A few minutes later, he opened his eyes. There he was, lying in his bed in Dr Eitan Green’s bedroom. Yet he wouldn’t be surprised if the door opened suddenly and Dr Eitan Green entered and commanded him to leave. The man lying in bed who, not directly but indisputably, had caused the death of a young girl last night, would be tossed out of bed by Dr Green, a man of principle who refused to tolerate bribery. The man who had run over someone and left him on the side of the road, and almost let someone else take the blame for it, would be thrown out the front door by Dr Green. And that man, tossed out of bed and thrown out the door, would stand in the front yard among the rosemary bushes and still wonder. Could he actually be the real Eitan Green?
What defined him more – a full life of careful driving, of medical studies, of carrying an old lady’s groceries from the supermarket – or that single moment? Forty-one years of life versus a single moment, and nevertheless he felt as if that moment contained a great deal more than its sixty seconds, just as a bit of DNA embodied the entire human species. And yes, it mattered that he’d been an Eritrean. Because they all looked alike to him. Because he didn’t know them. Because people from another planet are not really people. And yes, that sounded terrible, but he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. He was only the one who had happened to run one of them over.
He lay in bed and thought about the blood roses on the girl’s dress. It was Liat’s fault just as much as his. She could tell herself as many times as she wanted that she had exposed the romance to save the boy from false arrest, but the truth was that she’d done it because she couldn’t stand the idea that it was Cheetah, not she, who had cracked the case. The boy had told her to stop investigating, but she didn’t listen to him, and when she solved the case, she’d been so proud that she never stopped to consider that she was endangering the girl. That’s how it was. There were no good or bad people, only strong and weak ones. Perhaps that’s what Zakai had been trying to tell him when he gave him that bottle of whiskey.
He shaved carefully in front of the mirror. Yesterday, Prof. Tal had told him that he looked neglected. He’d said it with a smile, with a slap on his back, but he’d said it all the same. Prof. Shakedi hadn’t said a word to him for two days. The head of the department’s usual admonishing glances had been replaced by open displays of avoidance, which worried Eitan much more. The other doctors barely spoke to him, and he was too tired and upset to carry on a real conversation anyway. Even the young nurse had stopped smiling, deciding to invest her energy in the new intern. Perhaps she might have behaved differently if she’d known that the tired, unshaven doctor was actually the chief director of another hospital. Less well known, less legal, but nevertheless, a hospital. With medical equipment and a variety of injuries and illnesses, and since yesterday with patient fatalities as well – it wouldn’t have been a hospital without them.
You need to calm down, he told himself as he buttoned his shirt, you need to calm down or you’ll lose your job. He finished buttoning his shirt and moved on to polishing his shoes. Finally, he stood in front of the mirror and examined his image. No, Prof. Tal definitely could not say he looked neglected.
But he sprayed either side of his neck with his expensive only-for-weddings aftershave, just to be on the safe side.
Hours later, when the aftershave had been replaced by the sour smell of sweat, one of the nurses came over to him and said, “Your wife’s on the phone.” He apologized to his patient and hurried out to answer. He’d been expecting that call since morning. Liat would tell him that the Bedouin girl was dead, and then she’d start to cry. Or first she’d start to cry and then tell him that the Bedouin girl was dead. He’d be no less shocked than she was. He’d calm her down. He’d say, “Tuli, it’s not your fault. You were only trying to help.” And he’d really believe himself when he said it. He wouldn’t think that, in fact, she was to blame for the never-ending investigation and the promotion that might come at the end of it. When he’d hear her crying, he’d know the promotion was just an excuse for something else, that desire of Liat’s to be one of the good guys. The ones who do things well, because that’s how they should be done. Like doctors. Surely no one did it for the money. Or the prestige. Seven years of school in order to find out that if there were both good and evil forces in the world, you were undoubtedly on the side of the good.
He intended to say all that when he picked up the receiver, which is why he was very surprised to hear not Liat’s tormented voice on the other end, but a different voice, a calm and collected one.
