The Lover (23 page)

And suddenly the nervous voice of a newscaster breaks into the music and the singing. Something’s happened. The Jews start to huddle around the radio. Hamid gives us a look and all the Arab music is switched off. We too begin to hear the details.
Something
at the university. An attack on the registrar’s office at the university. They’ve taken hostages.

My heart stands still. That’s him.

Adnan has returned. The whispered curses of the Jews. The bright ideas. Everybody has ideas about what should be done. And we make ourselves small. Walk about quietly, we have nothing to do with all this. Trying to behave naturally, only working feverishly.

At ten past twelve they threw the body of a clerk out the window. Such cruelty. One of the Arabs smiles to himself, a thin, faraway smile. I slip down under one of the cars and try a thousand times to tighten a screw that keeps slipping out of my hand. I’m not here.

All around the usual talk about the death penalty and revenge. Our brother. What’s he doing? Where does he get the guts? This cursed pride. And why don’t the damn Jews take better care of themselves?

A cabinet meeting. The army. The Ministry of Defence. The same old story. Time for our lunch break. Drying our hands, taking our bags and sitting down on the floor to one side. I sit beside Hamid and keep close to him. He doesn’t say anything. As
silent as usual. The others talk in low voices about other things, arguing about the new Volvo, about automatic gear boxes. I have no appetite, I want to cry but my eyes are dry.

Negotiations begin. Declarations. Conversations through a bullhorn. The arrogance. The usual descriptions. Just one novelty. One of the
fedayeen
is walking about in a suit and tie like he’s at a party.

I throw my bread to a stray dog that’s always wandering around the garage. Go back to work with the others. Everything’s as usual. The Jews come to take away the repaired cars, arguing over the price, but with anxious eyes, listening to the songs on the radio in great agitation. One of the Arabs quietly tunes in to Radio Damascus. It’s a different story there. A great battle, the university in flames. The lies. The fantasy.

And all the time I’m thinking only of Adnan.

We start closing the toolboxes and changing our clothes. And suddenly everything’s happening at once. The newscaster starts shouting like a commentator at a football game. They’re attacking. The sounds of gunfire come over on the radio like the rattle of a broken drill. They understand nothing. They’re killing him. Right now, they’re killing my brother. His eyes are seeing the light for the last time. Goodbye. Madman. Curse him. What he is doing to us. The shame. The cursed pride. My poor brother.

The Jews start to breathe more easily, even though a few of their own people have been killed. Suddenly they stop answering our questions, they’ve remembered to be angry with us. And we walk to the bus stop a bit closer together than usual, there are cops on the street to stop anyone having a go at us. But nobody wants to touch us, they don’t even look at us. On Radio Damascus the battle’s still raging. They’ve brought in tanks and fighter planes. We get on the bus. I sit beside Hamid on the back seat. Nobody says a word. Now Hamid takes out his transistor and puts it to his ear. And I look up at the hill, at the university sitting there like a flat white stone, like a tombstone. God, how long will this go on? Suddenly Hamid bows his head. On Radio Damascus they’re reading out the names. Hamid nudges me gently. It’s him. But I knew already, right from the start I knew it. Attacking the registrar’s office at the university in a suit and a
tie and with a Kalashnikov. That could only be his idea. Only his.

In the village they know already. News travels fest. We don’t need the radio to tell us. A crowd of people outside the house. Women crying. I go inside the house and it’s full of chairs. They’ve brought in chairs from all the other houses, brought them here for the mourners. And Father has shut himself up in his room and isn’t speaking to anyone. And relations arriving all the time from other villages. And the women all in one room, their eyes red. What good is crying? To hell with it all.

And the house fills up with people. All sitting quietly and waiting. What for? In the evening somebody switches on the television, no sound, just to see if they’ll show the corpses. But they show only the room where the hostages were kept, the files scattered on the floor, the mess and the wreckage. They sit there in silence. Nobody speaks. Just now and then somebody groans “O God.” And at midnight the security forces arrive. In their innocent-looking Escorts.
Welcome
back
sweet
little
bird.
More like dogs than birds. Fat, with black moustaches. They’re tired and unhappy too. No blame, no threats. Wishing peace on everybody. They know all of us by name, hell. Shaking hands. The strange Iraqi Arabic they speak. People make space for them in the middle of the room but they decline and go stand in a corner. Drinking coffee. In the end Father’s brought out to meet them, he looks a hundred years older. Bit by bit they start telling the true story of what happened. Silence in the room, they’re all holding their breath. And the village outside is hushed as well, like the whole village is listening to the story in the dark. They tell us the facts we don’t want to hear but must. Hearts beating fast eyes closed. We hear of the cruelty, the heroism, the madness. Already the bombers are roaring overhead.

