A Late Divorce (53 page)

I returned to my room. Dina was still too absorbed in herself to notice me. I bent over my valise and took out my passport and ticket, putting them in my pocket. I took out my last dollars too and stuck them in my wallet. I put on my jacket and hat.

“I'll be right back. Tell Asa and Tsvi that I won't be long.”

Some boys and girls in the blue shirts of a youth movement were drifting slowly down the street below. By the newsstand on the corner was a taxi stand. I jumped into the first cab, whose driver was a sullen-looking, middle-aged man. What time was it?

“Take me to Acre. I'll direct you from there.”

He started the motor.

“Wait a minute.” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Will you take dollars?”

“Don't you have any pounds?”

“I'm afraid not. But we'll check the exchange rate in the paper. You won't lose a cent.”

The taxi's shadow bolted ahead of it. It headed downhill toward the bay and then took the main road running east. The traffic picked up. The city itself had been quiet but the roads were full of vacationers. At the old British checkpost outside of town we turned north to follow the curve of the bay, passing through its industrial zone and suburbs, the traffic lights slowing us up. The driver kept silent, and I was thankful that he didn't turn on the radio. To my left, in the west, I caught sight of the sea, the last sunlight glinting off the foam of its strong, steady surf. Clearly visible behind us was Mount Carmel, massive and lush, a large cloud sinking over it. Pinkish light. The same now here as in Minneapolis. The cab picked up speed. Northward toward the minarets of Acre. We approached them and crossed some railroad tracks. The traffic kept getting thicker.

“Don't drive through the town. Bypass it to the right”

“But where do you want to go?”

“I'll guide you. Keep heading north past the town.”

“But where to?”

I told him the name of the hospital.

“So how come you didn't want to tell me? What's to hide?”

“I didn't realize that you were familiar with the place.”

“Of course I am. You're not the first fare I've taken there, and you won't be the last.”

The taxi swung around Acre to the right. Soft pastel colors, a row of eucalyptus trees, stands selling wicker furniture. We passed the old railroad station with its freight cars gleaming in the waxing golden light of sunset. Dusty streets, Arabs selling pitas, cars backed up in a row. A crossroads. To the right the road ran eastward to the Galilee but we drove straight ahead. We crossed the railroad tracks where they swerved toward the sea, the western horizon all awash, the sun slipping free of the clouds, dropping as they rose. The taxi slowed. The traffic ground to a halt, cars honked. Something must have happened ahead. I leaned impatiently forward and glimpsed a pack of dogs blocking traffic while cars beeped their horns and tried to shoulder them off the road. At last we came to the yellow sign of the hospital and stopped to turn left, waiting for the line of southbound cars to pass. More dogs ran by wagging their tails, careening off the car and into the fields. Finally we turned into the narrow approach road that led to the hospital gate. Back again. For the fourth time this trip. Yesterday you were certain that you would never return. The sea. The sun at eye level near the horizon. The mountains at your back. In a few hours I would be taking off. The cottages. The trees like paper cutouts, a slender form standing by them in the brackish, yellow, crinkly evening light.

“Stop!” I cried.

The taxi slowed down.

“Stop right here, driver!” I said again, grabbing him by the shoulder. He turned to me angrily.

“What's wrong?”

By the distant gate I had made out Calderon's white car and several figures standing by it. Tsvi, I recalled, made a point of never entering the hospital.

“Stop right here.”

“What's the matter?”

“Wait for me here. I'll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“I can bring you right to the cottages. They always let me drive into this crazy house.”

“You needn't bother. Stop here and wait. I'll be back in fifteen minutes, half an hour at the most. Can you wait?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I once waited here for half the day for someone who was supposed to be coming right out. For all I know he's still in there.”

“No, listen here, I'm not a patient ... I just have to deliver some document. Here, let me pay you for the return trip.”

“Keep it, mister. Pay me for coming here and for the wait. Let's call it an hour.”

“That will be fine. Would you happen to know what time it is?”

