From a Sealed Room

by Rachel Kadish

  But that year they brought Turkevich to the house and, Shifra, his tired eyes made my breath seize in my chest. Shifra, I could barely speak in his presence, so frightened was I by the mottled hands that lay still on his knees as he spoke, hands impatient for nothing, only wishing to make comfortable their owner’s middle years. For weeks Mother coaxed and Father insisted, nights I cried my eyes to burning with my fist in my mouth so not to wake you, asleep at last despite your insomnia in the bed beside me. I told you nothing, Shifra, to tell would have split me in two and you as well. In the mornings my chores loomed impossible, more complicated than I could have imagined, and in the evening when there was no time left for my studies I did not care. I stood perfectly still over the soup pot full of sliced beets and onions, I drew breath and for a moment I could not remember what to do. Then I saw the pitcher of water in my own hand and I poured until the pot brimmed crimson. On the night table my books, my charts, notebooks’ blank white pages lay open crying despair. Don’t threaten to kill yourself, we know it’s only your trickery, Father said. Mother held my shoulders then, and rocked me like a small child. She said to me, You’ll grow accustomed to him, it won’t be so very bad. Trust me, I know.

  When Mother and Father rose from the parlor with their plans for the wedding I lifted my head from my hands and I said, Father there is a Gentile from the countryside who plans to marry Shifra and if you force me to marry Turkevich then I will not stop this Gentile from eloping with her.

  That is a lie, Mother said. You will not fool us so easily. But I said, Mother if you force me to marry then you will see. I will kill myself and Shifra will disappear one night, you will have no daughter and no one in this cursed house to slave for you in the shop. Will you chase away every Gentile customer, will you follow Shifra through the streets? You cannot keep him from her. Only I know who the Gentile is and he obeys only me. Only I can keep him from talking to her.

  And they believed, Halina said. They believed and they waved Turkevich away without so much as an apology. I heard later he was so shamed he did not leave his house for two weeks.

  For another year I kept the Gentile from you, Halina whispered to me. I had never truly known a Catholic, only the marketplace vendors, and then the professors who paced behind University lecterns. But this one’s laughter would not leave my mind. Still, when he came to me in the marketplace that winter I turned him away, I would not hear him.

  And then that spring I watched you grow paler and thin, I watched you turn your head in pain when the gimnazjum girls came to get me. I saw you become wary of the neighborhood boys who taunted you for your quiet.

  On a summer morning I dressed for an outing, I told Mother and Father I was going for a picnic. And you, Shifra, you wanted to join me but I lied and said I was going with my Sports Club friends and you could not come. How the tremor in your voice ripped at me. But I could not allow you to follow. All morning I walked toward the farms, I hitched rides from curious Gentiles who slowed their wag ons to ask my destination. I knew only his first name, over and over I motioned high above my head with my hand: a fair-haired young man, so tall. At last in the hot sun of late afternoon a barefooted woman led me to a field where I recognized the Gentile. Standing on marshy ground in my long dress and thin shoes, I told him he had my permission to speak to you. I told him you would probably not care for him and I would give him no help in wooing you. But he might find you by the river or beside the house, and I would do nothing to interfere. The Gentile did not answer at first, then he thanked me and he planted his hoe into the dirt and he drove me back to town. We rode in silence, the horses nodding their heads over the uneven road and my feet throbbing as I sat stiff beside him. I signaled him to let me off beside the forest and as I walked into town I thought, Shifra will have the chance to love, and I prayed I was not bringing injury to your heart.

  Halina’s long finger poked at packed dirt. Her chalky skin was streaked with grime. At the corner of the building behind which we crouched, the dying stood wordless, awaiting their turn at the latrine. Some who could not wait stared straight ahead and grimaced only slightly as they soiled themselves, shame or disgust too far past to recall. Halina did not turn to watch them. She crouched on the dirt, her own scarecrow bones folded at sharp angles. Knees and elbows pointed helpless at sky, at earth. Halina, a bird whose wings could not carry the weight of her, but could only map out the universe endlessly: There above is flight; here below, clay. I was wrong about the Gentiles, she said to me. They are not all bad.

