The Lover (7 page)

And what’s wrong with a garage? Not only are we never without a car, we’re the only family with two cars, some of the children in the class don’t even have one car at home. And Daddy has a lot of money too, though you don’t see much evidence of it at home. This is something that I’ve realized in the last few months. I don’t think even Mommy realizes how much money Daddy’s got. For all her education it seems there are some things that just aren’t clear to her.

A strange couple. I wonder why they ever got together. What do they want? I don’t remember ever seeing them embracing or kissing. They hardly talk to each other.

But they don’t quarrel either –

Like two strangers –

Is this what they call love?

Again and again I used to ask them, together and separately, how it was that they met, and it was always the same story from both of them. They were in the same class at school for many years. But surely that’s no reason to stay joined until death, to have children.

In their school they weren’t particularly friendly. Daddy finished studying in the sixth grade, as he makes a point of reminding me whenever I ask him for help with my homework. Mommy of course went on studying. After a few years they met again and got married.

As if someone forced them –

When do they make love, for example, if they make love at all?

On this side of the wall I don’t hear so much as a whisper –

And at night I walk around the house a little –

Strange thoughts, maybe, sad thoughts.

Sometimes I’m terrified they might split up and leave me all alone, like Tali, whose father disappeared years ago, leaving her with her mother, who can’t stand her.

I hear their breathing. Daddy moans softly. At the window faint signs of dawn. Accustomed to the darkness, my eyes pick out every detail. My legs feel weak. Sometimes I wish I could go and crawl in between them under the blanket, like when I was a child.

But it’s no longer possible –

The faint, early chirping of an early bird in the wadi –

PART TWO

How to describe her? Where do I start? Simple, the colour of her eyes, her hair, her style of dress, her habits, her manner of speech, her feet. Where do I start? My wife. So familiar, not only from twenty-five years of marriage but also from the years before that, childhood, youth, from the days that I remember in the first class of the little school near the harbour, the green and stuffy huts with their smell of milk and rotten bananas, the red-painted swings, the big sand pit, a derelict car with a giant steering wheel, the broken fence. Days of endless summer even in winter. Like in a blurred picture, no distinction between me and the world around me. She is there among the children, sometimes I have to search for her, there are times when she disappears and then returns, a thin girl with plaits sitting in front of me or behind me or beside me and sucking her thumb.

Until now, when I see her engrossed in reading or writing with her clenched fist to her mouth and the thumb moves restlessly with a slow movement, a relic of the days when she used to suck her thumb. She didn’t believe it when I told her once that I remembered her sucking her thumb.

“But I don’t remember you at all from that time.”

“I was in the class the whole time.”

The strange and funny stories about the many years when we sat as children in the same class, told mainly to satisfy the curiosity of Dafi, who sometimes asks us how we met, why we became involved, what our feelings were. She thinks it strange that we sat for so many years in the same class and didn’t know that in the end we would marry.

None of the mystery of a woman who springs suddenly out of the darkness and you remember the first time that you saw her, the first words that you exchanged. Asya was beside me always, like the trees in the yard, like the sea that was visible from the windows.

In the seventh or eighth grade when the boys began to fall in love, I fell in love too, not with her but with the two or three girls that everyone fell in love with. Falling in love not because you wanted to be in love but to be freed of some burden, as if it was a duty. Falling in love so as to be free for the really important
things – trips, games, the events going on outside. The Second World War was at its height and there was a great army all around us, soldiers, artillery, battleships – all this demanded deep concentration. She wasn’t among those chosen for love. A quiet girl, not pretty, a serious and distinguished pupil whose homework it was sometimes necessary to copy. In the morning before school they used to wait for her, to have a look at her exercise books, which she handed over without protest but with such a scowl, watching them copy from her all the good ideas and the correct answers, sometimes having to explain impatiently what they meant. I didn’t copy from her, I copied from those who copied from her. Even then, at the end of primary school, my work was beginning to deteriorate, not because I was
incompetent
but because at home they were already telling me that I shouldn’t continue with my studies, that I’d have to work with my father in the garage. Already in the afternoons I was required to come and help him, to fetch tools, wash cars, change wheels. What point was there in making an effort in studies that were beginning to seem more and more irrelevant to whatever was real.

