Kingdom of Twilight

by Steven Uhly

  “Loo paper will do. And then stop crying. Listen, perhaps one day Shimon might realize that he loves you and wants to be with you too, you don’t know that yet.”

  “Grandma, he’s so . . . he’s so lost! He’s like a drug addict, he consumes everything, emotions, alcohol, cigarettes, hard drugs too, he’s got no boundaries. The same thing has happened to so many women with him. And I’m so stupid I rushed into it with open eyes!”

  “It’s got nothing to do with stupidity, Lisa. You can’t control the course of love.”

  “No, evidently not.”

  “Have you at least found out anything helpful from Anna?”

  “Anna told me that Shimon is the son of one of five S.S. men who raped her one after the other. The first was Josef Ranzner.”

  “My God! Does Shimon know?”

  “No. Shimon thinks Peretz is his father. She told me, a stranger! And then she begged me not to say anything because she wanted to tell him herself. But since then she hasn’t done a thing. She’s so scared that Shimon will throw himself off the nearest building if he finds out the truth.”

  “Oh Lisa, what have you got yourself into?”

  “Grandma, I want to get away from Israel. I can’t stand it here anymore.”

  “You’ll come home to start with, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you give me another call tomorrow? When you’ve booked your flight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright. Stop crying now and go to bed.”

  “Yes, Grandma. Good night. Love you, Grandma.”

  “I love you too, very much.”

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maria is dead, isn’t she?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m really so sorry, Grandma! I ought to have replied to your letter. But my head was just full of Shimon.”

  “It’s not so bad, Lisa! You’ve got to live your own life. That’s the most important thing there is, do you hear me? The most important thing of all.”

  “Are you very sad?”

  “I was. Now I’m feeling a little better. And I’m happy that I’ve still got you. And a great-grandchild too, soon!”

  “But I’m far too young to have a child, Grandma! I wanted to be free, I wanted to travel and have new experiences!”

  “And you will, Lisa. Life is a journey, but you never know what’s coming next.”

  “Goodnight, Grandma.”

  “Goodnight, Lisa. Sleep well.”

  142

  Shimon was floating in the darkness. The darkness was lit up. Shimon fell without ever hitting the ground. Shimon flew without any wind. Shimon could not see, hear or feel anything. I’m dead, Shimon thought. The thought stood clearly in the room, Shimon remembered the needle he had pushed into the crook of his arm, he remembered the hand holding it, the arm that led up to a left shoulder, the shoulder had a counterpart on the other side, a neck had grown between them, on the neck sat a head, Shimon reconstructed his body from the memory, he placed a mirror in his soul and used it to inspect himself. I was a young man, he thought, he saw the face of a young woman, he stretched his thoughts out to her, but all they touched was a memory. He had no senses any longer, he was dead, and yet the memory of Lisa was painful. Suddenly a voice pierced his soul, not his voice, whose voice? He did not know the voice, it said, Quick! Resuscitation! Shimon heard a bang, the voice said, Again! Another bang and now Shimon heard a high-pitched sound, the high-pitched sound had been there all the time, he had not been paying attention to it, but all of a sudden the sound changed, it was no longer consistent, but jumpy. The voice said, Phew! That was really close. He heard other sounds, he heard the voice of a young woman, she said, He’s a handsome chap, he heard metal on metal, he heard footsteps, he heard doors opening, he heard wheels rolling along a floor, the rolling stopped, a door closed, he heard nothing for a while, then he heard a regular sound like water dripping. I want to sleep, he thought, but he could not sleep, he lacked a body to feel tired, I’m a soul inside a bottle, he thought, he became sad and cried without eyes, without sobs. As he cried he heard the dripping sound, it was like a tap, I’m living in my dead body, he thought. He strayed though the lit-up darkness, he found a place that was completely white, white and refreshing, there he lay down and stopped waiting.

