The Lover (4 page)

“Well, what’s the matter? The bell is ringing.” Yes, it really is the bell, as if from the sky, like the ringing of cowbells. And I have no books and no notes and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be teaching or which classroom I’m supposed to be in. I say to him, “This is a real revolution …” and as always he echoes my words:

“A revolution … precisely, a revolution …” He laughs. “People don’t understand that … come and see …”

And suddenly he has time to spare despite the bell, leading me to a little cave, a crevice really, and there under a pile of stones is a bundle of page proofs for a book. There the true revolution is written. But the text itself I recognize as the text of his old handbook for the matriculation exams in Bible studies. Simplified explanations of passages set for the exams.

And meanwhile there is silence all around. The great camp is still, students sitting in tight circles and the teachers knitting in the centre and someone reading from a book. I feel tense and
excited. The word “revolution” will not leave me alone. I want to find my class. I want desperately to teach. Such a pain in my chest from wanting to be with my pupils. I know that they are beside the little acorn tree. I go in search of them but now I can’t remember what an acorn tree looks like, I’m staring at the ground searching for acorns. Going down a hill slope to a big wadi. It seems the enemy lines are not far away. Not children patrolling here but grown men, soldiers. Grey-haired men with helmets and firearms. Advance positions among the rocks. The sky clouding over towards evening.

I ask about the little acorn and they show me a little acorn on the ground, light brown. “We are your class.” They laugh. I don’t mind talking to adults. On the contrary. And the faces are familiar, fathers of children in the seventh and eighth grades who come to parents’ meetings. And they are sitting on the ground but not looking at me, their backs are turned and their eyes are on the wadi. They are so uneasy. And I want to say something of general significance about the importance of studying history. Someone stands up and points to the wadi. A suspicious
movement
there. It’s an old man wearing a hat and he’s walking down the wadi with such determination, receding in the distance towards the enemy lines. My heart stands still. He looks like my father. Is he here too? Does he belong here or not? Walking erect and excitedly down the rock-strewn ravine. What sort of a revolution is this, I wonder, what are they talking about? It’s a war, it’s only a war.

A stone laid on a white sheet. A big stone. They turn the stone wash the stone feed the stone and the stone urinates slowly. Turn the stone clean the stone water the stone and again the stone urinates. The sun disappears. Darkness. Quiet. A stone weeping why am I only a stone weeping stone. She has no peace begins to stir rolls without sound hovers over a dirty grey floor a great desert there is nothing a giant swamp a dead burned land. Wanders till she stumbles on tight ropes cables in a dark tent touching a spade. A stone halting a stone sinking. A root stirs in the stone, embracing crumbling entwining within. A stone not a
stone dying and sprouting a stone sprouting a stone a plant among plants among stillness burrowing in the dust rising from darkness a strong branch and more branches. Strong growth a plant clad in leaves among leaves. A great sun outside. Day. A great old plant on a bed. They turn the plant clean the plant give tea to the plant and the plant still lives.

Actually it was us who sent him to the army, he received no orders, nor could he have. Two hours after the alarm was sounded he was already with us. Apparently we didn’t hear his knock and instead of waiting he opened the door with a key that Asya had given him. So he’s already got a key to the house, I thought, but I said nothing, just watched him as he came into the room, confused, agitated, talking in a loud voice. As if the war that was breaking out was directed personally against him. He asked for explanations, and when it became clear that we had nothing to tell him he seized the radio and began frantically searching for news, for information, going from station to station, French, English, even pausing for a while over a Greek or a Turkish broadcast in his attempt to put some facts together.

He was growing pale, his hands shaking, he couldn’t relax.

For a moment I thought, he’s going to faint, like that time in the garage.

But there was also the freedom with which he behaved in the house. The way he touched things, going to the kitchen and helping himself to food, raiding the fridge. He knew exactly where to find the big atlas when he wanted to look at a map. And there was the way he behaved towards Asya, interrupting her in mid-sentence, touching her.

