Every House Needs a Balcony (23 page)

“Because there is something wrong between us,” she said.

“It's normal,” he said. “They say that all couples go through a crisis after seven years of marriage.”

“It didn't happen to my sister,” she said quietly, “and with us it only seems to get worse as time goes by.”

“I don't understand why you are forever complaining. Lots of people in the office tell me that I am a model husband.”

She was completely taken aback by this. “How do they know what kind of a husband you are?” she asked.

“I work with them all day, don't I? They see me calling you at work every day to ask how you are, and in the afternoons when you are at work, I call the babysitter and have a long conversation with her to make sure that Noa is all right. Every Friday I bring you flowers. How many husbands do you know who bring their wives flowers after seven years of marriage? I never forget your birthday or our wedding anniversary.”

“Well, thank you very much for that, really,” she replied.

“You see. I can't even hold a conversation with you, without you putting me down with your cynicism.”

She looked at him and felt like giving him a good slap, but she didn't like to because he really did remember her birthday, whereas she had forgotten his. He even remembered her sister and brother-in-law's birthdays, and those of her nieces, and she herself was really bad at these things.

“I don't know what else to do,” she said to her sister, weeping, “he's so hard to live with. I sometimes think that it must be because of the differences in mentality between us. Because of our different upbringing.” Her sister said she didn't think that was the reason.

“So what is the reason?” she asked her sister, who replied that she thought it was simply that he couldn't keep up with her. “You are quick to solve problems, and you have initiative, while he is heavy and hesitant and slow to decide, and it drives you crazy. Do you remember that neighbor of ours, Albert, in our house in downtown on Hadekalim Street, how he kept on harassing you?”

“Of course I remember. Why have you suddenly brought him up?”

“You were only twelve, and he was forever lying in wait for you in the staircase and trying to fumble with you, and you were resourceful enough not to go to whining to Dad but to go straight to his wife and threaten her that if her husband didn't stop harassing you, you'd go to the police. And he stopped immediately.”

“Sure.” She started laughing. “I knew he'd be more afraid of his wife than of Dad.”

“And you were only twelve,” her sister reminded her. “I'm sure that now, too, you'll find a way to sort out your problems.”

“It takes two to tango,” she told her sister.

And one day she noticed that he had spent much longer
than half an hour in the bath and emerged perfumed from top to toe and whistling a happy tune.

“I've noticed that you don't like me working at home in the evenings,” he told her, “so I've decided to take on another job. I'll be home late.”

“Has something good happened?” she asked, and he gave her a peck on the cheek and asked if one had to have a special reason to be in a good mood. For two weeks he whistled and hummed and set off for work even before she had finished dressing and feeding Noa; and when he returned home at ten o'clock in the evening, she asked him if he had a mistress.

“Are you crazy?” He was horrified. “Can't a guy be in a good mood without being suspected of having taken a mistress?” he said and added that from then on he would be returning home every evening at ten o'clock because he had decided to work longer hours at his second job.

The next day she called him at his second office at seven in the evening, and he answered. She was immediately filled with remorse; her husband was working extra hours to increase their income, and she was suspecting him of having an affair.

On Friday he brought her flowers as usual, and she suggested that they take a holiday abroad, since they'd now have some spare cash. “I can leave Noa with my sister,” she said, and he replied that he was just about to suggest joining a group of his friends from work, who were organizing a vacation at Club Med in Ahziv.

She agreed, but continued to suspect his good mood,
which seemed to improve from day to day. Now he was even trumpeting to himself in the bath, in which he spent a good hour every morning, emerging eventually squeaky-clean and highly perfumed.

They went to Ahziv with a group of very nice people, including Shula, who was especially charming toward her. She took an immediate liking to Shula, who also happened to be Romanian. But Shula was on her own, without a partner, and when she told her that she was divorced, she immediately suspected her of being her husband's mistress. Especially because he hardly laid a finger on her all week, even though they were alone at last after a very long time. They had sex only twice during that week, and even then she felt that his heart wasn't really with her. She thought she might just be imagining it, but her senses told her that he was dying for the vacation to come to an end.

“You're always complaining that I don't initiate sex, but now when I do, you're not interested?” she asked him, but he was evasive and avoided looking her straight in the eye. He said that maybe he just wasn't in the mood.

They returned from their vacation, and she continued to be suspicious of his good spirits. When she called his second place of work at eight in the evening and someone else answered the phone and told her that he had stepped out a half hour before, she waited for him to arrive, sure that he would be home any minute to sort out the matter of his mistress once and for all.

He turned up at eleven o'clock, and when she asked him furiously where he'd been until then, he understood that she had called him at work and told her immediately that he had indeed left early, but had met a colleague, and they'd been out drinking until a short while before.

“Which friend?” she asked, and he said she didn't know him; it was someone new who had started working in his office that morning.

The following morning when he emerged washed and smiling from the bathroom, she told him to say hello to his girlfriend for her. He yelled at her that there was no girlfriend and that he was sick and tired of her constant suspicions.

“Constant?” she asked innocently. “My suspicions began two months ago.”