  143

  Lana knew the military base in Tel HaShomer, to the east of Tel Aviv, where her father was stationed. That is why she imagined her big brother lying there on a sofa when, at the end of March 1967, she went with her mother in a taxi to Chaim Sheba Hospital. It’s right beside Papa’s work, she had told Lana. But what’s wrong with Shimon? she had asked. Wiping the tears from her eyes, her mother had smiled and said, It’s nothing serious, darling, he just needs to rest!

  To Lana’s surprise her brother was not lying on the sofa in her father’s office, but in a prefab which stood in a large complex of buildings, some low, some taller, all connected by a labyrinth of small roads and paths. The roads were lined with grass verges, lilac-blue jacarandas blossomed there, people in white clothing hurried hither and thither.

  When Anna found out the state her son was in she would have gladly relinquished control over her body. She would have dropped to the floor and lain there, the doctors would have picked her up and placed her next to Shimon, attached her to the same tubes, inserted the same needles. Anna would have realized none of this and yet she would have been connected to her son.

  She pulled herself together for Lana’s sake. Squatting beside her daughter in the ward corridor, she said, “We can’t see Shimon today, darling, the ward doctor said he’s got to rest a little longer.”

  “But surely we can have a look at him, that won’t wake him up, will it?”

  “Look, darling, I’d prefer it if we came back when we can talk to him. You know what your brother looks like when he’s asleep.”

  Lana looked her mother in the eye, then said, “Why are you lying, Mama?”

  “I’m not lying, Lana.”

  “Yes, you are. Shimon’s not resting, no one goes to hospital for that. I’m not a baby anymore. I know that Shimon smoked and drank too much. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it?”

  Anna bowed her head, tears filled her eyes and ran slowly down her face. She nodded weakly and said, “Yes, my darling, that’s why he’s here.”

  “And it’s also to do with Lisa going away, isn’t it?”

  Anna nodded once more. “Yes.”

  Lana put an arm around her mother and hugged her tightly. “Don’t cry, Mama. Lisa’s bound to come back.”

  144

  Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 30th March 1967

  Dear Ruth

  How are you? I hope you, Aaron and your three children are well and happy.

  I bet you’re surprised that I’ve sent you this letter. I wouldn’t blame you; after all, I haven’t managed it these last few years. You must feel as if I’ve lost all interest in keeping in touch with you, your family and our other friends from our time as refugees. After the old man died—in my mind he’ll always be the old man—we became even more estranged. That’s fifteen years ago now. How many times have we seen each other or spoken since? Three, four? Not more than that, and every time it was you coming to Tel Aviv either alone or with your family. I’ve never visited you in Haifa.

  Please believe me when I say I didn’t want it to be that way. I’ve never stopped missing you and the others. I shared your excitement when you had your children. I worried about Marja, especially when they took away her doll. When Ariel began his studies in Tel Aviv I visited him and shared his delight at having finally got away from his orthodox parents, but that hasn’t reduced my affection for the Abramowiczes in any way.

  Sarah sometimes pops by with Schmuel Seligmann, they seem very happy together in spite of the large age gap—Schmuel is almost twenty years older than she is. Now she’s got a permanent job at Haaretz she has enough money to get by without our help, and it’s good for h
er. I’m pleased that’s she’s finally becoming independent of us.

  But that’s not what I wanted to say. I want to tell you something that you ought to know. In fact you ought to have been the first to know, considering you looked after him to the very end. But I can also understand why it was me he revealed the truth to.

  When I went to see the old man on his deathbed, we were alone in his room while the rest of you were waiting in the corridor, wondering what he might be confiding to me. Well, he didn’t only tell me his real name. He also told me why he had dispensed with this name. He begged me to keep it to myself, but I think he knew perfectly well that I would anyway. You would never have done, because you’ve never had anything to hide. But he recognized that he and I were birds of a feather, or at least that’s how it seems now.

  He told me that he . . .

  Anna sat up. She had never expected it to feel like a denunciation to write, Isaak Hirsch was a Kapo, a foreman in Auschwitz, Isaak Hirsch collaborated, Isaak Hirsch was only able to say it to me, because at the moment of my greatest humiliation I collaborated too, and although he couldn’t know this he seemed to sense it. We were accomplices, and now I’m going to betray him.

