With Nachum, even though in the last year he was unable to speak, it was different. Especially in the moments when he would suddenly open his eyes, anxiously search for Emilia, give her a surprised look and then calmly close his eyes again. With Adina everything is the opposite. Emilia knows that Adina doesn’t want her there and that any other caregiver could do the job better than her. She tells herself this cannot be the reason why she is here, so far away from where she was born. There must be a different reason, something she does not yet understand and has to find, and if she does not find it she must go back to Riga, even though no one is waiting for her there either.
Emilia does not give up. Each day begins with the hope that something good will happen.
At nights she has trouble falling asleep, because the flat she rents is on a main road and there is noise from the traffic all night, and also because of the cold. She knows she may have to move again soon, to Adina’s home, but even so she goes to a homeware shop on Balfour Street and buys some dishes she likes, a frying pan, two colourful towels and a blanket. She spends a lot of time cleaning the flat, which was previously rented by three Georgian workers who never cleaned it. In the evenings she has a ten-minute walk back from the nursing home. She stops at the supermarket for tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons, a few apples and bottles of mineral water, because the tap water is cloudy, and that is all she eats at home. She stops buying bread. There is no mirror in the flat, and Emilia decides she doesn’t need one, but in the mirrors at the nursing home she can see that she is losing weight.
She makes herself a cup of very sweet tea in the evening, the way her mother used to make it for her, and she misses Riga—or rather, not Riga but the home she grew up in and the hours when she used to wait alone for her father to come home from work, always before Mother did. Emilia would lay the table with two plates, one for her father and one for herself, and next to each of them she would place a knife, fork and spoon. In the middle of the table she would put a brown basket with half a loaf of bread left over from breakfast. The deep plates were decorated with storks and geese in yellow and black. Emilia was not allowed to turn on the stove, so her father would heat up the food when he got home for his lunch break. Emilia would clear the dishes after lunch and wash them in cold water in the kitchen sink.
On the floor above her flat in Bat Yam lives an elderly couple, and since Emilia keeps her windows open to the cold air and evening smells, she can hear the man shouting at his wife in Hebrew and the wife answering. Most of the time she feels fine with her decision not to take the television or radio from Esther, because her flat seems more and more like a sort of cavern, a place where she must prepare herself. It is fourteen square metres, and it’s unclear how the Georgians who lived there managed to fit in three mattresses. But precisely because Emilia has no television or radio, the sounds she happens to hear on the bus or from Adina’s television can send chills down her spine, as do voices that drift through the open window, because each of them might be saying something that Emilia needs to hear. A voice to guide her. A sign.
And it’s possible that it has already come.
It happened when a Filipina caregiver named Jennifer pinned a sign on the noticeboard next to the lift, inviting believers to Mass on Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent. Emilia saw the Filipina putting up the sign and asked her what language the Mass would be held in, and the Filipina said English. She couldn’t go because she worked on Wednesdays, but she realized that she might have unwittingly started Lent by deciding to give up television and radio, and with her new diet.
On her forty-sixth birthday, which was near the end of January and which no one but her celebrated, she visited the church for the first time. She’d copied down the address from the Filipina’s notice. She took the bus to Jaffa but realized she could have walked all the way along the beach, because her flat was no more than three kilometres away. And that, too, was a signal.
She did not know much about what one was supposed to do in church, apart from what everyone knows. She did not cross herself or kneel in front of the marble statue of the Son of God when she entered the large hall for the first time. As a child, Emilia had not gone to church much because her father did not believe in the Son of God back then, while her mother, who did seem to have believed, went infrequently and usually without Emilia, so as not to anger the Father. But on the bus to Jaffa, Emilia remembered visiting St. Peter, in the old city of Riga, as a little girl, with her Aunt Stefka, her mother’s older sister. Stefka had come to live with them when Emilia’s mother fell ill, and she and Emilia were supposed to pray together for her mother to get well. Emilia not only prayed for good health but also asked that her mother not keep suffering. When she died, less than a week later, Emilia felt guilty and did not tell anyone about her secret prayer.