  Sounds of the dying and the still-living reached us but we did not turn our gazes from each other. Halina’s voice rough, carrying no compassion only merciless fact. If I had let him meet you when he first asked, you would be married. You would be hidden in a Gentile farmhouse, you would wear a cross on a string around your neck. You would live.

  We will live, I told Halina.

  No, Halina said. We will not.

  Regret is too small a word, this is too small a world hemmed in by wire and barking guards, by their watchfulness, and ours. We lift our eyes. Halina, I said, the Americans will bend the sky and come for us. We will make a home together after the war, we will drink and eat and live. No, she repeated. There will be no after. There is no after, there is no tomorrow. There is only now, there is only now and now and now.

  In white clouded sky, nothing. No streak, no motion, no buzz of airplanes.

  I forgive you with all my heart, I told Halina. My sister shook her head, she would not receive my words. I could have saved you, she said. Her own dark pupils empty of all emotion, her scalp riddled with louse bites between scant tufts of hair. Her collarbone was so sharp it caused me pain to look on it, and although surely it was impossible that our hearts beat any longer, still a pulse could be seen faintly threading between the knobs at the base of her neck.

  I thought I would do anything in my power for my beloved sister, Halina spoke one final time. But I failed.

  American, You did not come then.

  Suitcases flung open on earth. Halina’s elbows folded like the wings of birds, as if a mere gift of feathers could yet free us.

  American, there is none other than You. I have hoped for no other.

  But You have not redeemed. For I have lain counting my bones before You and still the past burns. O American of hosts, You have not used Your might to bring future.

  And who if not You will make this fiery life whole? Who if not You, my rock my redeemer? I lift my question to the heavens and You hearken but withhold Your answer.

  I spin to the stairwell You clutch my hand. Stay, You say. Are you all right, You ask, do you want a glass of water? You want to hold me You want to caress me American. But You have broken Your promise, You have not shown me Your steadfastness. What can Your water glass do now to quench this scorching air, I drop it to Your floor. I have waited so long for Your redemption and You deny it. I spin to earth I stumble down these stairs I am the chaff in the wind, only memory is solid and I blow like dust.

  O American, my American, why have You abandoned me?

  You bent the sky and came down, but You have not filled the oceans. You heard my cry but You have not quenched this fire this breathless air. My redeemer my rock I have waited for You. My redeemer my rock You have forsaken me. You touch my lips and heal nothing.

  13

  The morning sun beats down on the roof of Dov’s dusty white car. We speed along the highway into the desert, air whipping in the spaces between us and flinging my hair into my mouth. Since leaving Jerusalem we’ve traveled along a road that carves through a landscape of rocky hills. Dov drives in amiable silence, his girlfriend, Rina, slouched beside him with her bare feet propped on the dashboard and her fingers playing with the worn fringe of a hole in her jeans. “Like they wear them in the U.S.,” she said grinning at me earlier, when my eyes fell on the patch of knee showing through each hole.

  Gil and I sit in the backseat, our sandaled feet propped on our bags; the Subaru’s trunk could not
accommodate them on top of the sleeping bags and camping gear. Sleepily I take Gil’s hand. It occurs to me that Fanya’s early-morning parting words sum up how I feel this minute. She rode with Dov and Rina from Wolfson Street to see us off at my apartment, and to remind us what a wonderful time the four of us would have together. “It couldn’t be more perfect,” she declared.

  “The hills in the Arava are going to put another year’s worth of wear on the car.” Rina shakes her head as she watches the Judean Desert spread around us. “Then it will be an invalid instead of just a senior citizen.”

  “No,” Dov counters, “another year’s wear and it will be a fossil.” I glimpse my cousin in the rearview mirror, and it is easy to recognize Nachum’s broad grin. The tension in Dov’s face has eased; he looks almost lighthearted. He pats the steering wheel absently, perhaps to encourage his car or himself.