He slammed the door as he left. Noa looked at her and started to cry.

She put Noa in nursery school and decided that she would visit his office in the afternoon, to make sure that he was indeed going on to his second job.

From four thirty she sat waiting near his office, knowing that he was due to finish at five; but she got cold feet at a quarter to five and drove away. She decided that it wasn't to her credit to be following her husband and that she was only humiliating herself, so she went home to her daughter. When he arrived home at ten in the evening, she said that she really wanted to know if he had someone else, because she would prefer to cope with any truth than live a lie.

He said he wasn't lying and that she was imagining things. During the month that followed she called him only once, at seven in the evening, at his second job, and he answered the phone and returned as usual at eleven. They hardly ever had sex, and he claimed that he was tired from working at two jobs.

On Friday she called his second job at five in the afternoon and the boss told her that he had left at one. He came home at seven, half an hour before her mother was due to join them for dinner. She told him she had called at five and he wasn't at work, and he said he'd had a meeting with an engineer, Zvika, who commissioned him to do a small private planning job for him.

After dinner she asked if he would mind driving her mother back to the retirement home she had been living in for the last two months, but he said he was tired and going to bed. When she returned and opened the door, he was on the phone, and he hung up as soon as he saw her. She pretended not to notice, and the next morning, Saturday, she forced him to take Noa to the fairground without her.

“I need to be alone with myself,” she said, and he didn't dare refuse.

She called her friend Gila in Haifa. Gila was a player; when she had fallen in love with a divorced man who had three daughters and became pregnant by him, he left her, refusing to have anything to do with another child, although he loved Gila. In her seventh month, she called him and lied that a scan she'd just had showed that the baby was a boy.
They got married in Cyprus because she was a divorcee and he was a
kohen
, and there is no civil marriage or divorce in Israel, and two months later she gave birth to their first daughter. Two years later their second daughter was born.

She told Gila that she suspected her husband of having an affair, but he was denying it hotly, and it was driving her crazy. Gila asked what he was saying when he got home late. As an example, she told her about the previous night, when he'd said he he'd been at an after-work meeting with Zvika.

“Do you know this Zvika?” Gila asked her.

“Yes, actually,” she replied. “When we immigrated to Israel and bought the apartment in Rishon le Zion, I worked for him for a while, until Noa was born.”

“So what's your problem? Give him a call and check with him,” her friend advised.

“And what, call him up just like that, after not having spoken to him for four years, suddenly I should ask him if he had a meeting yesterday with my husband?” she asked.

“You'll think of some excuse. You do want to know, don't you?” Gila urged her.

“Of course I want to know,” she replied, and in the same second she knew exactly what she'd say to Zvika.

She remembered that Zvika had had the hots for Racheli, who worked alongside her in his office, but she was married and quite religious, so Zvika didn't dare make a move. Shortly after she left, Racheli too had moved away, and
they'd lost touch with each other. And now—as proof of the small world we live in—just last month she'd been at the hospital with Noa when she ran into Racheli, who told her that she was newly divorced and back living with her parents in Rishon le Zion. They exchanged telephone numbers and promised to keep in touch.

She called Zvika on Saturday morning at eleven. He was quite surprised to hear her voice and asked to what he owed the honor.

“I wanted to pass on best regards from Racheli,” she said, and he seemed rather pleased, and took Racheli's telephone number. She told him all about Racheli, and he asked about Noa and then about her, and when she told him that she'd been working for over a year in the stocks and bonds department of a large bank, he said that it was much more like her to work with people.

“And how's your husband?” he asked.

“He's fine,” she replied. “Aren't you in contact with him?”

“Do you know how long it's been since I last saw him?” he replied. “It must be at least three years.”

Her heart took a nosedive straight into her underpants.

When Mom prepared her Romanian
chorba
soup, she made a point of inviting the Syrian girls from upstairs, Sima, Rocha, and Yaffa, because she knew how much they loved it. Besides, it's not expensive to make, only vegetables. Sima was a very pretty girl, but she thought she was ugly because of the large burn scar on her neck from a Primus stove that had been thrown on her by mistake when she was crying too much as a baby. The burning Primus did not calm down the crying baby, but it did leave her with a large, meaty scar on her neck. Sima believed that no one would ever want to marry her when she grew up because of that scar on her neck, and Yosefa used to reassure her by saying that it's all nonsense, and it's not beauty that matters, but character. I asked my sister if she really believed that someone would marry Sima, and she said no.

“So why do you lie to her?” I asked, angry. “You know how Dad hates it when we lie.”

“I'm not lying. I just don't want her to be sad,” my sister replied.

I went and snitched to my father that Fila was lying to Sima and telling her that someone was certainly going to want to marry her although she knows that it wasn't true, and my dad told me that there are lies that can be told to make people feel good.

