He awoke immediately, surprised but not alarmed, like some little creature used to escaping from captivity. I wound the empty sleeves around his body and tied them in a knot.
"Good morning," I said in a voice which sounded amazingly gentle to me.
He spat at me, his saliva full of the sourness of night.
With one hand I wiped my face. With the other I moved his forelock aside, using a finger which still smelled of the most secret scent his mother's body could produce.
"It won't help you. I know everything. The sugar in the fuel tank. The smashed headlamps. The slogan you painted on the wall with the paint-sprayer of the priest... and," I slapped him lightly, "about the soldier you beat up..."
His mouth opened in an attempt to bite my hand. I stuffed the end of the sleeve into it.
"I want you to return the rifle you took that night and promise me you won't act wildly any more..." Even before I had finished I realized how amazingly stupid I sounded. In a village where even the priest expressed no moderation what could a promise given with a stuffed-up mouth be worth?
He managed to rid himself of the cloth in his mouth. "When my father comes back, he'll kill both of you."
"Your father?"
"You arrested him!"
"He's not your father."
"He is. She's not my mother. Just a whore he took in. First she was his whore, now she's the soldiers' whore." His blue eyes flashed. His Adam's apple rose and fell. His head sank into the coat collar as he tried to extricate himself. I leaned over to tighten the knot. When he moved his lips I said: "If you spit at me again I'll smash your teeth in."
He spat all the same. At the right moment I moved my head aside. The gob of spit passed over my shoulder and was lost somewhere in the undergrowth.
"Why don't you smash my teeth in?"
"Why didn't you shoot me last night?"
He was on the verge of tears. There was something captivating about his sorrow. I no longer cared if he went. I untied the sleeves, undid the zip and lit a cigarette. He stretched his limbs and remained sitting, holding his face in large hands with grease stains under the nails.
"Take one," I held the pack out to him.
As he smoked, he slightly resembled Yvonne. There was something in the way his mouth puckered around the cigarette, as if around some small prey. His desolation was soon replaced by accusation.
"What do you want of me?" he asked suddenly. "If you try to take me with you I'll run..."
"I don't want to arrest you. I want to make sure you don't act foolishly again."
"I'll do what I like." He shook his hair out of his eyes.
"You'll get into trouble. In fact, you're in trouble already..."
"So are you..."
I looked at him in surprise. His face had the look of a scheming child. Below us several army trucks were climbing the road, laden with soldiers - possibly the reservists the captain had been promised. Michel gestured towards them. "Do they know what you do at night?"
"It's none of your business."
He extinguished the cigarette on the sole of his shoe. "I'll kill her." Beneath the boast was the whine of an abandoned child.
I stood up. "You won't see your father again..." The threat came out of my mouth in a forced way, like a line in a bad play, but he took it seriously.
"You can't do anything to him. You've got only one job, to recruit traitors..."
"Who told you that?"
He grinned mockingly. "You're not the first. There have been a few like you here. Two Syrians, a couple of Palestinians, someone from the Phalangists. Every army that moves in here brings a man who scatters promises and threats..."
There was movement at the Athenaeum. Someone was testing the loudspeaker. I grabbed his arm.
"Give me the rifle..."
He tried to get away but I tightened my grip.
"What will you give me for it?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"I love that gun, I even sleep with it..." He twisted the arm that was in my grip. With his other hand he poked in the bed of roots beneath him. "What I need is ammunition." The tip of the barrel which appeared had already lost some of its military polish. "So if you don't want something bad to happen, bring me some bullets, a box a day. That'll be enough for me to practice with."
Forget it."
"All right," he said calmly, "I'll know what to do..." His free hand burrowed feverishly to get the gun out from beneath the roots of the bush. I waited until he was holding it, then put out my hand to snatch it away from him. But he was too quick for me and managed to trip me up and skip away with the same suddenness as he had fled from the ruin that night.
"Next time you come to her," he shouted from the slope of the wadi, "leave some ammunition here. Remember - a box a day."
