascinated by the beard, all the time running her little hand through it. Perhaps one of the first words she learned to say as a baby was “beard”.

At work I was careful not to put my head inside a running engine in case my beard got caught in one of the moving parts.

They were forced to take bits of the engine out to show them to me.

Sometimes I thought, I’ve had enough, time to shave it off, but at the last moment I’d think better of it, Dafi used to plead with me not to shave it off. Sometimes I went to the barber shop to have it cut and trimmed, but before long it was unruly again. White hairs began to appear in it, the golden colour faded and turned brown, there were several different shades in it. The barber once offered to dye it but of course I refused. I didn’t touch it a lot, I wasn’t in the habit of smoothing it down unnecessarily as bearded men tend to do, but sometimes I used to catch myself chewing it between my teeth.

Sometimes I even forgot about it, and at night in bed, when I folded the newspaper and tried to sleep, I’d catch sight of my face in the big mirror and think for a moment that a stranger was staring at me.

DAFI

In the silence of the room, in the afternoon, the three of us each reading a different chapter of the history book, to brief the other two on the contents, preparing for the exam tomorrow, and Osnat’s kid brother lying on the floor in a T-shirt and underpants, quietly spreading cake on the carpet. Through the wall I hear a sort of moan, whispers and the creaking of a bed. “My love, oh, my love, oh my darling.” So clear. My heart stops, I feel like I’m going to faint. And Osnat looks up from her book, blushing bright red, starts shuffling papers to cover the sound of the whispering, terribly embarrassed, cuffing the child, who starts to howl, and jumping up from her seat, not daring to look at me or at Tali, who’s still staring at her book, reading or daydreaming, there’s no way of telling if she too has heard the sound of Osnat’s parents making afternoon love in the next room. It seems this is their favourite time, this isn’t the first occasion, apparently it was in the afternoon one day many years ago that Osnat was conceived.

And now I can’t help it, I just have to smile, Osnat looks at me angrily and then, slowly, she begins to smile too. What’s she got to be embarrassed about anyway?

Because she sure has really nice parents. A cheerful, noisy loud-mouthed mom, a larger version of Osnat, tall and thin with glasses, always sitting down to gossip with us in her American accent, helping us with our English homework, she knows everything that goes on in the school and the names of all the children in the class. They’ve got a lovely house with a little garden, inside it’s always chaotic, but it’s a nice place to be, they always invite Tali and me to stay for supper. They’re used to children. Besides Osnat there’s an older brother in the army, a younger sister and the little boy, who was born a year and a half ago, causing a lot of excitement in the class because we were all invited to the circumcision. Perhaps Osnat’s the only one who isn’t charmed by him, though he’s a sweet kid, awfully fat, with a round tummy and still no hair, reminds you of Osnat’s dad, who looks a lot older than her mom, he’s a professor at the Technion, plump and bald but full of life, madly in love with his ugly wife. He comes home from the Technion in the afternoon, opens the door and heads straight for the kitchen, kissing his wife quite shamelessly, in front of us, they stand there hugging for so long you’d think they hadn’t seen each other for ten years. Then he bursts into Osnat’s room, starts cracking jokes and taking an interest in her work, he’s really sweet.

And after a while her mom comes in, bringing in the baby and a plate of cookies, our reward for looking after him while they go to “rest”. And Osnat starts to protest, we’ve got our homework to do and an exam to prepare for, then her mom winks at us and says “Dafi and Tali will look after him then, O.K.?” And she hurries away to their bedroom on the other side of the wall. They don’t sleep, we hear them whispering, laughing, the deep voice of Osnat’s dad — “Oh, oh, oh” — and then silence, and suddenly it hits me, like a sharp stab in the heart, I hear her moaning softly “Oh, my love, my darling …”

And Osnat hits the baby and her mom calls out “Osnat, what’s the matter with Gidi? Let us have a little peace.” I pick the baby up, trying to calm him, kissing him, he claws at my face with his grubby hands, pulling my hair, yelling triumphantly “Tafi, Tafi.”

