The Lover (52 page)

“Pack your belongings and bring them here,” I tell him quietly.

He goes to his room and returns with two big cases.

So, he really did mean to leave –

And with property –

We go out, closing the door behind us, leaving the old lady lying on the floor, covered with a sheet, newspapers scattered about her. For a moment it seems there’s a slight movement there, but it’s a newspaper stirring in the breeze. The Morris
sinks under the weight of Na’im’s cases. The engine won’t start, but I keep on trying, playing with the accelerator. At last I get a spark and start the engine.

But what to do now?

Where to?

A grey evening in spite of the clear skies, thin smoke covering the town, a
hamsin
wind. We’re still stationary, the engine
running
, charging up the almost dead battery. Na’im sits beside me, listening to the engine. What’s he thinking? He’s a stranger really, another world, and I thought he was close to me. No, I’m not angry with him. From his point of view, why not? And anyway, what use are words, I must just get him away from here.

But where to?

“How long has this been going on with you and Dafi?”

I don’t look at him.

“Only today …”

“Did you sleep together?”

He doesn’t know … he thinks so, isn’t sure, doesn’t know … this was the first time in his life … if that’s what they call it … he isn’t sure … he thinks so …

He stammers, his voice shaking, as if he’s about to burst into tears. I remember how he stood and cried outside the bathroom.

He’s become a little lover in the course of the year –

I feel a sudden stab of pain. Must get him away from here at once.

I switch on the lights, the engine falters, coughing.

The lights are weak but I start to drive. I feel something mechanical in my movements, something perverse, I’m about to do something stupid, so I drive very slowly, very carefully.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks.

I don’t answer.

This car’s going to fall apart under me and yet I can’t bring myself to leave it. I’ve spent too much time searching for it up and down the land.

At a petrol station I fill the tank, my wallet almost empty, I’ve been spending money like water these last few days. I buy a map as well, unfold it on the wheel and calculate the distance to the border.

Lunacy, a stupid idea, to throw him across the border. And yet
I drive north, passing through Acre and Nahariya, following the road north.

The night grows clearer, the headlights are dim on the narrow road. Suddenly there are searchlights, roadblocks, half-tracks, machine guns and soldiers, the frontier guard, Circassians, Druze.

“Where are you heading?”

I look at Na’im.

“Peki’in,” he says.

“You’re on the wrong road. Get out of the car!”

They search us thoroughly, everything arouses their suspicion, me, Na’im, the car, they shine their flashlights into the car, taking everything out, searching under the seats. Everything is stripped, the suitcases are opened, old clothes from generations past are scattered on the road, they’re astonished to find the big hat, they examine the tassels, the severed side curls.

“But who are you?” they almost shout.

Na’im pulls out his identity card, I search for mine.

In the end they send us back, showing us the way to the village. After half an hour, the road stops, on the hillside the dim lights of a little village.

“This is it …” he says.

I put him down.

“Go to your father’s house. Tell him you’ve finished working for me.”

And then he starts quietly weeping, explaining that he’s willing to get married, not just to be in love.

In love? What’s he talking about, the world’s gone mad. How old are they?

“In our village … at this age …” he tries to explain, the tears still flowing.

I smile.

“Go, go, tell your Ether to send you to school …”

He really does love her. He fell in love quietly and I didn’t sense it.

He starts to go, carrying the two cases. The headlights lose him, he disappears around a bend in the road, I try to turn the car but the engine goes dead. The lights fade. The battery is absolutely dead.

I take Asya’s battery, lift the hood and change the batteries,
unfastening and replacing the screws with my fingers. But even now there’s no response from the engine, her battery too has gone dead these last months, I hadn’t noticed.

A smell of fields around, the sky full of stars, a broken side road. Somewhere in Galilee.

Old lives, new lives –

He will go and I shall have to start from the beginning.

My state of mind –

Standing beside a dead old car from ’47 and there’s nobody to save me.

I must look for Hamid –

But still I don’t move. Silence envelops me, deep stillness, it’s as if I’m deaf.

He could have killed me but he didn’t kill me, didn’t strike me, didn’t touch me he was sorry or he was afraid back home in the village I’d have bit the dust.

Great God, thank you God –

It was so sweet, only now I understand how good it was. Honey and butter to the very end and at once how wildly she kissed how she tore my shirt. Dafi Dafi Dafi Dafi I could shout your name all night and how I suddenly sighed what happened to me such shame sighing and sighing and she just gazing at me my love –

I fall at your feet –

This warm dust the smell of the village and down below a new desire awakening –

I kneel before you God –

It was so good and wonderful so good Dafi Dafi Dafi

Now to go home to the village and say to Father “I have come”

To say hello to the donkeys

What do I care if they don’t let me see her I shall remember her a thousand years I shall not forget

I miss her already –

I’ve been burned with kindness –

And he doesn’t move from there. He’s switched off the lights.
From behind a fence of cactus I see him lift the hood and try to start up. Not moving … a big tired shadow … stuck …

Let him work a little, he’s forgotten how to work –

“Go back to school” he said and I’ve forgotten what school is. A good man, a good and tired man, and they got on poor Adnan’s nerves so –

It’s possible to love them and to hurt them too –

He’s stuck there he can’t do anything. But if I go back to help him he’ll attack me better to go and rouse Hamid.

The people will wonder what’s happened to Na’im that he’s suddenly so full of hope.

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A.B. Yehoshua is the author of nine novels and a collection of short stories. One of Israel’s top novelists, he has won prizes worldwide for all his novels, and in the UK was shortlisted in 2005 for the first Man Booker International Prize. He continues to be an outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies.

The Continuing Silence of a Poet:
The Collected Stories of A.B. Yehoshua

The Lover

A Late Divorce

Five Seasons

Mr Mani

Open Heart

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

The Liberated Bride

A Woman in Jerusalem

Friendly Fire