The Lover (14 page)

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.

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.

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.

PART THREE

But which animal is it, a rabbit a frog an old bird? Perhaps something big a cow or a gorilla. They haven’t decided yet. A universal animal an animal of animals a sad monster lying beneath a blanket warming herself in a big bed rubbing her body on a crumpled sheet her soft tongue constantly licking the nose the pillow her eyes flitting about. Thinking animal thoughts about food and water that she will eat and drink about food and water that she has eaten and drunk whining a soft whine. They come and raise the blanket urging the animal to rise sitting her on a chair washing her skin with a sponge bringing a plate of gruel taking a spoon and feeding her.

Night. Darkness. An animal sniffing the world a sweet smell of rotting flesh. A big moon comes to the window and cries to the animal. The animal cries to the moon – ho … ho … oy … trying to remember something that she does not know that she only thinks she knows scratching at the wall tasting the peeling plaster. They come to silence the animal stroking her head quietly comforting her – sh … sh … sh … the animal grows quiet. Wants to weep and does not know how.

Strong light around and voices. Sun. The cattle shed the stable the hen coop rustle. The face of a creature before her a creature not an animal, a creature talking to the animal. She wants what does she want? She wants how does she want? Why? A creature that once was. A little pain waking within. Deep down inside the animal something stirs such a soft wind a breath without air without movement bride to the creature her soul her soul. She is here she has not vanished. She always was. The man talks. From a familiar distance. But what is he saying his speech is dark. Gives up and leaves. The animal begins to understand with surprise that she is also human.

In fact it was I who found him, who brought him home to Asya. People put themselves in my hands sometimes, I’ve noticed, they throw themselves at me as if saying – “Take me,” and sometimes I take them –

At the beginning of last summer, in the quiet months before the war, I detached myself more and more from the general work of the garage, arriving in the morning, seeing everything working at a high pitch and after two or three hours getting into my car and driving around the shops looking for spare parts, driving to Tel Aviv, touring the automobile agencies, looking through catalogues, visiting other garages to pick up new ideas, driving back to Haifa by side roads leading up to the Carmel range, walking in the woods to pass the time, arriving at the garage before the end of working hours, chasing back into the workshops the men who thought they’d get away early, telling one of the boys to unpack the equipment that I’d bought, hearing reports from the foreman, glancing at an engine or two, deciding the fate of a car smashed up in a road accident and going into the office to sit with Erlich over the accounts, to sign cheques, to receive the keys of the safe and to hear the last of his explanations before he goes.

I used to enjoy counting on my fingers the bank notes accumulated during the day, but over the last year this has all changed into a pen and paper business, all calculations, studying bank balances, making decisions about shares, estimating future profits, a quiet assessment of the financial assets accruing to me, and all this while around me there’s silence, the garage empty, the work benches clean, the floor swept, the winches released, the generators switched off. My considerable kingdom into which the old night watchman now comes with his funny little lame dog, his big bundle jingling, locking the side entrances and leaving just the main gate open for me. He takes a kettle and fills it with water to make coffee, all the time staring intently towards the office, to catch my eye before bowing to me humbly, and then through the main gate a little car enters slowly, a very old Morris painted bright blue, rolling slowly into the garage without a driver, without a sound, like something out of a nightmare.

I straightened up in my seat.

And then I saw him for the first time, still through the window of the office, wearing a white shirt and sunglasses, a beret on his head, walking behind the car and pushing it like a baby carriage. The watchman in the corner by the tap hadn’t noticed him, but the dog started barking hoarsely, ran slowly towards the man and
attacked him. The man stepped back from the car, which rolled on a few more metres and then stopped. The watchman dropped the kettle and ran after his dog shouting, “The garage is closed, get that car out of here.”

I looked at the car with great interest. A very old model, dating from the early fifties, perhaps even earlier. It was many years since I’d seen this little rectangular box, with the windows like lattices, on the roads. It seems they still exist, I thought to myself, but I didn’t go out of the office.

Meanwhile the dog had fallen silent. He’d found the strange old running board on the side of the car and was amusing himself jumping on and off it, but the watchman went on shouting at the man, who made no attempt to argue. He’d gone around to the front of the car and was trying to push it back, but he couldn’t do it, the car had settled into a dip in the garage floor.

The watchman went on shouting, acting as if he owned the place. I went out into the garage. The dog wagged his tail, the watchman turned to me and started to explain.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked the man. He began to explain – “Nothing serious, the engine won’t start, there’s a screw missing,” and he went and opened the hood.

He looked rather pale, as if he hadn’t been out in the sun for a long time, there was also something odd about his way of speaking, about his style, his manners were a little strange. For a moment I thought he was religious, a yeshiva student, but his head was already uncovered, the beret crumpled in his hand.

The little car fascinated me, it had been kept in good
condition
, it seemed incredible but it was possible that this was the original paintwork, the chassis was clean, without rust, there were spokes in the old-fashioned wheels, the windshield wipers shone. Drops of water fell from it. My hands instantly began to stroke it.

“What’s missing?”

“Just one screw … I think.”

“One screw?” I’m always scornful of such assurance. “Which screw?”

He doesn’t know what it’s called … it should be here … in this part … and he bent over the engine to find the place … there was always one screw that used to fall out here …

I looked at the engine, in contrast to the bodywork it was in a hideous state, all dry and dusty and parts of it were even gummed up with spiders’ webs.

“Look, I don’t understand, when did you last drive this car?”

“About twelve years ago.”