Father listens and listens. His eyes closed like he’s asleep. And when they finish he starts to speak. Softly, going around and around in circles. First about the fields, about the rain and what the Koran says about brotherhood and peace. And then he starts to curse. Weeping and cursing. Better that the boy had never been born.

And they listen to the curses, the words of loyalty and abuse. Nodding their heads but not believing. Not believing that we
believe in what we say, but not wanting to hear other things from us.

Nobody goes to bed. All night we sit there in the big room and people come and go and in the morning the journalists arrive. With cameras and microphones. There’s no getting rid of them. They corner us and ask questions, they want photographs of him. Where did he go to school? Who were his teachers? How did he behave? Who were his friends? And Father with his Hebrew full of mistakes sits like a baby in a highchair, a microphone tied around his neck as they focus the lights on him, trying to smile. Again and again they ask him the same questions. And he says, “He was just mad, that’s all. Look at his little brother, he’s a good boy.” And he hugs me hard, hurting me. All this in front of the cameras. The shame. Adnan’s no longer his son. We’ve forgotten him. And that’s what we say, over and over again. The relations, the cousins, they all smile into the cameras. He was just crazy, off his rocker, even though we know he wasn’t.

Rainy days. A heavy winter. I wake up as usual at five o’clock in the morning, a habit that I can’t change now. Lately I’ve been the first to go to sleep and I find a different house when I wake up in the morning. The leftovers of supper in the dining room. Pillows and blankets on the chairs. Dafi’s night struggles. Asya curled up beside me like a foetus. Her grey hair on the pillow. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Behind the lids her eyes are moving. Dreaming again. Dreaming all the time.

“Asya,” I whisper, as if trying to penetrate her dream.

She moans, turns over quickly.

I drink coffee, eat a slice of bread, then drive through the empty streets, sometimes stopping by the seashore, parking the car and starting to walk along the wet beach. Very cold. The sky clouding over. A strong wind rising from the sea. But there’s always somebody there. An elderly couple in swimsuits running slowly hand in hand along the water line, chattering happily. A woman, not young, emerges from the stormy breakers and slowly walks towards me. She picks up a towel that was lying
almost at my feet and covers herself with it. Taking off her bathing cap, shaking out her hair and spraying cold drops of water on my face. She smiles at me, perhaps she wants to start a conversation. Not a pretty face, but a superb figure. I stand beside her, wrapped in my big fur coat, watching her change her bathing suit for a dress, watching her white breasts in the freezing wind. Without interest. Deep in thought. Somebody touches my shoulder.

My heart stops – Gabriel.

But it’s Erlich, the old
yeke
, in swimming trunks, laughing, thin and strong, his silver body hair reeking of salt and sand.

“Erlich! Do you still swim in the sea in the morning, even on days like this?”

“For thirty years now. I used to swim with your father. Every day before work. Come on now, strip off and get into the water.”

“I’m an old man …” I reply with a smile. We talk for a while, Erlich running on the spot to keep warm. Then he leaves me and goes running away to climb on some horizontal bars. A light rain falling. All kinds of weird people turning up. Friendly fishermen. It’s nearly seven o’clock. Time to go. Driving out towards the main road I see the woman who came out of the water, whose breasts I caught sight of for a moment, walking on the left-hand side, in a short coat, stopping and turning to look at me, slowly raising her hand. For a moment I think of stopping and picking her up, I hesitate, slow down, but then drive on, feeling defeated, a light nausea rising in me.

On the way to the garage once again I pass by the old house. Although I know I won’t find anything I can’t resist stopping there, getting out of the car to look up at the closed shutters. It’s four months now since he disappeared.

If only I could break into this house –

I examine the pipes on the outside of the building. A long drainpipe leads up to the second floor, uneven bricks protrude on the outer wall, the shutter up there is still a tiny bit open.