After a while they finish resting and they go to take a shower. Her mom comes in to fetch the baby wearing a long flowery dressing gown, smelling nice and with her hair wet, and her dad comes in too, in short trousers and a vest, carrying a big tray loaded with different flavours of ice cream. And they’re both relaxed and happy, smiling brightly, sitting with us and licking the ice cream, wanting us to share in their happiness, playing with the baby, kissing him hard, with what’s left of their passion. And Osnat shows him her maths homework and he solves a problem or two for us, making us laugh with his funny explanations.

They’ve just been making love, I think to myself, watching them from the side, unable to forget that deep powerful groan, something comes over me, a sort of sweet pain, I don’t know why, How could she call this fat little man “my love, my love, my darling”?

Why should I care anyway –

“Are you staying for supper?” says Osnat’s mom. Tali’s always eager to stay, but I jump up from my seat. “I can’t stay, must go home, they’re waiting for me.” It’s a lie, I pick up my books and run home, Of course nobody’s waiting for me. Mommy’s not at home. Daddy’s sitting in a chair in his working clothes, reading the paper. When do they make love? When does he get kissed? Who says to him “my darling”?

I go into the living room, look at him. A heavy, serious man, leafing through a newspaper wearily, without interest, I go to him, kiss him lightly on the cheek, feeling the thickness of his big beard. He’s surprised, he smiles, touches my head lightly.

“Has something happened?”

ADAM

But why not describe her detail by detail, clearly, precisely, why do I hesitate to consider everything? But what do I really want, I’m changing too, it’s impossible to preserve eternal youth, nor is that what you’re looking for. In the garage the workers stick pictures of nude girls on the walls. I say nothing, it’s not my business and if it helps them to work, fine. But Erlich’s annoyed by it, he interferes and imposes his own censorship, declares what’s permitted and what isn’t, going and taking down a picture that he thinks is too daring, protesting in his angry, pedantic voice, “Please, nothing tasteless, nothing pornographic, only what’s aesthetic,” and the workers laugh, sneer at him, start to argue, try to snatch the picture out of his hand, a gale of laughter sweeps the garage, work stops, the boys stand and stare, open-mouthed. I go to see what all the fuss is about, not interfering of course, the workers smile at me and gradually they drift back to their work. I look at the pictures, the smooth young bodies, endless variations on the same theme. There are some pictures that have been hanging here for perhaps ten or fifteen years, girls who have changed in the meantime into dull, middle-aged women, growing old, perhaps even dying and becoming dust and ashes and here they are on the grimy walls of the garage in their eternal youth and Erlich stands beside me blushing, is he angry or is he smiling, looking at the torn picture in his hand, the dirty old man, he still gets turned on, he winks at me — “The bastards, they want to turn the garage into a whorehouse.”

But I don’t care, it’s as if I’ve lost my desire. Soon after Dafi was born I felt the first signs, a deep sense of disappointment overcame me, I regretted that I’d been so persistent. We couldn’t bring the boy back. We really should have parted.

And I see Asya returning to her daily routine, as if she’s forgotten everything, and a new, unfamiliar lust takes hold of her. She wants to make love to me, at every opportunity. Sometimes she sits naked on the bed, reading a newspaper and quietly waiting for me and when I touch her she goes wild, comes quickly, as if by herself, ignoring me.

I begin treating her crudely, though she doesn’t seem to mind, delaying her on purpose, sometimes leaving her halfway through, a violence I never knew taking hold of me. Sometimes I’m afraid I may be going too far, but she still clings to me, the violence doesn’t scare her, perhaps the opposite.

I grow distant, changing my habits, going to sleep early, putting out the light, pulling the blanket over my head, playing dead, getting up with the dawn and going out. She tries to follow me, afraid to say plainly what’s on her mind, in the end she gives up. She’s grown thin again lately, has shrunk a little, there are signs that her bony frame is beginning to stoop, she walks briskly.

She’s beginning to despair of me, she comes into the bedroom at night without putting on the light so as not to rouse me but there are times when I wake up, suddenly, take her in my arms and try to make love to her. She whispers “You don’t need to struggle so” but I reply “I’m not struggling.” I’m looking around for the bedroom mirror, to see what I don’t feel.