  Laughing, Rina teaches over to pat the steering wheel too. She’s modestly pretty, this girlfriend of Dov’s, with striking green eyes. I know from a comment Dov made earlier that she did her army service in Intelligence. But when I ask her about it, she only makes a face and laughs yet again. “It was a job,” she tells me. “It would be better if it were obsolete.” At this, Dov groans. “Here goes the peacenik again,” he says. She ignores him and continues. “I want all our army service to be obsolete, then we can be college students like you Americans, we can spend our time joining sports clubs and worrying about whether we’ve found ourselves.”

  It would be easy to feel insulted by her words; instead I’m warmed by the familiarity. Rina confides eagerly about the American magazines she reads whenever she can get hold of them. If I disregard Dov’s callused hand resting on the ragged knee of her jeans, I can even imagine we might be friends.

  The sun lays claim to every inch of these hills, every speck of crawling or rushing life. Gil wipes his forehead and fingers the strap of the binoculars in his lap. Yesterday’s rest has left him peaceful. The day, it turned out, was nothing like I’d planned. All afternoon the telephone rang; two well-wishers even stopped by and asked for him. I had to tell them he was asleep. I watched over Gil while he lay motionless. I stayed in bed with him until my restlessness was too much to bear. I reminded myself to be patient. The weeks of work were etched on his face; he woke only to ask the time and nod off again.

  “The woman from downstairs came to visit,” I told him later, after our dinner in a dark kitchen. Gil had finished his account of the previous evening’s celebration, and of the hints dropped by the Tel Aviv critic of a positive review. As I followed him back to the bedroom, I felt almost shy. Gil: miraculously content, his hair mussed, his voice quiet and deep. Gil, who saw things other people did not; who had seen something in the woman downstairs that I had missed, even if he didn’t understand that she wasn’t religious. There was no end to learning about him. So many misunderstandings he and I had to make up for. I readied to trust him with the truth. “It’s not the first time she and I have spoken,” I said. I prepared the next question in my mind: Do you know what it is she wants?

  Gil yawned and laughed at the same time, which made him laugh more. “Honey, I’m still exhausted. How about if you tell me tomorrow? Because I want to hear about the crazy woman, but I’m so tired I can’t move. And your bionic cousin is picking us up at, what, seven in the morning?” He rummaged high in his closet and emerged with the leather-cased field glasses. “Can’t go see the sights without these.” He yawned again, and laid them reverently on top of his bag before kissing me on my forehead. “Thanks for packing.”

  The telephone rang; Gil picked up the receiver, listened, then put it down after the briefest of replies. With obvious pleasure, he announced, “Your cousin says he listened to the forecast and the hamsin is lifting. ‘So we can leave in the morning as planned,’ he says. Was he going to cancel if the hamsin didn’t pass? Sorry, it’s too hot to go out and play. Not quite tough enough, after all, is he? Good thing the weather is indulging him.” With a snap of his wrist, Gil turned off the bedside light.

  Now, as the narrow strip of road weaves deeper into the hills, Dov turns on the radio. Even with the hamsin fading, the heat feels unforgiving. I imagine walking along the roadside. The first moment under this searing desert sun would be a pleasure. The next would bring danger.

  On the radio, a man recites news of a manhunt for a suspected terrorist; Rina tunes to a music station. I touch the binoculars on Gil’s knees, and he nods permission without turning his eyes from the window. Facing forward in the car, I lift the binoculars to my eyes.

  For an instant the world careens and wobbles in a glorious stream of brown and blue and golden light. Then, as I adjust the focus, I am assaulted by a brightly lit field rushing at me: earth and stone and skyline coming too fast, too close. I jump back involuntarily in my seat. The world has been corralled into the ruthless eye of a microscope, the smallest objects tilt at me with excruciating sharpness; it’s as if the window of my mind has been forced open and the world come pouring in.

  I lower the glasses and return them to Gil’s knees without a word.

  Rina sings along with an Israeli pop song on the radio; Dov hums to a phrase here and there. In the determinedly cheerful manner he’s maintained since picking us up this morning, he asks a polite string of questions about my studies. I’m certain most of his interest stems from Fanya’s coaching; I wonder whether any of it is genuine.