The Mass in Jaffa was held in Polish, and Emilia sat on a wooden pew in the back and listened to the prayers without understanding much. The priest’s voice echoed through the empty space like music.
Before leaving, she bought a candle and lit it from the flame of one of the other candles that burned near the baptism font, and when she put her candle next to the others and inhaled the smell of burning wax, she thought about Nachum and Esther, and also about her mother and her father, who only a few weeks before his sudden death had started talking to her about the Son of God.
Now she goes to the church in Jaffa every Sunday, to the exact same Mass in a language she cannot understand. She discovers that the Jaffa church is also named for St. Peter, like the ancient one in Riga, and she begins to recognize the worshippers. She thinks the young priest recognizes her too. Every Sunday she allows herself to get closer to him, to sit on a pew nearer the front, to move her lips in front of him.
She still does not dare talk to him, even though she wants to and knows she will.
She does not understand most of the words in the prayers, even though the sounds of some of them are close to the sounds of her own language. But as the days go by, she begins to feel that perhaps He is not guiding her in a language of words and letters but in a different language, the language of things, the language of events and occurrences that no notebook can teach her, and that in order to understand she must open all the windows and allow things to enter.
And that is exactly what she tries to do.
After her visit with Esther, she takes the bus back to Bat Yam and gets off on Balfour Street, goes into the homeware shop and buys an embroidered tablecloth, a plastic dish rack and a little basket for baked goods or fruit. That evening she finds in the pocket of her trousers the piece of paper with Gil’s phone number, and she calls him, because she has to find more work and make more money.
In her notebook, where she copies down Hebrew words and short sentences that she sees on signs and tries to memorize, is the name of the street where the church is located, names of the two streets that lead to the church from the bus stop and Emilia’s own name, in Hebrew, drawn in pencil, as though it were composed not of letters but of pictures.
She visits the cemetery where Nachum is buried and copies the inscription on his grave into her notebook.
“Our beloved grandfather, father and husband.”
“Salt of the earth, a pioneer and a children’s doctor.”
“May his soul be bound in the eternity of life.”
When Emilia places a large bouquet of flowers that she bought outside the cemetery on his grave, she sees Nachum not far away, among the other graves, watching her with eyes that turn slowly black.
4
Her first meeting with Gil was on a Sunday, near the end of February. Still winter.
A few days earlier the bad news had come. When Emilia opened the door to Adina’s room, she’d found her daughter, Hava, organizing the wardrobe. Hava asked if Nurit from the agency had spoken with her, and when Emilia said no, she told her the National Insurance had finally authorized a full-
time caregiver for Adina and she could move into the nursing home on the first of March.
She took Emilia to Adina’s bedroom. The wardrobe was open and clothes and faded towels were arranged on the bed in tall piles, and Hava asked if one drawer and three shelves would be enough. She said Adina had spare sheets and blankets, and if there was anything else Emilia needed, she should make a list. Hava would see what she had at her place, and whatever they still needed she’d get hold of.
Adina sat on the couch in the tiny living room, and even though she did not follow their whole conversation, she apparently understood the preparations her daughter was making. She yelled at Hava in Hebrew that she didn’t want Emilia to live with her, she didn’t need her and Emilia was stealing money from her. Emilia was horrified, even though Hava told her in English to ignore Adina. “Do you understand what she’s saying?” Hava asked. “She thinks everyone steals from her. Mostly me and my husband and the kids. As if she even has anything left worth stealing. All she did her whole life was waste money. Now there’s nothing left and I have to spend my own money on her.”
Even though she no longer needed legal counsel, Emilia did not cancel the meeting with Gil.
