by Lavie Tidhar
His sigh felt close.
"Judit, don't torment yourself with this! Won't you come over and talk? It would be easier to accept—"
"How will he die?"
"I'd rather not say."
Rage burst out of me.
"Because you are a coward! I don't believe this! You have your gift and just sweep it under the carpet? I don't think so! The world doesn't work like that. It's your choice not to do anything, but don't expect the same from me. I am not like you!"
"You make it more difficult than—"
"So what? It's my life! Even if you behaved like a proper father, my life wouldn't be yours to decide what I should do with it. Oh, fuck, I don't believe this! Now you want to protect me?"
Chilly silence. I had to press my hand against my forehead to cool my feverish brow. I could have said more: obscenities, accusations, suppressed hatred burnt my tongue and I bit my lips to hold it all back. I knew what I'd already said was more than enough.
"He will be hit by a branch," said my father at last, and he put down the phone.
"That's it?" I shouted, but the line was dead.
I sat with my cell phone in my lap. It tired me to move and when I finally stood, my knees trembled. I went out to check on my wards.
The corridor shone coldly as the night lighting reflected off the tiles. I had got my answer from my father and yet I felt empty. When I looked into the third ward I froze. I saw a patient with a pillow in her hands leaning over another patient, but the sight seemed abstract.
I don't remember moving.
I tore the pillow from the wizened old hands. She scratched my arm. "She wanted to kill me!" the old woman shrieked. "I saw it in her eyes, I knew it…she wanted to steal my money this afternoon; I had to hide it under my pillow."
I leant towards the dying woman's mouth—it was parched and smelt of age—but I was too late. I already knew it. I started CPR for I had to try. Only afterwards did I grab the old woman's trembling arm. She babbled on.
"She waited for me to fall asleep. As soon as I was asleep, she tried to take my money! I saw her hand! I wanted to make her sleep." She started to cry then. "I just wanted to make her sleep…"
The other two patients' eyes glistened in the darkness. Only for their sake did I refrain from hitting the old woman. I wanted to hurt her not because she was demented and had killed her bed neighbour, but because she had fulfilled the prophecy I wanted to thwart.
"You come with me!" I shouted in her face. I pulled her out of the ward as if I were a jailer. I had to report the incident. She was crying, but I didn't look at her.
My eyes were dry.
I tried to warn him. I called him in New Delhi. He immediately picked up the phone as if he was waiting for the call.
"Judit?" His voice was so eager and happy that it was hard to believe we hadn't seen each other for five months. How could one e-mail a week be enough? "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I missed your voice." As soon as I said it, I knew that was the real reason, not the warning. My whole body ached from missing him, and his absence smothered me.
"I missed yours, too." He paused.
"Listen to me!" I began. "If there is a storm…don't go for a walk, especially not under trees! And always watch for woodcutters thinning the branches. Take care…"
"What?" He laughed.
"I'm not joking. Take care with those trees!"
He didn't understand. I sputtered the warning again but I feared he didn't comprehend my words. He didn't believe me.
"Promise me!" I demanded.
"I do," he said, still laughing. "Okay. And what about you? Tell me, how are you?"
"I'm fine," I said, not wanting to chat. "Do you promise me?"
"Yes! I will be careful with the trees."
"Good. Bye!"
I put down the phone. A cigarette was already in my mouth. I couldn't remember taking it out.
Iván's voice had told me that he hadn't understood. He wouldn't keep his promise. Silliness, he would say, and even if he watched the trees on the first day he would realise it was pointless and forget about the stupid request. He would live like he did, walk under trees and, if he remembered his promise at all, he would only smile. Silly, pet, he would say fondly, and for a moment he would feel my face in his palm. That was all.
I wrote a letter to him, but it was already too late to start explaining my father's prophecies to him. Would I believe them if I hadn't been born into the family of an oracle?