  “I’m enrolled for the fall semester at the university,” I explain to the back of his head.

  “What about your university at home?” Rina asks.

  “They’ll give me credit.” I move closer to Gil, and he wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Besides, maybe I’ll stay in Israel and finish college here.”

  “But why would you do that?”

  Gil rests his chin against my temple; I am drunk on his calm. When I answer Rina, my voice is firm. “I just want to. I want to be here.”

  “Wow,” Rina sighs. “If I had a choice, I’d go to university in the States.” She winks. “Football teams, you know. Parties and excitement. Here we all do army before university, so by the time we get to our studies we’re too old to make like Animal House.”

  “American universities aren’t all Animal House,” I venture.

  “So how long will your drawings be on display?” Dov cuts in, with a nod toward Gil.

  “Two weeks,” Gil replies. He regards Dov with what looks like a dull-edged suspicion. Since meeting my cousin this morning he has addressed him only to answer his brief questions with briefer answers.

  “Are you pleased with the show?”

  “Yes.”

  I think I catch Rina rolling her eyes at me in the rearview mirror, but I can’t be sure. Then, with a burst of energy, she takes over management of the conversation. “Tell us about it,” she says.

  And after a few false starts, Gil is talking. He seems cajoled by Rina’s lively questions, and his answers grow fuller and scattered with detail. When he explains stylistic influences and trends in Israeli art, it’s clear he’s decided to shine. Rina startles me with her knowledge of the art scene; she asks more, and Gil warms to her interest. He speaks of his idea for a new project, a large-scale installation involving the Orthodox. “It’s going to take people by storm.” His smile is full of mischief.

  Dov says nothing, but he looks annoyed. I don’t know whether he’s irritated because of Gil’s brashness or because he recognizes even fewer of Gil and Rina’s art references than I do.

  As Gil’s monologue continues, I feel a mounting anxiety. I’ve thought of this first exhibit as a milestone where Gil can rest, not as an opportunity to rush on to a next step. Pretending absorption in the landscape outside the window, I wonder whether Rina and Dov can tell that I’m hearing these plans for the first time.

  In the middle of a description of various types of parchment, Gil interrupts himself. “Why aren’t we heading south?”

  “I thought we’d stop at Wadi Qelt,” Dov says.
“It’s just a short loop before we turn south, and Maya might be interested in seeing the flood marks.” He speaks quickly and without affect; we are not to make much of this act of generosity. The detour, I know, is more of Fanya’s work. I picture her strolling away down the sidewalk this morning, her yellow-and-green scarf fluttering behind her. She refused a lift back to Tami and Nachum’s apartment; the distance home from Emek Refaim was just right for a morning walk, and until the hamsin was completely past she surely wouldn’t be taking her exercise in the afternoons. “Remember to see everything,” she told us, “and be careful of the sun. I’ll be waiting out the heat wave indoors, listening to music. Maybe reading some poetry in the German.”

  Dov pulls off the highway onto a narrow road, and a few minutes later steers to one side and stops the car. I look out the windows to my right and see nothing of note on the rocky landscape. To my left I see a hill rising steeply against the morning sky. At the center of the hill’s crest there appears to be a small break in the rock: a shallow furrow, nothing more.

  We step out of the car, and as Gil and I stretch, Dov and Rina start up the pebbly incline. I scramble to join them. “What’s the hurry?” I hear Gil say from behind me. I slow my steps, but he follows at a distance all the same.

  I reach the top of the rise and stop short beside Dov and Rina. Only a few feet before us, the ground vanishes. What appeared from below to be a furrow in the rock is not a furrow at all, but a chasm dropping a hundred yards down. I stare into a deep channel cut in the, layered stone, a highway through sun-baked rock. The broad reach of air separating the spot where we stand from the cliff opposite narrows far below us to a slender twisting rock bed. There is not a trace of water in the bottom of the channel, only a faint trail of vegetation where water has been and might once again be.