Furious, I threw a stone at him. He laughed and waved the rifle. Then he climbed agilely up the face of the cliff and disappeared into the bushes, like a swift young monkey.
***
The curfew had not yet been lifted, but the patrols were no longer visible in the streets. The inhabitants stood in the entrances to the houses and courtyards, waiting to set off to work. They paid nervous attention to a series of unclear announcements which issued forth from the loudspeaker at the Athenaeum. I ran to the trampled garden, once again filled with people. Soldiers sat in rows on the ground, looking at something on a wooden stage near the wall of the building. I looked at the sloppy, khaki-clothed backs, heavy necks, the slumped shoulders which lacked the youthful erectness of the paratroops. These were newly-mobilized reservists. Their expressions showed a lack of sleep, homesickness and acceptance.
On the tiny stage was the captain, tight-lipped and tense, exuding authority. Scheckler was there too, his face displaying its usual expression, hinting at some easy profits this new place might offer them. In the middle, behind a shiny black microphone, a chaplain was sermonizing, going on about the heritage the soldiers were upholding by being in Dura rather than at home. Nearby the paratroopers and the mechanics struggled to dismantle the wine-cellar and to arrange the bricks in square piles along the line where the wall was to be built.
"We never attack," the rabbi was saying. "We pursue peace, in accordance with our bible. No other religion in the world takes such care to guarantee the rights of others, to wage war according to strict rules, to maintain the purity of arms." He stopped for a moment, as though waiting for applause. I drew near and crouched down at the end of one of the rows. Soldiers moved over, tired and indifferent, to make room for me. One cleared his throat. Another was carefully tearing an empty cigarette packet to shreds. The rabbi opened a small black book and read out a few verses. Two thousand years of feverish preaching swirled through the microphone into nothingness.
I shut my eyes in exhaustion. My attempt to return, after years of aliases, to Daniel Simon again, could also be summed up as nothingness. From every point of view I was the wrong man; for each individual in whose life I had intervened I was a bad bargain, a delusion, a bad seed which the fairies had put in the cradle.
Yvonne's sympathy, Michel's threats, the priest's evasiveness and the doctor who had been spirited away by Headquarters, that was silent now and instead sent army battalions... It was all too big, binding and terrifying. My exhaustion brought Vincent back to me, and with him a dissolution of my resolve to banish him from my thoughts. He would have found the middle way, the golden path, the trick to keep all the balls in the air at the same time. He would be able to mold the conflicting polyhedron here into a circle.
Above all, he would have taken care not to slip into the developing attachment to Yvonne, which had led to my decision yesterday not to report to Tel Aviv, a decision which now threatened to enclose me and rule me completely.
"Fear not, my servant, Jacob!" the rabbi declaimed emotionally. Perhaps my trip that day had not been in vain. Maybe it was important that I had gone to the detention camp, spoken again with the priest, seen Yvonne, been surprised by Michel. Now the Dur
a chapter in my life might conclude in my way, Simon's way, and end with the one and only thing that Vincent would never have permitted himself: desertion.
I got up and shuffled to the back, behind the rows. The door to the soldiers’ quarters was open. The reservists’ equipment was piled in the corridor, as lifeless as the accoutrements of a circus which had just come to town. I emptied a huge kitbag lying on one of the beds, ran with it to my room, and began to fill it. The napalm in the tin had produced a thick layer of glycerin and the pencil-gauge had sunk half-way down. The ointment in the box had dried and cracked with the heat. Everything found its place in the kitbag, together with the books I had brought with me, the heating element and the electricity cables. With my now heavy burden, I went down the stairs, passed through the front courtyard, jumped over the fence, crossed the road and descended into the wadi.
Behind a large rock, at a spot where the floodwaters had eroded a crater in the rocky ground, I broke the entrance to a rabbit warren. The kitbag slid in easily. In the distance I could hear the big trucks which had brought the reservists revving their engines. I covered the mouth of the warren with earth and branches and ran back. The last lorry stopped at the gate.