VEDUCHA

A row of plants a vineyard an orchard a wheat field among them a big old growth. Banana? Watermelon? Dark eggplant? A dry dense little bush planted in a bed under pyjamas and a gown. Little twisted roots beneath the sheet like hard thumbs. A thick stem, a ball soft and damp, two sinewy branches a thin coat of resin. Thin moss covers a branch of white leaves. Thoughts of an ancient plant will she grow to the ceiling or break out through a window into the sunlight give flowers and fruit.

They come and pour gruel on the obstinate plant give it yellow tea to drink. The plant drinks in silence feeling only the sun revolving from window to window disappearing. Night. A plant in the darkness. But a door opens and a piercing draught stirs the waking plant the breeze passes through her branches penetrates to the roots. A door closes, a wind trapped in the plant, stirring free. Her bark peels off grows soft moss turns to hair resin to blood the stem grows weak and hollow, a whistling begins deep inside a wind comes in a wind goes out and a wind comes in again. A plant self-nourished spreading thin moisture a noisy plant the wind choking in her. Two acorns bursting out of the branch, growing fine, frosted glass absorbing light, soft hairy leaves hear voices. A plant sniffing herself tasting the bitter taste of a split leaf in her mouth. Hunger, thirst, feeling. Starting to groan — oh … ohhhh … ooo … the groan of a creature that once was a plant.

DAFI

It’s always dark there because the flat’s on the ground floor of a house on the hillside, but also because of the curtains that shut out the light and the weak light bulbs that her mom uses to save electricity. She doesn’t believe in ventilation, either, even though she gets the air free. The place always reeks of scent but such a nasty scent. When Osnat and I arrive we feel depressed even before we go inside. We wouldn’t be visiting Tali at all, only she’s sick today.

Always wearing the same dressing gown with the button missing right there in the middle, so you can see her gigantic tits. A big, untidy woman with pale blond hair scattered over her shoulders, maybe she was pretty once but now she’s all dried up, so unnerving, opening the door and giving us a mean look, saying, “Ah, at last you’ve remembered that you’ve got a friend,” although Tali’s only been sick since this morning.

We go into Tali’s room and find her as pretty as ever, with a high temperature, we sit down beside the bed waiting for her mom to go and then we start to gossip with her, telling her what’s been going on in the school, giving her the test paper that was handed back today and consoling her that half the class failed it, and Tali isn’t a great talker, she just smiles that dreamy smile of hers, takes the test paper and puts it under her pillow. After a while her mom comes in, moving a chair into the doorway, half in and half out, sitting there with a book in Hungarian, a cigarette in her mouth, glancing angrily at us, wanting to join in, as if we’ve come to visit her as well.

Osnat once told me that Tali’s mom is only half Jewish and didn’t want to come to Israel at all, except that Tali’s dad forced her to come here and then ran away and left her. We never said anything about this to Tali, maybe she doesn’t know that she’s quarter not Jewish, but it helped to explain all sorts of things, most of all her mother’s awful bitterness.

She sits there, not far from us, pretending to read her book, in a cloud of smoke, so solemn, staring at us as if we’re some kind of merchandise, not smiling even when we tell jokes. Every now and then she suddenly interrupts Osnat in midsentence with the most unexpected questions.

“Tell me, Osnat, how much does your father earn?”

Osnat’s taken aback.

“I don’t know.”

“Roughly?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Three thousand a month?”

“I don’t know.”

“Four thousand?”

“I don’t know,” Osnat almost shouts. But Tali’s mom is quite unperturbed.

“Then ask him sometime.”

“What for?”

“So you’ll know.”

“All right.”

And then there’s an uneasy silence, and we’re trying to pick up the threads of the interrupted conversation when suddenly –

“I’ll tell you then. In the Technion they give them a raise every month. He’s bringing home at least four thousand clear.”

“Clear of what?” asks Osnat angrily.

“Clear of tax.”

“Oh …”

And again that uncomfortable silence. Why the hell should she care how much Osnat’s dad earns?

