“You can’t do that,” he tells me.
“Why not?”
Now, he turns around and flashes his amused and arrogant smile at me.
“Because you don’t know how to do it, do you?”
“So, show me,” I reply.
“We also don’t know,” he lets me know plainly. If he does not know, as he has already said, the fact of not knowing makes him especially pleased.
Oved continues staring at me, defying and mocking me, as Leah and Benny compete for the title of being most confused.
“Then, at least tell me what you tried that didn’t succeed so that I don’t waste my time,” I request.
Three pairs of eyes look at me in silence. I begin losing patience in the face of their lack of cooperation.
“It just isn’t possible that you never thought of that by yourself,” I hurl at them. Benny shakes his head to say no. Leah lowers her gaze to avoid responding.
“Never, ever,” Oved says firmly.
I am astounded. Completely amazed. Benny has already told me that he is apprehensive of being judged. This was why he did not move on. He fears the meeting with his father and forefathers. Despite finding that fear ridiculous, I can understand what leaves him here. Leah feels obliged to Helen and can’t leave her. That is also absurd and equally understandable. But what keeps Oved here? He doesn’t appear to be one who is led by feelings of guilt or obligation to anyone in particular.
“In all these years, have you never thought of leaving?” I ask.
“It’s not as if I haven’t given it thought,” Oved says. “I simply never tried. Firstly, I still have unfinished business here.”
“What haven’t you finished? You’ve been here, how long? Two thousand years? Besides, what do you still have to do? You can’t do anything more, can you?” I cry. Each time I think I am beginning to understand something, Oved pulls out another platitude that confuses me even more. Oved shrugs, as if we are dealing with something marginal and unimportant, and hovers gently out of the living room. Benny and Leah keep silent.
“It can’t be possible that you haven’t ever thought of it,” I suggest. Neither one of them answers.
***
Leah stands facing the large mirror in Helen’s bedroom, trying to remember the last time she entered it. It was the day Noga arrived. Several things had happened since then, which was strange because since she came here, not much has happened. Milka appeared one day. That can be called a significant event. Although Helen had gone wild at first, it seemed that in her heart of hearts, she was happy at the addition. She had been alone for too long, and Leah was familiar enough with her to know she wasn’t the type to benefit from being alone. It was the same when Oved appeared, and after that, of Benny, but those were all the changes she could specify.
People turned up from time to time – curious tourists, who tried to peep in through the boarded-up windows; historians, who wanted to tell the history of the settlement and would photograph the house from every angle. Occasionally, administrators and other such officials, who came to check that no one had placed anything in the abandoned house. But those casual visitors disappeared from whence they came without leaving their mark on the house. One could say that during those long years, nothing much happened there. Nothing happens to people in her situation. That is part of the essence of the matter; she feels trapped in a static position where nothing progresses or changes, and yet, things are changing here, and threatening to overturn her world. Soon, she will have to depart and take leave of the house for the second time, this time, forever. Strangely, it is the mirror that breaks her heart.
Leah thought of the last time she had cleaned it. It was more than seventy years ago, and one year before her death. She knew that, unlike others, she had counted the years—or more correctly, she had counted the winters. She arrived at the house for the first time as a young girl in the heat of June, but returned to it as an old woman in the long nights of December. Since then, she has counted seventy-seven winters of long nights. The last time she cleaned the mirror was when she visited the settlement with her eldest granddaughter. The days were the days of the Second World War, and the Holy Land was in turmoil.
Nevertheless, in Zichron Ya’akov, people insisted on celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of its establishment, and the local council sent invitations to the festivities to all the pioneer settlers. Leah also received a letter. Initially, she did not plan to attend. She seldom went on journeys after Mordecai’s death. Her children and grandchildren visited her at her home. So, it happened that her eldest granddaughter, Michal, a student at the teachers’ seminary, saw the invitation when she visited her and talked her into going. The festivities were of no interest to her. They consisted of interminable speeches from officials who knew little if nothing of the early days of Zichron Ya’akov. She lost interest very quickly.
“Come, let’s go and see the house,” she suggested to her granddaughter. Initially, Michal thought, she meant her parents’ home that had been sold a long time ago and renovated to such an extent that it was impossible to recognize the miserable shack it had once been. Leah led her to the edge of the settlement, where the paths and gardens ended, and the spacious, proud, and elegant house stood alone and expressed its distaste for Zichron Ya’akov by intentionally keeping its distance from the other dwellings.
The house had been standing empty for several years. People said that the Baron had stayed there on his last visit to the settlement. Since his death, no one cared, and when payment to the guard who oversaw the house stopped, neglect began to take its toll on the yard and the rooms. No one took occupancy of the house. Rumor had it that the spirit of the wife of Jacob Disraeli, the Baron’s representative, haunted it. Of course, everyone said it was nonsense, yet they repeated it over and over again.
