The Lover (10 page)

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?

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.

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.