The sunrays glance off the green dollar bills he holds them up to the light pretending to know what to look for. I get out and stride into the fields leaving the road behind me cutting through rows of young sprouts in the moist earth bearing traces of sand from the sea heading for the hole in the fence that the patients told me about. The yellowish light gives the sprouts a blue tint I'm walking through a sprouting sea on my right to the north the houses of a village. A tractor pulls a cart piled high with long irrigation pipes and drops them off at intervals in a field. Behind me my huge shadow plows the ground. Homeland why can't you be a homeland. No fantasy then she wanted to kill me. Had she just gone mad I would have stayed to nurse her but she used her madness to settle old scores. I disappointed her? Wait till she sees what I do now. And there it's morning Connie grinding coffee in her gadget-filled kitchen. A pregnant woman by herself she wonders how. I'll take back what's mine. I reach the old concrete wall festooned with dead vines looping up from its base an imposing barricade of barbed wire but where is the hole in it? All at once the wall stops but the gap is sealed with barbed wire too. Have I been misled? I press on. The wall resumes again it's lower now the concrete yielding to ancient stones perhaps the ruins of a Roman aqueduct of the kind often found in these parts. I clamber up its broad stairlike headers there's the hospital below me the lawns the paths even the little library. The parchment flying through the air. I turn to look at the black taxicab parked now in front of the railroad tracks next to Calderon's car.

Hurry.

Not really dusk yet it's the clash of clouds and sun that's ground the light to smithereens. Already you're on the hospital grounds you know your way from here. Your fourth time in ten days. Once more into the breach. Collect yourself. The right to change your mind. The clump of trees. The rubber hose snakes upon the ground someone is standing there and slowly hoeing a small dead bush it's that mute giant hard at work. I pass close by him but he doesn't see me. Be quick. Ask her for the waiver and destroy it have the lawyer cancel it in Tel Aviv. I jam my hat down on my head. The library door is open the puddles of mud have dried to hard earth. No one here. Silence. Soft light of fear. Born-again balminess of the spring evening. Here's her cottage. Three years ago when I first came to visit it was pouring cats and dogs she sat layered in clothes by the kerosene stove listening to me tell her about the snow in America. It was then that I promised to write her.

Stealthily I enter the cottage ready for anything. The beds in rows some made some not a small overly tailored lady of about forty sitting on a chair by a window next to a very big suitcase reading a woman's magazine. She glances up at me her face twitches quickly. I take of my hat and nod.

“Excuse me. Perhaps you could tell me which bed is Naomi Kaminka's.''

“I'm sorry but I just got here myself. I don't know anyone.”

But I've already found it by the broad straw hat upon it. I hurry to her locker here are her dresses her red robe the shawl that Ya'el brought her for me. I open the drawer and go through it rattling the dog's chain. Bottles of perfume salves bags full of medicines here are some papers a packet of letters from me the parchment divorce a peaceful white dove the waiver on the house a copy of the power of attorney for Asa. I fold the last two and stick them in my pocket I turn to leave passing by the small lady again she hasn't stopped looking at me.

“Excuse me...”

“Yes?”

“How were you allowed in here?”

I smile. “What do you mean, how was I allowed? That's my wife's bed over there...”

“But didn't you need special permission?”

“Not at all.”

“Men are allowed in here?”

“Of course.”

“Because my husband said he wasn't. Perhaps they misinformed him, or else he misunderstood...”

“He must have misunderstood.”

“Because suddenly he left me ...”

She rises and comes over to me perfumed rather scared suddenly she whispers:

“Do you happen to know by any chance if this is a religious institution?”

“A religious institution? What gave you that idea?”

“We came here so quickly. I had a sort of breakdown at the seder, and the doctor from the health plan sent us here. But I think... I'm afraid ... that they sent us to a religious institution. My husband is an army officer and knows nothing about these things ...”

“But what makes you think that it's religious?”

“It looks like it is. The walls ... these beds ...”

“Well, it isn't. Some of the patients may be observant, but...”

“And the management? How about the management?”