My father wanted to ask for my forgiveness, at least that was what I deduced from the text messages that urged me to visit him. When he tried to call me, I didn't pick up. I deleted his e-mails—so he only wanted to talk, well, I didn't care. Maybe he was not the one who would kill Iván, but he knew about his death and not only stepped aside but wanted to pull me aside, as well.
"Your father called," said Mum one day when I visited her. She didn't look up from the stove. "He wants to talk to you."
They hadn't spoken to each other for a long time now. When communication was absolutely unavoidable, they sent messages through me. They didn't hate each other; I think my father was afraid of my mother who, in turn, looked through him.
"My fault," I said. "He has been trying to reach me for a month now. Sorry."
"He didn't tell me anything else." Based on her voice I assumed she was smiling sarcastically. "He just asked me to tell you—visit him by all means—then said goodbye. I think he doesn't really know how to treat me. Will you put the cloth on the table?"
I took out the plates: a plain white for her, the blue one from my childhood for me that had cars, bicycles and ships running along its edge.
"You don't know what he wanted?"
"I learnt long ago to leave his things be. You know the cost." Her voice was sour, as always, when she talked about my father. "If I am not cautious, I might get to know something."
"I see."
"Is that why you won't talk to him?" She glanced at me searchingly. "May I ladle you some soup?"
I nodded.
The bean soup was thick and hot, it burnt my tongue. It was good to sit in Mum's kitchen, although it has been a long time since I had last felt at home there. Lights were subdued, noises low: the cat purred in front of the stove, the washing machine rumbled softly in the bathroom. I was calmed not by the familiar plate, noises or the taste; the peace and harmony came from not speaking to my father. Suddenly we were on the same side and closer to each other despite our differences.
I finished eating sooner than my mother. I leant back and looked around the kitchen. It was cluttered, full of bric-a-brac, crochet left on the top of the fridge, books put down, opened on their belly.
"If Dad had begged you back, would you have gone back to him?"
She looked up surprised.
"What do you mean?"
"When you took me from him when I was small. If he had called you back…you said you wanted it…would you have gone back to him? Would you have stayed with him, even if he'd seen you leave?" I didn't add the question: would you have broken the prophecy?
Her mouth was pulled into a smile as if by a hook.
"It was so long ago, Judit…"
"Would you have gone back?"
"Maybe, I don't know. I wouldn't have taken it for long, even then."
She shook her head, more to herself than to me, and continued eating.
"It doesn't matter," she said at length.
I left it at that. Maybe she was right.
My father died. I hadn't seen him before that, and I hadn't talked to him. I had erased his last message from my phone without listening to it; I learnt the news shortly after I had done that. I don't know what he wanted to say. I imagined a thousand messages, but I can't say if the real one was amongst them.
He had a heart attack. Perhaps he could have saved himself if he had called an ambulance, for he knew when he would die. But he did nothing of the sort. He simply lay down and waited for the last kick of his hear
t. A bottle of whisky and a big bar of hazelnut chocolate were prepared on the bedside table. The silver wrapping was torn just a little as if he had changed his mind.
I inherited his flat. I packed his things and I should have thrown them away but, somewhere between casting everything onto the floor and bundling it into a carton, a feeling overwhelmed me that the pullover I held in my hands was my father. And the books on the shelves, also. The used toothbrush, the leftover food in the fridge, the stuffed notebook on the table, the old guitar in the corner—all were him. Unmatched, incomplete objects that were not bound together by anything anymore. I tried to imagine my father in the pullover, the pen in his hands, his feet in his slippers, but I couldn't. My memories were leaking.
He had wanted to talk to me. For the last time.
If I had known…
I realised in the end that knowledge wouldn't have been absolution. If the only reason to talk to him was his death in a month, a week, a day, I wouldn't have been less of a stranger to him.
I stood in his flat, knowing where every object belonged and yet I felt lost. I had tried to understand him but had failed. It was too late for that now. But there was something I was still in time for.
