A Late Divorce (20 page)

“But that's very interesting. Why wouldn't it mean anything to me?”

“Because it involves a controversy about theories that you know nothing about.”

“You and your controversies. You waste too much energy arguing with everyone.”

“I had a good teacher to learn from.”

“Maybe I once did let myself be goaded against my better nature ... but it happens less often now. I'm more on my guard. Connie ... well, never mind. Shortcutting history? Can it be done?”

“It can.”

“For example?”

“Not now, father. Not on this bus.”

“Right you are. But this, Asa, you must send me to read. Do you promise?”

“All right.”

“After all, how can I allow myself not to know what you're doing, even if I am so far away? I'm sure to understand parts of it...”

“Parts of it, certainly.”

“I myself, you'll be surprised to hear, am in a very productive period. I'm constantly doing new things. I have my little linguistic projects ... it's very peaceful there ... and in the winter you can't go out anyhow. And recently—I'll let you in on a secret—I've been writing this ... these memoirs ... maybe one day they'll turn into a...”

“Novel? I always thought you'd write one someday.”

“Why shouldn't I try? There's no need to be so scornful.” “Who's being scornful?”

“You are. You keep parading this intellectual scorn for me.”

“I was never intellectually scornful of you.”

“But I keep feeling it. Well, it doesn't matter. You're like a small boy, angry because I've left you...”

“Since when? You're totally mistaken.”

“But I'll return. You may not believe me, but I'll return to live here someday.”

“I never said you wouldn't.”

“I keep feeling that you're judging me.”

“I'm not.”

“For all it mattered to you, I could have stayed locked up with her in that house until I died. Just as long as I didn't bother you.”

“Did I ever tell you to stay there?”

“If I had stayed, could I ever have hoped for such a relationship with a woman ... for such an intellectual renaissance? Tell me ... when I see your angry looks ... why, you would gladly have seen me taken away and locked up there with her!...What's this, already the new road to Haifa?”

“It's the old road. The inland route.”

“But it's so wide. It looks new too.”

“They've widened it.”

“How soft and lovely everything seems ... these orange groves on either side ... it's a beautiful country, we should be kinder to it ... But where was I? Enough, let's change the subject...”

(Now! I can feel it coming over me. Right smack in his puss.)

“Did you tell Dina that mother tried attacking you?”

“Murdering me, not just attacking. You know perfectly well ... please ...”

“You know that's not so.”

“What are you talking about? How can you keep insisting?...Tsvi saw me lying there in my own blood ...”

“All right, forget it. Don't let's start with that again. So she wanted to murder you. Why did you tell her yesterday...?”

“I just mentioned it in passing. What was wrong with that? So she'd understand why I didn't come to your wedding. I owed her that much of an explanation.”

“Did you also owe it to her to open your shirt and show her your scar?”

“I don't remember showing her ... did you say that I opened my shirt? How can that be ... is that really what she told you? Perhaps I just outlined it with my hand. She really said that? But you know what she's like. Terribly childish, she lives in fantasies ... or call it the literary imagination ... and even if I did show her, so what? I suppose she thought it was a big joke.”

“No.”

“Then what did I do wrong? For better or worse she's one of us now. Let her know. It's not something that can be kept hidden. Why must you keep feeling ashamed?”

“I'm not ashamed. I just want you to know that if I feel scorn, it's for that. It's not intellectual. I never looked down on you intellectually. On the contrary, I learned a great deal from you. You were a teacher too, and I've followed in your footsteps, although in a somewhat different field. But this sentimentality of yours ... this uncontrollable need to talk ... without the slightest sense of discrimination...”

“Where are we turning now?”

“I don't know. Why are you so worried about the bus?”

“I don't want to be late. Are you sure he's going straight to Haifa?”

“Of course.”

“But that's how I am. That's my nature. Take me or leave me, as the Americans say. It's my nature to be frank.”

“Don't be absurd. Frankness has nothing to do with it. Nobody asked you about it. Don't you see why I didn't want you to visit her parents? I was afraid you'd start telling them everything, that you'd stand there and open your shirt...”

“Did you really think I was capable...?”

“Why not? Recently you've proven yourself capable of astounding things.”

“That's Connie. It's she who gave me new hope. It's she who saw the potential still in me when I came there a beaten, desperate man ... who restored my faith to me. I'd like so much for you to meet her. You'd understand me much better if you did. It would be wonderful if you and Dina could come spend some time with us ... if you could see our little Jew-child when it's born ... what a miracle! I still haven't told you everything ... I have grand plans for you ... it's just that ... Look, there's the ocean at last! It will be a chance for you to get out into the world ... I'll arrange something for you at the university ... how is your English? You can lecture about your terrorists, or about Judaism and Jewish history—that's a hot item there now, and they pay well. We'll live together for a while.... Could you open the window a bit or is it too windy? I'm suddenly gagging ... I feel nauseous ... you've really done a job on me ... squelched me completely ... you don't know the meaning of compassion ... why can't you understand what I've been going through?”

“That's enough, father. Never mind. Let's drop it for now. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. I'll try to sleep too.”

And the pale young man so rudely plucked from his work—that thinker of never-before-thought thoughts that were to astound the few intellects of his age that could grasp them—that man shut his eyes. He sat with his head thrown back in the speeding bus that drove one dull spring day through hot dusty winds toward the ridges of the Carmel and the bay that looped at their feet, passed on the left by soundless cars whose drivers, sprawled limply at their black wheels, had not the slightest inkling who it was they had passed sitting at the window by his father, that blurred, concupiscent figure of a man now wiping away tears whose traces too would be stalked one hundred years from now by an eager young biographer, who—if he meant to do the job property—would have to travel all the way to Minneapolis and burrow there through old papers to determine what, if any, had been the paternal influence on that world-shaking, seminal mind. He curled up in his seat, savagely kneading his own silence, upgrading raw libido into intellectual power, contemplating space rushing by upon the face of the historical time that meandered within him. Flowing past borders, shooting white water, navigating the hydra-headed river, crossing the alluvial swamp in the midst of dead cosmic time, there he would find the bottom, the true bed in which it all flowed. The time had come to make order, to gather the defiant facts into one grand system, to bare the underlying laws, the sudden cascades, the disappointing channels that blindly petered out only to burst forth unexpectedly again, the missed, the impossible opportunities.

