by Batya Gur
He rummaged in his trouser pocket for a clean handkerchief and tried to make up his mind whether to return to the kitchen now and prepare the sugar water. But his right hand was already removing the disposable diaper, which was disintegrating from its apparent long hours of use. As he folded it he reflected that they had still used cloth diapers in Yuval’s time. Then he froze for a moment and heard himself uttering a cry of astonishment before he laughed aloud. He had been so sure of the baby’s sex that even the sight of the tiny vulva, which was red and chapped from urine, wasn’t enough to convince him at first.
“But you’re a girl!” he said and bent over her. “Not that it makes any difference to us,” he murmured into the tiny ear, “a baby is a baby whatever its sex. But it’s funny how trapped people are in their old perceptions,” he went on aloud. “Anyone who once diapered and bathed and fed his boy baby simply doesn’t think of a clothed baby as a girl. If I’d known I’d have realized why you don’t struggle when you’re being undressed, because little girls, they say, are gentler even as babies.”
The little body was now completely naked. A network of blue veins stood out on its white chest, red blotches of diaper rash covered the stomach. And before the little legs began to kick again he gathered her into his arms, clasped her to his chest, and lowered her gradually, first the legs and then the buttocks, and lastly his own arm supporting her back and neck, into the warm water. The baby shuddered convulsively and let out a yell. Michael resumed his murmurs and explanations as he laid his hand on her face and neck. He worked quickly as he soaped and rinsed, and very carefully returned her to the towel, wrapped her up in it, and rummaged in the medicine chest again for some cream, finding the white ointment in the blue container which Yuval had used years ago in the army.
The sight of the baby wrapped in the big towel, supported on his one arm, her legs jerking, reminded him of Nira. When he bathed Yuval before feedings, she would stand at the bathroom door, leaning against the doorpost, her hands stopping her ears against the screams. He often had to remind her to hold out her finger to the baby, so that he could grip it in his fist, to save him from the terrible fear of being lost in space. Whenever he reminded her, Nira would hurry to obey, and somehow her helplessness and obedience gave him a feeling of self-righteousness. He didn’t like himself when he told her how to behave with her son, but he couldn’t stop himself either.
It gave him a strange feeling to dry and powder the baby. When he smeared the thick cream on her abdomen, he examined her red and protruding navel. Suddenly he was afraid that she might have a hernia, as a result of hours of continuous crying. Only a pediatrician could make the diagnosis, and the thought of a pediatrician gave rise in him to feelings of reluctance and fear. A pediatrician meant that somebody else would know about the baby, who would immediately take her away for a medical examination. So he decided to drive the thought from his mind. The pediatrician could wait. Apart from the navel and apart from the diaper rash, her skin was smooth and clear. She began to scream again, making her face red and blue.
When Michael went into the kitchen with the baby and prepared the sugar water, he still didn’t know what exactly he would say to the upstairs neighbor. But she was the only quick solution he could think of as far as bottles, formula, diapers, and even a change of clothing were concerned. He couldn’t bring himself to put the baby back into her original garment, or return her to the cardboard box. She remained wrapped in the towel, lying in the middle of the bed, a clean handkerchief rolled up and dipped in sugar water in her pink mouth, her lips sucking avidly. Michael built a wall of pillows around her and ran up the stairs to the second floor.
Even when the neighbor stood before him he didn’t know what to say. She opened the door a crack. One hand held the handle and the other ran through her curls, trying to gather them up, and then fussed with the collar of her purple man’s shirt. He recognized the apprehension, almost the fear, on her face that he had again come about the damp stain on his ceiling.
“May I come in?” he asked. With a kind of helpless submission, but with obvious reluctance, as if she would have liked to deny him entry if only she had an excuse to do so, and because she didn’t know how to say no, she opened the door and moved aside until he was standing in the room next to a playpen, against which the cello case leaned.
