Black Box (35 page)

On days when it’s not too cold I generally sit him in the easy chair that Boaz has fixed up for him on the veranda for half an hour, put his dark glasses on him and watch over him while he dozes in the sun. Sometimes he asks for a story. I recite from memory chapters from the novels you used to bring me from the lending library. He now has a faint, absent-minded curiosity to hear about other folks’ lives. Tales that he, like you, always used to regard with utter contempt:
Le Père Goriot,
Dickens, Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham. Maybe I’ll ask Boaz to buy a TV. We are on the electricity grid now.

Boaz looks after him with a sort of submissive attentiveness: he has fitted shutters on the window, replaced a windowpane, put a lambskin rug down for him in the toilet; he takes care of buying the medicines for him at the pharmacy in Zikhron, fetches a fresh bunch of mint every day to drive away the sick smells, all in tense silence. He stubbornly avoids all conversation, beyond Good morning, Good night. Like Friday with Robinson Crusoe.

Sometimes we spend the best part of the morning, he and I, playing endless games of checkers. Or cards: bridge, rummy, canasta. When he wins he beams with childish glee, like a pampered child. And if I win he starts to stamp his foot and complain to his mother that I cheated. I manipulate our games so that he is nearly always the one who wins. If he tries to fool me, to put back on the board a piece I have already taken, or deal himself an extra card, I slap his hand and stand up as if to leave the room. I let him plead and promise that from now on he’ll be good. Twice he fixed me with a strange look, smiled with silent madness, and asked me to take my clothes off. Once he asked me to send Boaz to the public telephone in Zikhron to call the minister of Defense and the chief of staff, both of them old acquaintances of his, and tell them to come urgently on a matter I must not know about but which brooked no delay. And another time he surprised me in a different way: he delivered a well-organized, terrifying, brilliant, and totally lucid lecture on the way in which the Arab armies would defeat Israel in the nineties.

But for the most part he says nothing. He breaks his silence only to ask me to take him to the toilet. This is a complicated and painful business, and I have to help him with everything, like changing a baby.

Toward midday he generally feels a little better. He gets up and walks around the room obsessively putting everything in its right place. He folds up my clothes, which are draped over the back of a chair. Puts the cards away in their box. Pounces on a piece of paper. Removes the empty glasses from the room and leaves them on the bench in the hallway. Takes great pains to get the blanket perfectly straight, as though this were a base for new recruits. Scolds me for leaving my comb lying on the table.

At midday I feed him mashed potatoes or rice pudding. I make him drink a glass of carrot juice. Then I go down and work for an hour or two in the kitchen or one of the storerooms, taking down with me the dirty dishes from the bench in the hallway and the accumulated dirty laundry. And he starts on his daily walk between the wall and the door, tapping with his stick, always following the same route, like a caged animal. Until four or five o’clock, the beginning of twilight, when he gropes his way with his stick downstairs to the kitchen. Boaz has made a kind of day bed for him, a sort of cat’s cradle on a framework of eucalyptus branches. He huddles in this, close to the fire, wrapped in three blankets, silently watching the girls preparing dinner. Or Boaz studying grammar. Sometimes he dozes off in his cradle and sleeps painlessly on his back with his thumb in his mouth, his face at peace, his breathing slow and regular. This is the easiest time for him. When he wakes up it is pitch dark outside and the kitchen is lit by yellow electricity and the log fire in the grate. I feed him. I give him his pills with a glass of water. Then he sits in his cradle, resting on a heap of cushions that Boaz has made from sacks stuffed with seaweed, listening to the guitar until close to midnight. One by one, or in pairs, they get up, say good night to him politely from a distance, and leave the room. Boaz bends over him, picks him up carefully in his arms, and carries him silently upstairs to our attic room. Softly he lays him down on the bed and goes out and closes the door.

As he leaves I arrive. Bringing a thermos bottle for the night and the tray of medicines. I turn the kerosene heater around. I close the shutters that Boaz has fixed up for us. I wrap him in his blankets and sing a few lullabies. If he considers that I have sung sloppily, repeated myself, or finished too soon, he turns to his mother and complains. But at times a sharp flash, a rapid, sly flicker, flares up and dies in his eyes and the wolfish smile passes for an instant across his lips. As though to hint to me that despite everything he is still running the game, and that of his own free will he chooses to play the fool a little so that I can play at being a nurse. If pain brings out a sweat on his high pale forehead, I wipe it with my hand. I run my fingers over his face and through the remnants of his hair. Then his hand between mine and silence and dozing and the bubbling of the kerosene every few moments on its way from the tank of the heater to the wick that burns with a blue flame. As he dozes he sometimes whispers woefully: “Ilana. Wet.”