I need you to come today.
“Why do you think you can call here?”
You’re not answering your phone.
He told her something she already knew, that his phone was turned off during shifts, and she told him that he hadn’t answered last night either, or this morning. She said they had patients. Many. Yesterday she’d told them all to go because he decided he’d rather treat that Bedouin girl, but today he had to come. He said, “I can’t come today, Sirkit, I’m on duty until late,” and she said, So I’ll tell them to come tomorrow, and hung up.
*
When he got out of the SUV, the first thing he noticed was the moon. A gaping white eye with its pupil ripped out. (And if the moon was full, then two months must have passed; Janis Joplin had wailed inside the car then, and there was a person named Asum outside and you ran him over.) He locked the SUV and walked toward the garage. Ten Eritreans were gathered at the door, peering inside. He thought they were waiting for him, so he was surprised that they didn’t even glance at him as he walked past. When he reached the garage door, he understood why. A heavyset Sudanese woman was on her knees, her back to the group, kissing Sirkit’s feet. “Minfadlik,” she said, and then again, “Minfadlik, Minfadlik.” Eitan knew that word. The Sudanese who came to the garage said it often. Please.
Sirkit replied in soft, melodious Arabic. The sound was so pleasant that it took a moment for Eitan to realize that she was rejecting the woman’s request. He realized it when the woman stood up and spit in Sirkit’s face.
Sounds of shock passed through the group. The saliva, white and foamy, had struck the arch of Sirkit’s nose and was now dripping onto her cheek. How pathetic and ludicrous her proud face looked now with threads of saliva trickling down its entire length. But as the seconds passed and Sirkit remained standing there, Eitan had to admit that she looked more noble than ludicrous. Because apparently the spitting had not changed her in the slightest. She simply continued to stand there without saying a word. When the woman spit again straight into the thick darkness of her eyes, she went over to the sink and washed her face. The Sudanese woman turned around and saw Eitan. Her expression changed abruptly. “Minfadlak, Doctor. Sirkit wants money. I have no money.” She was about to kneel again, this time at his feet, when the Eritreans Sirkit had appointed to keep order approached the woman. They didn’t have to touch her. She stood up immediately. Looked coldly at Sirkit, at the men who were ready to spring into action, at the people watching from the door. Shaking with anger and humiliation, she said to Eitan, “For every blow that Asum gave her, Allah will give her ten.”
The last patient walked out of there at two. More accurately, he limped out. Eitan watched him as he hopped out on his bandaged leg. He had told him about the antibiotics three times, but still wasn’t sure the man had understood. He’d arrived yesterday, spoke slowly, his eyes dull. Maybe because of the heat, maybe he’d been dimwitted from the outset. But a dimwitted person could not have evaded the Bedouin smugglers as he had, could not have crossed the border without paying anyone. Sirkit said he’d gotten the leg injury from crawling under one of the Egyptian fences. He didn’t know if that was true. Nothing she told him sounded true. The only thing he knew for certain was that the leg looked terrible. He’d blitzed the man with half a ton of antibiotics; the last thing he needed now was another emergency operation in the garage.
“Tell him that if he doesn’t treat the infection, he’ll probably
lose the leg.”
Sirkit translated and the fellow burst out laughing.
He said the leg will be fine, that you obviously do not know that Eritreans are the world champions in the 500-meter race.
Eitan saw the rare, secret smile Sirkit gave the man. As if they were sharing a joke that had slipped out from behind the bars of the translation.
“World champions in the 500-meter race?”
That is the range of the Egyptian rifles. Anyone who does not run it fast enough does not get here.
She stood up and walked out with the man. The lunar eye illuminated them as the man took some notes out of his pocket and handed them to Sirkit. Eitan watched them, fascinated. Sirkit came back into the garage. She took a squeegee and began scrubbing the concrete floor, her only words to Eitan a request for him to move a bit; she wanted to wash there. He watched her as she cleaned. Practiced, rapid movements.
“That woman who was here earlier.”
