The Falafel King Is Dead

by Sara Shilo

  After the rabbi finished his speech and the dancing had stopped, they introduced me. He blessed me, calling me ‘Yakov’. People started to drift away, and the rabbi and his people finished loading their van. I looked at the van until it disappeared. At the bend in the road one of them waved goodbye to me. I was full of it. He might have been going away but he wouldn’t forget me. Maybe he’d talk about me. Then, suddenly, they were shouting: ‘Kobi, come quick, your dad’s collapsed at the falafel shop.’

  What do you mean? Collapsed? How? I ran there and saw everything: Dad lying on the floor in the falafel oil, the pot upside down on the floor, the big knife in his hand, full of bits of parsley, his eyes half-open, the left one swollen. Later Albert Biton found the bee that stung him in the oil. The centre of town had been empty, but in less than a minute it was crammed with people again. I stood there with everyone else, watching them pull my dad out like he would pull a sack of chickpeas, lying him on the floor. His shirt was pulled out of his trousers and you could see his whole belly. I thought I would die. I don’t know why. I wanted to cover him up but I couldn’t move. I wanted them all to shut up, to stand still, not to keep moving. He looked to me like Yehiel the Bible teacher who used to gaze at us with hooded eyes, waiting for us to be quiet before he opened his mouth. I wanted to say, ‘Don’t you see he’s waiting for you to be quiet?’ But Dad just lay still, his hair glued to the floor with oil, and people shouted.

  Chico started CPR. All the time everyone kept saying, ‘Isn’t this bad for the kids? They shouldn’t see him like this. Take them away.’ But no one did take us away. Why would they when they had such a good view? Every other minute somebody shouted, ‘When will the ambulance be here?’ But everyone knew he was dead before the ambulance arrived. In the end they took us home. Itzik was with us, too. Me and Dudi and Itzik. I can still hear Mum’s screeches as she tried to run to the centre, the women in our building stopping her. They grabbed her, brought her into the house, laid her down on the sofa in the living room, poured water on her.

  I don’t remember the funeral. It has just flown out of my head. But I do remember coming home afterwards. Every door was open as we climbed the stairs. The whole building was like one big house, and everything was turned over. I didn’t know where to put my feet. I was turfed out of all the usual places and I couldn’t go outside. In the end they sat me on a mattress on the floor. People started coming into the house. Stand, sit. More came in. I looked up at a thousand faces. They were using all the air. I couldn’t breathe. I went to the bathroom. There was a queue, but they let me go first. I did everything quickly – washed my face, wet my hair, fixed my bar mitzvah yarmulke with a pin. To make myself cry I said into to the mirror, ‘Dad’s dead. Dad’s dead.’ But I couldn’t cry. Nothing. Not a single tear. I tried out different expressions, decided on one for the day so I could be sure how they’d see me. Someone knocked on the door. I grabbed the shirt they tore. It was a new shirt, what good did it do to tear it? Another knock. I opened the door and went back to my mattress. Now there were serious faces instead of the handshakes and laughs of the bar mitzvah, but they shook my hand once more, repeating what they’d said at my bar mitzvah: ‘Now you’re the man of the family. You have to be a man now.’

  Mum’s brothers from Ashdod were there for the day. They were afraid for her, afraid to leave her alone. They told me the same thing. What could I say? I nodded, keeping my head down, putting my hand over my face, waiting until they went to talk to someone else – Mum, Dad’s brothers, Grandma, anyone just so long as they left me alone. When I stood with Dad’s brothers to say Kaddish for him, I felt I wasn’t alone. But I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know that one year later I’d discover their true faces when they left me alone to be the man of the house.

  After about a month and a half or two months, Mum came home from the clinic crying, and went into her room. Ricki Amar, who works with her at the nursery, followed her. After a while she came out of the room alone, went into the kitchen to boil water for tea. We followed her. She said, ‘Come in here, I have something to tell you. Your mum is pregnant. You’ve got to take care of her, make sure she doesn’t work too hard.’ At first I didn’t understand. What did she mean? Pregnant? How could she get pregnant now? I didn’t get it. I don’t know why. I was angry. And disgusted, too. There are guys who run onto the football pitch after a game and kick a ball into the goal. It’s their chance to been seen on the pitch. They like to score a goal, without a goalkeeper or other players, just for the hell of it. I can’t stand that. It makes me sick.