“No. There's no reason to think ... it's a government hospital, after all, it's run by the department of health ... it's not a private institution at all...”

She smiles sadly reassured.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you happen to know what time it is?”

“Half past five.”

I nod goodbye to her I tip and wave my hat she sits down again in her chair reaching out to touch her suitcase hesitantly sticking her thumb in her mouth. Dusk now. I head back toward the front gate the giant still standing there without moving limply holding a pitchfork waiting for something. He's recognized me. I retrace my steps cutting back through the ward with its rows of beds smiling pleasantly to the tailored lady who watches me bare legs pertly crossed hesitantly taking her thumb from her mouth. I enter the small kitchen at the far end of the ward and slip out through the back door. A new perspective. The sound of surf. Dogs bark. The green cottage of the library seen from behind. The bench in the garden beneath the tall eucalyptus trees where we stood. Nearby another cottage with bars a dim light shining inside. The gathering darkness. I make a leisurely detour around the lawn to my left no need to run I bend down and pluck a leaf chewing it inhaling its fresh green smell. I reach the southern end of the fence and cut back eastward plunging into the bushes planted alongside it the barking growing louder one dog is howling now as though it were hurt I never was afraid of dogs but this is an eerie sound. The concrete wall ends. Here must be the hole I head toward it through the bushes but I'm wrong it's the barbed wire again the sealed gap some hairy mangy thing is thrashing about in its loops and kicking up dust. Beyond the bushes more dogs bark. And human voices too. It's 'Ratio he's caught in there he's howling pawing up earth. All of a sudden I feel my heart break for our old dog.

“'Ratio!” I shout. “'Ratio! Horatio!”

He stops what he's doing and looks up at me. Our eyes meet. He wags his tail madly. From beyond the bushes I hear Tsvi calling him too.

“Horatio! Horatio!...He's stuck in there, mother.”

And Naomi's voice from afar:

“Where?”

Dogs bark in a frenzy.

“Git!” shouts Asi furiously.

I crouch and hide behind a bush hearing them struggle in the red sunset.

“He's over there! He must have smelled him.”

“Father??”

“He's stuck in there, pull him back this way!”

Above the branches I glimpse Naomi's white hair.

“Grab his chain!”

“He's gone crazy! How did he ever get in there?”

I don't move at all seeing the road far away the black taxi waiting by the railroad tracks facing east toward the main road a line of cars turning in there toward the hospital. They're shouting outside the fence and I'm hiding inside what a reversal of roles.

Now! I take the documents from my pocket I read them quickly and tear them into little pieces I dig a small hole in the ground and stick them in it covering them with stones and earth. A sense of inner peace. I'll have to call the lawyer from the airport. Divorce yes. The house no. My inalienable rights. I disappointed you? What did I ever promise? I rise and head back the way I've come doubled over. Hide-and-seek. I'll leave by the sea side. Soul colors in the fiery pageant of sunset far away. What time is it? Time enough. Time enough. I finger my ticket and my passport in my pocket. Cars enter the hospital bringing back patients from their seder day at home. A noisy bustle of people lights go on in the wards. I cross the lawns again the giant's still there poking his pitchfork at the dead bush. Dumbfounded to see me. I smile at him. Amazingly he has a big watch on. “What time is it?” I ask. He looks at me in a trance not answering. I tip my hat and walk on.

Your head is spinning but inside you you're at peace. A bit much though all that tipping of your hat. You enter the ward again the tailored lady hurries toward you.

“Oh, it's you,” she says. “I'm glad you're back. I can't seem to turn on the light.”

I flick the switch but nothing happens.

“There must be a short,” I explain. “Someone will come to fix it soon.”

No fantasy then. What you love is what you kill the spirit listeth where it will. And supposing I did disappoint? Divorce yes. The house no. We'll bargain again. Two women. No less. Maybe you'd like to kill me again please. I fling myself on Naomi's bed. Saber-sharp thought. I push aside her straw hat and stretch out on her bedclothes. The last rays of the sun glint on the white sheets. I'll wait for them here. The wretched lady hovers by the bed.