But I completed the fifth grade nevertheless. It was then that the children began to pair off in the classroom but it didn’t worry me that I was in love with somebody who already had a boy friend. On the contrary, it was a relief, it freed me from the obligation to court her, to demean myself with excessive
compliments
during break. I could love from a distance without any effort, only at times when the friendship was dissolved and the girl became open to new proposals did I become uneasy, feverish almost, as if it was now my duty to try, but I used to hesitate, delay, wait, maybe someone else …

It was then that an immigrant joined the class, one of the children from Teheran, an orphan, his name was Yitzhak. The teachers gave Asya the task of making him feel at home, helping him with his studies, with his homework. He fell in love with her immediately, openly, always following her, admiring her. For us there was something perplexing about so obvious a display of love, in an old-fashioned, European style. She treated him with patience, rumour said that she “pitied” him, but she sure devoted a lot of attention to him. Standing with him during break and
having long conversations with him. I had no contact with her but in the class there was a feeling that this love gave her strength, improved her position. I remember that during the girls’ gym class we boys used to sit on the fence and watch them playing volley ball. We were already looking at them differently, studying them closely, constantly. It was then that I noticed for the first time that her legs were long and attractive, but she didn’t yet wear a bra, and we were interested only in breasts, they were what mattered most, sometimes in class we used to move our chairs around to catch a glimpse through an open sleeve of this desired piece of flesh.

At the end of the fifth grade we went to a camp in the mountains of Galilee, with the teachers and the headmaster. It was a big camp and children from all the fifth grade classes in the city were there. The official purpose was to familiarize us with nature, with our surroundings, but they took the opportunity to bother us with some premilitary training. Most important was sentry duty at night. And since the girls insisted on standing guard too, it was decided that we should guard in pairs, and this understandably caused some excitement, particularly regarding the choice of partners. In the evening of the second day I saw that I’d been selected to go on guard with her, and then that boy, the immigrant, came to me and asked me to change places with him. Naturally I agreed at once. In the evening she came to me to show me her sleeping place in the tent. She asked me to wake her because she was a heavy sleeper and she might not be up when it was time to stand guard. I told her straightaway that I wasn’t on guard duty with her, that Yitzhak had asked me to change.

She blushed, angry.

“What do you mean? Did you agree?”

I mumbled, “I thought you’d want …”

“Why should you have to think for me? If you don’t want to go on guard with me that’s a different matter.”

There was something bold in her manner of speech, something not quite fitting this thin, quiet girl. It seemed to me that until then I’d never spoken to her as an individual, face to face. I was confused, scared of getting involved in the love affairs of this orphan immigrant.

“But he asked …” I added hesitantly.

“Tell him I’m not his wife yet.”

I laughed. Something in her proud and resolute stand appealed to me.

I told him. He looked miserable. I despised him for this open and self-torturing love.

At 1
A.M
. they woke me to go on duty. I went outside the tent and waited for her. About ten minutes passed and she didn’t come. I went into the girls’ tent to wake her. Perhaps it was at that moment that the idea of felling in love with her first occurred to me. In the dark tent, among the girls lying huddled together, the smell of their femininity mingled with a light odour of perfume, touching the girl who lay there curled up, lifting away the blanket, seeing in the moonlight her legs in short trousers, the hair scattered about her, bending down to touch her face, perhaps now for the first time touching her intentionally, freely and simply, shaking her, whispering her name. Then it occurred to me that she was dreaming, that I was waking her from a dream. At last she opened her eyes and smiled at me. Then she switched on a big army flashlight that lay beside her. I stood there as if hypnotized, watching her put on trousers and a sweater, and she asked me if it was cold outside. The girls around me began to stir, mumbling. Someone suddenly woke up and saw me. “Who’s that?” she cried and I hurried out of the tent. A few seconds later Asya came out, wearing an army combat smock that impressed me. She had all kinds of genuine army equipment that her father had apparently given her. I had a vague idea that her father had something to do with the authorities, with matters of security. We began walking about among the big tents, now and then hitting at the grass and the bushes with the hard smooth sticks that they’d given us. Eventually we sat down on a rock at the edge of the camp, looking down into a dark wadi, she with the big army flashlight in her hand, from time to time shining it down into the wadi, playing with the strong beam of light.

