by Sara Shilo
I thought then that it was lucky I was here doing this, because the carob tree was on the path home, and if the Katyushas weren’t enough, there might be terrorists on their way there. Now that Delilah was dead and couldn’t scratch out their eyes, they’d get everyone in one go: Mum, Oshri and Chaim, Etti and Kobi. ‘Kobi, Kobi,’ I said out loud, now that Itzik wasn’t there to get angry and jump on me.
And then I thought about how Mum had given birth to me, a healthy baby, and about Itzik, how I was born to give him spare parts. God wanted my hands to be Itzik’s spare hands. And as if it was getting angry, too, the wind picked up again, whistling as though inviting its whole family into the wadi for a party – brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, coming from all directions. By now I was walking up the path to our building, past the tall trees with the acorns. I didn’t hear the wind. I didn’t feel any cuts on my body – my hands, my feet and my face were numb.
Suddenly, the town’s electricity came back on. From the wadi, in the middle of the mountains, I saw the lights of the town like a television in a darkened room, our building seeming closer, and I could feel my hands and my feet and my face again, and I said out loud, ‘Dudi’s thought isn’t like the wind! No one’s going to change it!’
Our building stood between two others, like a bride that has spent all day getting ready for her groom. In the entrance was Mike’s painting of snowy mountains and waterfalls, and all the windows were lit up. I could see the chain of flags waving in our window and I didn’t have to take them down any more. There was no need. They were just forgotten Independence Day flags, not an invitation to terrorists.
My face was cold and I was dying to go down to the shelter, to collapse onto a mattress. But if I went into the shelter in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, they’d die of fright or punch my lights out. But I just wanted to promise everyone there that I wouldn’t break into houses any more. I’d use the door rather than the window. I nearly swore on Dad’s name, then I remembered that Itzik said we shouldn’t do that as we didn’t have a dad. Now I wanted to argue: Yes, we do! Yes, we do! Yes, we do! We have a dead dad. I think about him all the time. There isn’t a day when I don’t think of him, feel his hand on my shoulder, as soft and warm as a pillow. I remember how he’d peel the paper off an ice cream for me, slowly so the chocolate wouldn’t break, and put it in my hand, the paper like a banana skin so it wouldn’t drip. And I remember him at the end. I saw it all. How could Itzik think I’d forget?
How could I forget Dad, how he was the most handsome person there, the others standing around and shouting, moving me, pulling me away from the circle of people so I wouldn’t see him, and how I crawled back in and looked. He was still the most handsome, even if they were alive and he was lying on the floor, dead.
That made me think of something else, about his six-year memorial, which they wouldn’t do now because of the Katyushas. And without asking anyone, I, Dudi, decided that if no one was going to have a memorial for him because they were afraid of the Katyushas, I’d do it for him! I was outside anyway, and shouldn’t have been wandering around. I might as well be at the cemetery if everyone else was in the shelter. As I made my way there, past the football pitch, I decided I’d make my vow there. It would be the place to promise Dad that I was never, ever going to steal again, never climb up the houses of strangers, break in through the windows. I’m only going to use doors from now on. All the way to the cemetery I said, ‘Dad’, the start of my vow, except I couldn’t get any further. Whenever I opened my mouth, only the word ‘Dad’ came out, ‘Dad, Dad’. All I could do was walk and say, ‘Dad, Dad’. I don’t know what came over me. ‘Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.’ I just couldn’t stop.
Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad
KOBI DADON
1
Kobi Dadon. Try writing it: Kobi Dadon. All the middle letters are holes. My name is full of holes. If only I had an ‘l’, a long, thin loop, the whole thing would be better. I could write it as high as I liked, to make up for the holes, tying everything together. Done. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of names with an ‘l’: Aflalu, Elmakeis, Iluz, Amsalam, Lilo. I’m not after two – just one would make my signature right. My handwriting doesn’t help. I can’t seem to make my signature any bigger. I measured it with a ruler – it isn’t more than an inch and a half. It looks shrivelled, the letters like a row of burnt matches. I’ve traced over Israel’s signature with a black pen: Talmon Israel. It’s like a painter’s signature. How did he manage it?
Whenever he sends a letter, I immediately get out my ruler. I measure the length first, then the height. His signature is never smaller than three inches long and an inch high.
So, I sit down to write my signature. Sitting as he does, holding the pen as he does. It doesn’t work. The letters of my name will never join together properly, and I don’t know how to make the whole thing bigger. If I make the capital ‘D’ bigger, all I get is a bigger hole. If I make all the letters bigger, it looks like the writing of a six-year-old. I try one way, then another. Nothing works. Today the new storeroom papers are supposed to arrive via internal mail: form number 328 is for department orders and form number 412 is for permission to take it from the storeroom. I’ve worked so hard to organise it all, but my signature will let me down. It’ll be seen all over the factory. It could have been something to make people respect me.
