The Wanting (19 page)

“No,
you
won’t talk about her.”

“He, too. He doesn’t talk about anything, actually.”

“You have a point. But, even so, this is his territory.”

“Uncle Lonya, I need to know some things.”

“Since when is it ‘uncle’?” His coffee came and then the toast. He spread so much butter on it, there was more butter than toast. “Look,” he said, “why don’t we call him, and he can come down and join us. I’ll help you ask whatever you want. You know, be a buffer.”

“He’s off working,” I said. “And he’s never going to answer me anyway.”

“Working? Really? That’s wonderful. I’m glad to hear it.” He pretended to spit into the palms of his hands and rub them together. He does this whenever anyone says something hopeful. To ward off the demons, I think.

“But I need to know about her now,” I said.

“Why suddenly?”

I think he could see I was too agitated. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“OK,” he said. “OK. I can tell you this, sweetheart. Your mother was a brave, brave woman, and she was a hero of the Jewish movement in Soviet Days, right up there with Sharansky.”

But I’d heard that a million times! And before I could stop myself, I screamed at him, “If she was such a big hero, why did she give me away?”

“She didn’t
give
you away.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Only in a certain sense.”

“Yeah. In the sense that she gave me away.”

“Don’t be so hard on her. When you’re older you’ll understand these things.”

“I am older.”

“Look, she took the whole world on her shoulders. She sacrificed for all of us. That’s the way it was, you had to either make a stand or—”

“Or what? What about you?”

“Me? I’m a bum.”

“What about Abba? Was he a bum?”

“Your father was not a bum. How can you say such a thing? Look what he’s done for you! Jesus, Anyusha, you have no idea—you’re exactly like her! Impossible! An impossible person. Who can reason with you? It’s like talking to a hole in the ground.”

“I just want to know, that’s all!”

“Then you’ll just have to talk to your father!”

I wanted to say to him, how can I talk to my father? I don’t even know where he is! But I kept my trap shut, and he stood up, put some money on the table, enough for my breakfast, too, bent down and kissed me, and walked away.

Just like my mother? Please!

How can I be just like my mother? I never even met my mother. My mother is a bitch and an egotist and what did she ever do but make people unhappy?

Of course grown-ups say things like that to kids just to get
them to think about things differently. I know that trick. Pop does it all the time, and I do that to him, too, only he is unaware of it. But there was a reason I wanted to know about her, and it had to do with everything that had happened up till then, which I still haven’t written about because, well, I doubt if I’m supposed to, and also it’s very long and complicated. But I guess if I’m going to have this journal or diary or whatever it is, I have an obligation to tell everything. So here goes.

It began back there with Rabbi Keren and Yohanan and all that. And then Rabbi introduced me to Shlomo and Shlomo introduced me to Miriam, because it was Miriam who said to me, Come with me and let me show you.

You have to just know Miriam! I can’t decide how old she is—but old. Probably thirty or twenty-five, and very pretty if you ask me, even with the scarf on, but she wears it in that way they do when they still show their hair, you know, kind of weaving her long ponytail through the scarf so it becomes almost a living thing, so elegant. And she always puts her arms around me, and she always laughs when I say something funny, because she gets me, and almost nobody else in the whole world does, and she smells like gardenias. Anyway, I was telling her, or I was
trying
to tell her, about my doubt, and she said, Come and let me show you.

When I think back, I can’t remember exactly how it started. Suddenly I was just reading all this new stuff. It’s not like I didn’t know all the stories in the Bible, because everyone knows all the stories, but I felt I couldn’t analyze, say, that crazy Ezekiel if I didn’t go back and reread Genesis first, and then I just kept reading, because before I knew it I had gone through Leviticus and Numbers and then Deuteronomy, and I thought, this stuff is just totally stupid, but it’s
so beautiful
. How can something be stupid and beautiful at the same time? I didn’t really believe one single word of it, and the more I read the less I believed. But the more I read, the more I couldn’t stop reading. Even all the gross stuff in Leviticus—you know, like what happens if you have pus coming out of your skin or how you have to burn the entrails with all the fat on it. It was disgusting, but it was also
terminal
. However, it
didn’t take away any of my doubt. In fact, it made it worse. And that’s when I understood that doubt was my problem. That doubt was my weakness. That I’d never become anything in this world or in any other world if I didn’t overcome it. You have to overcome your weaknesses, or what are you?

For instance, I am thinking right now about Kishuko So, also known as Tamahome, which means the fighter (let me tell you about this and then I’ll get back to the whole Miriam thing). Tamahome is very powerful because he knows martial arts and he wears the symbol of the demon on his forehead. His mother died when he was twelve, which is just a year younger than me, and his father recently became ill, I guess just like mine. But in the Universe of the Four Gods, he has a purpose—to protect Suzako-no Miko, who of course in real life is Miaka. He also has a weakness. He loves money. This is probably because his family is so poor, so he steals money to feed his brothers and sisters. Of course, it leads him down very bad paths. His love for Miaka helps him overcome his weakness. He becomes a hero even in the real world.

Well, as I said, my weakness is
doubt
. I don’t believe what anyone tells me. I don’t believe my teachers. I don’t believe the older kids. I don’t believe adults like Daphne. I don’t even believe Rabbi Keren. I suppose that means I don’t believe God. Why should God tell me the truth? We’re just like weeds on this planet, overrunning everything. You don’t tell the truth to a weed. You pull it out. You spray weed killer on it and watch it die.

