The Lover (3 page)

Mommy still hasn’t come in –

I switched off the TV and went to have a shower. When I’m naked under the running water I really feel as if I’m drugged, time becomes sweet and shapeless, I could stand like this for hours. Once Daddy broke down the door because Mommy thought I’d fainted or something. I’d been standing there maybe an hour and I hadn’t heard them calling me. Now the water
slowly goes cold. I’ve emptied the tank. Mommy will be mad at me. I dry myself, put on my pyjamas and switch off the lights in the house. I go into their bedroom, put out Daddy’s bedside lamp and pull the newspaper from underneath him. His beard is big and bushy, there are white hairs in it, glinting in the light from the passage. I feel sorry for him as I watch him sleeping, and it isn’t natural for children to pity their parents. I go into my room, take another look at the maths homework, perhaps inspiration will come from heaven, but the sky is dark, without a single star, and there’s a light rain falling. Since our maths teacher was killed in the war and they brought in that kid from the Technion I’ve lost all interest in the subject. It isn’t for me. I can’t even begin to understand the questions, never mind the answers.

I pull down the blinds and switch on the transistor, it’s that crooner Sarussi. Slowly I pack my school bag, leaving out the maths book on purpose. I’ll say I forgot it, that’ll be the fourth time this month. Next time I’ll have to think up a new excuse. At the moment Baby Face doesn’t say anything, he blushes as if he’s the one who’s lying, not me. He’s still a bit nervous, scared of getting involved, but he’s beginning to gain some confidence – there are disturbing signs. Mommy still hasn’t come home. Such a long teachers’ meeting. They must be hatching great plots against us.

It’s quiet in the house. Deep silence. And then the phone rings. I run to it but Daddy answers before I get to it. Since that man disappeared I’ve never been able to get to the phone first, Mommy or Daddy always pounce on it, they’ve even got an extension beside their bed.

I pick up the receiver in the study, and I hear Daddy talking to Tali. She’s startled to hear his sleepy voice. I join in the
conversation
at once. “What happened?” She’s forgotten what the history test tomorrow is about. That’s what she and Osnat came around for this afternoon, to learn some history, and somehow they forgot all about it. Me too. But I’m not worried about history, maybe it’s the only subject that I’m pretty sure about, a talent I got from Mommy; all sorts of pointless and trivial facts stick to me. I tell her the page numbers and she starts to protest, as if I’m the history teacher. “That’s far too much, what’s the big idea? Can’t do all that.”

Then she calms down, starts whispering something about Osnat, but a strange whisper rises from the phone, like heavy breathing. Daddy’s fallen asleep with the receiver. Tali shrieks. The girl’s a total hysteric. I put the phone down, hurry to Daddy, take the receiver from the pillow and put it back in its place. If only I had a fraction of his ability to sleep.

“Go to sleep …” he says suddenly.

“Yes, right away … Mommy hasn’t come in yet.”

“She’ll be home soon. Don’t wait up for her. You’ll be worn out in the morning.”

Back to my room. I start to sort it out, to turn over the day, scraps, feelings, words and laughter, all are like a thin layer of rubbish that I gather up and throw into the basket. I start tidying up the bed, airing it, I find Osnat’s purse and a tampon in a nylon bag that must be Tali’s, she carries it around with her
everywhere
. At last the room has some sort of shape. I put out the main light, switch on the bedside lamp. I pick up the book on the Age of Enlightenment and get into bed with it, to prepare for the test. The letters go blurred, my head goes heavy, my breathing heavy too, the moment of grace, grab it, wonderful, I’m asleep.

And then Mommy arrives, her footsteps so quick on the stairs sound as if she’s returning from an orgy, not a teachers’ meeting. The door opens. At once I call out, “Mommy?” She comes into my room, her coat is wet, a stack of papers under her arm, her face grey, she’s very tired.

“Asleep yet?”

“Not me.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Then go to sleep.”

“Mommy?”

“Not now … you can see I’m exhausted.”

Lately that’s been her constant refrain. A terrible exhaustion. You can’t talk to her, she’s always busy, as if she were running the whole world. Now her quick footsteps in the house, moving about in the dim light, taking something out of the fridge, undressing in the bathroom, tries to shower but turns it off immediately. Quickly I switch off the light so she won’t come in
and shout at me for using all the hot water. She goes into the dark bedroom, Daddy mutters something, she answers, and they are silent.