In the playpen the chubby baby lay on its back, arms outspread and legs apart. It breathed noisily. The cello itself was laying on a little sofa next to a pile of wash and under a big oil painting, on unframed canvas, which at a glance left the impression of a misty landscape in white, black, and gray. The woman coughed and said, still from her place at the door, that because of the holidays she hadn’t managed to find a plumber. He tried to say that he hadn’t come about the stain, but she went on talking rapidly, apologizing again that because of the baby and her need to get back to work and the holidays. . . .
Michael waved his arm impatiently. “I’m just here to ask . . .” he began, “there’s a baby, a little girl, in my apartment now and I don’t have anything for her. . . .”
In the seconds during which she looked at him with astonishment, her deep and very light eyes narrowing and wrinkling at the corners, the explanation came to him: “My sister left her granddaughter with me and she forgot all the things.”
“What things?” asked the woman. The soft light still coming through the big window lingered on the gray strands in her curly hair before illuminating a smallish blotch on her left breast.
“Everything. Bottles, formula, diapers—all that stuff,” he muttered, embarrassed, knowing that his story didn’t make sense. Again he panicked at the dawning knowledge, which he hurried to banish from his mind, that he was doing something wrong. “Everything’s closed for the next two days, because of the holiday. I can’t phone my sister because she’s religious. . . . And anyway she lives far away.”
Something between apprehension and suspicion appeared in the woman’s eyes as she asked: “What? The baby’s been left with you for the whole of the holiday? The baby? Do you live alone?”
Michael nodded unwillingly.
“Excuse me for asking,” she said quickly, “it’s just that . . . Do you know how to take care of her?”
“I think so. . . . It’s been a long time since . . . My son’s already grown up, but a baby’s a baby. I don’t think you forget . . .” His voice died away as he heard himself stammering. “Anyhow,” he said firmly, “there’s no choice now. She’s here and I haven’t even got a bottle or a diaper, and I thought you could help me. . . .” He gestured toward the baby.
“How old is she? I have bottles and powdered milk,” she said on her way to the next room. Michael waited for her to come back, and then watched her as she placed a baby bottle and a can of powdered milk on the round table in the dining nook and stood there waiting for an answer.
“Five weeks,” said Michael, responding to an instinct that told him not to give an even number.
“That’s a really young baby,” the woman said, alarmed. “How could they have left her like that without . . .”
“There’s been a misfortune in the family,” said Michael quickly, blinking. This lie, he thought, could lead to a real misfortune. Like when he had lied that Yuval was ill, and that very same night the boy had broken out with chicken pox. “I don’t have anyone to ask, they’re traveling . . . out of town . . . and the baby’s downstairs screaming with hunger.”
Again she went to the next room, returning with a big bundle of disposable diapers and a pacifier in a plastic wrapper. She paused to think for a moment. Then she went away again and came back quickly with a pile of baby clothes, a cloth diaper, and a round plastic box with a scented paper towel sticking out of it. She pushed all these things together, and then stood surveying the table with her cheek resting on a finger. She glanced doubtfully at Michael.
“He’s just fallen asleep, why don’t I come with you? I can help you with the first bottle.”
“No, no, no,�
�� said Michael, alarmed. He could imagine her face when she saw the cardboard box. Then she would understand everything. He knew that he couldn’t say he’d found the baby. She would then be taken away from him at once. “I don’t want to trouble you anymore. I don’t want you to leave your baby alone on my account.”
“There’s no problem,” she said pleasantly, and she began putting the articles she had collected into a big plastic bag. “Ido’s just fallen asleep. He’ll sleep for a while now. It’s no trouble at all for me to come down for a minute.”
Michael glanced at the playpen, put his hand on her arm, and said: “I’ll come back if I have a problem.”
She looked at him doubtfully, but helped him get a grip on the handles of the bag of disposable diapers. “Where are her parents? Leaving a five-week-old baby like that!”
“Her mother’s . . . in the hospital. Postnatal complications, and her father . . .” He looked frantically at the wall and said: “He . . . there’s no father. She’s a single mother.”
A look of understanding and concern dawned on her face. “Don’t worry,” she said. Her full lips, which pouted and gave her a sulky expression around the mouth, broke into a generous smile. “We’ll manage with her over the holidays. I suggest you let me help you a little. Ido’s almost five months old. Everything’s still fresh in my mind.” Suddenly, with an expression of alarm, she said: “You left her alone, she must be screaming her head off. Why don’t you go get her and bring her here?”