“What? And hasn’t it been touched since then?”

He smiled, a gentle, pleasant smile, no, it’s been used, he thinks it’s been used, perhaps not a lot … but not by him, because he hasn’t been here, in Israel that is … he only came back a few days ago … it had been left in storage at a garage not far away, he pushed it from there after cleaning it up a bit …

“Then why didn’t you look for the screw there?”

They didn’t want to have anything to do with the car … they don’t know … they don’t have spare parts … they sent him here … they told him this was a big garage with a stock of spare parts …

“For a 1950 Morris?”

“1947 … I think …” he corrected me cautiously.

“1947? Even better … do you think I run a museum here?”

He was embarrassed at first, then he laughed, taking off his sunglasses for a moment to see me better. He had bright eyes and a pleasant face, his body was thin with a bit of a stoop, and he had a slight accent that I couldn’t place.

“So there’s no chance of finding just one little screw so the engine will start?”

Either he’s a simpleton or he’s mocking me.

“It’s got nothing to do with a screw.” I began to feel irritable. “This engine, can’t you see, it’s ruined and rusted. Do you want to sell it?”

“Do you want to buy it?”

“Me?” I was astonished by his frankness. “What would I want with it. Twenty-five years ago I used to have a car exactly like it, it really wasn’t at all bad, but I don’t feel any great nostalgia for it. You might find some nut, some antique collector, who’d give you something for it …”

Right from the start I noticed that I was talking to him in the manner I usually reserve for customers, with him it was as if I was trying to establish a bond, and refusing to desist. Something about that old blue box fascinated me, as if I was looking at
something from a distant dream.

“Anyway I can’t sell it now … it isn’t mine yet.”

“Well then, do you want me to restore it?”

As if I was short of work in the garage –

He thought for a moment, hesitated. “O.K., but …”

But I cut him short, afraid he might change his mind, and at that very moment an idea occurred to me, I thought of starting a new line in restoring old cars, in the general climate of affluence there’d surely be nuts interested in a new hobby.

“Come back in three days and collect it, it’ll be fit to drive again. Leave the keys inside and push it into a corner so it won’t be in the way. Help him,” I ordered the surprised watchman and went back to the office, wondering for a moment if I should say something about the cost of repairs, but I decided against it in case he would change his mind.

I sat down at the table, going over the last accounts, through the window I saw him and the watchman pushing the car into a corner. He paced around the car for a while, deep in thought, looked towards the office and disappeared.

Five minutes later I finished my work, stuffed a few thousand pounds in my wallet, locked away the rest in the safe and prepared to drive home. Before getting into my car I went again to the Morris, opened the hood and looked inside. Again I was astonished to see the tangle of spiders’ webs entwined around the engine. I took off the oilfiller cap and a big black spider crawled out of the dry rusty sump. Just one screw missing … I grinned to myself, squashing the spider with my fist. I closed the hood, got inside the car. I sat down at the wheel, which was completely loose, playing with it like a child, studying the primitive dashboard. The interior of the car was very clean, the seats were covered with hand-sewn flowered upholstery, on the back seat lay an old travelling hat with a long scarf attached to it, an
old-fashioned
lady’s hat. I looked in the mirror and saw the old watchman standing behind the car, watching me curiously.

I got out hurriedly, smiled at him, climbed into my own car, started the engine and left the garage, a hundred metres farther on I saw him standing at a bus stop, he couldn’t have known that the last bus had gone. This entire commercial district was deserted at that hour. I stopped. He didn’t recognize me at first.
“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow for a bus.” He didn’t
understand
, turning his head with the winter cap towards me.

“Come on, get in, I’m driving to the city.”

He took off his cap and sat down beside me, thanked me politely, asked permission to pull down the sun shade.

“This awful sun, how can you stand it? I’d forgotten what it was like …”

“How long have you been abroad?”

“Twelve years, perhaps more, I’ve already lost count.”

“Where have you been?”

“In Paris.”

“And you suddenly decided to return?”

“No … why should I? I haven’t returned … I only came to pick up an inheritance from my grandmother.”

“The Morris … is that what you inherit?”

He blushed, embarrassed.

“No, I wouldn’t have come back for that load of junk, but there’s a house as well … an apartment actually … an apartment in an old Arab house in the lower city … and a few other things … old furniture …”

He spoke sincerely, with a pleasing candour, without
apologies
, without guilt for having left the country, without excuses, admitting that he’d come to collect a legacy and leave.

“You’ll be surprised, but that Morris isn’t a heap of junk at all … it’s basically quite sound …”

Yes, yes, he knows … he and his grandmother used to drive around in it in the fifties, they got a lot of good use out of it.

We drove slowly, joining a long line of traffic at the approaches to the city. He sat there beside me, with his big sunglasses, busily adjusting the shade, as if the sunlight might sting him. I couldn’t make him out, his Hebrew was good, admittedly, but he used all kinds of old-fashioned expressions. I carried on with the idle conversation.

“And your … your grandmother … she used to drive the Morris all the time … who used to look after the car for her?”

He didn’t know, to tell the truth he hadn’t been particularly close to her … he’d been ill … out of touch … for a few years he’d been in an institution in Paris.

“An institution?”

“For the mentally ill … that was several years ago … but now everything’s all right …”

He hastened to reassure me, looking at me with a smile. Suddenly it all became clear to me, the way he came into the garage, pushing the car, his search for one screw, the oddity of his speech, his hasty confessions. A lunatic who suddenly
remembered
an ancient legacy.