A quiet married life –

The last light in the house has gone out. I close my eyes, still hoping. Everything is quiet. My mind at rest, my school bag packed, the house locked, the shutters closed. The street is quiet. Everything is right for sleep and maybe I really have slept for a minute or two and then time passes, and I understand that I’m really not asleep, that the little flame burning down inside the soul won’t leave me alone. I begin to stir restlessly and the strange wakefulness gets stronger. I turn the pillow over, change position every quarter of an hour, then every few minutes. An hour passes. The luminous hands touch midnight. That’s it. You might just as well get up, my dear. Poor Dafi, it’s a white night and there’s no point in fighting it, get up and wake up.

The path of light on sleepless nights. First the small light beside the bed, then the main light in the bedroom, the light in the passage, and the white light in the kitchen and last of all the light inside the fridge.

Midnight feast. What use is a diet during the day if at night you gobble up four hundred calories on the quiet? A slice of cake, cheese, a piece of chocolate and the last of the milk. Then, heavy and drowsy, I sink down on the sofa in the dark sitting room, facing the big window, opposite me is a mighty ship, a brightly lit palace, under the mountain on the invisible sea. A wonderful vision of people awake. I go to fetch a pillow and a blanket, I come back and the ship has already vanished, she’s gone before you even realize she’s moving.

Once I managed to get some sleep on the sofa in the sitting room, but not tonight. The upholstery scratches me. I lie there for a quarter of an hour, half an hour. I reach out for the radio. What language is this? Greek? Turkish? Yugoslav? The songs are nice. And the disc jockey has a sexy voice, chattering away. Old women are talking to him on the phone, their voices shaky, they make him laugh, he’s in fits of laughter, quite uninhibited. I almost join in. Well, it seems not everyone’s asleep. Suddenly he fades out, there’s an ad for Coca-Cola, for Fiat, a last song, an
announcer’s voice, she sounds half asleep, seems to be saying good night. A whistle. The station’s closed down. It’s already after one o’clock.

The clock creeps on, five hours at least until first light. I sit in the chair, I can’t even lie down, I’m close to tears. What about the man who types? I almost forgot him. The man who types at night in the house across the wadi. I go to the bathroom and through the little window that looks out across the wadi I search for his lighted window. There he is, that’s him. Three cheers for the man who types at night. Sitting at his desk and working hard, my nocturnal friend.

I discovered him by chance a few weeks ago. A bachelor? Married? I know nothing about him. In the daytime the curtains are drawn, he appears only at night, alone there in the light, working at something, writing without a break. Every time I see him I’m determined to visit the neighbourhood across the wadi, find out which is his house and what his name is. I’d phone him and say, “Mr. Typist, I watch you at night from the other side of the wadi. What are you writing? A thesis? A novel? What’s it about? You should write about insomnia, a subject that hasn’t been studied enough. The insomnia of a fifteen-year-old girl, for example, a student in the sixth grade, who lies awake every fourth night.”

Tears in my eyes –

I get dressed in a hurry, changing into a thick pair of woollen trousers, putting a big scarf over the pyjama top, taking an overcoat and Daddy’s fur hat. I put out the lights in the house and open the front door, holding the key in my clenched fist, going down the dark steps into the street. A little night stroll, I won’t go far. A hundred metres down the hill to the roundabout where Yigal was killed and back again. If Mommy and Daddy knew about this going for walks at night they’d kill me. It’s
two-thirty
. I’m in bedroom slippers, my feet are cold and shivering. I walk down a street that’s dead and damp, looking at the stars. Suddenly a car with lights full on comes racing down the slope, passes me and stops about five metres from me. I freeze. The car jerks backwards. A powerful torch flashes on, searching for me. Maybe they think I’m a little hooker. I’m seized by panic, the key drops into a puddle, someone jumps out of the car, a tall
smiling figure. I pick up the key and run, hurrying up the steps, into the house, panting, I lock the door, undress in a hurry, get into bed and pull the blanket over my head.

How will it end, this night life? What’s eating me?
Everything’s
fine, after all. Good friends, comforts at home, boys starting to love me in secret, I know, they don’t say anything but they can’t hide it, those furtive glances in the classroom, those eyes following my legs. Someone from the eighth grade even tried to get off with me. A big boy with a dark face and pimples on his forehead grabbed me once by the school fence and kept me there for a whole hour, and talked. I don’t know about what. Crazy. Until I got away from him.