Yes?
“She said you take money. That anyone who doesn’t pay doesn’t get treated.”
So?
She continued scrubbing with the same movement of the squeegee. Not faster, not slower. And Eitan was suddenly very much aware of the bright circles around her wrist and the cigarette that had burned them into her skin.
“She also said that your husband beat you.”
She swept the water out, her hands fisted around the squeegee. She wiped the clean floor with a rag until not a drop of water was left. She folded the rag into four precise, equal quarters.
So?
*
After he left, she cleaned the garage again. The movements were rhythmic and measured, like the rowing of a boat in calm waters. The place was clean, of that she had no doubt. But she cleaned the concrete floor again anyway, scrubbed the rusty iron table with a cloth. The body worked and the mind was serene or at least tried to be, because as soon as she stopped moving for a few seconds she was gripped by such a strong sense of unease that she immediately began moving again, cutting across the floor back and forth, back and forth.
She’d never know what might have happened if the SUV hadn’t appeared out of nowhere that night and hit him. How many more times he would have punched her, and whether she would ever have hit him back. And that’s how it would always be. She had been given her life by someone else, by that doctor who had certainly not meant to give it to her.
There were five bright circles on her wrist, and she remembered her skin burning and the smell of his tobacco the night he burned them into her flesh. As she dipped the rag into the water again, she thought she hated that woman as much as she hated him, the woman who had knelt on the ground in their shack that night and waited for it to be over. She wanted to grab her by the hair, the stupid cow, to jerk her to her feet so she could hit her again. How could you let him? You didn’t even scream. The doctor is guilty of running him over, but you, you are guilty of not running him over. You did nothing.
She put the squeegee in the corner and went outside to hang up the rag. There was no doubt, she was an expert in hiding from life. She had done it for thirty-one years. Mainly from her husband, who had filled the entire shack, bursting out through the roof. Her husband was as large as God, but not as evil. Sometimes he’d sit on the mattress and she would let her hair down, and he would untangle all the knots with his fingers. Gently. So it wouldn’t hurt her. She would sit with her back to him, her eyes closed, and he would untangle all the knots with his fingers, the way he straightened a tangled fishing net. He knew how to untangle the strands of the net without tearing even a single one, so gentle were his fingers. She would close her eyes and breathe. Outside the shack, people were burning garbage. Asum’s fingers smelled of tobacco and fish. He ran them back and forth through her hair, until there wasn’t a single knot left. And then her hair also smelled of tobacco and fish. Sometimes he kept running his fingers through her hair even when there were no more knots to untangle. They would meander up and down, up and down, twisting, winding movements, like a line of ants, like the flow of a river, like a tenderness she couldn’t describe now, but remembered suddenly at the base of her skull. And the entire time his fingers wandered through her hair, the whistle wandered through his lips. Stopping only when he stopped for a moment to spit on the floor, then beginning once again.
He had brought the whistle with him one day from the sea. Said he’d gotten it from the fish. That didn’t sound logical, but Asum wasn’t one of those people you contradicted. And the whistle was really nice. So was the melody, which was different from anything she’d known before, and the way his lips pursed when he whistled it, the way he looked momentarily like the little boy he might have been once, sort of sweet and not at all frightening.
When they left the village, he took the whistle with him, but he no longer looked like a little boy when he pursed his lips. He looked like a tired, angry man. In a few weeks, the smell of the fish left his fingers. They both felt it, but no one mentioned it. Without the smell of the fish, his fingers were like a person whose shadow had been cut away. Everything was there, but something important was missing. Far from the sea, his hands choked in the sun like the fish on the floor of the shack. He kept smoking tobacco, but stopped untangling her knots with his fingers, and he spoke to her as little as possible. There were days when the whistle was the only thing that came out of his mouth. The same melody, but different. Slower, and dusty.