Whistles behind me. A girl traffic cop comes walking up to see what’s happening. I move, drive to the garage. Erlich’s already sitting over the accounts, looking fresh and invigorated. If he had been in my shoes he could have climbed that wall long ago. At
night that alleyway’s deserted. Perhaps I could ask Hamid to find me somebody to break in there. If he had a terrorist among his relations, surely he could find me a professional housebreaker, but afterwards it might be tricky.

No, I need to find a boy, some boy who can climb quickly, somebody who wouldn’t understand exactly what he was doing, a stranger, but not a complete stranger, somebody who trusts me a little, perhaps somebody employed temporarily in the garage.

I watch the workers closely, moving about among them, they pretend not to notice me but I’m conscious that the chattering stops when I approach, the music is turned down slightly. I know very few names here. But there’s one fellow who looks up, staring back at me. It’s that boy again, the one who was hurt and has recovered now. Smiling a sincere understanding smile at me. He picks up a big screwdriver and swaggering like a veteran mechanic he walks over to a large plump woman standing beside a little Fiat with a raised hood. He says boldly, “Get in, lady, and start the engine. Keep your foot on the throttle and do exactly as I tell you.”

And she smiles, looking around her with embarrassment, gets into the car and starts the engine. The boy climbs onto the bumper and starts tuning. Scandalous. Only two months ago he was sweeping the floor and now he’s got the nerve to tune engines. But I say nothing, I just stand there watching him, and he knows that I’m watching him and he carries on tuning, raising and lowering the revolutions of the engine, with no idea what he’s doing. In the end one of the Jewish mechanics comes along and shouts at him, pushing him aside. But the boy isn’t offended, watching me from a distance, with a smile as if to spite me.

This, it comes to me in a flash, is the boy who’ll climb that wall, and perhaps he’ll keep quiet about it too.

It was like a dream that Friday. A sweet dream. Because I slept in her house and ate breakfast and supper with her, and even if I had maybe done something criminal still I was happy.

As soon as I arrived at the garage that morning he grabbed me like he’d been waiting for me. He took me into a quiet corner
and told me he needed me for a small job that night, if it was all right for me not going home to the village. I said that was all right, no problem, I didn’t mind sleeping at the garage. He said, “No, you don’t need to sleep at the garage, you can sleep at my house. I’ll look after you.” I was so happy I thought I was going to faint. My head went fuzzy. But I just smiled at him. And he said, “Only don’t talk about it, can you keep a secret?” “Of course I can,” I said. “I’ll keep as quiet about it as you like.” He looked at me like he was checking some bit of machinery. “Can you climb?” “Climb on what?” I asked. “It’s not important.” He was embarrassed. “You’ll see. What have you got in that bag?” He didn’t give me a chance to reply but snatched it out of my hand and looked inside it, seeing the bread and the book of poems by Alterman. I thought I was going to die. He took out the book and asked me what it was. “It’s a book,” I said. “But whose is it?” “It’s mine, I’m reading it.” “You’re reading this?” He was surprised, he laughed and he put his hand on my head again like he did the first time. In the distance I saw the other workers watching us curiously. He flicked through the book but he didn’t look at the first page. He just asked, “Do you
understand
this stuff?” “Sometimes,” I said, and snatched it back in a hurry. He was thrilled, really impressed, and he touched me again, he was always so careful not to touch the other workers but it was like with me it was O.K. Then he took out his wallet again, the one that was always stuffed full of money like it was weighing him down and he wanted to get rid of it. He took out a hundred-pound note and said, “Go and buy yourself some pyjamas and a toothbrush and come back here at four o’clock after the others have gone and I’ll pick you up. I’ll tell Hamid you won’t be going back to the village tonight.” “But I can go straight to your house,” I said. He was surprised. “Do you know where it is?” I reminded him that he’d once sent me to his house to fetch a briefcase, he didn’t remember but he said, “All right, come straight to the house at four o’clock.” “O.K.,” I said, “but what kind of pyjamas do you want me to buy?” He laughed. “The pyjamas are for you, not for me.” I knew that but I only asked him because I was getting all mixed up I was so happy. How happy I was suddenly.