If you let someone clever to wander around the factory for the day, then asked him to name Talmon’s deputy, he might say the department managers, the foremen, the workers. But if he gave ten answers he wouldn’t be right. If they asked him who decides what comes in and out of the factory, from the smallest thing – drawing pins for the noticeboard, say – to the biggest – hiring and firing, promotions – there’s no chance he’d look at me. And if I told him, he’d laugh. But I’m not worried about it. I walk around with my head high. I’ve got nothing to hide.
What did they all think of me in those first six months? They didn’t even know my name, just called me ‘the kid who took poor Rosette’s place’. The machine I worked on they called ‘the Monster’. When we walked onto the factory floor at ten o’clock at night, the girls would spit on it as they walked past. No one wanted to go near it. They’d take their places, and their spit would drip in front of my face. I wanted to ask them to stop doing it, but I didn’t have the guts. The spit aside, it wasn’t a good place to be. Not one drop of beauty to the place. I used to dress up every night, as if I was going out somewhere special, just so I’d remember I was going to get out of there one day, to climb the career ladder, not get stuck there for twenty or thirty years. As everyone knows, clothes maketh the man. If you only ever wear dirty clothes that stink of cooking oil, you’ll be knocked out in the first round.
I got my bad back because of that night shift. I could hardly stand up straight and I couldn’t ask for a chair, either. I was afraid they’d fire me if I did. Everyone said, ‘Ah, you’re Rosette’s replacement’ in a way that made me feel guilty, as if it was my fault her head got smashed in.
On my first night at the factory I learned that the machines stop every time there’s a hole in the thread. The electricity cuts out, but it doesn’t make any difference to the machines if they ruin a human life. Three-thirty in the morning is when you start to go mad. You can’t believe you’ll get through the next hour. You look at the clock ten times in thirty seconds, then up to the windows in the roof to see if there’s any light, then back to the clock. Nothing moves. The clock, the darkness, both stay as they are. You start to think that time really is standing still, that God fell asleep without leaving instructions to move the hours. If someone came to the factory at 2 a.m. and asked us to give a year of our lives just to go to sleep there and then, we’d all sign up to it. People would be queuing up. But after what happened to Rosette, for a while no one went to sleep at three-thirty. Everyone seemed to wake up, to turn and look at me. The factory would buzz at the same time every night. It was a kind of memorial,
even though she’s still alive. I’d think a thousand thoughts at that time of night. I wanted to stop the noise, to stick an axe into a machine to break it, and, along with everyone else, I’d think about Rosette.
One Thursday, Rosette was standing exactly where I used to, her hand passing the thread into the machine. Everyone says she had the best touch for the job, that she could feel if the thread was a quarter of a millimetre too thick or thin. Maybe she just looked up to the roof windows to see if dawn had begun. Whatever happened, her long hair was suddenly caught in the wheels, pulled through like the thread, until her head smashed against the machine. It can process 30 centimetres of hair or thread in five seconds, it doesn’t matter which. Whatever goes into the forest of wheels has to come out the other side. At break-time, the same refrain over and over: Why didn’t we jump up and turn off the machine? Then they’d start to get angry. If they didn’t make us work back to back like robots, so we can’t look at each other, we would have seen her. But over the noise of the machines, how could we have heard anything?
Then they talked about the workers who were facing her but were too far away. Four of them jumped up immediately, but it was no good. Five seconds is nothing. What can you do in five seconds? It’s no time at all.
When the whole Rosette business had calmed down, I began to see the factory for real. The laughter at break-time, when the weak electric current of the machines is connected to the kettle, so that when someone tries to make themselves a cup of tea, they get a little shock. The tape cassette of ‘The Flower in my Garden’ on constant play, turned over a hundred times. The way they aren’t as safety-conscious after half an hour on shift, taking off the goggles and the ear protectors – they can’t stand wearing them in the heat – but still putting up their hair, of course. From time to time someone still went to visit Rosette, and would come and tell us about her. But the 3.30 a.m. moment was in the past. They forgot all about it. Suddenly, they were fighting over my machine, remembering it was the best machine, clocking in quickly and running to grab it.
I’d get home at six-fifteen on the factory bus. Mum would have been up for some time already. She’d make me tea, and I’d fall into her bed, which was still warm. I’d breathe in her smell, not sour like it was when she was breastfeeding. I’d sleep on her side until the afternoon, then go back into work for the night shift. That was how it was every day for ten months. Then Talmon came to the factory.
Today everyone knows me. There isn’t a person who hasn’t poured out her heart to Kobi. Ever since I was a boy, people have told me everything. I don’t know why. I don’t tell them about my life, just listen and remember what they’ve told me, then keep my mouth shut. I don’t gossip. That’s what Talmon saw when he took me off the machines and put me in the storeroom. When he called me into his office, three days after he’d arrived as the new manager, everyone thought he was going to fire me. People still think that. Others think we’re like cat and mouse. How did they come to that conclusion? Are they blind? Can’t they see I’m climbing the ladder?
