The Inbetween People (9 page)

November 14th, 1990

D
ear Sareet,

I received your letter two weeks ago, and apologise for the delay in replying for you gave me much to think about. I’ve walked a lot, and I’ve given it some thought, as you requested.

For the first week after receipt of your letter I allowed myself to believe that you could come back, and I nestled in that dream for eight days. In fact for the duration of these eight days I existed in a kind of stupor: I went to bed early, slept well and my dreams were pleasant, and in turn my days were spent in a happy haze of planning what to do with the house in preparation for your return. On the eighth day I decided I must write to you immediately and tell you that, yes, indeed, it is a good idea that you come back, as you say you want to. I made the decision early one morning, after a sleepless night, my first sleepless night for eight days, surrounded by the winter sound of rain. You know all about rain, you say, but you chose that rain, and everything else about your life now.

I was tired, it had been a stormy night, and I had woken from a strange dream where I strolled through a dark forest filled with little natural light, heavy with the scent of damp leaves, that opened on to a great lake under the grey British skies of my childhood—the leaves thick under my feet, the mouldy smell of autumn all around me. It beckoned to me all night, this autumnal forest, remaining with me after I awakened; but something else, what I am not sure, it murmured something to me, what exactly I cannot remember. I think it was my mother’s silhouette I saw there, standing by the lake; she was shivering and she called out something to me, but her words disappeared into the cold air. The night was long and I arose before dawn and sat at the window, drinking sweet coffee and staring at the rain, great sheets of it, driving against the house. When it eased I decided that I must take my morning walk.

So, having decided I must write to you to tell you to hasten your journey back, I walked through the rain, out of the kibbutz, towards the chalk mountains in the distance, silver and shimmering in the wet morning light. I’ll write this morning, I thought, and after that I must tell Avi immediately, best to get it done with: Mother wants to come home, and I’ve agreed that she should.

I imagined you here, here this very winter, making it your home again, repossessing us, me, Avi, our very house where even the colours of the walls remain the same as they were when you were here. Avi doesn’t sleep in the house, of course, you remember that—he sleeps with the other children, as is the way here, or had you forgotten? Nor would your other children, the girl and boy, children I don’t know, whose very names elude me, sleep with us in the house. You realise that, don’t you? Are you sure you want to bring them here, to a world they do not know, a world that would be strange to them, leaving their father behind, as you once left us?

I sat there on the mountain, a place I’ve visited often over the years, both in winter and summer. The rain stopped and it was quiet there, save for the sound of water, surging down the mountainside, and I looked down on the kibbutz. The gardens are different from that distance, from above, and I see things there that I would not notice on my normal rounds. That morning, for instance, I realised that the wisteria I have been cultivating all these years does not belong on the western wall of the children’s house. I won’t go into the details, but once observed I knew that it was absolutely wrong there and would have to be moved, though moving wisteria is a troublesome business—you know how difficult it is about flowering. In fact I knew at that moment that I only planted it there when Avi was a boy so that the scent would come to him as he slept.

After that observation I did what I don’t normally do, I lit a cigarette. Generally speaking, I save this cigarette for the evening, one cigarette a day, that’s all I allow myself; but that morning I broke my strict rules and I smoked one, for I came to a realisation there on the rain-soaked mountainside. I remembered something and that remembrance, that stab of memory, made me realise that you absolutely must not come back. You see, the exact detail of the day you left came to me, I hadn’t thought of it in a long time; I once thought of it often, once I saw the image of you leaving a thousand times in a single afternoon, for years and years. When I stopped seeing it I can’t remember, but I thought of it that morning and I remembered your eyes, the life inside them dying, how dull they became; and I wondered how life with us died for you as completely and utterly as it did. I remembered you stirring your coffee that morning, the tears running down your face, because of the constant heat you said.

It’s different now, of course—we have air conditioning and life is comfortable. The management committee has become more lenient about privately owned luxuries, too lenient I often think, and I am not the only member of this community who feels like this. There are more than enough comforts, I am sure you would enjoy them. I tried to convince myself of that.

But mostly I remembered what you said. It hit me with a blow to the chest that morning on the mountainside, even all these years later, your words of that July day still contain the same powers of destruction that they did then. Do you remember? You said that youth is above all a collection of possibilities, and that with every day you spent with me another of those opportunities died. Died before your eyes, you said. Do you know how it feels to watch those opportunities die, you said. I can’t stay here and watch them die anymore, you said.

That summer is still inside me—the daze through which I laboured in the gardens, the greenfly that devoured the rose garden, only detected when it was far too late for action, the weeds that overcame the display of colour opposite the communal laundry, the rows of putrid strawberries that I neglected to harvest, the buzzing of the swollen flies around them—is still with me. You have not forgotten it either, that summer is still inside you, it returns to you every year. To return here would be a kind of release for you.

After you left I felt nothing for a long time, I continued as normal because I had to, and Avi needed me too. I am not sure, for example, for how long I set the table, on a Saturday evening (when the dining room was closed in deference to the Sabbath) for three people, something I had done automatically for so long. I only know that I did it for a long time, and neither of us looked at or acknowledged the extra plate, yet it was always there, and I continued to do it after I remembered that you were gone. After a time it ceased to be an automatic gesture, but I did it just the same, because I realised that the Saturday that I stopped setting a place for you would be the day that I understood and accepted that you weren’t coming back, and I sensed that Avi needed me to leave that place for you.