That week, our school principal, Dror, who used to beat all the kids, even those who didn't deserve to be beaten, painful, ringing slaps to the face, caught me and two boys and called us to his room to interrogate us as to whether we had been keeping watch by the classroom door when Itzik was peeing into the teacher's desk drawer. One of the boys said he knew nothing about it and straight away got two ringing clouts around the head. The second boy owned up to standing watch and received four ringing clouts, and his parents were called for a hearing. I stood before the cruel principal's florid face, knowing that my dad got very angry at adults who beat little children, even when they are school principals or teachers; besides, that teacher deserved to have Itzik pee in her drawer because she was forever insulting him and telling him that in his house “they're a bunch of primitives who eat with their hands.” And when the principal asked me if I had stood watch at the door, I said that I was playing catch outside with Braha, Ahuva, and Adina at the time. I lied so as to do myself good, just as Dad had explained to me, and I knew that Braha, Ahuva, and Adina
would never tell on me because they were more afraid of me than of Principal Dror.

“Are you sure?” asked Principal Dror.

“I'm sure,” I answered him in a firm voice, and lowered my eyes as I had been taught by my sister, since grown-ups don't like children looking them straight in the eye. It undermines their self-confidence. “The teacher can ask them himself.” I was careful to use the right grammar, so as not to be on the receiving end of a slap on the face for not speaking correctly. He didn't hit me. I expect his hand was sore from already having dealt six clouts.

I rushed home and told Dad that I had lied to Principal Dror so as to avoid a beating and he kissed my cheek and said, “Good girl.”

On Saturday evening when Yosefa went with Sima to Baruch's falafel stand, she shared her half portion with her friend; one bite for her, one bite for Sima, a bite for her, a bite for Sima, until they came home, when she lied to Mom in Romanian and promised that she had eaten the entire half portion by herself, no sharing.

Since Dad allowed me to lie in order to do people good, I also lied to Shmuel, my sister's friend Shoshi's brother. My sister had a lot of friends, and I had my sister; that was enough for me. Following her friend Chaya's departure to America with all her dolls, and after we had moved to downtown Haifa next to the Turkish market, Yosefa had made friends with Shoshi and visited her at home whenever she
wasn't reading, because at Shoshi's place she was allowed to sew purses.

Shoshi's mother sewed bridal gowns, and since they lived in a tiny one-room apartment that housed four people and a table that served as Shoshi's workshop and took up half the room, Shoshi and my sister played under the table. They took the remnants of the white fabric and used them to sew purses. She didn't let me come with her to Shoshi's because there wasn't enough room under the table; but as compensation, she brought me one of the white purses she had made, which I filled with buttons, because I had no money.

But Mom and Dad forced my sister to take me with her to her class evenings, because I was little, and Shoshi's parents forced Shoshi to take Shmuel, her older brother, to her class evenings because he was retarded.

And so Shmuel and I would sit on the fence alone on class evenings that weren't even ours, while my sister and her friends whispered among themselves, each choosing the boy she wanted, and we discussed the meaning of life, which we painted in all sorts of colors.

“Swear you won't tell anyone,” Shmuel would say to me.

“I swear.” I always swore on my sister, my mother, and my dead grandmother. I refused to swear on my father because I could never be sure I wouldn't break my vow.

“I know you're not going to believe me, but when I grow up I want to get married and have two children, a boy and a girl.”

“Why shouldn't I believe you?” I asked.

“Because I'm retarded,” Shmuel replied.

“You're not retarded. You're just a bit slow,” I told him, because that is what Dad had said about Shmuel, that he was slow. My dad also told me that Shoshi's parents had been in a forced labor camp in Romania and had managed to escape, but the Germans shot at them and hit Shoshi's mother in the leg; she was pregnant with Shmuel and fell down in a pool of blood. Her husband was able to drag her away, and that is why Shmuel was born a little slow. When the time came for Shmuel to go to school—my dad told me, and I always remembered all his stories—the authorities told them he could only be admitted to a religious boarding school. Shmuel's parents loved him very much, but they didn't love God very much, so they sent him to a school for retarded children for half a day, and Shoshi had to watch over him in the afternoons.

“Do you ever want to get married?” Shmuel asked me, and I told him that I had to because I had a dowry.

“What kind of a dowry do you have?” Shmuel asked, and I told him that I didn't know, sheets, maybe, and towels.

“My sister's friend Tova already has a refrigerator,” I added.

“And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Shmuel asked me.

“I want to be wise, like my sister,” I replied.

“Is being wise a profession?” he asked.

“It's a lot of professions. Wisdom gives you the chance to choose.” I told him. “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be a gardener,” Shmuel told me, and I said that gardening is a lovely job, being responsible for the earth.

“Rina, stop swinging your legs on the fence,” my sister shouted at me, “you'll fall off and then they'll have to sew up your bum.”

“Is Rina a name from the Bible?” Shmuel asked.

“Sure. In the Bible it means ‘joy,' but in Ladino it means ‘queen.' That's why my dad called me Rina. Because I'm his queen.”

“And I am their prophet,” said Shmuel, who may have been slow, but he knew that he was named for the biblical prophet Samuel.

“I am certain you'll get married and have two children,” I lied to Shmuel, to do him good. Because he was slow, I wasn't sure he'd be able to get married, but I was certain that he could be a gardener, so I didn't really feel that I was lying to him.