  4

  I close the notebook and lock it in the drawer. I want to run away from the factory. Without the noise of the machines, it’s worse than a graveyard. The last time it was so quiet was my first day. It was six o’clock on a Sunday morning and I was sixteen and two months. The workers went onto the factory floor with the foreman. In the dark all the machines were like rocks. Why not? I thought. We’ll stand next to each other, talk, laugh, and, chic-choc, the day’s over. Suddenly they turned on all the machines, all of them at once, the women’s and the men’s. I thought my ears would explode. The machines started moving like animals that had slept all Saturday. I wanted to escape, to find the schoolbag I had thrown away, to go back to school. Every day for a month I wanted to go back to school. Then I got my salary and I felt like a man who knows how to earn some cash. After the fifteenth of the month, when I went to the bank, I didn’t want to go back to school any more. It’s like being in first grade and walking past the nursery. You look over the fence at your old teacher sitting outside with the children, and see there’s no reason to go back there. And when my first draft board letter came, I saw the army wasn’t the right thing for me, either. It’s lucky I met Mordi. He taught me what to do, and so did Talmon. I don’t know who he talked to, but they say his brother is a high-ranking officer in the army. A week later, the exemption letter arrived in the post.

  I get up and walk down the corridor, past Jamil’s room. Talmon will never know the truth. Jamil is the factory book-keeper, and he cottoned on to our game right from the start. He worked it out at the job interview. A day later he caught me on my way to the storeroom and quietly said, ‘Thanks.’ My face started to burn. I was rooted to the spot, and he went to his room. Just ‘thanks’. How he got wind of us, I don’t know. How could he have worked out that I can put in a word with Talmon? How did he realise I helped him get the job? Maybe he knew there was a Jew who wanted the job, too. When I was at nursery, we’d play a game when we all had to copy one person, and another has to guess who it is. Motti Ipergan would be sent out of the room, then come back in, look for a second and quietly say the right name, then sit down in his chair. The teacher would go mad. She did everything she could to confuse him, but he never got confused. He now works in Army Intelligence – what else? Jamil’s the same. His brain is fast and accurate. Immediately he gets what no one else does, and says only what he needs to. He has diplomas in accountancy and tax, and all his diplomas say he qualified with distinction.

  I walked into Talmon’s room in the middle of his interview, pretended I was filing, and looked up at the ceiling. That was our signal. Looking up at the ceiling meant ‘he’s the one to hire’. The week before interviews, Talmon gives me the list of candidates, and I do my work: I ask questions, listen to the answers, get into places – the Union, the head of the Council and his secretary – to know who’s pulling one way and who’s pulling the other. I know which candidate has been sent to trip him up, and which one they don’t want hired, although they don’t want to look prejudiced, as well as the person they recommend for friendship’s sake, who’s screwed up every job he ever had. If I don’t have the time to slip him the paper on the sly, he calls me into the interview and I give him my signal. He never talks about it. Sometimes it’s as easy as pie, like the brother-in-law of the head of the Council, or a member of some family that everyone knows you can’t touch. I don’t understand how he can’t see
it. It’s as if he’s blind and deaf. Sometimes I feel I’m sweating bullets to help him, pleading with Mordi to talk to the right person when he drives them, maybe crack a few jokes with the poker-faced secretary to the head of the Council when they’re arranging transportation. I do everything so I can write two words to Talmon on a piece of paper, or go into his room to give him our signal before going back to the storeroom. He doesn’t want anything more from me.

  The truth is, Jamil was hired because my cousin Gabi wanted the job, too. He’d finished studying and had come back to the moshav. He sat and talked to Talmon like the job was already his. He knew that the only other candidate was an Arab from the village. If Mordi knew I gave a Jew’s job to an Arab he’d kill me. He’s always saying, ‘You can’t even trust an Arab that’s been dead forty years.’ But what do I care if he’s an Arab or a Jew? He could be a Bedouin for all I care. I’ll scratch the back of whoever scratches mine. I just opened the door during Gabi’s interview, stuck my head in, and left. I didn’t even say hello, just looked at the floor so Talmon wouldn’t make a mistake. No way are any of Dad’s family getting a foot in this factory. After what they did to us when Dad died, the whole business with the falafel shop, I’ve got no time for them. I wouldn’t lift my little finger to help any of them.