To understand the pulsing shuttle of the historical grid: with that he was to begin the first of his series of essays, which, appearing one by one at regular intervals, were eagerly snatched up by his few mental compeers ... The theoretical approach to history and its laws is still alive. No doubt it has suffered a severe setback in the course of this century, in which certain malignant phenomena in the human organism have revived absurdly chaotic ideologies of a mythical, religious or fatalistic nature that exist side by side with the most banal sociological generalities. Yet the historical process itself has continued; it is inherent in human behavior and has its own laws that render it both predictable and quantifiable. It moves irreversibly forward, never revolv
ing in place, though increasingly complex and tortuous attempts to shortcut it have frequently blurred its clear course. Is it possible to construct a reliable and measurable method that will account for the success or failure of such shortcuts, which are the essence of practical politics, within the readily discernible outlines of the historical process itself? Are even the most chimerical attempts to oppose or circumvent this process governed by laws of their own? In this series of essays I shall attempt to build and verify such a model based on a study of the history of the nineteenth century taken as one homogeneous unit. Undeniably I have taken upon myself a highly ambitious task ...

 

We were exhausted when we got off the bus in Haifa. Father stumbled going down the stairs and had to shut his eyes and lean against one of the big concrete columns of the terminal. I took his valise and he walked slowly on, head down and arms dangling, through the dark wide passageways that echoed with the screeches of the buses. All at once Kedmi popped out of some exit.

“It's about time! What happened to you? I was about to try the lost-and-found department. The two of you look as depressed as though you'd just landed on the moon.''

Father looked right through him. He glanced about, then left us without a word and crossed the passageway to the men's room. Kedmi winked jovially.

“This is his big day. Believe me, though, he never should have come. All I needed was one more time alone with your mother to get her to finish thinking. But who can stand up to you all? Come, there's another Kaminka-and-a-half eagerly awaiting you.”

He took me to a corner table in the cafeteria. Once again I was struck by the sheer size of Gaddi, who sat there with a big shiny bright toy locomotive. I smiled at him and mussed his hair. He didn't smile back.

“We're old phone pals, aren't we, Gaddi?”

He nodded.

Ya'el sat hunched, soft and pensive, in a big gray windbreaker, her smooth, unlined face looking broader than ever. I dropped into a chair by her side. Should I kiss her? She made a face, then shut her eyes, put her arms around my head, and kissed me. Her so feminine skin.

“Who's looking after the baby?”

“Kedmi's mother,” answered Kedmi with a twinkle.

“Dina couldn't come with you today?”

“No. And it wouldn't have been a good idea.”

“I don't suppose it would have. How is she? I haven't seen her for so long.”

“The same. She's still working on and off at the same place.”

Kedmi chuckled abruptly at a joke he'd just told himself. Ya'el smiled nebulously. She started to say something but Kedmi beat her to it.

“You'd better hustle, Asa, if you want to eat something. The train is leaving soon. We've got our work cut out for us.”

“The train? What train?”

“Surprisingly enough”—he laughed—“there is one. And you're going to Acre on it. Relax. I promised Gaddi. It will be an experience for you too. The station in Acre is near the rabbinate building. From there you'll take a cab to the hospital, and I'll pick you up at five. It's been all decided. I've got to run to see my murderer now. I still have to earn a little money here and there, your father hasn't put me on a retainer yet...”

Through the plate glass I saw father come out of the men's room. He halted confusedly, then headed in the wrong direction. Kedmi grinned and roused Gaddi. “Go get your grandpa before we lose him.”

“What's with him?” asked Ya'el. “How was his visit with you?”

“Fine. He actually seemed in good spirits.”

“Yes. He seems happy.”

Gaddi ran up to father and poked him in the back. Father bent and hugged him warmly, then picked him up and kissed him with an emotion that surprised me. The toy looked excited too and kept pointing at the locomotive that he held. They returned to us with their arms around each other. Ya'el got up to hug father. His face was wet, his hair damp. There was a faint smell of vomit about him.

“I didn't feel good. I don't know what happened to me all of a sudden.”

“It was your fear,” blurted Kedmi without looking at him.

“Fear of what?”

“Never mind...”

A nauseating man with a nauseating sense of humor.

Father made a move to sit down but Kedmi began giving him orders too.

“Go eat something. It won't help any to be hungry.”

“Sit, father,” I said. “I'll bring you something. What would you like?”

“Just tea and cake or something. But wait a minute...”

He reached for his wallet and took out some dollar bills.

“I don't need them,” I said.

Kedmi hovered jocularly around us. “You still haven't changed your dollars, eh, Yehuda? You're a rational man, you know a dollar changed tomorrow is worth two changed today ...”

Father interrupted him short-temperedly. “Where is there a bank around here?”

“Not now ... not now...'' we all exclaimed together.

“But I have to. I must.”

“Come here, I'll change them for you. How much do you want?”

Father gave Kedmi a hundred-dollar bill. Kedmi held it up to the light, grinning impishly. “There are counterfeits making the rounds.” He picked up a newspaper to check the exchange rate and showed it to father.

“Fine, whatever you say,” mumbled father with loathing.