She woke up early, when it was still dark outside. She drank her coffee in the kitchen by the open window, with the lamp on. She did not have many such mornings left. In the little basket from the homeware shop, which she’d placed on the embroidered tablecloth in the middle of the table, were a few lemons and apples. During a brief lull in the traffic outside, Emilia heard a woman walking by quickly in high heels. She told herself these changes were for the best; her salary would be higher, and she wouldn’t have to pay rent. She couldn’t have stayed in this flat for much longer anyway because she didn’t have enough money. Yet still she felt that moving to the nursing home would be even harder than leaving Nachum and Esther’s home.
The number 42 bus took her from Bat Yam to Ramat Gan. She got on at the beginning of the route, and so she found a seat at the back, next to a steamy window. She wore the same grey jeans and grey T-shirt she always wore, and large sunglasses. Since she’d lost so much weight, the clothes hung loose on her body, but she couldn’t imagine herself wearing anything else, nor could she afford new clothes now. In a plastic bag she had a long black purse and an old mobile phone.
Emilia held the plastic bag on her lap.
The passengers in the other seats changed over every few stops, and the bus filled up. People who couldn’t get a seat crowded together, trying to find something to hold on to. Their wet coats touched each other. At one of the stops the young priest from Jaffa who conducted the Mass in Polish got on. Emilia was surprised to see him outside the church. His presence on the bus was foreign, strange, as though he were not supposed to be there or were there only for her. And he looked completely different. His clerical collar peeked out under a blue sweater and a black windbreaker, and on his shoulder he carried a leather satchel, like a student.
The priest did not notice Emilia because she was hidden behind a huddle of passengers. She could only see him when one of the passengers moved or got off and the crowd broke up. His face, which appeared and disappeared intermittently in her line of sight, excited Emilia. Since no one offered him a seat, she got up, leaving her plastic bag on the bench, and made her way towards him. She did not introduce herself when she asked, in English, if he would like to sit down. He gave her a surprised look, smiled and said he was getting off at the next stop. She went back to her seat and got off a few stops later, on the corner of Bialik and Aba Hillel streets.
Gil was busy, and she waited for him in an armchair in front of a secretary.
Two stout men who looked like twins left his office, but she kept waiting until the secretary told her she could go in and walked her to his office. The soft, white, doughy hand that Gil held out when she walked in reminded her of Nachum’s hands, which she used to wash every morning and evening, and once every week or two she would clip his nails. His green eyes also resembled Nachum’s, but they did not look at her as directly as Nachum used to when he woke up in a fright or when she washed his face.
Gil wore a suit and smelled of aftershave. At the beginning of the meeting he still looked busy or distracted. He told Emilia in Hebrew, “My mother said you went to see her and that you’d like my advice.” Emilia understood what he said, but she answered in English. In fact, she didn’t need anything from him now, because soon she would start a full-time job at the nursing home, but when he asked her in English, “So how can I help you?” she lied and repeated the things that were correct when she’d told them to Esther: she works part-time, the pay is not enough, she wants to start cleaning homes or offices on her free days. She doesn’t know if she should do it without permits or try to change her work permit, if that’s even possible. Esther suggested she ask Gil, which was why she’d called. She felt bad about not telling Gil the truth, but consoled herself with the knowledge that what she had told Esther was not a complete lie and it had been true when she’d called him.
All she knew about Gil at this point was that he was Nachum and Esther’s youngest son. A few years younger than his two sisters and many years younger than his brother. Of the four, he was the one who visited Nachum and Esther the least, and not simply because he was busy and travelled overseas a lot—or so she understood from what Esther sometimes said. Esther had insinuated that he visited his in-laws much more often, because they were rich and gave Gil and his wife a lot of money. Emilia remembered hearing her tell Nachum that “Gil knew who to marry in terms of money, but that hasn’t helped him be happy in life.” Emilia did not see him often. Money matters and her salary were handled by their oldest son, Ze’ev.
His office was small and not very fancy. There was grey wall-towall carpeting, and the furniture was old. Not only his hands and the colour of his eyes reminded Emilia of his father, Nachum, but also something in the soft slowness of his movements.
