The Lover (30 page)

And she led the bewildered Na’im into the bathroom, the poor fellow was getting used to being sent into the bathroom every time he entered a Jewish house. She sat me down in the big room and brought in plates full of biscuits, nuts and almonds. She made coffee and brought it to me.

“Don’t bother.”

“I’ve already bothered. I’m not going to throw it all away.”

The coffee was excellent and she charmed me with her courtesy, with her thin smile. I explained to her my intention of patrolling the roads at night, towing in cars and looking for Gabriel. I told her that of course she could make use of the boy, he could help with the cleaning, go shopping, do minor repairs if necessary. “A good boy,” I said. “You’ll see.”

“When they’re young, perhaps, before they join Fatah.”

I laughed.

Then she put on her reading glasses and picked up a heap of newspapers, most of them copies of
Ma’ariv
and
Yediot
Aharonot
of the last few weeks, and she began leafing through them excitedly. After a while she took off her glasses and turned to me with a question.

“Perhaps you can help me?”

“By all means.”

“Tell me, what is this Kissinger?”

“What?”

“What is he? Who is he? Before I went into the hospital I’d never heard of him. Now that I’ve recovered the papers are full of him, they never mention anyone else. Why?”

I told her about him.

“A Jew?” She was amazed, didn’t believe it. “That’s
impossible
! An apostate, perhaps … how could they let him? What do you say? Isn’t he ashamed to make so much trouble?”

“It’s not so bad …” I tried to calm her.

“What’s not so bad?” she protested. “Read what the papers say about him. Somebody ought to talk to his father.”

Na’im came out of the bathroom, scowled at us.

“What’s this!” she said, in Arabic. “So quickly? You’ve just been playing with the water. Come here … let’s see how well you’ve washed … behind your ears, isn’t that part of you? Next time I shall wash you … Don’t look so surprised, I’ve washed bigger boys than you … now sit down and eat.”

She was a real live wire. Drowning in newspapers and politics, all the time pumping me for information about politics and parties, complaining that she’d missed the election, she’d never missed one before. Even unconscious she would have known how to vote.

“How would you have voted?” I asked with a smile.

“Not for the Communists anyway … perhaps for that slut … what’s her name? The one who sticks up for women … perhaps for someone else … but that should be a secret, shouldn’t it?” And she winked at me.

Na’im sat there in silence, eating biscuits and drinking coffee. I’d noticed before how relaxed he could be, he had an
astonishing
ability to adapt himself to new surroundings. Watching her suspiciously but calmly, picking up the paper that lay in front of him and starting to read it with deep concentration, trying to ignore us.

She looked at him in astonishment, whispering to me, “What’s this? Can he read Hebrew or is he just pretending?”

“He knows Hebrew yery well … he’s been to school … he knows poems by Bialik by heart …”

She was furious.

“What does he want with Bialik? What use is it to him? Oh, we’re ruining these Arabs of ours … they’ll stop working and write poetry instead … but if he can read then he can read to me a little … my eyes get tired so quickly. And there are so many interesting things in the newspapers …”

She took the paper from him, leafed through it and handed it back to him.

“Leave off the pictures now. Read the article by Rosenblum on the first page. He’s a wicked man but he knows the truth.”

I stood up from my seat. I was charmed by her.

“You see, Na’im, you’ll have interesting work here.” But he didn’t smile.

“Are you going already?” She was disappointed, didn’t want me to leave. “What’s the time? Drink some more coffee … eat some supper perhaps … your wife won’t have cooked anything for you yet … when should I put him to bed?”

I laughed again.

“Oh, he’ll go to bed by himself. He’ll be fifteen soon … he can look after himself.”

“But all the same … will you be coming to fetch him tonight?”

“Perhaps.”

And suddenly she clutched at me, unsteady, weeping.

“I wish I could come with you to search for him … so kind of
you to care about me, not turning your back on me, like all the others.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, she smelled of baby soap.

And Na’im was sprawled in his chair, ignoring us, sipping his coffee, turning the pages of the newspaper one after the other.