“As for Dafi’s father” — suddenly she turns to me with a scornful smile — “I don’t ask you because you really don’t know, he doesn’t know himself. He’ll be a millionaire soon with that garage of his, though your mother does her best to keep it a secret.”

It’s my turn to be startled and struck dumb. The witch, sitting there in that chair with her bare legs, smooth as pats of butter, her toenails painted with bright red nail polish. When I see her sitting like that I know which half of her isn’t Jewish, the lower half for sure.

The odd thing is that Tali never interrupts her mom when she starts to prattle, pays no attention to her, just sits there quietly in bed, staring out the window, not caring that her mom’s getting on our nerves. We start groping for another subject, we start telling Tali something and suddenly there’s another blast from the corner of the room.

“Tell me, girls, do you need a new dress every week, like Tali?”

We look at Tali but she’s so calm you’d think she doesn’t understand what we’re talking about.

“Tell me, tell me … I get only twelve hundred pounds a month and I pay out three hundred in rent. Please tell her she shouldn’t ask for a new dress each week, once every two weeks is enough. Maybe you have some influence over her.”

We want to escape from here right away, like Tali’s dad, but that would be hard on Tali. Osnat starts cleaning her glasses, her hands shaking. I see that she’s getting into her usual state of panic, but she’s not saying anything, neither am I. Knowing that any reply will get a scornful comment. We ignore her, going back to our conversation, whispering, muttering in low voices, sneaking a sideways glance at the woman sitting there in the doorway, her hard face, the blond hair scattered over her shoulders. Perhaps after all her un-Jewish half is the top half, I think. A quarter of an hour passes, we’ve almost forgotten her, and then –

“What do you think, should I keep Tali at the school? Is it worth it?”

“Why not?” we both start up.

“But she’s a very poor pupil.”

“Not true,” we protest, giving her the names of children in the class who are worse than Tali.

But her mom isn’t impressed.

“Is she really going to get a living out of all this? Maybe she should leave and just get a job …”

But we’re scared of losing Tali, we start to explain the importance of going to school, education, the future … and her mom stares at us angrily, intently, listening with interest but sticking firmly to her opinion.

“In another two or three years Tali can get married, Tali’s very pretty, everyone knows that, she’s prettier than either of you, she’s sure to get snapped up … so why should she stay at school?”

Now I begin to see the funny side. But Osnat goes pale, stands up, ready to go, whenever people talk about physical appearance she gets awfully up-tight.

“But maybe you’re right, Osnat,” she continues in her calm, irritating voice with the Hungarian accent. “It’s good she should have some qualifications, I’ve got no qualifications and I’ve paid dearly, I thought love was enough …”

And her face twists as if she wants to curse or to cry, she runs out of the room. We look at Tali. Her mom’s worn us out completely, but her it didn’t touch. She’s not normal, smiling a thin smile to herself, dreaming, playing with the edge of the blanket, nothing matters to her.

Osnat wants to go but Tali says softly, “Just a moment, what was the homework?” and we sit down again, this after all is what we came here for. Her mom suddenly appears again, but this time with cream cakes and coffee, she sits down in the chair again, chain-smoking, we wait for the next blow but she says nothing. At last we say goodbye to Tali, her mom goes with us to the door in silence, then at the door she suddenly catches hold of us, violently, whispering, her face full of pain: “But what does she say? She never talks to me … what does she say?”

And we’re still groping for words and she hugs us tightly. “Don’t abandon Tali, girls.”

And she lets us go. We’re stunned, we can’t say a word, walking in silence down the street, stopping outside Osnat’s house, unable to speak but also unable to part company without saying something. It’s as if Tali’s silence has stuck to us as well. At last Osnat confesses, “If my parents split up I’d kill myself.”

“Me too,” I say at once, but with a stab of pain in my heart. She can say things like that because in her house there’s love and kissing and cuddling and “my darling” every afternoon. But in our house it’s so quiet. I look up, she’s staring at me, as if she’s testing me.

“Ciao,” I mutter and quickly walk away.