I might have understood that at the start, when he took me off the factory line, made me carry things, rearrange shelves. I worked until I broke into a sweat. They all thought I’d been screwed. And then he gave me a drinks corner, the best heater, his old desk and chairs when he got new ones. Why can’t they see we’re as thick as thieves? My salary is one-and-a-half times theirs. I have my own room. I wear a jacket. My sweating days are long gone. I’ve become white collar. Little Siso drags the heavy stuff around now. And just because Talmon likes to put on a little show now and again, giving me a dressing-down on the factory floor, pretending he’s not happy with an order, or appearing at the door of the cafeteria and demanding something when I’m in the middle of eating, they think he doesn’t respect me, that he’ll soon fire me. Fire me? Me? Once I’ve finished doing what he wants, I go back to the cafeteria and my plate, counting, one by one, the people who got their jobs because me, and thinking about the ones Talmon and I fired together. Then I’m calm.
What shall I do now? Until the new forms arrive, my time is my own. My storeroom is as closely guarded as a pharmacy now. Since Talmon agreed to a lock on the door, no one is allowed in here alone. If someone needs something, I have to watch them take it off the shelves. They can drink coffee at my table outside, as much as they like. Let them drink, let them pour it out. Kobi’s OK with all that. But they can’t go into the storeroom alone. Today the forms are coming, and then the whole factory will have to write down what they want and wait for my signature. They’ll think twice before asking for something.
It’s seven o’clock. I take Talmon’s papers from the bottom drawer, the papers from our first meeting. He asked me a thousand questions, and I sat there and told him about my life and my family, what everyone knows and some secrets, too. And with every word that came out, I’d think: Is that really what happened? Is that my life? Until that meeting, I didn’t talk to anybody about it, and now all I can think about is how I would tell it differently, and what he would say.
After I’d told him everything, he started talking. ‘Look, Kobi,’ he said – and I’ll never forget this – ‘I’m going to put all my cards on the table. I have no choice. I need to let somebody see my hand, and I’ve chosen you. My biggest problem, my lowest card, is that I’m a new immigrant here, and I can’t afford to be new. Look,’ he went on, taking a paper out of his briefcase, ‘this factory has been going for four-and-a-half years, and it’s gone through six managers. Six managers in four-and-a-half years. I’m the seventh. It’s simple arithmetic – each manager lasts an average of nine months. That really bothers me. They were all good, all clever, all department managers in the main factory. They were successful, yet they were tossed out of here before they even got their feet under the desk. Afterwards, they were given some dead-end job. I started work here three days ago, and I want to stay here for five years. That’s what I want.’
On another piece of paper he wrote the year five years from now and signed it. That was the first time I saw his signature. It was the first time I saw his drawings, too. He’d drawn our factory surrounded by the sea, and six people – the previous managers – holding their briefcases over their heads with both hands, flying, and falling into the sea.
At that point, all I could think of was whether he was going to hire me or fire me. My mind was locked. Hire, fire. Then, when I guessed he wasn’t going to kick me out, I didn’t want to say a thing because I was afraid he would stop talking and I wouldn’t understand what he wanted. I said to myself: Careful, Kobi. This isn’t a film. He might be putting on a performance, but this is real life.
‘For two days I’ve been ringing around,’ he went on. ‘I didn’t leave a stone unturned, and this is what I found out: those managers were thrown out because they got on the wrong side of the Council. Everyone knows you’ve got to be cautious with the authorities, but it’s not easy. Not at all. It’s stupid to think the ones who were fired were stupid. They were all clever and they all tripped up. So I have to be really clever. And you, Kobi, have to help me be a clever old-timer rather than a stupid newcomer.’
As he talked, he filled the desk with paper. He was either drawing, or writing just one word on a whole piece of paper, then underlining it. When he figured out the average duration of the managers and underlined it, the pen tore the paper. When he said the managers were clever, he wrote ‘clever’ on their briefcases. He told me the factory workers were like pieces of fruit in a crate. If just one started to rot, you had to take it out before it rotted the fruit next to it. He talked about knowing what was to his right and to his left, saying, ‘I have to know what’s behind my back and what’s right in front of me. A wise man’s eyes are in his head. I’m like a blind man and you’re helping me cross the street.’ Then he drew a picture of it. You wouldn’t believe a factory manager could draw so well. Zvika, the previous manager, wasn’t a match for Talmon. He was heavy, always nervous and tired. I’ve never seen Talmon tired.
Whenever you see him it’s as if he just started work that very minute.
When his desk started overflowing, he threw the paper in the bin and talked about the storeroom. He said, ‘You’ll have a storeroom with your own desk. It’ll be like an office. A falafel shop is too small for you.’ Then he told me what I had do in the factory, with the workforce, and what I had to get from the town hall, the Council, the Union, and the people in the market. ‘What are people saying in the market?’ he always says. ‘Don’t forget the people in the market.’ He must think the whole town does nothing, that everyone just stands around talking at the Thursday morning market.
Afterwards, when he was walking around the factory, I rescued all the paper from his bin, including the last picture he drew. There are two circles. In one the two of us are tied together with a rope, standing on a mountain and laughing; and in the other circle we’re both hanging from our rope, dead, with a big X drawn next to us.