And I change his pajama trousers and the bottom sheet without getting him up. I’ve become an expert at this. I have spread oilcloth over the mattress. And at one o’clock in the morning he stirs, sits up in bed, and asks to dictate something to me. I sit down at the table, switch on a light, and take the cover off the Baby Hermes. I wait. He hesitates, coughs, and finally mutters: “It’s not important. Go to sleep, Mother. You’re tired too.”

And he curls himself up in his blanket.

In the silence of the night he says after a couple of hours, in his low inner voice: “You look good in that Bedouin dress.” Or: “It was a slaughter, not a battle.” Or: “Hannibal should have acquired naval supremacy first.” When he finally gets to sleep I have to leave the wall light on. I sit and knit to the sound of the dogs barking and the wind sweeping the darkened garden, until my eyes close. In the past four weeks I have knitted him a sweater, a hat, and a scarf. For Yifat I have knitted a pair of gloves and a cardigan. I shall knit something for you too, Michel: a sweater. White. With stripes. Who irons your shirts? Your sister-in-law? The cousin? Your dumpy arranged match? Perhaps you have learned to launder and iron Yifat’s clothes and your own by yourself? Silence. No answer. Exile. As if I never existed. I am unworthy of all the Biblical punishments you have all condemned me to. What will you do if I turn up tomorrow afternoon on your doorstep? With a suitcase in my right hand, a plastic bag over my shoulder, a woolly teddy for Yifat, a tie and after-shave for you, I’ll ring the bell and you’ll open the door and I’ll say, Here I am, I’m back. What will you do, Michel? Where will you put your shame? You’ll slam the door in my face. They’ll never come back, our Saturday mornings in the simple flat, the sparrows chirping into our late sleep from the branches of the olive tree at the open window. Yifat, in her pajamas with the pattern of cyclamens, creeping in with her dolly between the two of us under the blanket to make a cave with pillows. Your warm hands, half-awake before your eyes have opened, groping blindly in my long hair and her tousled curls. The morning kiss we all three bestow, ceremoniously, upon the bald plastic doll. Your custom of bringing us a glass of orange juice and a cup of strained cocoa in bed on Saturday mornings. Your habit of sitting Yifat on the marble shelf next to the basin in the bathroom, lathering her cheeks and yours with your shaving cream, and having a toothbrushing race with her while I make breakfast and the sparrows squeak outside as if the happiness were more than they could bear. Our Sabbath walks to the wadi at the foot of the monastery. Grace after meals on the balcony performed by the Sommo Trio. The great pillow fight and animal and bird fables and the rebuilding of the Temple in toy bricks on the mat with the Chamber of Hewn Stone made of dominoes and colored buttons from my sewing basket representing priests and Levites. The Sabbath afternoon rest amid a scattering of evening papers on the bed and the armchair and the mat. Your repertoire of Parisian stories and the imitations of singing
clochards,
which made us both weep with laughter. And fill my eyes even now, as I remember and write. Once Yifat took my lipstick and colored a map of the ten tribes of Israel that hung above your desk, a gift from an evening paper to its readers, and in your fury you locked her outside on the balcony “to ruminate on her actions and mend her evil ways” and stuffed your ears with cotton wool lest your heart be softened at the sound of her faint weeping and you forbade me to take pity on her because of the text “He that spareth the rod hateth his child.” But when her weeping suddenly stopped and a strange silence descended, you rushed outside and cuddled her and folded her tiny body deep inside your sweater. As though you were pregnant with her. Won’t you take pity on me too, Michel? Shan’t I be folded into the warmth of your hairy womb, underneath your shirt, when my punishment is complete?