In recent months pictures of that evening have come into my mind again and again. The last pictures of him before his
disappearance
.

The twilight hour, him standing in the middle of the big room, his white shirt straggling out of his black trousers, his thin delicate back a little exposed. The big atlas open in his hands and him standing there explaining something to us, and she, her face flushed with embarrassment and fear, nervously watching,
following
his movements as if afraid that he’ll break something. This is a real lover, I thought, she’s really fallen for him.

And in the middle of all this, the war breaking out with such force. The certainty of a new reality overtaking us, there would be no going back. The evening came down quickly and we put no lights on in the house so we could leave the windows open. Every plane flying overhead sent him rushing out to the balcony. Was it one of ours or one of theirs, he had to know. He even gave me a piece of paper and asked me to draw a MiG and a Mirage and a Phantom, and he would take the miserable sketch outside with him, his eyes fixed on the sky.

“What do you mean one of theirs?” growled Dafi, who was sitting all the time in a corner, scowling, not taking her eyes off him.

“But their air force hasn’t been destroyed,” he explained with a grim smile. “This time it will be a different story.”

A defeatist? Not exactly. But there was something strange about him. He was interested only in peculiar practical questions. What was the range of their missiles, could they blow up the ports from sea, would there be food rationing, how soon would he be able to leave the country? He had been abroad for more than ten years, he had no idea what goes on here in wartime. He had old-fashioned, European ideas.

I was patient towards him. I answered his questions, tried to reassure him. Watching Asya, who sat on the edge of the sofa under the lamp, which had an old straw hat for a shade, a stack of exercise books on her lap, a red pencil in her hand, trying to calm herself, I know, but not succeeding, a grey woman with white streaks in her hair, wearing an old dressing gown and flat slippers, her face drawn and the tension filling it with light and power. In love despite herself, against her will, confused by her love, ashamed perhaps. Saying hardly a word, just getting up from time to time and fetching something to eat or drink, coffee for me, fruit juice for Dafi, a sandwich for Gabriel, and all the time the endless stream of garbled information – reports from correspondents, television interviews, foreign stations, news pouring out from all directions but obstinately repeating itself. The phone rings. It’s the garage foreman, telling me he’s been called up. I myself phone several of the mechanics at home, it
turns out they’ve all been called up, some of them as long ago as yesterday afternoon.

I return from the study and find him sitting in the kitchen. The blinds are closed, he’s drinking soup, she sits beside him, watching him.

Establishing himself among us –

He smiles at me apologetically, fear makes him hungry, he admits. He’s always been that way, and he scoops up the rest of the soup into his mouth.

It seems that he’s decided to spend the night here, if we don’t object. He’s prepared to sleep on the floor, or on the sofa, wherever we put him. It’s just that in his grandmother’s house there’s no radio, and the house is directly opposite the port, the classic target for a first attack. In the First World War they always attacked the ports first….

He turns to Asya, as if asking for confirmation. But she doesn’t respond, she looks anxiously at me.

There was something laughable about him, but something pathetic as well, like a lost child. He will spend the whole war in this house, I thought, without anger but with a kind of
excitement
, a feeling that anything was possible now. I kept my distance.

Nearly midnight. A phone call from Erlich, the old cashier at the garage. He’s in high spirits, informs me that he’s been called up. He starts to explain to me where the accounts are kept, what our bank balance is, how much is owed to us, what to do about the wages, you’d think he was going away to fight on the other side of the world. A fussy, tiresome old
y
eke,
though not without humour. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” I try to reassure him but he isn’t reassured. In financial matters he doesn’t trust me. Finally he announces that he’ll come into the garage himself tomorrow morning, he’s being posted not far away, near the refineries.

“They’re drafting the entire population … really …” I announced. They were sitting in the dark. “And what about you?” I turned to him, not meaning to imply anything.