"Wait for me," I shouted to the driver, "I'm just going to get my stuff..." On my way out Scheckler delayed me on the steps. "I haven't seen you since we got back..." I did not respond. His friendly signals, along with all the other things about that place, fitted Vincent's style, not mine. As I climbed into the back of the lorry I was sure I would never return.
PART TWO: THE LAW OF BROKEN VESSELS
CHAPTER NINE
In September Tel Aviv becomes bearable. Its pretensions to being a European city are not as pathetic as they are in the summer, and its blandness is modified by the hues of approaching autumn. It serves as an appropriate consoling backdrop to a process of surrender and acceptance.
When I arrived home it was already the middle of the morning. Jonathan was away at school and Hannah at work. Her smell still hung in the air, the compressed, unaired dankness of bedclothes, faded skin and cosmetics. I took time to inspect everything. How many gifts from bed-wetters had been added to the wall? Had that big armchair always been covered in green velvet?
In the fridge I found the remains of a meal: sausages and sweet corn, beansprouts, a half-full bottle of wine. Two glasses stood on crystal stems in the sink. With whom was she drinking? I wondered, more curious than jealous.
I glanced occasionally out into the street, the habit of someone who spends much of his life in other people's homes. Beyond the sparklingly clean window new cars lined the street. Houses with identical facades dozed within the bosoms of their lawns. Everything was predictable. All the sounds were restrained. It was difficult to believe that once there had been an Arab village here, perhaps one like Dura.
I noticed at once that I had stained the floor tiles with purple spots. Dura's red earth followed me everywhere, marking my course. I found a mop in the pantry, wet it at the kitchen sink, wrung it out and swathed it across the stains. Now a muddy trail wound throughout the house. After it dries I'll sweep it away, I thought.
The phone rang. "Hannah?" a woman's voice asked when I lifted the receiver. "Hannah, can you hear me?"
I put the receiver down. My shoulders were shaking. The chill of enclosed places. The black coat had remained with Michel. Was he wearing it as he wandered about the mountains, the gun in his hand?
I looked into the cupboards. Only a few old shirts and two suits. Not a single sweater. What had Hannah done with all my clothes? After a moment I remembered, those were all my clothes. I pulled a plaid woolen blanket from Jonathan's bed and wrapped myself in the armchair with the green velvet upholstery. I pushed my hands into my trouser-pockets, to warm them. There was a paper in the left pocket, which I pulled out. It was the copy of Anton Khamis' letter. The last memento once I had taken a shower and swept away the drying mud.
The sun had moved. The light streaming in from the garden had the green tinge of corrosion. I thought about what my life would look like from now on, its restrained tempo, the suppressed storm of denial. I thought about longing. I touched the piece of paper in my pocket again. What should I do with it? Burn it in the ashtray, throw it down the toilet, bury it in the garden?
A key turned in the door. High heels clacked through. Clothes rustled. Hannah. How had I failed to hear the car? Her shadow advanced. By what evidence would she notice that I was here? The rucksack in the hall, the smell in the toilet, the half-open curtain?
The trail of red footprints. She tried to remove it with the toe of her shoe.
"Wait," I called out. "It'll dry and then I'll sweep it..."
The surprise in her voice was joyless. "It's you. When did you arrive?"
"An hour ago."
She approached me, her heels tapping. "That blanket, are you ill or something...?"
"Just a bit cold."
"Cold, in September?" Her mouth planted a cool kiss on my cheek. "How long are you staying?"
"I don't know, it depends on..." But she was already in the kitchen.
"I'll make dinner. Will you eat chicken?"
"Where's Jonathan?"
There was no reply. She was too far away. I got up, wrapped in the blanket, and walked along the mud-path.
"Where's Jonathan?" I asked again.