So why is it that I can’t sleep, even now at half-past three in the morning after I’ve gone through the whole programme of night activities and I’m exhausted, and tomorrow I’ve got seven hours in school and a test in history and maths that I haven’t prepared for.

I throw the blanket off again, getting out of bed heavily and clumsily, putting on the light, stumbling over the furniture, meaning to make a noise. I go to the bathroom for a drink of water, looking bleary-eyed at the man who types. He isn’t typing now, he’s sitting there resting his head on the typewriter. Even he’s asleep. I go to their bedroom, stand in the doorway. They’re fast asleep, like little children. I begin to wail softly, “Mommy, Daddy,” and then I go away.

At first, when I started having sleepless nights, I used to wake them up, Mommy or Daddy, whichever one I chose, sometimes both of them. Not really knowing why, in despair, wanting them to stop sleeping and to think about me. Mommy used to answer me at once, as if she’d been awake the whole time waiting for me. But it wasn’t like that. She’d just finish the sentence and fall straight back to sleep.

It takes time to wake Daddy up. At first he grunts and mumbles nonsense, he just can’t understand who is talking to him, you’d think he had a dozen children, I have to shake him to wake him up. But once he wakes up, he’s wide awake. He gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom and then he comes into my room, sits down beside me on the chair and starts asking questions. “What’s up? What’s the trouble? I’ll sit with you now
until you go to sleep. He covers me up, puts out the light, puts a small pillow behind his head and slowly drops off to sleep. I feel sorry for him. After a quarter of an hour he wakes up and whispers “Are you asleep, Dafi?” I’m wide awake but I don’t say anything. Then he waits a little longer and goes back to his bed, stumbling like a sleepwalker.

I don’t wake them up anymore. What’s the point? Once when I went in to wake him, he said, “Go away, I told you to get out of here.” It was in such a clear voice. I was startled and hurt. “What?” I said, but then I realized he was talking in his sleep. I whispered, “Daddy?” but he didn’t answer.

Tears. Good morning. The tears again. Under the blanket I cry, out of self-pity, weary, bitter tears. It’s four o’clock in the morning. What’s going to happen?

I raise the blind, opening the window a little. The night lies cruel and endless on the world. The sky clears a bit, heavy clouds shift slowly, piling up on the horizon. Morning breeze. But I’m getting hotter and hotter. I throw off the blanket completely, undo the buttons of my pyjama top, baring my aching chest to the cool wind. I throw the pillow down on the floor and lie there like a corpse, arms outstretched, legs spread-eagled, and slowly, with the smell of the rain as the sky grows pale, I start to doze. Not really asleep, just feeling myself grow lighter. My limbs disappear one by one. Leg, arm, back, the other arm, hair, head, I shrink into a tiny crystal, into my essence. What refuses to disappear is that cruel flame, no bigger than a dry little coin.

And when Mommy wakes me in the morning her voice is vigorous, she draws the blanket from my face (Daddy must have covered me up before he left the house) saying, “Dafi, Dafi, get up now. You’ll be late.”

I search for my eyes. Where are they? Where did my eyes disappear to? I roll about in a cauldron of lead, searching for my eyes to open them. I hear Mommy in the shower and the hiss of the kettle.

When at last they are wrenched open, cracks in white-hot steel, the window is open to the light, to the high grey winter sky. Between the sky and the earth, hovering like a hit space ship, is the little purple cloud, the hateful cloud that robbed me of my sleep.

Mommy comes in, dressed, her bag in her hand.

“Dafi, are you crazy? How much more can you sleep?”

What sort of a trip? A school trip but more than that in a camp near a big mountain city, a mixture of Safad and Jerusalem, a big lake visible in the distance. And a crowd of young people, grey tents full of schoolchildren not only from our school but from others too, former pupils from the senior grades of my old school dressed in khaki, eternal youth training with sticks, standing and beating in long lines. For it seems there was a war and there were soldiers on the hills around us. Midday and I’m walking through this crowded camp looking for the teachers’ room, stepping over tent ropes, among thorns and rocks and smoke-blackened camp cauldrons till I see the faces of children from Dafi’s class and I see Sarah as well and Yemimah and Vardah in long broad khaki skirts and the janitor and Yochi and the secretaries; the entire staff of the school has moved here complete with typewriters and filing systems. And there’s Shwartzy dressed in a khaki British uniform looking young and sunburned and impressive with a stick in his hand.