I told Father and Mother, “He wants me again, the garage boss. I’ll be staying with an old woman because he wants me at night for special work, but he can’t say when he’ll be bringing me back.”

“Is his boiler out of order again?” Mother asked, because I’d told them too that I’d helped him repair his boiler that Friday night, not that I’d broken into the house of an old woman who turned out to be at home.

“No, he’s starting to tow in broken-down cars, he wants to catch new customers when their cars are smashed up, looks like he’s expanding the garage. And I’m helping him with the tools and things like that.”

And they were very impressed, really proud. And Father said right away, “You see, Na’im, you wanted to stay on at school, wasting your time, it’s not yet five months since you started working for him and already he can’t do without you.”

“He can do very well without me, he just wants me there.”

And Father went straightaway to Aunt Isha’s and came back with a big old suitcase, and Mother started folding up my clothes and putting them in, putting in more and more clothes like I was never coming back. But I don’t have that many clothes, the suitcase was still only a third full. Then Father looked inside the case and called Mother aside and they went into the room that used to be Adnan’s and whispered a bit, then they called me in and I went in and saw Adnan’s clothes lying there on the bed and they told me to undress and I undressed, and they tried some of his clothes on me, shirts and trousers and sweaters, and Mother marked with pins the places that needed shortening, and Father looked at me with tears in his eyes and started to moan, “Adnan, Adnan,” and Mother said, “Perhaps we shouldn’t do this,” but he said, “No, who else should we give his clothes to, the security
police?” And so they put some of Adnan’s clothes into the case too, and they gave me his overcoat, which had once belonged to Faiz as well, and even then the suitcase wasn’t full so Mother went out into the fields and came back with peppers, eggplants and garlic and she even put some eggs in at the top – “These are for the old lady that you’re going to live with, so she looks after you properly and feeds you.”

And they were all excited and confused and anxious but they were pleased as well that I was getting to be a real expert mechanic. And Father took me aside and said solemnly, “Wait two more weeks and then ask for a raise. Promise me.” And that night I had a bath. And in the morning they were all awake extra early and Father fetched a wheelbarrow and he put the suitcase on it and we went to the bus stop.

I saw on the bus that morning that the workers were looking at me in a shifty sort of way. The news had already gone around the village that I was going to do a special job and they were all a bit jealous of me because is there anyone who wouldn’t like to leave the village and sleep in the town and not be awakened by the cocks crowing in the morning? The only one who didn’t care at all was Hamid. He just gave me a dry sort of look, didn’t say it was good or bad, just indifferent.

I got to the garage late because I had to carry the suitcase by myself and it really slowed me down. And he saw me and told me to wait on the side. And I sat there with my suitcase the whole day, it seemed strange to me that they were all working and I was sitting there on my own, and all of them watching me from the side. And I looked at the pictures of naked women, not many changes. Only the picture of that old woman who used to be Prime Minister was torn and dirty, someone had drawn glasses on the President’s face, only the ex-President was left as he was.

After work he took me to the old woman’s house and this time we went up the stairs and she opened the door, at first I thought it was someone else, she was so clean and nicely dressed and the apartment was clean and tidy, but it really was the same woman and right from the start I saw I was going to have problems with her, that, like I heard one of the Jewish workers in the garage say about somebody, she was going to fuck my mind up, and my spirits fell.

First of all, she started talking to me in Arabic and I don’t like it when Jews speak Arabic, they make so many mistakes and it always sounds like they’re making fun of us. Those are the Jews who think they know us best, damn them. The only things they know about us are the things they can make fun of and they never have any respect even when they’re pretending to be good friends.

Straightaway she opened up the suitcase to see what was inside it and she found the eggs and the vegetables on top of the clothes. I almost wished the ground would swallow me up for the shame that Mother was causing me in front of Adam, who thought I’d brought these things to sell. And then she told me to have a bath, even though I was very clean. Only dirty people need to wash all the time, Adnan used to say. And she seemed to think I might be bringing bugs into the house, though the last time I saw fleas was in her kitchen that night and there’d been a mouse too.