In the old days, I would say, so what? Just figure it out for yourself, you don’t have to believe anyone. But that was before. Before I met Miriam and before I really got to know Yohanan. Now I see that the whole thing was put in front of me so that I could overcome this weakness, so that I could challenge myself like Tamahome with his love for Miaka. Even the thing with Pop. I was checking out the Bible etc. way before he was blown up by that suicide bomber, and when it happened, I didn’t say anything to him because why should I upset him? But it scared me, it upset me a lot, I saw how at any moment anything could happen and then what? I wanted to hold on to him, but Pop, you can’t just
hold on to him, he’ll go like, come on, what’s the matter with you? That’s because he never wants to think anything
is
wrong. That’s what I realized. It’s like, hey Pop, you just got blown up! So I made a journal for him. I went to my favorite store, Rafi’s, where they have art supplies and all kinds of pens and notebooks and rice paper and metallic papers where the whole sheet looks like gold and papers with leaves and flowers pressed into them. They even have real papyrus. It’s kind of woven, like fabric, only finer, in a muted tone; I think they call it ecru. So I bought some papyrus, and I bought some felt for the cover and some twine and a heavy needle and some glue—altogether it was kind of expensive, forty-five shekels—but I didn’t mind spending it because I thought Pop should write down what he was thinking and feeling, maybe describe what happened to him, maybe even second by second, maybe ponder the meaning of life. I don’t know. But that’s what I would do if I were he. So I constructed this beautiful writing book for my father, hand-sewn and glued with this special glue they have, and a beautiful felt cover, and I made the title page with watercolors and markers and colored pencils, and I entitled it:

I decorated it with flowers, birds, animals, leaves, stars, hearts, and I can’t remember what else. And in the corner, down on the right, I signed my name. I did the title page in Hebrew, but I did think maybe I should have written it in Russian, because I believe he uses Russian to think his most personal thoughts. Even though he talks Hebrew to me and to his friends, something tells me his heart is still Russian. If I had done it in Russian, it would have looked like this:

I wrapped it with ribbon and put it where I knew he would
have
to find it. But I have a feeling he never did, because he never said anything to me, and my dad is a very attentive parent. For instance, he would always take me to the site he was working on, and I’d see it from beginning to end. I especially like going when there is nothing built yet, just land, lots of rock, usually, or sand, and then we can imagine it together, what it will look like. But also I like it when it’s finished, because when a new house is all done, I’m the first person he lets inside. That’s our tradition. He opens the door, and I walk in, and I can hear my shoes echoing on the floor, and then he comes in after me and says, Well, Anyusha? And I say, This is your best one! Because, guess what? It always is.

People think it sucks to have just a dad. But they’re wrong. I think it’s better. I lied to Lonya. Pop is always trying to get me to ask about my mom. But what for? I think it’s his way of saying he’s not good enough, like he isn’t doing a good enough job. I know, if I told people he was gone all night and then didn’t come home this morning and probably will be gone at least till tonight, they’d probably say he was a horrible miserable rotten father and they would take me to court and I’d have to live with Babushka and he’d go to jail or something. But I know he’s just doing his thinking. That’s what I would do, too. And anyway, it’s good luck he chose today not to be home so there are no prying questions. But the fact that he didn’t get my notebook means it will be much harder for him to work out his thoughts, because it is always so much easier when you write them in a book, as I am doing now. It would have been easier for you, Pop, if you had the notebook. That’s all. My feelings aren’t hurt, so don’t worry about it.

I
T WAS ALMOST THREE IN THE AFTERNOON
, and the heat was unbearable. I’d been sitting on this little patch of desert for more than two and a half hours, getting up only to pee. How could that be? I never sat around doing nothing. Daphne, Lonya, Anyusha, were always telling me, slow down, take a break, you’ll have a heart attack. Only my mother thought I was lazy—“Why do you waste your time making these fancy houses? Why don’t you build something great, like the Jewish Taj Mahal or something? Something we can actually be proud of.” But now time seemed to have crawled to a standstill, or maybe the opposite, it was flying by without my noticing, while I was stuck somewhere in my own past, eating the same meal over and over, dreaming the same dream, kissing the same kiss, and all that time my real body was quickly withering away under the sun.

I found myself softly humming a little tune, an old Russian tune, actually, “Vecherni Zvon.”
Evening bells, evening bells / How many thoughts do they tell! / O youthful days where I used to roam, / Where I loved, my father’s home. / And how I, leaving these familiar climes, / Heard the bells for one last time—ding dong ding dong!

I sang to the bright sky as to a child, as I used to do to Anyusha, every night in fact; long after she had fallen asleep, I would steal into her room, lean over her bed, place my lips beside her ear, and—not sing, because I can’t sing—but whisper my incantation,
Papa will always take care of you. Papa is your best friend. Papa will never leave you. Anyusha will never be alone again
. I guess I
was making promises I had no way of keeping. Perhaps it was even dangerous to her psyche. But I believed with all my heart if she heard these words over and over, night after night, she would grow up secure and self-assured, in true possession of herself. What more could a father want for his daughter?