“No, no,” cried Michael. The woman’s face was now radiant with a smile that completely changed her expression. All traces of disquiet were gone, and her light eyes were wide open, like clear, bottomless pools. For some reason it was clear to him that bringing this woman into contact with the baby girl would mean losing her. Michael didn’t know why he was so sure of this. He was merely responding to a feeling of dismay unlike anything he had ever felt before. He thrust aside any attempt at logical thought.
“We need lukewarm boiled water,” he heard her call after him as he bounded down the stairs. He was holding the bags of clothes and diapers in his hands and the bottle and other things under his arm. “To make powdered milk you have to . . .” He didn’t hear the rest, only the screams from behind his door. Inside, he put the bundles down at the bedroom door, picked the baby up, and clasped her to his chest. The yellow blanket and the pink towel wrapped around her were both wet. A warm wetness soaked his shirt. He put his cheek to her little face. Her cheeks were on fire. For a moment her head jerked back convulsively. Her body struggled, but then her crying stopped and her face muscles relaxed.
For a few seconds the world was complete and at peace, lacking nothing. As if from a distance he heard the faint sound of music. The baby strained and stretched in his arms, and let out a loud scream of frustration. It took a while before he realized that it was the cello again, that the upstairs neighbor was sitting next to her sleeping baby and playing a sorrowful melody. He didn’t know what the sweetly heartfelt music was. He bent down and picked up the bag holding the bottle and powdered milk. He wondered how long she had been living here, and why he had never noticed her in the stairwell. He reflected on the beauty of her eyes and smile. If she weren’t such a mess she could be really attractive.
He glanced at the instructions for making the powdered milk and sat down so that he could go on holding the baby. While he was opening the can with his army knife and smelling the yellowish powder, he went on murmuring into the baby’s ear. How much water did you need to add for a baby girl? For some reason the fact that the baby was a girl made matters more serious, as if she needed more protection and special care than he might be able to provide. Michael measured out the requisite amount of powder, poured a bit more into the bottle just to be on the safe side, and made a face as he smelled the powder again. He wondered how it could possibly taste good to her. He felt the electric teakettle and poured some water into a glass. Since he didn’t want to let go of the baby, who stopped crying whenever he whispered an account of his actions into her ear, he couldn’t pour a drop of water onto his wrist. That was a gesture imprinted in his body ever since Yuval’s bottle-feeding days. And so he dipped his finger in the glass.
“A finger’s less sensitive,” he whispered into the pink little ear. The baby screamed in spite of his talking, and her screams hastened his movements. “One really doesn’t forget,” he assured her as he pressed her tightly to his body. “It’s like swimming or riding a bicycle,” he explained. He poured the water from the teakettle into the bottle, screwed the nipple on with one hand, and shook the bottle hard over the inside of his left wrist. To do this he had to relax his hold on the baby, who screamed at the top of her voice and writhed about on his arm. Drops of whitish fluid fell onto his skin. The temperature was right. He sat down on a chair, set the baby on his lap, and put the nipple into her mouth.
In the profound silence that now reigned, the sound of the cello was heard again from upstairs, full of feeling, vibrant with sweet sorrow. He loved the sound of the cello. How lucky the upstairs neighbor was to be able to play like that on the most beautiful of all musical instruments.
The baby sucked avidly, stopped, and her eyes closed. She seemed exhausted and had given up. Maybe she was too hungry to be fed. But Michael didn’t give up. He moistened her lips with the liquid, which came out of the bottle with difficulty, only when he shook it. Suddenly he realized that the hole must be too small. As if to verify his suspicion, the round, pink, perfect mouth opened wide, the head moved in frantic searching movements, and a new scream split the air, silencing any other sound. He panicked for only a moment. Until he remembered how he used to hold the tip of a pin over the gas flame and stick it into nipple holes that were too small. He even remembered the smell of the charred rubber, and how it sometimes melted and made the hole too large. The milk would come out in a big trickle and flood the inside of Yuval’s mouth.