We fell immediately into conversation, as if we’d planned it from the beginning. I was watching her all the time, studying her, trying to decide if it was worthwhile falling in love with her and beginning to fall in love with her even as I thought about it. She talked about the teachers, about teaching methods, asked my
opinion. She had firm, clear, very critical ideas. About the system of teaching, against the material taught and especially against the teachers themselves. I was surprised, because in class she was very quiet and obedient, and very respectful towards the teachers. I had no idea that deep down in her heart she despised them. I told her that I was leaving the school, that I was starting to work with my father in the garage, and she responded to the idea with enthusiasm, jealous that I was going out into the world where great changes were taking place, when now, with the end of the war, total revolution was imminent. If only she could, she would leave school as well.

There was something obscure about her, ideas that were confused but daring, something strange to me, very intellectual, almost a chatterbox, but very interesting. We talked and talked and half of the next watch had gone by when suddenly we were attacked by the gym teacher who was in charge of the guard. He snatched the flashlight from her hand and threw it to the ground, told us to shut up, to lie on the ground, to move farther apart and to keep watch quietly for the enemy.

When he had gone and we were still lying on the ground, a little amused and a little annoyed, I said to her, “Did I wake you from a dream?” and she was amazed. “How did you know?” She insisted, she was determined to know how in the darkness of the tent I could tell that she was dreaming. And then she told me her dream, something about her father.

The watch was over and we returned to our separate tents. I took her flashlight to try and repair it. The next day, during the training and the excursions, we didn’t exchange a word. I still have time to decide whether to fall in love with her, I thought. In the afternoon I gave her the mended flashlight. She thanked me, touched my hand lightly, intentionally, wanting to start a conversation, but I slipped away, uneasy, still hesitant, afraid of making a fool of myself.

That evening Yitzhak disappeared. Apparently he’d been gone since midday, but it was only in the evening that he was missed. All the training and the activities were suspended and all of us, including the children from the other schools, went out to search for him. Walking over the hills in long lines, searching every bush and every crevice and all the time calling his name. The
headmaster supervised the search, shouting excitedly, walking among us pale and desperate. Suddenly she was in the centre. They all looked at her accusingly, curiously. Even the children from the other schools came to see her, they all knew by now the reason for the disappearance. Again and again she was called to the headmaster to give more information about him. He stood and shouted at her as if she were to blame for not returning Yitzhak’s love.

In the morning two British policemen arrived with a dog. They were very much amused, inspecting the camp and taking advantage of the opportunity to search for weapons. After a few minutes he was found. He’d simply hidden in a little cave about a hundred metres from the camp. The dog flushed him out. He emerged weeping bitterly, shouting in his foreign accent, “Don’t kill me.” Down on his knees before the headmaster and before her. It was impossible even to scold him, he was so miserable. She was told to sit with him, to comfort him. I couldn’t get close to her now, until camp was over.

But it seems that his hopeless love infected me. In the holidays I thought about her constantly, walking by her house in the evenings, searching for some contact. I was already working
full-time
in the garage, I didn’t register for the new school year. My father was growing weaker, already there were screws that he was unable to turn. He used to sit on a chair beside the car and tell me what to do. Now and then when I had time to spare I would go to the school, just as I was, in my dirty overalls, sit on the fence and wait for break, to see my friends, to try to keep in touch with them. Searching for her, sometimes seeing her suddenly, hardly managing to hold a proper conversation with her at all, especially as Yitzhak was still at her heels and she was cautious because of him. It seemed that in spite of everything they were friends. After a while I stopped going to the school, I broke off, the work in the garage kept me more and more busy. My friends suddenly seemed childish to me, with their books and their note pads and their little stories about the teachers.