"Today's Thursday..." she answered with a toss of her head, her hands rinsing and skinning frozen chicken legs under the running tap. "He'll be here any moment." She threw me a quick glance. "You'd better take that blanket off before he comes."
I gathered the blanket into a bundle and held it.
"Father's in hospital," she said, pulling a pot out from the cupboard.
"What's happened to him?" I asked without sympathy.
"Nothing special. Exhaustion, he's slightly confused."
"I'll visit him."
"You don't have to."
The tin mudguards of a bicycle clattered against the kitchen door. I smiled at the youngster who came in. He dropped his satchel on the floor.
"Hello, is there something to eat?"
"Your father has arrived," Hannah said severely.
"I said hello," Jonathan defended himself.
He did," I confirmed.
She covered the saucepan and kissed him. "Take your satchel to your room. We'll be eating soon."
When we were again on our own I sat down at the table and watched her movements, moderate, economical and efficient. When she bent to look into the oven her hair fell in two waves. I got up and touched her exposed nape. The years had not altered the hollow in its middle, which remained soft and flexible. She straightened up and exhaled, "Careful," as she put the hot pan on a cooling-rack. Her face was red and her lips protruded with that special charm of serious-looking women when they are playful. I went over to embrace her.
She said, "We're all hungry now. Don't start with your romantic stuff..."
The three of us sat down and sipped soup in silence. In the other room the radio told of battles which had flared up along the Beirut-Damascus road. Supposing the order to act reached Dura today?
Hannah said, "There are so many rumors about this war. It all grew into something much bigger than they expected. I hoped that you were safe."
Her affection had a way of appearing, faint and diminished, the moment after I had despaired of hoping for it.
"I was in a small place," I explained, "completely safe and totally unimportant..."
"Then why were you there?" Jonathan asked.
"Eat," Hannah commanded before I could answer, and put another portion of chicken onto his plate.
"How long are you staying with us?" he asked.
The heaviness in my stomach and the warmth which arose from the table relaxed me. Dura was far away, on the verge of being erased. Maybe home would even be able to make me forget Yvonne.
"I think," I said, feeling encouraged, "that I'll be at home a lot more from now on."
"Tha
t's good," Hannah said with a full mouth.
I wondered if she was answering me or commenting on the food she was chewing.
"I'm not really needed there," I said with regret.
"At your age, there's no reason to be."
I ignored the comment. "Why don't we arrange something for Saturday?" I thumped Jonathan's shoulder.
"Jonathan has a match on Saturday," Hannah interfered.
"Then a movie, perhaps, on Saturday night?"
Jonathan shrugged his shoulders. "We'll see."
"I haven't been to a movie for ages," Hannah said.
Jonathan tried to get up. "There's another course," she reprimanded him and went over to the stove.
When she had moved away, the fear of what lay ahead crept back beneath my skin. Jonathan's silent alienation threatened to paralyze me. I stretched on my chair, putting my arms out to the sides.
"What frightens me," I said quietly, "is routine. Being lost in a heap of days which are all alike and as meaningless..."
Jonathan looked at me without comprehension.
Hannah said, "One needs an aim in life. That's what I say to my patients."
I smiled at both of them. "We have a nice house." I looked at the walls around us, trying to derive encouragement from an African mask, two copper frying pans, a Van Gogh reproduction. “...And we have one another..."
"I'm late for tennis," Jonathan grumbled. Hannah gave him a plate of dessert. He bent to gulp it and had finished even before she came back with my plate. "Wait until your father has finished," she said sternly.
"He can go," I said, "and we'll sit and talk."
"He'll stay here until we've finished eating."
Jonathan got up, silent and angry. I put my hand out to him, but he evaded it and disappeared down the darkened hall.
"All right, let him go," Hannah said. "He'll be back when he wants something." She concentrated on her plate, removing the pips from slices of cooked apple. "You appear," she added suddenly, "and suddenly impose all your doubts, your sadness, your insecurity on him. He's an adolescent and needs a calm, confident man to identify with..."
The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance Page 16