  Anna sat in the kitchen, looking out into the front garden. Peretz had put bars on all the windows of the house because of the unrest at the border. There are enough Arabs in Israel, he had said. Now she felt as if she were in a cage. She shook her head. Peretz and the Arabs, what did he have against them?

  She knew what to do. She would have to ring Ruth to arrange a visit. She would have to go to Haifa. And she would have to tell her everything, the old man’s secret as well as her own, for the two were linked, she herself had forged this link with her silence, and now it could no longer be broken.

  She would tell her everything, for she wanted to talk about Shimon, she had to talk about Shimon, Shimon dominated her life, it had been like that from the beginning, from the moment of his conception, and now Shimon might never regain consciousness, he would lie there absolutely still, as she had seen him, but she could not talk to anyone about this, she felt as if she had been silenced along with him.

  Peretz could only react angrily, it had always been this way, he had reacted to Shimon like that from the beginning, over any little thing, Not all fathers are the same, she had told herself, But he looks after him, she had told herself, He can’t show his feelings in the way he’d like, and in her head a voice had answered, Don’t kid yourself. She had maintained her balance with lies and the truth, and this was the result.

  She scrunched up the letter and threw it into the bin under the sink. She went into the sitting room, where the telephone sat on a small side table next to the sofa. She sat down and picked up the receiver. Then with one finger she began to dial Ruth’s number.

  145

  Shimon’s eyes saw the two doctors standing on either side of his bed, one older, shorter, greyer, the other younger, taller, balder, both of them had glasses with metal frames, ballpoint pens stuck out of the breast pockets of their coats. The younger doctor was studying a clipboard that he held in his hand. Shimon’s ears heard what they were saying to each other, This one came to us from intensive care a month ago, the younger man said, Heart failure, in a coma for three weeks, a miracle he came out of it. The older man looked at Shimon briefly over the top of his glasses, What was it? The younger man gave a terse laugh, Heroin overdose, but they missed that completely! The older man raised his eyebrows, he gave his colleague a probing look, I see, he said, So, opiate withdrawal, cold turkey? The younger man nodded, In a coma! And now? the older man asked, the younger man shrugged, They shunted him over to us because he flew into a rage when he woke up. What’s he getting? the older man asked, the younger man looked at his clipboard and said, Diazepam. The older man lowered his head for a closer look at Shimon over his glasses, he said, How’s he reacting to it? The younger man shrugged, He’s peaceful, he said. Everything alright physically? The younger man nodded, Physically he’s in good health. The older man stood up straight, turned to go and said, Good, discharge him around the middle of the month, give him a packet of this new substitute, you know he’ll have withdrawal symptoms when he’s off the sedatives. The younger man nodded, he plucked a ballpoint pen from the breast pocket of his coat, as he wrote he muttered, Fifteenth of May, sixty-seven, methadone, pack of thirty.

  Shimon’s eyes saw the two men leave the room, Shimon’s ears heard the older man tell the younger man, My hands are tied, the instructions come from the Ministry of Defense, they want to show the Egyptians that we’re prepared for any emergency. Before the younger man closed the door from outside he said, Throughout the whole country? Shimon was not able to see the older man nod, he did not hear the younger man lower his voice and say, That, by the way, was Colonel Sarfati’s son, he did not see the older man briefly raise his eyebrows without saying anything in reply, as his hand reached for the next door handle.

  When Shimon was alone, he turned his head. The white walls of the room slipped past his eyes, the bedside table with a glass of water, the picture of the three horses, the ceiling with its neon light, the chair on the other side and finally the window came into his line of vision, Shimon’s eyes saw the white bars fixed on the outside, beyond these the trees with their lilac-blue blossoms. He stayed there like that in his bed. The sun wandered across his pupils, the door opened and closed, two hands fiddled with his right forearm, they pulled out the cannula, stuck on a plaster, the door opened and closed. The sun wandered over Shimon’s retinas, the sun wandered through Shimon’s soul, the sun set, Shimon closed his eyes.