On the eve of New Year, a month ago, you sent your brother-in-law Armand in his Peugeot truck to take Yifat to you. By way of Rabbi Bouskila you informed me in writing that you had initiated divorce proceedings, that my status was that of a “rebellious wife,” and that you had begun to raise loans so that you could repay “that tainted money of yours.” At the beginning of the week Rahel and Yoash were here: they came to talk me into hiring a lawyer (not Zakheim) and insisting on my right to know what you have done with my daughter, demanding to see her, not just giving her up. Yoash went down with Boaz to look at the water pump, and Rahel put her arm around my shoulder and said, “Lawyer or no lawyer, Ilana, you have no right to ruin your life and abandon Yifat.” She volunteered to go to Jerusalem and talk you into agreeing to a reconciliation. She demanded to speak to Alex face to face. She suggested enlisting Boaz for the round of shuttle diplomacy that she was apparently planning. And I sat facing her like a clockwork doll whose spring has run down and said nothing except “Just leave me alone.” When they had gone I went up to Alec to make sure he took his pills. I asked him if he would agree to letting you and Yifat come here at Boaz’s invitation. Alec smiled wryly and asked if I was thinking of holding a little orgy here. And he added, “Sure, sweetie; on the contrary, there’s no shortage of rooms here and I’ll pay him a hundred dollars for every day he agrees to stay.” Next day he suddenly told us to send urgently for Zakheim. Who arrived two hours later, red and puffing, in his Citroën from Jerusalem and received a cold rebuke and instructions to transfer another twenty thousand dollars to you at once. Which you apparently decided despite everything to accept, taint or no taint: because the check was never returned. Alec also told Zakheim to put the house and the land around it in Boaz’s name. Dorit Zakheim received a gift of a little plot near Nes Ziyyona, and Zakheim himself, the next day, two cases of champagne.

“Are you or are you not his wife?”

“Yes. And yours too.”

“And the child?”

“With him.”

“Go to him. Get dressed and go. That’s an order.”

Then, woefully, in a whisper: “Ilana. Wet.”

Poor Michel: right to the end he has the upper hand. I am in his hands, your honor is underneath his feet, and even the halo of the victim deserving of pity is filched from you, because he is dying, and is placed on his own balding head. I saw the noble note you wrote him magnanimously inviting us all to stay with you and instead of weeping I burst out laughing suddenly and couldn’t stop myself: “It’s creeping annexation, Alec. He’s got the impression that you’ve weakened, and that the time is right to annex us all under the wings of his presence.” And Alec twisted his lips in the grimace that serves him as a smile.

Every Sunday I go with him in a taxi to Haifa, to the hospital, where they treat him with chemotherapy. Meanwhile they have stopped the radiotherapy. And, surprisingly, there is an improvement in his condition: he is still weak and tired, he still dozes most of the day and lies half-awake at night, his mind is muddled by drugs, but he has less pain. He manages now to spend two or three hours walking between the wall and the door. To make his own way with the help of his stick to the kitchen in the evening. I allow him to stay there until they disperse to their rooms, close to midnight. I even encourage him to converse with them to distract his mind. But once, last week, it happened that he failed to control himself and he wet himself in their company. He couldn’t be bothered or forgot to ask me to take him to the toilet. I told Boaz to take him straight up to our room, I cleaned him up, I changed him, and the next day, as a punishment, I forbade him to come downstairs. Since then he tries harder. Before the rain that started falling yesterday he even walked by himself a little in the garden. Tall and gaunt in his patched jeans and a ridiculous sweatshirt. When he misbehaves I don’t hesitate to hit him. For example, when he slipped away from me one night and climbed up to the observatory on the roof and on the way back slipped and fell off the rope ladder and lay stunned in the hallway until I found him. I beat him like a puppy, and now it is clear to him that he does not have the strength to climb stairs, and he lets Boaz carry him up to our room every evening in his arms. You have taught us all compassion.

And what about you? Do you take time off from your work of redemption and fetch Yifat from the nursery at half past one? Do you sing to her in your scorched voice “For the food which Thou hast given us,” “Behold thou art fair,” “Mighty in kingship”? Or perhaps you have planted her in your brother’s family, packing all her clothes and toys in the brown suitcase, and left for the rocky hills of Hebron? If you come and bring her I’ll forgive you, Michel. I’ll even sleep with you. I’ll do whatever you ask for. And even what you’re too shy to ask for. Time is passing and every day that slips by and every night is another hill and another valley that we have lost. They will not return. You are silent. Avenging and resenting and punishing with all the rigor of your silence. You have compassion for all Israel, for ancient ruins, for Boaz, for Alec, but not for your wife or daughter. Even about the divorce proceedings you saw fit to tell me through your rabbi. Who informed me in your name that I am a rebellious wife and henceforth I am forbidden to see Yifat. Am I too unworthy for you to demand an explanation from me? For you to impose a penance on me and show me the way of repentance? That you should write me a Biblical curse?