ADAM

Maybe we should part. It’s the beginning of summer. Oppressive heat, I wake up covered in sweat, it’s nearly midnight. Where’s Asya? I get up. The light’s on in Dafi’s room, but Dafi’s, asleep, a book lying open on her face. I pick up the book, put out the light, but there’s still a light on in the house. I go into the study. She’s sitting there, small and thin beside the big table, her hair still wet from the shower, wearing a tatty old bathrobe, her little bare feet swinging. The room is full of big shadows, the table lamp hardly lights the papers and the books in front of her. She’s startled by my sudden appearance. Is she still afraid of me?

She’s decided to try to write over the long vacation a source book for the teacher of the French Revolution, collecting new material, with explanatory notes for teachers and systematic questions. She goes around to the libraries collecting books, thick and heavy dictionaries filled with the old French terminology.

I sink down on the bed beside her and smile at her, she smiles back at me and then goes back to her books. It doesn’t bother her at all that I’m sitting beside her watching her. She’s so sure of the bond between us that she doesn’t even need to lay down her pen and say something to me. Could anyone want to take her from me?

It’s a long time now since I’ve touched her. She says nothing. I watch her with squinting eyes. Her pale breasts show through the open bathrobe. If I was to go to her now and hold her she wouldn’t resist, she might even be glad, surely she hasn’t lost her desire as well.

“Do you still dream?”

She lays down her pen, surprised.

“Sometimes.”

Silence. Perhaps she’ll tell me a dream, like in the early days, it’s years now since she’s told me one of her dreams. She seems troubled, staring at me intently, then she picks up her pen, reads what she’s just written and crosses it out.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Yes, but I just want to finish this page.”

“Making progress?”

“Slowly. This old French is very complicated.”

“You’re always having to study something new.”

She blushes slightly, a gleam in her eye.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No, why? If it’s important to you …”

“No … I shall stop now.”

“No, there’s no need. If you’re not tired.”

I stretch out on the bed, put a cushion under my head, feeling heavy and drowsy. I didn’t say that I don’t love her, I haven’t said that yet, only I’m sure this can’t go on much longer. To the sound of the scratching of her pen and the rustling of her papers I begin to doze, until I hear her whispering, “Adam, Adam.” The room is in darkness and she’s standing over me trying to wake me. I don’t move, I want to see if she’ll touch me, but she doesn’t touch me, she hesitates for a moment and leaves the room.

ASYA

I’m in a classroom, some bricks left over from the building are still on the floor, a pile of sand still in the corner. Most of the pupils aren’t in the classroom, though the bell has rung and a sort of echo is still ringing in my ears. I ask one of the pupils where the rest of the class is and he says, “They’re having a gym session, they’ll be here soon,” but they don’t come and I’m getting nervous, because I want to start on the lesson, the books and the notes are open in front of me. The subject is something to do with the Second World War, a subject that I’m not sure of, it’s always so difficult to explain it to the children.

The pupil who has spoken to me is sitting in the front row, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, with a sickly face and a heavy accent, sitting there all wrapped up in a heavy coat, a funny Siberian cap and a scarf, looking at me with such crafty eyes, testing me. In fact he’s the only one in the class, what I took to be the other pupils were just the shadows of chairs.

Angrily I ask him, “Are you that cold?”

“A little,” he replies.

“Then please take off your coat, you can’t sit like that in the classroom.”

He stands up, removes his hat, his coat, unwraps the scarf, takes off his gloves, pulls off his sweater, unfastens the buttons of his shirt, strips it off, sits down and takes off his shoes, his socks, he goes and stands in the corner, beside the little pile of sand, and takes down his trousers, his T-shirt and his underpants, quite calmly, without even blushing. Now he stands there in the corner, naked, a little plump, his body white as marble, he makes no attempt to hide his paltry member, the member of a growing boy. I catch my breath, feeling a mixture of repulsion and fierce desire. But I say not a word, flicking constantly through the notes in front of me. He walks past me and out of the room, walking slowly, his shoulders bent, his ass wagging. I want to say to him “Come here” but I’m left alone in the classroom that’s now completely empty, in the light of a strange twilight.