I purchased a ticket to India. Just then, I didn't know when I would come back or how long I would have to stay for. I was only sure that I wouldn't budge from Iván's side. I didn't care what happened in a day, two days, three days or a month; I just wanted to be with him and not on another continent, alone.
He was waiting for me at Delhi Airport. The huge, multicoloured and multi-smelling crowd in the waiting hall undulated between us, but it disappeared when I saw Iván—or I just pushed everyone aside, I can't remember. Our meeting was just as you would expect. I will skip that.
"I have been waiting for you," he said in the cool cab. His hand enveloped mine, holding me as he might hold a bird. "I knew you would come."
"Funny, I didn't know."
"I knew it for you." He laughed. "No, that's not true, I didn't know. But I am happy."
"And were you careful with the trees?" I asked.
"I haven't as much as peeked out, just like you said. This warning was a clever idea; it made me think of you whenever I saw a tree. Smooth. Is that why you warned me?"
I was giddy from his closeness. I hadn't seen him in such a long time; all his features were new and yet painfully familiar. My fingertips remembered him more than my eyes.
I saw only his eyes and mouth as he talked. I noticed his dark tan, the scratch on his neck from shaving, his thinning hair. I was unguarded. I hadn't yet got used to taking care of him, although that was the reason I came.
In the sudden heat, as we were walking towards his lodgings, pulling my suitcases after me on the bumpy street, I didn't notice the people, the houses, the dirty motorbikes. The screeching, the honking din, the shouts, the singing on the street, the stench rising from the pavement; all of it came to me only later. I didn't see the truck turning the corner, nor the timber whooshing free.
Iván was looking at me, pointing at his house behind him.
"I had rats but I put out some poison," he said. "You are not afraid, are you?"
His eyes told me something else. I smiled and I started to answer this other, unspoken question and then…
The timber could have hit me but I only felt its draught. Iván fell like a bowling pin. His head… I am unable to write down what happened to his head.
I hadn't stopped it. I stood on the street that was suddenly filling with a loud hubbub; I smelt the stink and the spices and stared at Iván lying before me. I almost leant down but froze. I would have recognised his death even if I hadn't seen countless other dead before. I knew it.
The year had passed.
I understood nothing from the shouts around me. They spoke a strange language, strangers all. My suitcase was dotted with red, the feeling of Iván's touch was cooling on my hand.
The sounds fled; the scene became distant and memories attacked me.
First from the past: Iván, laughing when he tried to hide a pain; his touch on my belly; him shaking his hair from his face—then from the future: me, as I run away from all relationships; me who lets go because holding on hurts more; me, who will be the last oracle on this Earth for I won't bear a child for anyone.
I see me living alone, and when the gas remains on—accidentally or deliberately—I flare up without anything to feel remorse for, only that I have nothing and no-one to regret. It will be a perfect death, for I won't be alive before it happens. I won't even be old.
I trembled with the certainty, and then I was again standing on the pavement with two Indian women beside me who held my hands and talked to me in English. A large crowd gaped around us. Iván was covered with a tarp that had offered merchandise a few minutes ago.
I stared at the plaid tarp and still the tears didn't come. Only later, at the police station where no-one understood my pronunciation and mangled English and my stammer.
I don't recall how and when I made the journey back home.
They left me alone. Perhaps they realised that my gaze was barbed wire and my silence a brick wall—at least they didn't approach me. They knew what had happened and talked about it, too; I heard the half-sentences float out of the nurses' room. Although I wished to see them fall shamefully silent as I entered, I waited in the corridor until the topic shifted.
I smoked a lot alone in the hospital garden. I noticed that the others went down separately whenever they could, while I was turning the sheets, giving shots, serving dinner. It was already winter, my fingers were chilled red and my feet were cold in my clogs because I only ever put on a coat, but I wouldn't go back until I had smoked at least two cigarettes.
"We will catch a cold," said Anna from behind me on one of the freezing afternoons.
