by Sara Shilo
I’m dying to sit in his office again like that first time. What wouldn’t I give? Back then he didn’t have his secretary Leah, who came from his old company a month later. She took Heli’s place, after I gave him the OK to fire her. It’s a shame really, because Leah made me feel smaller than a fly when I tried to walk past her into his room once. I’m not doing that again. Back then he didn’t have those people with him, either, the ones he brings from outside and walks around with. He wasn’t confident of his place yet. I look at the drawings to remember our first meeting, when he asked me all those questions about my life, making me feel I was number one. Me and him alone in the room. His cards on the table. To succeed, Israel Talmon needs Kobi. Without Kobi, he’s nothing. He does take most of my advice, although not all of it. He fired Zion even though I told him to be careful. He probably thought he was a rotten fruit in the crate, just because he complained about overtime. But he still respects my opinion. He lets me hire people for the crappy jobs, throws me a question here and there, so I always feel we’re still tied with the rope he drew, that he can’t move without me, the blind man’s white stick, to show him the way.
How I wish he would sit with me and lay his cards on the table again. It’s eating me up. I wish he’d show Leah who I really am in this place. I wish he’d stand with me at the factory assembly before Rosh Hashana or Passover, when he raises a plastic cup and announces the factory’s new and improved production numbers. I wish he’d tell them all who I really am, that without Kobi, he wouldn’t have made it through the two years he’s been here, wouldn’t have expanded the factory from twenty-four workers to seventy-three, from one to two buildings, from fifty orders to two-hundred and twenty, that without Kobi he would have been tossed into the sea, buried in some dead-end job with no prospects. But no, nothing. He makes everyone feel important. He doesn’t raise anyone up or bring them down, just finishes every meeting with ‘Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy’ or ‘Those who prepare for the Sabbath will eat on the Sabbath’. It’s like being back in school. Then he straightens his yarmulke, everyone goes back to their places, and he leaves without saying a single word to me. When I think about that, my life seems so black. I can’t see any good in it.
Then, when I remember I’m not just his white stick, I feel happier, because I know how to keep quiet, to have patience like no one else. I’m as patient as a stone. Talmon is just one course in my life, and he’ll never know what’s right under his nose. I have another avenue that gives me the strength to be quiet when he’s shitty to me in front of everyone, the strength not to get up and tell everyone what I’ve done for him.
2
I clean my desk with a rag. There’s nothing on it. I won’t allow a single piece of paper to be seen on it. Everything is in the drawers.
I wait a few minutes so it’s exactly the right time: 7.30 a.m. I take the white plastic folder out of the second drawer, and, one by one, I go through the papers inside. I trace over the lines of the apartment plan with a pen – the walls, the circles that show how the doors open and close, the beds, the sofas, the kitchen, the sinks, the circles of the hob, the square of the fridge, the table in the dining alcove. I trace over everything. If I took a piece of blank paper, I think I could draw it from memory.
I first saw the apartment a year and two months ago, and when I went in, all I wanted to do was run away. We arrived in Rishon LeZion on the mini-bus and dropped the passengers off. I was dying for a shit. Mordi said, ‘Let’s go in here. I’ll pretend I’m interested in buying; you find a toilet.’ So we went in. Mordi chatted up the girl there, and I found the bathroom easily. I opened the door, and I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven.
Was it really a bathroom? The toilet seat was covered with green carpet, and on the floor, cut around the base of toilet, was more carpet in the same colour. I didn’t know what to do. I took off my shoes so I wouldn’t dirty the carpet, then I sat down slowly and put my feet on it really carefully. Then I started to cry. Shitting, crying. Wiping myself, crying. I got up to flush the toilet and I was still crying. I put the carpeted seat back down and sat on it. I didn’t have the strength to get up again. I’d aged a hundred years in one minute. I looked around. It was all shiny and new. The big sink was a delicate pink and the mirror was surrounded by small lightbulbs, and you could move it up and down to see yourself from all angles. There were red and violet and pink flowers on the tiles, and the towel was the green of the leaves and the toilet seat carpet.
The soap was new, the bath huge and shiny, and the taps were gold. On the floor next to the bath was a little rug. A rug in the bathroom! Who would have thought it?