  It was night when Shimon opened them again. He felt different, it was as if someone had pulled a plug out of his ears, as if he had been watching a long film without any sound and all of a sudden someone had turned up the volume, and the wind was back, the trees had a rustling, the corridor outside had footsteps, his own body had a breathing, a beating heart. Thoughts poured into his consciousness like a gawking crowd locked out for far too long and now finally rushing in with senses sharpened to absorb everything, comment on everything, label everything, a sympathy, an aversion. Shimon lay in his bed, unable to move. The more that happened, the louder his heart pounded, the more he struggled for breath, he lay in bed, feeling as if he were running as fast as he could, he lay in bed, feeling as if he must collapse to the floor at any moment because all his strength would vanish, he tried with his eyes to hold on to something external, but it was dark, he could not see well enough, he tried to grasp the mattress with his hands, but the mattress had a consistency, it had a resistance, the wind whistled right through Shimon’s ears, swirling up the thoughts like leaves, the thoughts were all crying out at once, Shimon tried to understand them, but his heart was pounding, Shimon tried to steady his breathing, but his breathing whistled like the wind in his ears, the wind in his ears had footsteps in the corridor, Shimon was worried that everyone was leaving, everyone was going past his door with their footsteps, which were carrying them through his ears, now he lay in his bed, unable to move, he could only run as fast as he could, could only fall for as long as he could, could only fear for as long as he could that, far below, the hard floor was racing toward him through the darkness in his eyes, and when they collided, he and the floor . . .

  When Shimon came to it was light, the sun was shining in through the window, he lay in his bed, his limbs ached as if he had stiff muscles. Supporting himself on his elbows, he looked around. I’m still here, he said. He broke off. An impalpable pain shot through him. Lisa had been with him the whole time like his own back, invisible yet close. Now he had turned to face the world again and she was gone. He sank onto the bed, he stared at the ceiling. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

  On May 15, at 7:30 a.m., the ward doctor came in, Shimon recognized him as one might recognize someone from a dream. He was the younger of the two, his ballpoint pen was in his breast pocket, the clipboard in his hands had vanished.

  “The c
ountry is mobilizing, Mr. Sarfati,” he said. “With the exception of the Arab population and people like you, almost all young men and women are busy protecting the country from destruction by our enemies. You should be ashamed of yourself. Go home.” He left Shimon’s room without shutting the door.

  146

  The difference was so obvious! Anna was sitting in an E.G.G.E.D. bus going north, thinking about how Lydia Sarfati had treated her granddaughter. I didn’t want to see it before, even though it was plainly visible. The landscape drifted past, reddish-brown earth, orange groves, the sky so blue, the people on the bus chatted, dozed, ate their sandwiches, fruit, drank water or Coca-Cola, looked out of the window like Anna. Beside her sat an elderly man, at least sixty, who kept darting sideways glances at her, Anna sensed he was waiting for an opportunity to start a conversation, but she would not grant him one, she was sweating, the air conditioning was not working, she was wearing a dark-red, knee-length skirt, a white blouse, her suitcase was almost exactly beneath her in the bus’s luggage hold, music clanged from the defective speakers. Arik Einstein’s soft, warm voice sounded tinny as it sang, Come, chocolate soldier

  come to me,

  come to the trenches,

  be calm, have no fear

  of returning to dust.

  The butcher gives the executioner flesh,

  the executioner feeds the rifles

  and all men are equal as they lie

  beneath flowers in the earth, Turn it off! someone shouted. Other voices chimed in. The bus driver shouted something back. A loud babble of voices struck up, the bus driver made an angry gesture with his arm and lowered the volume. Peace was gradually restored and the drone of the engine, the rushing of the airstream regained the upper hand. The man beside Anna smiled ironically, he said, They prefer war. Anna nodded tersely before focusing again on the countryside.