  Two weeks after he started work at the factory, Jamil came to me with his proposal: ‘For every worker of mine that you bring in, you get ten per cent of his first salary.’ I said, ‘Twenty per cent.’ We settled on fifteen. I don’t know his percentage. I don’t ask. Then I went away and, a minute later, came back with the Model Apartment brochure. I sat there, shaking. I put the brochure down and I couldn’t open my mouth. I was going mad dreaming about it. Jamil took the folder, pulled out everything with his long fingers, opened it all on the table. I didn’t say a word. He asked questions about money, took an adding machine and some blank paper, sat for a few minutes, wrote some numbers on the paper and, there and then, made me a plan to bring the Model Apartment out of my dreams and into my life. I almost kissed his hand.

  When he brought me money the first time, I walked around with it in my pocket all day. I didn’t know where to put it. There was nowhere safe at home. In any case, there’s always somebody around when I get in. If I put it in the bank, into savings, the cashiers there could hint to Mum or the Housing Office that I have means of paying. People here don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. Only yesterday Itzik’s teacher grabbed me in the town centre, in front of everyone, and started talking about how he hadn’t been to school for two months, that she’d send a truant officer or the new street youth-worker. She shouted at me right in front of the supermarket, when everyone could hear.

  That first night I slept with the money on me. In the morning I went back to the factory and asked Jamil what to do. He said, ‘I’ll keep it all for you in dollars, until you have fourteen thousand for the deposit.’ I thought: What do I have to lose? I’m in his hands, and he’s in mine. We’re bound with the same rope.

  From that day, on the fifteenth of every month, I withdraw my whole salary from the bank in cash. I give half to him, and he changes it into dollars, then keeps it in the village. When someone from his village gets a job, he writes down how many dollars he’s putting away for me, and that’s it. I’ve never seen my dollars, but I’m not worried. Jamil is completely straight. His word is his bond. And having it in dollars means I can’t spend it. I’m dying to see my dollars one day, to hold them in my hand, to count them, to walk around with them in my pocket, to feel them on my body, but I gave him my word I wouldn’t go to his village, and my word is my bond, too. And no one in the factory would guess we’ve got something going. I never sit next to him in the cafeteria, and he doesn’t drink coffee with me like everyone else. I’ve promised I won’t go to the village, and Jamil has promised that, even if I beg, he won’t give me a single dollar before the time comes to buy.

  We agreed that soon after, when Mum was putting pressure on me to let Itzik have private lessons in the city. She said, ‘If he doesn’t have private lessons, what will become of him? He spends all day with that bird. What kind of a life is that?’ I said, ‘There’s no money.’ She looked me straight in the eye, but I didn’t blink. Anyway, I wasn’t really lying. It’s not money – it’s walls, a sink, an oven, a bathroom, carpet. As soon as I started thinking that way about the money, it got easy for me to say no to them. I think the same when I feel like buying a new jacket. So we’re all living on half my salary and the child allowance and the pennies she earns at the nursery. Everyone understands there’s no money. Even Dudi, who’s dying to have a few pounds in his pocket, doesn’t ask. But I allow one trip to the cinema every two weeks. What can I do? You can’t live without films here. You’d die. And they’ve stopped wanting a television, an electric heater, or clothes. They know they don’t have a good reason to ask me. I also stopped paying Council tax and water rates. The Council cut it off once, and I went to talk to them. They settled for half the debt and turned it back on. And the Housing Office hasn’t seen a penny from me for a year. They’ve started to threaten, so I’ll make a settlement with them, too.

