Black Box (36 page)

Boaz says: “The best thing for you to do, Ilana, is to let him finish being angry out there. Let him work it all off on his religious chums. Then he’s bound to cool down and give in to you whatever you ask.”

“Do you think I wronged him?”

“Nobody’s any better than the next person.”

“Boaz. Frankly. Do you think I’m mad?”

“Nobody’s more sane than the next person. Do you feel like sorting some seeds?”

“Tell me: who are you making that merry-go-round for?”

“For the little one. I mean, when she comes back.”

“Do you believe?”

“Don’t know. Maybe. Why not?”

This morning I hit him again. Because he went out on the balcony without my permission and stood in the rain and got wet. There was an expression of total idiocy on his tortured face. Had he decided to kill himself? He smiled. Replied that the rain was very good for the fields. I grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him indoors and slapped him. And I couldn’t stop myself. I beat on his chest with my fist and knocked him down on the bed and went on hitting him until my hand hurt, and he didn’t stop smiling, as though he was enjoying making me happy. I lay down next to him and kissed him on the eyes, on the sunken chest, on his forehead which is spreading upward thanks to his falling hair. I stroked him till he dozed off. And I got up and went out on the balcony myself to see what the rain was doing to the fields and to wash away the pain of my longing for you, for the smell of your hairy body, the smell of bread and halva and garlic. For your voice cracked from smoking and your bold moderation. Will you come? Will you bring Yifat? We’ll all be here. It’s nice here. Wonderfully quiet.

Take the ruined fish pool, for example: it’s been mended with cement and now there are fish in it once more. Carp instead of goldfish. The renovated fountain replies to the rain in its own language: it doesn’t gush, it drips. And all around, the fruit trees and the ornamental trees stand in the grey silence in the gentle rain that falls on them all day. I have no hope, Michel. This letter is pointless. The moment you identify my handwriting on the envelope, you will tear the paper to shreds and flush it down the toilet. You have already mourned for me. All lost. What is there left for me except to accompany my obsession to his grave?

And then to disappear. Not to exist. If Alec leaves me some money I’ll go abroad. I’ll rent myself a small room in a big faraway city. If loneliness gets the better of me I’ll give myself to strange men. I’ll close my eyes tight and taste you and him in them. I can still manage to stir bashful glances of desire in the three odd youths who wander around here among all the girls who are twenty years younger than I. Because Boaz’s commune is slowly expanding: every now and then another lost soul drops in. And the garden is cultivated now, the trees in the orchard have been pruned, new saplings have been planted on the slope of the hill. The pigeons have been evicted from the house and installed in a large dovecote. Only the peacock is still entitled to roam at will in the bedrooms, hallways, and staircases. Most of the rooms have been cleaned out. The electricity has been rewired. We have about twenty kerosene heaters. Bought? Or stolen? Impossible to tell. Instead of the sunken tiles, concrete floors have been laid. An aromatic wood fire burns in the grate in the kitchen. The small tractor stands in a corrugated-metal shelter and all around it are various attachments: sprayer, mower, cultivator, disk harrow. It wasn’t a waste to send Boaz to an agricultural school. He purchased all these things with the money his father gives him. And there are beehives and a goat shed and a little stable for the donkey and coops for the geese, which I have learned to look after. Even though the hens still wander around the yard, pecking among the plants as in an Arab village, with the dogs chasing after them. Opposite my window the wind stirs the tatters of the scarecrows that Yifat and I put up in the vegetable garden before you sent to take her away from me. Does she ask if she can come back? Does she ask after Boaz? Or the peacock? If she complains of earache again don’t rush to give her antibiotics. Wait a day or two, Michel.

The bougainvillaea and wild oleander have been cleared away from the house. The cracks in the walls have been filled. There is no more scampering of mice across the floor at night. Boaz’s friends bake their own bread; its warm, guttural smell fills me with longing for you. We make yogurt too and even cheeses from the goats’ milk. Boaz has made two wooden barrels and next summer we shall have our own wine. On the roof stands a telescope, and on the night of the Day of Atonement I was invited to climb up and look through it and I saw the dead seas that extend over the surface of the moon.

Low, stubborn, even, the rain continues to fall. To fill the stone water hole in the yard, the pit that Volodya Gudonski dug and his grandson cleared and restored and which they erroneously call a well. The storehouses, sheds, and shelters are full of sacks of seed, sacks of organic and chemical fertilizer, drums of kerosene and oil, pesticides, cans of engine oil, hoses, sprinklers, and other irrigation equipment. Yoash sends
The Field
every month. From here and there they have collected old furniture, camp beds, mattresses, bookcases, wardrobes, a mixed multitude of household and kitchen utensils. In the refurbished workshop in the cellar he makes tables, benches, easy chairs for his father. Is he trying to say something to Alec with his two huge hands? Or is he also bewitched in his own way? In a niche dug out underneath the rusty boiler they discovered the treasure chest that Alec’s father hid there. All that was left in it were five Turkish gold coins, which Boaz is keeping for Yifat. For you he is reserving the job of builder, because I told him that during your first year in the country you worked as a construction worker.

The bottle chimes tinkle on the ground floor, because Alec’s bed of planks, his table and chair and typewriter have been taken up to his mother’s old room, which has a window and a little balcony looking out over the coastal strip and the sea. He doesn’t write a thing, nor does he dictate to me. The typewriter is gathering dust. Books that he asked Boaz to buy for him in the shop in Zikhron stand arranged by height, like soldiers, on the shelf but Alec doesn’t touch them. He is content with stories I tell him. Only the Hebrew dictionary and grammar are open on his table. Because in his lucid hours, in the afternoon, Boaz sometimes comes up: Alec is teaching him spelling and basic syntax. Like Friday with Robinson Crusoe.