“The baby’s choking!” Nira would cry, and he would hurry to turn him over. Yuval was a greedy baby. This baby, who didn’t yet have a name, or maybe had one he didn’t know, looked as if she had despaired of the possibility of being fed, as if she had really given up.
When Yuval was very hungry he couldn’t be fed. “Too hungry to eat,” Michael would announce, applying his special “method”: shaking drops from the bottle onto his finger and smearing them onto Yuval’s gums. Patience and perseverance would finally get him to eat. The room would fill with the rhythmic sucking sounds he now longed to hear from this baby.
He shook the bottle hard, wet his finger, and gently inserted it into the open mouth. The inside of the baby’s mouth was warm, her gums were clamped onto his finger, and her lips were pursed around it. Then he quickly pulled his finger out and substituted the nipple, which he had previously bitten to enlarge the hole.
Only when she began to suck hard, with a steady, regular rhythm, did he allow himself to lean against the cracked wooden back of the kitchen chair. Only then did he feel how tense his body had been until this minute, when a tremor of fatigue passed through the muscles of his legs.
It was only now that he felt free to examine her face at leisure. With the fingers of his left hand, the one that was holding her, he touched the little button of a nose, the delicate hint of fair eyebrows, the fine, soft down near her ears. Her eyes, which had now been closed for a few minutes, opened, a milky blue. Her tiny mouth was closed around the nipple from which she sucked steadily. She sighed between one suck and the next, and a film of sweat had gathered on her upper lip. Without moving the bottle, Michael rose with the baby in his arms and went to sit in the armchair in front of the French windows.
An ambulance siren wailed persistently in the distance. The sun set slowly over the hills, and the world was still. Only he and the baby remained, sitting in the wide armchair with its threadbare upholstery, the only piece of furniture left him from his married days. In this chair he used to feed Yuval on winter nights. He had listened to the sounds of his breathin
g and sucking, to his sighs of contentment, and again and again to Schubert’s song-cycle Die Winterreise. The atmosphere of those chilly nights—Yuval was born in autumn—was with him again. Silence, interrupted only by the sounds of feeding, and a solitude that was not loneliness but a kind of mute and perfect togetherness. The music upstairs stopped, and he had still not succeeded in identifying it. How often did you have to listen to a piece before you could identify it by name?
“We’re an autarchic economy,” he whispered with his face buried in the soft flaxen hair. The darkness gathered, the bottle emptied, and the baby’s eyes closed. Her sighs of satisfaction turned to rhythmic breathing. Her lips parted and let go of the nipple. Michael gently removed the bottle, checked to see how much was left, and put it down at his feet. Then he pressed the switch of the reading lamp. A soft yellow light illuminated her face. The other end of the room was in shadow. Michael picked up the baby and prepared to pace up and down the room. Since he was ready for a long trudge, he was surprised to hear the burp the moment he put her on his shoulder. He smiled with gratification. How little it sometimes took to be pleased! Sometimes it was enough to prepare for some effort and then it was unnecessary. Without making too much of it, the feeling at such moments might even be called happiness. He felt the weight of the little body, limp and relaxed, on his shoulder. He lowered her carefully to his arm, returned to the chair, put the baby on his lap, and gazed at the darkness outside and at the reflection of the lamp in the windowpane.
What now? he wondered. What do you actually want? But instead of keeping a grip on his thoughts, he let them wander. At that moment the demons began to surface in the form of the question of how long he was going to be able to keep the baby. He was breaking the law. He knew the procedures. It was obvious that he should have contacted the local police station that shared space with the Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound, where Michael worked. In his favor it could be said that it was a holiday, and that anyone else, too, would have kept the baby at home or taken her to the hospital. But the truth, the main point, was his wish, his imperative need, to keep her for himself. How brief and flimsy they were, the moments of utter peace of mind and body. One ring of the phone could crumble them to dust. Or a knock at the door, however hesitant. His heart skipped a beat. What if someone was already coming to take her away from him?