The window was ajar, wafting in clean air. There was no noisy black boiler. The floor wasn’t black, either. There was no mould on the ceiling, no condensation. Everything was white and new. At last I got up and went to the sink. I stood there, washing my hands and watching myself cry, then wiping my face and crying again, until I turned the mirror to the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to look at my tears. I grabbed the towel, pressed it to my face for a few minutes like a bandage. Then I opened my eyes and wiped the sink with the towel until it was shiny again.
I put on my shoes and went back out. Mordi was looking as pleased as if he had won the lottery, but all I could think was that in another minute I was going to faint. I tried to drag him out but he didn’t want to come. So I went out by myself, and waited for him outside. After a while he came out, too. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘What’s the hurry? I’ll never understand you. A few more minutes and she’d have made us some coffee.’
We wandered around the construction site for a while. I turned back every minute to see the sign, written in green: ‘Model Apartment’. Mordi was talking about the girl there, but I kept turning back to the sign so I wouldn’t forget it: Model Apartment. Mordi was talking and talking, laughing as he found a bin and threw away all the brochures she gave him. I’m in agony. I want to put my hand in and take them back out, but I stop myself. I don’t want Mordi to know what’s on my mind. So I shut up. I take the cigarette he offers me and we wander around the city together.
It was my first time in Rishon, but I didn’t see anything of the city. All I saw was my crying face in the bathroom mirror of the Model Apartment. I just walked and thought about my crying face. Then my back pains started, moving up from the backs of my shoes. Little pains at first, then so big they shot up to the middle of my back as they searched for a place to land. Shoot and search, over and over again. The first one was like a test run, like taking a measurement and making a pencil mark on the wall before you drill a hole. Before the drilling started, I swore with all my heart, on Oshri and Chaim, that I would never cry in that mirror again. One day Kobi Dadon will stand in the bathroom of the Model Apartment and laugh into that mirror. I swore so hard that I was sure the person who went to get the drill couldn’t find it. That’s how I do it: I keep swearing until the pain in my back disappears. But I don’t have the strength now. I lost it fighting the pain.
We went back to the bus, ate the food that Fannie and Mordi’s mum gave him. ‘I tell them both I’ve got no food, so I get double,’ he laughed. ‘They push me to each other, from here to there – that’s how I make sure they both spoil me.’ Then he showed me new photos of his kid. ‘We’re on the same wavelength,’ he told me. ‘Lucky I caught you in the draft board in the first call-up. Were you really thinking of going? The ones who joined the army think they’re men but they’re like boys. They haven’t seen anything of life. But somebody who had kids calling him Dad when he was only sixteen is in another league. What do you think of Lior? As soon as he was born, you could see he was a man.’ I looked at the photos of his kid and I add to my vow: one day I’m going to laugh in the mirror of the Model Apartment, and take photos of Oshri and Chaim laughing, too.
At last it was four o’clock, and it was time to take home the people we brought to Rishon in the morning. I sat at the back, wanting to sleep, and I
heard it like a song: ‘What, what, what is a model? The apartment’s a model.’ For a month I waited to take another day off from the factory. I worked overtime, I worked night shifts. I was still at the machines then; it was before I had the storeroom. I went to Mordi and asked, ‘When’s your next trip to Rishon?’
Mordi laughed. ‘You’ve got a crush on the city, have you? There’s nowhere like Rishon, believe me. Not even Tel Aviv. I go every Thursday.’
I said, ‘If you can pick me up at my house, I’ll come with you every last Thursday of the month.’
So I’d boxed myself in: my vow to Oshri and Chaim on one side, and Mordi, who wouldn’t let me off, on the other.
3
It’s eight o’clock. Just as I take the bunch of keys to get out the money notebook, I’m told they’re closing the factory. The army’s announced a Katyusha alert. We made a mistake last night and shot a couple of shells onto some village. Their radio’s reporting that a woman and five children died. Now we’re afraid they’ll go crazy, and so everyone’s being sent home. At 8.15 p.m. the factory’s closed. I go outside to wait for the buses with everyone else. Talmon, who’d just arrived, jumps back into his car and starts the engine. You’d have thought the factory was on fire. He drives off like a speeding bullet. People try to talk to him, but he turns the steering wheel and shouts out of the window, ‘Tomorrow, it can wait till tomorrow. Where’s the fire?’