Leah continued to work at the house until Jacob’s departure and had never revisited it. On the few occasions that she visited her parents on the settlement, she took care to keep her distance from the house. When the railway station in Binyamina opened, Leah could see the house, standing alone from the small platform, but since the construction of the new town around the railway station, its houses blocked the view of the manor house.
“What is this house?” Michal asked.
“It’s the house where I worked,” she replied.
“Is that so? You never told me about it,” Michal said in her cheerful youthful voice and already went to open the door.
“No. Stop,” she said to her granddaughter, who seemed surprised by the uncharacteristic sharpness of her grandmother’s voice. She had also surprised herself. And why did it bother her that Michal would enter the house? But something held her back.
Michal had been born in Tel-Aviv, the young Hebrew city born out of the sands. She was a member of the ‘Haganah,’ and belonged to the generation nurtured on hope. What possible connection could she have to this house, with all its corners filled with despair?
“I want to go into the house, alone, Michal, only for a few minutes,” she said, and her confused granddaughter only asked her weakly if she was sure, and remained standing outside while Leah opened the creaking door and disappeared inside.
The house was different from how she remembered it, yet familiar, nevertheless. Most of the carpets, furniture, and chandeliers were no longer there; perhaps people had stolen them. Now, dust and spider webs replaced them. She entered the kitchen, where her small metal bed still stood in the corner. No one wanted to take it. Leah shrank back at the sight of it and went out of the kitchen. She walked through the rooms and went upstairs to the master bedroom. For a moment, she expected to find Helen there, lying on the big four-poster bed with its canopy. But the bed was no longer there, only the carved wooden wardrobe and the huge mirror that was dirty and covered with a thick layer of dust. She could not but think how Helen would react to seeing her room in this condition, and she reme
mbered how she would blame her for any fault in her housekeeping work.
Although the house was neglected and dirty, Leah could not leave the mirror in its current state. She went downstairs and into the kitchen, avoiding the sight of her bed. The cleaning rags that Esther had cut from worn-out bedsheets were right where she thought she would find them, in the second drawer. Like the narrow bed, no one wanted them. She went to the sink but remembered that the house had never had piped water. The manor house had stayed behind when the settlement advanced and progressed. Leah went to the open front door and found Michal sitting on a single step in front of it.
“Have you got some water?” Michal stood up immediately.
“Sure. Are you thirsty?” She pulled a water bottle from her backpack and offered it to Leah with a look of concern on her face. Leah was familiar with that expression. It appeared on the faces of young people and reminded you that you were old.
She took the water bottle from Michal and turned back to the staircase.
“Is everything alright, Grandmother?” Michal called after her, but there was no response. How can anyone expect an answer to such a question?
This time, climbing the stairs took longer and required more effort. Leah was not young anymore.
Finally, the mirror was clean. Leah stared at the reflection of an old woman before her and sought the young girl she had once been. But the eyes that looked back at her from the mirror were the eyes of Helen, and they expressed anger and blame. Leah wanted to tear her eyes away, leave the room, and run away from the house, but she felt nailed to the spot in front of the mirror. She deserved it, she knew. After all, she was guilty.
“I apologize,” she mumbled and turned to the door.
Leah did not respond to Michal’s anxious questions and, at some stage, her granddaughter stopped asking and allowed her grandmother to sink deeper into her thoughts. Only when she got back home and parted with Michal after assuring her that she was well, did Leah notice that she was still holding the dirty rag.
Now, she thinks that, perhaps, Noga is right. Maybe, it is time to put down the dirty cloth and stop carrying it around with her. But where will she find the strength to do that?
That, she doesn’t know.
***
“So, what do you say?” I ask Helen after entering her room without any unnecessary preamble and ceremony, which elicited a shout of protestations and reprimands like “audacity,” “overstepping the limit,” “no manners,” that I manage to ignore.
“You overheard the conversation downstairs, didn’t you? Do you intend to move with them to that house in the North?”
Helen folded her arms and stuck her chin out in her typically insulting manner.
“I don’t intend on forcing my presence on anyone who isn’t interested in me.”
I prefer not to remark that she did exactly this when she decided to return to the house after her death.
“So, what will you do? They are going to demolish the house.”
“No one is going to pull down this house!” Helen cries out angrily.
“You know it won’t work for you,” I retort, “this whole display of holy anger. It won’t matter how much you shout and scream, no one outside this house can hear you. You have no control over what will happen, exactly as you had no control over what happened in the past. You will move with them in the end, whether they want you or not, because that’s what you do. You stick to the familiar, even if it’s bad for you.”
Helen opened her mouth to respond. I could visualize the chain of sentences that would emanate from her in deafening screams that would only be audible to the five spirits in the crumbling house to the exclusion of anyone else. But, after staring at me, open-mouthed for a few seconds, she closed it.
“What do you want from me? Why the hell are you bothering me?”