I glanced back. She hadn't even put on a coat, just a sweater. She didn't seem to be cold; maybe she had spoken only to make me notice her. I made some space for her by the ashtray of the refuse bin. As she stepped closer, I grew dizzy for a moment. She was pregnant but she didn't know it yet: I saw her going on maternity leave. I kept silent for a while then said:
"All those cigarettes will ruin you."
She laughed hoarsely. "Look who's talking! You have more nicotine in your blood than haemoglobin."
I shrugged. I knew how I would die, and it wouldn't be from smoking. "Not yet," said my father from my memories as he pulled me across the street.
We were silently blowing out smoke.
"So what's going on?" I asked for the sake of asking.
"I have a room full of living dead," she said calmly. "I hope they hang on until Christmas."
I nodded. Rooms like that embittered nurses. Smiles and comfort lasted only so long. For half a year by my reckoning.
"I can take over if you like." It would mean hell for administration but it was all the same for me.
"No problem," she said and smothered the butt. "Are you coming? I have a kilo of tangerines, would you like some?"
I went with her to her floor. Their nurses' room was smaller but more snug. Someone had brought several pots of poinsettia, and I smelt the cinnamon bark hanging from a closet door. I closed my eyes. Iván's perfume also had a hint of cinnamon, and I realised that I missed his scent the most. I will remember his smell longer than his face.
We ate tangerines while Anna talked about making Christmas presents. She didn't ask me what I would give for Christmas and to whom, and this bothered me, although I had no inclination to tell her. When the time came to check the wards, I accompanied her because I felt that our conversation was incomplete.
Dead were lying in the room. They were still alive but as I looked at them, I saw how they would die.
"You were right," I whispered to Anna.
"About what?"
I just nodded at them. I waited while she made her round. She stopped at every bed and asked how she could help. I was wondering whether I should tell her there were some who wouldn
't live to see Christmas, but in the end I kept silent. I knew my father, and he wouldn't have given away information like that. There was a reason for that. When Anna came out to the hallway I just smiled.
"You are doing the same," she said as we were walking back.
"What?"
"You know it is only a matter of a little comfort for a few days, and still you won't give up." She stopped at the door of the nurses' room. "Well, bye."
"Bye." I didn't budge. Then: "I think you are pregnant."
The surprise in her face. The happiness. Who would have thought? I was amazed. Is that all? You tell a prophecy and you do good with it? Then the sudden prick: why hadn't my father told me anything happy?
"How do you know?"
I shrugged. "A feeling." I turned away and then I remembered what I had vowed. That I would never have a child. Ever. I was already sorry for saying anything at all.
"I have to go. My patients are waiting."
She nodded. "You seem to be in need of a nurse yourself," she said in her old, wry voice.
She had thrown me off my balance again. Her remark hurt, although I didn't really understand why.
I went back to my own floor. As I was adjusting the pillows under the patients to make them comfortable, I was chewing on Anna's words.
"May I have a glass of water?" The raspy voice jolted me out of my thoughts.
I looked down at the old woman, and a wizened prune of a face looked back at me. My vision blurred and in a memory—as if it were my own—I saw her recover from her operation and fall in love, then marry. I was shocked. Her skin was yellow, her eyes full of grit—not someone who has something waiting for her. And still.
I poured her a glass of water. My hand shook.
"Don't worry, love," I said as I handed her the water. My father kept prophecies to himself, good and bad alike, although the latter was more likely to be spoken. I could afford to tell the good news. A small thing but it is within my power. "Two weeks and you will be like new. You will even dance at your wedding."
She laughed. "Me? Oh heavens, no! Perhaps at yours, Judit."
Definitely not at mine, I wanted to say, but my throat constricted. The face of the woman looked younger from laughing, and I would be sorry to see her age again. Plus… My breath stopped. The stupidity and futility of prophecies was suddenly plain, and I was lost amongst the waves of my thoughts.