But I didn’t say anything and I went to have a wash, I’d had a bath in a Jewish house before and I wasn’t afraid but I felt offended all the same. Then I went and saw the room that she’d fixed up for me and it really was a nice room with a bed and a wardrobe and a view of the bay, nothing to complain about. But I knew I wouldn’t get any peace here, she’s such an old windbag, a real political old lady, every other word she says is something about politics, she’s a newspaper nut. Can’t
understand
how she ever went into a coma, her mind is the only part of her that works, the rest of her is like a big ball of fat, she can hardly move.

And Adam liked her, laughing at everything she said, laughing happily. And that irritated me, I didn’t see anything special about her. In the meantime she brought in coffee and some cookies that were really good. These Oriental Jews know how to cook, they learned it from us Arabs.

I decided I wasn’t going to have too much to do with her, it wasn’t for her that I came to live in the city but for Dafi. I want to see her again and get to know her and fall in love with her. And I wasn’t going to get too friendly with this old woman so I sat there quietly reading
Ma’ariv
and that surprised her, she thought it was odd an Arab reading a newspaper in Hebrew. Pity
she never knew Adnan, he knew the papers by heart and he had answers to everything they said.

I’ll have to keep on my guard here, sit quietly and not get into arguments, otherwise things will be unbearable. I’m not here for politics but for love. And so I sat there quietly, pretending I didn’t care about anything, like Hamid, looking out of the window, thinking maybe I’d go to the movies if only I had some money. And at last Adam got up to go and the old woman went with him to the door and suddenly she started crying. Hanging on to him. Damn her.

So the evening began and she went into the kitchen to get a meal ready and I didn’t know if I ought to take the dirty plates off the table or not. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was here to help with the housework, I’m just a mechanic lodging with her, but I saw she really was terribly old, hardly able to walk, and groaning with every movement, and the evening light made her look all white, like a corpse. She must be over seventy, Father is seventy, and I was afraid she might suddenly drop dead so I quickly got up and picked up the dishes and took them to the kitchen and she smiled at me, a dead smile, and said:

“Sit down quietly and read the paper and I’ll make you some supper.”

I asked, “Do you have any repair job that needs doing?”

She began to think, then she bent down, nearly crawling on the floor, opening cupboards and looking for something, then she got out a small stepladder and started climbing up it. I almost shouted, “Tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you.”

And she smiled with her toothless mouth.

“You really are a good boy.”

But I didn’t want her to start talking Arabic again and I said straight out, “You can talk to me in Hebrew, no need for you to make an effort.”

She laughed. “But then you’ll end up forgetting your Arabic and your father will be angry with me.”

“I won’t forget, there’re plenty of Arabs even in Haifa.”

Then she smiled her dead smile again and told me to climb up the ladder and look in the top cupboards to see if there was a good bulb to put in the socket in the dining room so we’d have more light and we’d be able to see what we were eating. And I
went up the ladder right away and looked in the cupboard and there were maybe twenty bulbs there, all of them burned out. I don’t know why she kept them, maybe she thought she’d get a refund on them at the supermarket. I had to try them all before I found one that worked.

In the meantime she was cooking supper, mutton with rice and beans, great stuff, really tasty, Arab food. And she fussed around me all the time, not eating herself, going and fetching salt, pepper, pickled cucumber, bread. I kept telling her, “I’ll fetch it myself,” but she said, “You sit there quietly and eat.”

The last course was sweet
sahalab.
And she was walking slowly, dragging her feet. When the meal was finished I took the dirty dishes off the table and said to her, “All right, I’ll wash them.” But she wouldn’t let me, like she was afraid I’d break something. So I said, “O.K., at least let me take out the rubbish.”

And I went out to empty the rubbish and it was already dark in the street, and I walked along with the empty can to have a look at the street, to see what there was, who the neighbours were, what the shops were like.