“I want you to help me talk to Milka, to get her to explain how to release myself and leave this world,” I tell Helen, whose eyes open wide in amazement. I am not sure what shocks her more; the thought of leaving this world, or the idea of talking to Milka, or perhaps the very fact of my asking for help.
“Why would I do something like that?” she asked.
“Because it is also worth your while to leave, because you have no reason to remain, because you are suffering here, and because it’s time to advance,” I reply.
Helen grows silent for a few moments and stares intently at me, as if she is trying to find the trap I have set for her, some secret trick to trip her up.
“And why would Milka agree to talk to me?”
“Because you are a captivating and fascinating conversation partner,” I say and immediately regret my cynicism that did not escape Helen. “Because, in the long run, she’s all right and has no reason not to talk to you. And it won’t only be with you. It will be with all of us. We all need to find the way to move forward,” I say, but Helen is still not persuaded. She huffs in disgust.
“All of us? I heard you all in the living room. No one is enthusiastic about your crazy idea.”
“It’s not a crazy idea. It is the most logical idea possible. It makes more sense than escaping to another house, waiting a hundred more years ’til it also is demolished, or falls to pieces, or is snatched by someone.”
Although she seems reluctant and dismisses everything I say, I see that she is listening to me.
“Leah will go if you go. You are the only reason she is here, at all,” I add.
Hellen huffs in disgust again,
“Leah doesn’t care about me. She will go with them and desert me, just as she did before.” Her insulted tone doesn’t convince me. I even wonder if it persuades her.
“That’s not true. Leah returned to the house only for your sake, and she has been stuck here all these years because of you. And, if in the end she decides to move with Oved and leave you behind, it will only be because you have done nothing to justify her loyalty and devotion to you.”
Now, Helen explodes, and the exemplary restraint she displayed during our discussion until this moment, disappears at once.
“Devotion? Loyalty? She killed me! She poisoned me! She cooperated with those wretched, two-faced, scheming villains.” Her clenched fists punch the air as she screams uncontrollably, completely crazed as she uses all the insulting vocabulary at her disposal to describe those who had sought to destroy her—including Leah. It was so unfair and so wrong.
“She didn’t know what was in the cup. She thought it was medicine,” I try to insert into her downpour of curses.
“She didn’t know? Ha!” Helen’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. “Even a stupid, ignorant girl like her could have understood what was happening.”
“If it was so clear, how come you didn’t understand what was afoot? Why did you drink the tea if the plot was so transparent? If you knew that Sophie and Jacob were plotting to get rid of you,” I hurled at her.
“Don’t you dare blame me,” Helen screamed, and her tone rose together with her legs with each word. “I am the victim of this story.”
It is too much. It is clear to me with every rise in the decibels Helen is reaching, that the whole house is listening to our conversation, and I cannot bear the thought that Leah is a witness to this onslaught of delusional allegations.
“Leah is also a victim. She was Jacob and Sophie’s victim. They exploited her because, like you, they regarded her as a tool and not a human being, and to this day, she is the victim of the guilt feelings you offload on her.”
“She brought that upon herself,” Helen screeched, and I understand that I am close to the point of completely losing it.
“Well, perhaps you’re right,” I say. Helen shuts up for a minute. She was not expecting me to agree with her. I have no idea when someone last told her she was right.
“In a way, Leah did bring this on herself. She should not have ret
urned, and she should not have given you a second thought,” I say, then turn around and leave the room.
Helen’s screeching reached me even before she stood before me, waving her fists, her face distorted with anger.
“How dare you, your rudeness is unacceptable. You break all the bounds! I will not agree to suffer your audacity under any circumstances! You cannot speak to me that way in my home. I will not permit such behavior—”
“Do you know what your problem is?” I cut in.
“Don’t you dare interrupt me! You are crossing—”
“You are stuck, and that’s your problem. This house isn’t yours anymore, it hasn’t been home for a long time, and they will demolish it in a few days. Leah is no longer a young girl. In a way, she’s older than you. Jacob and Sophie died a long time ago, even their grandchildren are dead, and only you have stayed behind, in eternal exile,” I hear myself repeating Milka’s words. “Don’t you understand that this is your chance? They banished you from your home, from your family to a country you hated. Your husband banished you from his life, and now you insist on remaining in a place where you don’t belong. It isn’t your house. You will never belong here.”
The house has grown dark, and I decide that I would prefer to spend the night on the lower floor. This time Helen does not follow me.
I spend most of the night with a sense of frustration, accompanied by the general feeling of tension that permeates the house. When I go down in the morning, I don’t see anyone. Indeed, my experience with Helen was a dismal failure. I have lost hope of garnering her support for my effort to get Milka’s help, but, perhaps, our dispute will help Leah understand that there is no point in making sacrifices for Helen, who is unable to appreciate her. I decide that in the morning, Leah will be my first target. After that, perhaps, I will try again with Milka.
The House of Lost Spirits: A Paranormal Novel Page 17