Everyone’s talking about it. This time it’s serious. They wouldn’t close a whole factory for no reason. The buses are here to take us home. What kind of serious is it? Really serious? I can’t work out what they’ll achieve from this alert. Not a single person is in the shelter. And it’s such a nice day, too. Who’d sit in the shelter on a day like this? The sun is perfect. Somebody up there set the thermostat to a perfect heat.
As soon as work, school and the nursery were let out, all the shops closed, and the street got so full you’d have thought you were in the city. Buses and taxis were getting the schoolteachers, nursery workers and social workers out as fast as they could. A few families grab suitcases, get into a taxi or on a bus, and go to relatives in the south. After half an hour only the locals are left. I go down to the shelter with everyone, and count the minutes. For thirty-five minutes they sit in the shelter, eat all the food they’ve brought with them – nibbled sunflower seeds, drank coffee – until it is all gone. Then they start going out. First, the men open the door and stand outside to smoke; they obviously can’t bear sitting inside with the kids any more. Then everyone starts doing the same. The women go to sit with each other, and send the kids outside to their dads. By ten o’clock no one is sitting in the shelter; they’re all wandering the streets like millionaires that don’t need to work. Raphi’s dad opens up his backgammon set in the middle of town, and starts a game with Shushan. Ten guys come to watch, their kids running around. Reuven, the head of the Union, stands there in his slippers, smoking and looking pleased with himself.
What can you do? No one realises the danger until something happens. Every peaceful minute that passes is a sign that the next minute will be peaceful, too.
By twelve-thirty I’m wandering the streets too, my hands in my pockets. I’ve got to hide my hands. I don’t want anyone to see them. My mouth is fine; everything that leaves my mouth has authorisation, just like the storeroom. My eyes are the same. But I can’t control my hands. They do whatever they like, betraying me. When I’m around people I don’t know what to do with them. After the trip to Rishon I can’t stand wandering around town any more, can’t stand talking to the locals. On Independence Day I stood with Mordi and the little kids to watch the fireworks, and Mordi said to me, ‘The ones that just go up and up and up drive me mad. You watch them going up and think something’s going to happen, and nothing does. They just fall down again without opening.’ After Rishon I thought: People here, my dad included, are not even as good as those fireworks.
I make my way to Mordi’s house, thinking I’ll wait it out there. But I can’t. I had to leave the factory while I was in the middle of sorting out my drawers. Every Tuesday, from seven o’clock to eight-fifteen, I work out how much money I can put into my apartment fund that week and I write it into a notebook. I add it all up, work out how much more I have to save, then put it in the drawer and start my day. But today I had to leave before I could write up my notebook. I can’t go to Mordi’s. I’ve got to go back and do it so I can start my day right.
I walk back to the factory. It takes me twenty-five minutes. Luckily, I’ve got the keys, which probably weigh half a kilo. The industrial estate is dead, like it is on a Saturday. I look up at the sky, and feel a little afraid, with one hand trembling I try to open the factory and it doesn’t budge. Only when I use both hands can I get in. Last year a Katyusha fell in the industrial estate on Lag b’Omer. If one falls now, who will find me? They’ll just say, ‘Thank God it didn’t fall on the houses.’ No one will come. I’ll just go in for five minutes, write down the money and then go back up to town.
I go to my room, open the drawer quickly, take out the notebook. I want to write down the date and how much I’ve saved. It’s a good week. A $120 week. Added to the rest, I’ve now got $7,000. How much more do I need? Just another $7,000 and then I can get out of here. Today I’m halfway. As I write the date, my hand’s shaking. It’s my birthday today and I’m nineteen. It just so happened that I got to the halfway point on my birthday. I underline the date twice. What a day! I’ve got half of the deposit for the apartment! I feel as though I’ve climbed to the top of a mountain and I can see where I’m going. From today, every dollar I earn is pushing me downhill towards my real life. It’s lucky I didn’t enlist in the army. Where would I be now if I’d wasted time doing that?