  I don’t buy anything for the house. It’s not a home. I’ve seen what a home looks like. This is a pigsty. I’m just working to get myself and her and the twins out of this place. Itzik and Dudi and Etti will have to manage by themselves. I was working at Etti’s age. I don’t spend money for the sake of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to buy Mum a nice necklace, a new bracelet or a watch. I’m dying to buy her things, to see her face when she opens the box. But I’m not like Dad, who wanted her to be happy every day, throwing his money around like a kid. I know how to keep quiet, to keep everything locked inside. When I make up my mind not to talk, I don’t say a word. In the end I’ll bring her the most precious jewel in the world: the keys to the apartment.

  I haven’t said a word to her about the Model Apartment. When she holds the keys, that’s the first she’ll hear about it. She’ll stand there in Rishon with me and Chaim and Oshri. I won’t bring a thing from the house. Not a single rag is going to move to Rishon with us. Everything there will be clean, waiting for her. I picture her unlocking the door, the keys falling out of her hand. She’ll need to sit down, she’ll ask for a chair. A chair? I’ll take her to the armchair in the living room, bring her a glass of cold water from the kitchen. Then the colour will come back to her face and she can start her life again. New sheets, new towels, new pots. Everything will be new. Every day, when she falls into bed beside me, I hear her saying she aches all over. There’s less than half a metre between us. I’m dying to say, ‘Leave the nursery. We have money; you don’t have to work.’ But I don’t let myself. I close my eyes and imagine her lying in the big bed in Rishon, the same wood colour as the wardrobe. There’s nothing more stylish.

  Every month I walk the streets in Rishon for an hour and a half, looking in people’s windows to see what’s in their houses, what they do, what they buy. How they talk to each other, how they are with their kids, when they come back from nursery and school. I keep it all in my head ready for the day I move. As I walk the streets, I picture her getting off the bus on Herzl Street after a good night’s sleep, washed in the new bathroom, well dressed. Her face has returned to how it was in my bar mitzvah photo. She has a nice handbag, not the white bar mitzvah one but a new handbag with a purse full of money inside. She walks into shops, buys what she feels like. I’ve also picked out her hairdresser. In Rishon I’m sure she’ll throw away that scarf and all the mourning clothes. I already know the clothes shops she’ll like. I can see her life in Rishon. It’s a nice life, a life fit for humans.

  I go there every four weeks. No one at home knows. I get to the construction site at ten-thirty. The first thing I do is walk around to see how they’ve progressed. I don’t want them to finish quickly. I need time to get the money together. I look at all the buildings, but I know where my apartment is. The only one I want is the Model Apartment itself, none
of the others. I want it exactly as it is, fully fitted and furnished. I sit down outside it, take off my shoes and pour out all the sand that has crept in. There isn’t any soil. The ground, the air, the sun are all different there. Nothing’s the same. I put my shoes back on, tie the laces, and walk into my house. Every time I check what has happened to it that month, room by room. The bedroom, Mum’s room, the twins’ room, the bathroom. I check every corner, afraid things will get ruined. It’s a pity I can’t lock it, so my stuff won’t get worn out. It’s the carpet, dirtied by all the shoes, that annoys me the most.

  One day I said to Yafit, ‘Can’t we cover the rug with some plastic?’

  She laughed and said, ‘You and your jokes.’

  I said, ‘Come on, let’s take the toilet paper out of the bathroom so people will use the small toilet instead.’

  She laughed again.

  Every month I wet a rag and polish all the taps. The house is clean, the floor and the windows gleaming. Yafit goes mad. ‘If I wasn’t dying of boredom, I wouldn’t talk to you,’ she says. At first she thought I was mad, but at the end of the morning she always does what I want. At twenty-five past one she locks the door of the Model Apartment, leaves the keys on the small balcony for me. I come at one-thirty on the dot, take the keys, put them in my pocket, and pretend I’m walking into my own house with my own keys. I lock the door from the inside, throw the keys on the dining table in the alcove, drink some water. Yafit is usually sleeping on her stomach, legs crossed, in the master bedroom. She doesn’t even take off her shoes. But I don’t allow her to put them on the bedspread. So she crosses her legs in the air, her jeans as tight as can be. If Mordi was here he wouldn’t be able to control himself. But I don’t fancy her. She’s like a substitute teacher, going from one man to another, filling in where she’s needed.