But he started to mumble, he doesn’t know, obviously he has no unit to go to, it’s true that at the airport they gave him a certificate to take to an army depot within two weeks, but he
had no intention of staying for two weeks, he hadn’t known then that his grandmother wasn’t dead but had only lost consciousness. He hopes there’ll be no problems about leaving the country …

“There will be,” snapped Dafi. She had been strangely silent since he came into the house. “Why shouldn’t there be? They’ll think you’re a deserter …”

And he burst out laughing, in the dark, I couldn’t see his face, he laughed and laughed, but when he realized that we weren’t laughing he stopped, got up from his chair, lit a cigarette and started pacing about.

“Wait a few more days,” said Asya, “maybe it’ll all be over.” I say nothing. Something in the tone of her voice fascinates me. The midnight news. Nothing new. Reports we’ve already heard. At ten to one the music starts, marching songs. “Let’s go to bed,” I say, but it’s a crazy night, how can anyone sleep? Dafi goes and shuts herself in her room. Asya draws the curtains in the study, switches on the light, makes up a bed for Gabriel. I take the transistor, undress, get into bed with the radio. The window is open. The door to the balcony is open. Radios whisper from all the dark houses. Asya is taking her time, I get up and go out into the passage. I see him standing half naked beside the door to the study and she’s talking to him in a whisper, excitedly. She sees me and breaks off at once. A few minutes later she comes into the bedroom, undresses quickly, lies down beside me.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask suddenly, referring to the war.

“For the time being he can stay here … do you mind?”

I look at her, she closes her eyes. I do the same. The radio whispers beside me, from time to time I wake, turn up the volume, put it to my ear, listen, and go back to sleep. In the house there’s a constant movement of bare feet. Dafi is the first to start pacing about, then there’s the sound of his footsteps, Asya gets out of bed and I hear her moving about, there are whispers, a mixture of fear and stifled desire. Sweetness mixed with distant blood and fire.

Suddenly weakness overcomes me –

I rise at first light. Asya and Dafi are asleep. From the study comes the sound of lively singing. Another last picture of him, engraved deep in my memory. He’s half sitting, half lying, a sheet
over his head, the transistor under the sheet playing marching songs. Has he gone mad?

I touched him lightly. He pulled the sheet away, revealing his face, no sign of surprise, but his eyes still closed.

“Are they advancing? Eh? What’s happening there?”

He was wearing my old pyjama trousers. I stood beside him in the heavy silence that is mine, that I know, that I control, the silence that calms the people around me.

“You’d better go,” I said quietly, almost gently.

“Where?”

“To clarify your position … you may have problems leaving the country.”

Deep anxiety in his eyes. He’s cute, I thought, this lover, this poor shaken lover.

“Do you think they really need me … haven’t they got enough men to be going on with?”

“They won’t send you to the front … don’t worry, but you must get your documentation sorted out, show yourself willing.”

“Perhaps in a few more days … tomorrow …”

“No, go right now. This war may end suddenly and it’ll be too late, you’ll be in trouble …”

“The war may end suddenly?” He was amazed.

“Why not?”

Asya was standing behind me, listening to our conversation, bare-footed, her hair in a mess, her nightdress unbuttoned, forgetting herself completely.

I touched his bare shoulder. “Come and have something to eat, and make an early start, there’ll be crowds of people there today.”

He looked stunned, but he got up at once and dressed, and I went and dressed too. I lent him my shaving kit, he washed and came into the kitchen, I made breakfast for him and for Asya, who was pacing about nervously. The three of us ate in silence, bread and cheese, coffee and more coffee. It was six o’clock. The radio began to broadcast a morning prayer, and then the day’s chapter from the Bible.

He was most surprised, listening with close attention, with fear almost. He didn’t know that this is how the day’s broadcasting starts here.

“Is this because of the war?”

“No, it’s like this every day.” I smiled. He smiled back at me, sometimes he could be quite charming.

I went outside with him. The blue Morris was parked close behind my car, like a puppy clinging to its mother. I asked him to open the hood, I checked the oil, the fan belt, examined the battery. I told him to start the engine. The sound of the little old engine, vintage 1947, which over the years had developed an odd little whine. The heartbeat of a child, but a healthy child.