That place is gone, Sareet: the plate, the knife, the fork, all the memories and hopeless love that went with the setting of a place for you. We both believed for years, you see, that you would come back. There were no words for what we believed, but nevertheless we believed it absolutely. Words are not always necessary, and now, long after we stopped believing, you say you want to come back. You left us, but that summer never did, it clung to us for years, lived inside us, the heat and the dust and the hopelessness of everything. And your tears. And your leaving. It still clings to us today.

You must realise that this is not an easy decision for me to make, but I believe it to be the right one.

I would rather you not mention the nature of your request to the boy. The fact is that you left him once, and when you did his welfare became my responsibility. I simply believe it is better for him to understand that people do leave and don’t come back. I am not sure that he would benefit from you bursting back into his life, you and all the endless drama that is part of life with you, an integral part of life with you. It would also be easier for me if you continued as before, and wrote only to the boy. It’s preferable to forget all about this business now. I am sorry if this is stark, it is not as I meant it, but I know it to be the right decision, that you have merely lost interest in your Dutch adventure, for some reason you have lost the heart for it all.

And because I know it wouldn’t work. There is little left for you and I, Sareet, little is left of that time and the people we were then, nothing is left of your youth and my energy. You now believe that you would be content to simply come home to us, to this small community, live here again, live this uncomplicated life style after the life you have lived in Amsterdam. You speak of the smell of Avi’s skin after you bathed him, the odour of cheeses and olives and coffee that greeted you at the door of the communal dining room each morning, the storms that blaze across Galilee in the winter, the streaks of lightning across the sky, gleaming against the horizon. What happened to you that you discarded your life here, the people that filled it, suddenly and ruthlessly and with the blind persistence that I came to expect of you? Or does it matter? For the loss is there, whether or not you realise what it is you lost, or when, or why, and the reason no longer matters.

An empty autumn evening is falling on the Galilee, and I have said all there is to say. It is late, the rain is battering the windows, the thunder rolls in the distance. I am reminded of the young soldier I was when I met you and the summer that followed, that first summer after the war. Do you remember when we first met on the steps outside the kibbutz dining room, came face to face for the first time. How you reached out and squeezed my wrist to welcome me home that day, as many people did, but there was only you! Do you remember that first summer, sitting outside on those airless evenings, your head on my shoulder, gazing up through the branches at the stars in the summer sky? The smell of the Sinai desert was still upon me then, the faces of my comrades and enemies return to me in my dreams; that time has never really gone away, and, perhaps for this reason, neither have you.

None of this matters anymore, I shall go to sleep.

Daniel

C
HAPTER
12

I
t must have been dawn on the beach. I remember a vague light on the horizon, the smell of coffee, the taste of cigarettes, and a coldness—for the fire had gone down and the dawn air was cool. I remember your face as you weaved your story, your voice as it stumbled over these events.

There was no sense of victory that day, you said. There was nothing.

You are eighteen now, a man, the second man of the family after Father. The letter has arrived, your grandmother has placed it unopened on your bed. You stare at it for a long time, you sit on your bed and you stare at it, for you recognise the words stamped across the front of it, you know what is inside without opening it: inside will be a date, a time, there will be words, an appointment, exactly as you expected. You note the objects in your room: Karim’s bed, your own bed, your clothes folded on the shelves, your books, arranged in alphabetical order, the picture of the veiled woman that has always hung in this room.

You open it in one swift movement, you note the date, the time, and afterwards you move towards this date, making the appropriate arrangements, packing your most suitable clothing. Three days before you are due to go you tell Grandmother.

I am beginning my army service in three days, you say.

She is scrubbing pots, she doesn’t turn. You wait, you stand there, her back is stiff and you know she will speak. You watch her shadow on the wall, the sharp beak-like nose, she speaks without turning.

Where are you going, she asks.

I don’t know, you say. They didn’t say, I have to report to a base but after that I will be moved. I don’t even know what I will be doing. She continues to scrub the pots. I will receive training for whatever I am doing, you say. That is standard.

Packing bags, she said, preparing someone else’s parachute, placing it in a pack for them. Cooking their food, cleaning their toilets, that’s what you’ll be doing. They won’t give someone like you any responsibility. She lifts a pot into the sink, grimaces at its weight, and begins to scrub.

Grandmother, you say, you don’t know what you are talking about.

I know what I’m talking about, she says. I know what they think about our people. They will never give you any responsibility, never trust you, why would they? You are wasting your time and your youth. On them. You know nothing, every time you speak you reveal your ignorance.

I won’t be back for a while, you say. It will be a few weeks, maybe months. I will phone.

She scrubs the pot, bent double over the sink, her once dark hair has gone grey, you note that now and you wonder that you didn’t notice it happening, you didn’t see the streaks of grey, the gradual lightening. Don’t phone here, she says, we don’t want tales of your heroics.

You turn to leave the kitchen, she stays where she is, bent over the sink, a weak streak of light across her face, shining through the herbs she has growing on the windowsill of her kitchen: basil, parsley and always rosemary. You pack your clothes, alone, you’ve never packed for such a long period of time, you are sure you will forget something. The days pass, hot days, cloudless skies, and all the time you wait, nobody speaks to you about your army service, nobody asks you where you are going, or when you will be back, and the bright hot days are endless for the waiting.