The woman he had married was named Ruthi, and Emilia did not see her often either. They had two daughters, Hadass and Noa, who came to visit Nachum and Esther without him, alone or together. During the shiva Esther had brought out old photo albums, and on Saturday, when there were no visitors, she’d shown Emilia pictures of Gil as a boy and as a teenager.
When Gil asked her for her passport and the papers from the employment agency and looked through them, Emilia thought it was possible that the little room she’d slept in for two years used to be his childhood room.
Gil looked up from the documents at Emilia. He told her in English that this wasn’t exactly his field now, but that he’d worked on these matters until a few years ago, with agencies and foreign workers. In his opinion it would be next to impossible to change her work permit, certainly unless there were a formal request from the agency that had brought her to Israel.
“Would you like me to contact them and ask them to submit a request?” he asked, and Emilia quickly said no.
“Then, as an attorney, I cannot recommend that you work without the correct permits.” After a pause, he added, “But it might be the easiest way. That’s what everyone does. Including Israelis. But give me a few days to make a couple of enquiries and get back to you, okay?”
Emilia nodded but did not leave yet. It was important that he understand that she did not want him to get in touch with the agency, and he said he understood. He asked how to pronounce her last name and when she repeated it twice, Nodyeves, because Gil had trouble pronouncing it, she thought about how she hadn’t said her last name for a long time, as if the only name she had left was Emilia—eh-mili-ya—and that, too, was vanishing, because Adina did not call her by her name, as Nachum and Esther had. For a moment her name came back to her, thanks to Gil. When he asked if she had any relatives in Israel she said no, and Gil switched to Hebrew and asked, “But in Latvia? Do you have family in Riga?” She shook her head. “Not in Latvia either? No children in Latvia?”
She had no children. And now no parents either. She wanted to tell him that his father and mother were the last family she’d had, but that was not true because she also had her Aunt Stefka and her two cousins, both of whom had children. Then Gil mentioned Nachum. He said, “I know how attached Dad was to you. Have you been a caregiver for a long time? Before you came to Israel were you also a caregiver?” Emilia said no, and she told him that in Riga she’d worked at a homeware shop. She took her black purse out of the plastic bag, but Gil motioned for her to put it back. He said, “You don’t have to pay me, absolutely not. There’s nothing to pay for yet. I’ll let you know if there is. And I’ll try to do what I can to help.”
That evening Emilia walked all the way to Jaffa. The Polish Mass started at six o’clock, and she got there early and sat for a while in the square outside the church, by the sea.
She thought about the priest on the bus, earlier that morning. About how she might not be able to go to Mass on Sundays once she worked full-time and lived in the nursing home. The sight of the young priest among the passengers on the bus was a sign that she had to speak with him, and she decided to do it that day.
By now she knew exactly when all the worshippers would get up from their wooden pews and when they would kneel. She thought about the fold-out couch in the tiny living room in Adina’s flat and about the old sheets she would sleep on. The priest’s voice fell from the church ceiling and propelled her thoughts to other things, like Nachum’s hands, which were almost the only part of his body that had no signs of impending death or old age. She thought about how similar they were to the soft hand Gil had held out that morning. She thought about how the hands of the Son of God in the statue behind the priest were not injured, unlike the rest of his body. The hands of the marble Son of God were white and slender and the fingers were long and clean, with no signs of having been stabbed by nails. For a moment Nachum appeared before her again, but this time only in her memory. They were in the bathroom, at the sink. He sat in his wheelchair and she stood beside him, holding his hands, placing them above the sink and bathing them in water and soap. Nachum, perhaps because the mirror was too high and he could not look into his own face, looked at hers. She also thought about her mother, who fell ill when Emilia was a young girl who did not know how to be near death without being frightened by it, and about her father, who died suddenly many years later, from a heart attack, without Emilia having time to look after him.
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