I look at the calendar on the wall. I mark the end of every day with an X, tear off the page at the end of every month, put a new calendar up every year. It’s the calendar that shows me how time passes, not the clock. The clock is a liar. Every time you look at it, it’s as if it has just started ticking, giving no sign that time has passed. It’s as if every hour is the first hour of the world. A proper clock should have a hand like a knife, cutting out circles inside, so you can see time working, producing something.
I get up and look at the calendar, to mark the X on today’s date before I go. As soon as I do it, I can see that my birthday is today in the Hebrew calendar – 14 Sivan – as well as the standard calendar. How can that be? The two never coincide. Tomorrow is 15 Sivan, Dad’s memorial day. Why didn’t Mum mention it? She always talks about the memorial two weeks beforehand, so I can get ready. As I think about her, I realise she’s not talking at the moment. She hasn’t said a word for a week. She’s quiet all the time. When I looked at her face this morning as I woke up, I thought maybe I’d said something about the apartment in my sleep, but there’s no way I’d do that. I’m like a safe. I keep everything locked away, twenty-four seven. So what’s going on? Why didn’t she look at me when we went into the shelter this morning? Maybe she’s just realised we’ve missed Itzik’s bar mitzvah, that we didn’t do anything for him, and didn’t know how to talk to me about it. She’s probably afraid I’ll say no. She knows I’m not Dad. He’d just give her anything she wanted.
I haven’t said a word about the bar mitzvah to her or to Itzik. I don’t understand why he hasn’t mentioned it. Since he left school and brought the bird home, nothing seems to interest him. That bird is his life now. Because of her, he went back to sleep in the old apartment, and in the kitchen, no less. Just because it has a sink. He doesn’t look after himself. It’s as if he’s thinks he’s already dead. A cage with two animals in it wouldn’t stink as much as that kitchen. If I give her money to throw away on a bar mitzvah, even half of what she spent on mine, I’ll fall behind on the Model Apartment schedule. The notebook will be back to where it was four months ago. I had a bar mitzvah fit for a king. No one had ever seen anything like it. You couldn’t have asked for more. But just when you feel life is
smiling down on you, your dad goes and fucks everything up.
Two days after my bar mitzvah I was told, ‘Your dad died at the falafel shop.’ At the bar mitzvah everyone said, ‘Now you’re a man. Do you feel you’ve turned into a man?’ They slapped me on the back so hard I almost fell over, and I laughed like an idiot.
I was treated like a king at my bar mitzvah. No one could avoid hearing about it. Everyone was talking about me and my family. We all looked great, with our new clothes and haircuts, and the whole house was full of flowers and presents.
Two days later I was wandering around the town centre wearing my bar mitzvah jacket, shiny shoes and new watch, and everyone was still saying ‘mazel tov’ wherever I went. The town centre started to fill up; everyone had come to hear Rabbi Kahane. I looked at the people with him, figured out who was the real boss, and started to help them set up their things. I didn’t talk much, just gestured to two strong kids to carry the platform the rabbi would stand on, grabbed Abutbul’s eldest son and told him he’d get five shekels to beat up anyone who heckled, with half up front so he knew I was serious. I called Albert Biton to help them with the electricity. After ten minutes they were mine. They couldn’t manage without Kobi. They didn’t know my name, yet they ran to me with a question every two minutes. When I saw they were nearly finished, I whistled to Dudi, who was playing with his friends near the phone booth, sent him to get a few bottles of juice from the falafel shop. I didn’t think he’d have a problem. Just a few bottles. But Dad never understood how to choose sides. That was why he died.
So I got the drinks myself, opened them and handed them round. We sat down and drank together, started to chat. One way or another, I got to hear all sorts of things about the rabbi. Things no one knows. I pretended not to be interested, as if I heard stories about important people every day. But I was fizzing inside. They thought I worked for the Council, didn’t realise how young I was. Maybe because I was already shaving, they thought I was four or five years older. They said, ‘They don’t help us like this everywhere. Shkoyakh! Shkoyakh!’ I didn’t know what they meant, but I didn’t let on. Inside I was laughing, as cool as a cucumber.