Until the night that Bedouin told her to come to his tent. He walked past the group of seated women, examining them slowly, one by one, and then motioned for her to stand up. She was about to do it when she heard Asum’s whistle. This time the melody was fast, strong, almost cheerful. Surprised, the Bedouin turned around to the group of men. Standing among all the downcast faces was her husband, whistling. The Bedouin cocked his rifle and told him not to be a wise guy. Asum stopped whistling and said, “Let’s see what kind of man you are without the rifle.” The Bedouin handed his rifle to one of his pals and said, “No problem,” but you could see in his eyes that he was a bit worried. Asum was a head and a half taller, and despite everything that had happened since they left the village, his shoulders were still broad. But the Bedouin need not have been concerned. Days had passed since any of them had eaten normally, and since the smell of fish had gone, Asum’s hands had grown weaker. He was on the ground in less than a minute. The Bedouin shoved his head deep into the sand and said, “Now let’s see if you can whistle.” Then he kicked him a few more times and left him, and she would never know if the Bedouin remembered her at that point, whether he intended to drag her to the tent or he’d already had enough amusement for one night, because right after that, Asum whistled again. His face was full of sand and blood was running from his lips. He could barely purse them. The sound that emerged was fragmented, damaged. It wasn’t a whistle at all. And yet, she recognized the melody immediately, and so did the Bedouin, because this time he didn’t settle for kicking him. He let Asum get up and try to hit him, then started battering him as soon as his fist missed its target. It took a few minutes, but it felt like more, and the Bedouin seemed to feel that way too because when he finally finished (Asum’s face looked like a doughy mass), he wiped his hands on his galabiya, took his rifle from his friend and walked away.
Sirkit hurried over to the man lying on the ground who was her husband. She wiped the blood from his lips. She cleaned the sand from his face. She wanted to kiss his fingers, which smelled neither of tobacco nor of fish, when he clenched those fingers in a fist and punched her harder than she had ever been punched before. It caught her right in the stomach. He had already hit her before, but never like that. Maybe because this time he’d hit her especially hard. And maybe he’d always hit her like that, but her muscles weren’t ready this time. Relaxed, loose, not tensed with fear. When she’d seen him lying there covered in blood and sand, she hadn’t felt the slightest bit of fear. She hurried over to him not because she was afraid of him, but because she was concerned ab
out him. He had seen that there was no fear in her eyes and was alarmed, because it was one thing to lose the smell of the sea on your fingers, and something else to lose the fear in your wife’s eyes. It didn’t matter that the fear in her eyes had been replaced by tenderness. He didn’t know what to do with tenderness. He didn’t know what tenderness said about him. The fear in her eyes told him he was as he had been before, that nothing had changed. The tenderness said something else that he could not understand. Nor did he want to. Too many things had changed or had been lost. And he needed her fear. He had to have it in order to know who he was.
Now she was the one lying on the ground with her face in the sand. Asum was standing and spitting blood to the side. She looked at him and said to herself, stupid cow, did you really think he did it for you. It was not for you. When a man forces himself inside you and tears your flesh, he has no idea what “for you” is. It is for him. He would not let anyone else do it to his wife. No one but him.
Outside the garage, the night was round and quiet. The rocks lay in their place, and so did the sky, and they did not touch each other. On the night of the whistling, Asum was on the ground and she was standing, and then she was on the ground and Asum was standing, and in the middle of the night the Bedouin came and stood over her, and said come. Tonight she stood outside the garage and knew that if she wanted, she could tell her doctor to come, and he would do so immediately. And if she told him to treat a patient, he would. And if she told him to hop (like that boy at the far end of the camp who had pointed his rifle at them and said they were not allowed to be there now, so they should hop all the way back), her doctor would hop. She knew all that. But, she said to herself, you will never know what would have happened if he had not run over Asum that night. If, one day, you would have managed to get up and go, or if you would have stayed with him for ever, living from one punch to another. The silence of the heart between one beat and the next, that was what her life had seemed like to her. And the fact that it did not seem like that now was really very nice. But you will never know, she thought, you will never know how much of that power is yours, and how much is just chance.
Waking Lions Page 17