When he leaves, Boaz stoops slightly in the doorway, as though bowing to us. Alec takes up his stick and starts measuring the room with his rhythmic steps. The tire-and-string sandals that Boaz made for him make a padding sound. Sometimes he stops, surprised, bites his dead pipe, and bends over to adjust the angle of the chair to the table. Sternly straightens his blanket. Or mine. Removes my dress from the hook on the door and hangs it in the packing box that serves us as a wardrobe. A slightly stooping, balding man, with fine skin; his appearance reminds me of a Scandinavian village pastor, on his face a strange mixture of mortification, meditation, and irony, his shoulders sloping downward, his back bony and stiff. Only the grey eyes seem cloudy and damp, like the eyes of a confirmed alcoholic. At four o’clock I take him up an herbal infusion, pita fresh from the oven, a little goat cheese that I made myself. And on the same tray a cup of coffee for myself. For the most part we sit and sip in silence. Once, he spoke up and said, without a question mark at the end of the sentence: “Ilana. What are you doing here.”

And he answered for me: “Embers. But there are no embers.”

And then: “Carthage is destroyed. So what. And had it not been, what then. The trouble is quite different. The trouble is there’s no light here. Wherever you go you trip.”

At the bottom of his suitcase I found the pistol. I gave it to Boaz and told him to hide it.

There’s not much time left. It’s already winter. When the big rains come the telescope will have to be dismantled and brought down from the roof. Boaz will be obliged to give up his solitary wanderings on Mount Carmel. He will no longer vanish for three or four days, to measure the wooded valleys, to explore abandoned caves, to startle night birds in their holes, to lose himself in the thick tangles of the vegetation. He will no longer go down to the sea to float alone on a raft made without a single nail. Running away? Pursuing? Seeking astral inspiration? Groping in empty expanses, a gigantic inarticulate orphan, after some lost bosom?

One day he will go off on his rambles and not come back. His friends will wait for him here for a few weeks, then they’ll shrug their shoulders and vanish one by one. The commune will disperse. Not a living soul will remain. The lizard, the fox, and the viper will reinherit the house and the weeds will return. I shall be left alone to watch over the death pangs.

And then? Where shall I go?

When I was a little girl, the daughter of immigrants struggling with the remains of her comical accent and alien manners, I fell under the spell of the old pioneer songs, which you don’t know because you came here late. Tunes that brought me dim yearnings, a secret female longing even before I was a woman. To this day I tremble when they play “In the land the fathers loved” on the radio. Or “There was a lass in Kinneret.” Or “Upon a hill.” As if they are reminding me from a distance of vows of loyalty. As if they are saying there is a land but we have not found it. Some jester in disguise has crept in and seduced us into loathing what we have found. Destroying what was precious and will not return. Led us on with a will-o’-the-wisp until we strayed deep in the swamp and darkness descended upon us. Will you remember me in your prayers? Please say in my name that I am waiting for mercy. For myself and for him and for you. For his son. For his father. For Yifat and my sister. Say in your prayers, Michel, that loneliness, desire, and longing are more than we can bear. And without them we are extinguished. Say that we tried to receive and return love but that we have gone astray. Say that they should not forget us and that we are still glimmering in the darkness. Try to clarify how we are to get out. Where is that promised land.

Or no. Don’t pray.

Instead of praying build David’s Tower out of toy bricks with Yifat. Take her to the zoo. To the cinema. Make her your fried eggs, take the skin off the cocoa, say to her, “Drink, Little Miss Empty-Vessels.” Don’t forget to buy her some flannel pajamas for the winter. And some new shoes. Don’t hand her over to your sister-in-law. Think sometimes how Boaz carries his father in his arms. And how about the evening, when you come back from your travels? Do you sit in your stocking feet in front of the television until tiredness gets the better of you? Fall asleep fully dressed in the armchair? Chain-smoke? Or instead do you sit at the feet of your rabbi studying Torah with a tear? Buy yourself a warm scarf. From me. Don’t catch cold. Don’t get ill.

And I’ll wait for you. I’ll ask Boaz to make a wide bed of planks and to stuff a mattress with seaweed. Wide-awake and attentive we’ll lie with our eyes open in the dark. The rain will beat at the window. Through the treetops a breeze will pass. High thunder will move in the direction of the hills to the east and dogs will bark. If the dying man groans, if the cold brings on a shivering fit, we can hug him, you and I, from either side until we warm him between us. When you desire me I’ll attach myself to you and his fingers will slide over our backs. Or you can attach yourself to him and I’ll caress the two of you. As you have always yearned to do: to be joined to him and to me. To be joined in him to me, in me to him. For the three of us to be one. For then from without, from the darkness, through the cracks in the shutter shall come wind and rain, sea, clouds, stars, to close in silently on the three of us. And in the morning my son and my daughter will go out with a wicker basket to dig up radishes in the garden. Don’t be sad.

Mother

***

To Mr. Gideon
and Mrs. (in reply to her letter to me)
and to dear Boaz
Gideon House
Zikhron Yaakov

By the Grace of G-d
Jerusalem
4th of Marheshvan 5737 (28.10.76)

Greetings!

Thus it is written in the psalm, “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103): “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him.” Amen.

Michael Sommo