The Lover

by A. B. Yehoshua

The clock creeps on, five hours at least until first light. I sit in the chair, I can’t even lie down, I’m close to tears. What about the man who types? I almost forgot him. The man who types at night in the house across the wadi. I go to the bathroom and through the little window that looks out across the wadi I search for his lighted window. There he is, that’s him. Three cheers for the man who types at night. Sitting at his desk and working hard, my nocturnal friend.

  I discovered him by chance a few weeks ago. A bachelor? Married? I know nothing about him. In the daytime the curtains are drawn, he appears only at night, alone there in the light, working at something, writing without a break. Every time I see him I’m determined to visit the neighbourhood across the wadi, find out which is his house and what his name is. I’d phone him and say, “Mr. Typist, I watch you at night from the other side of the wadi. What are you writing? A thesis? A novel? What’s it about? You should write about insomnia, a subject that hasn’t been studied enough. The insomnia of a fifteen-year-old girl, for example, a student in the sixth grade, who lies awake every fourth night.”

  Tears in my eyes –

  I get dressed in a hurry, changing into a thick pair of woollen trousers, putting a big scarf over the pyjama top, taking an overcoat and Daddy’s fur hat. I put out the lights in the house and open the front door, holding the key in my clenched fist, going down the dark steps into the street. A little night stroll, I won’t go far. A hundred metres down the hill to the roundabout where Yigal was killed and back again. If Mommy and Daddy knew about this going for walks at night they’d kill me. It’s two-thirty. I’m in bedroom slippers, my feet are cold and shivering. I walk down a street that’s dead and damp, looking at the stars. Suddenly a car with lights full on comes racing down the slope, passes me and stops about five metres from me. I freeze. The car jerks backwards. A powerful torch flashes on, searching for me. Maybe they think I’m a little hooker. I’m seized by panic, the key drops into a puddle, someone jumps out of the car, a tall smiling figure. I pick up the key and run, hurrying up the steps, into the house, panting, I lock the door, undress in a hurry, get into bed and pull the blanket over my head.

  How will it end, this night life? What’s eating me? Everything’s fine, after all. Good friends, comforts at home, boys starting to love me in secret, I know, they don’t say anything but they can’t hide it, those furtive glances in the classroom, those eyes following my legs. Someone from the eighth grade even tried to get off with me. A big boy with a dark face and pimples on his forehead grabbed me once by the school fence and kept me there for a whole hour, and talked. I don’t know about what. Crazy. Until I got away from him.

  So why is it that I can’t sleep, even now at half-past three in the morning after I’ve gone through the whole programme of night activities and I’m exhausted, and tomorrow I’ve got seven hours in school and a test in history and maths that I haven’t prepared for.

  I throw the blanket off again, getting out of bed heavily and clumsily, putting on the light, stumbling over the furniture, meaning to make a noise. I go to the bathroom for a drink of water, looking bleary-eyed at the man who types. He isn’t typing now, he’s sitting there resting his head on the typewriter. Even he’s asleep. I go to their bedroom, stand in the doorway. They’re fast asleep, like little children. I begin to wail softly, “Mommy, Daddy,” and then I go away.

  At first, when I started having sleepless nights, I used to wake them up, Mommy or Daddy, whichever one I chose, sometimes both of them. Not really knowing why, in despair, wanting them to stop sleeping and to think about me. Mommy used to answer me at once, as if she’d been awake the whole time waiting for me. But it wasn’t like that. She’d just finish the sentence and fall straight back to sleep.

  It takes time to wake Daddy up. At first he grunts and mumbles nonsense, he just can’t understand who is talking to him, you’d think he had a dozen children, I have to shake him to wake him up. But once he wakes up, he’s wide awake. He gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom and then he comes into my room, sits down beside me on the chair and starts asking questions. “What’s up? What’s the trouble? I’ll sit with you now until you go to sleep. He covers me up, puts out the light, puts a small pillow behind his head and slowly drops off to sleep. I feel sorry for him. After a quarter of an hour he wakes up and whispers “Are you asleep, Dafi?” I’m wide awake but I don’t say anything. Then he waits a little longer and goes back to his bed, stumbling like a sleepwalker.

  I don’t wake them up anymore. What’s the point? Once when I went in to wake him, he said, “Go away, I told you to get out of here.” It was in such a clear voice. I was startled and hurt. “What?” I said, but then I realized he was talking in his sleep. I whispered, “Daddy?” but he didn’t answer.

  Tears. Good morning. The tears again. Under the blanket I cry, out of self-pity, weary, bitter tears. It’s four o’clock in the morning. What’s going to happen?

  I raise the blind, opening the window a little. The night lies cruel and endless on the world. The sky clears a bit, heavy clouds shift slowly, piling up on the horizon. Morning breeze. But I’m getting hotter and hotter. I throw off the blanket completely, undo the buttons of my pyjama top, baring my aching chest to the cool wind. I throw the pillow down on the floor and lie there like a corpse, arms outstretched, legs spread-eagled, and slowly, with the smell of the rain as the sky grows pale, I start to doze. Not really asleep, just feeling myself grow lighter. My limbs disappear one by one. Leg, arm, back, the other arm, hair, head, I shrink into a tiny crystal, into my essence. What refuses to disappear is that cruel flame, no bigger than a dry little coin.

  And when Mommy wakes me in the morning her voice is vigorous, she draws the blanket from my face (Daddy must have covered me up before he left the house) saying, “Dafi, Dafi, get up now. You’ll be late.”

  I search for my eyes. Where are they? Where did my eyes disappear to? I roll about in a cauldron of lead, searching for my eyes to open them. I hear Mommy in the shower and the hiss of the kettle.

  When at last they are wrenched open, cracks in white-hot steel, the window is open to the light, to the high grey winter sky. Between the sky and the earth, hovering like a hit space ship, is the little purple cloud, the hateful cloud that robbed me of my sleep.

  Mommy comes in, dressed, her bag in her hand.

  “Dafi, are you crazy? How much more can you sleep?”

  ASYA

  What sort of a trip? A school trip but more than that in a camp near a big mountain city, a mixture of Safad and Jerusalem, a big lake visible in the distance. And a crowd of young people, grey tents full of schoolchildren not only from our school but from others too, former pupils from the senior grades of my old school dressed in khaki, eternal youth training with sticks, standing and beating in long lines. For it seems there was a war and there were soldiers on the hills around us. Midday and I’m walking through this crowded camp looking for the teachers’ room, stepping over tent ropes, among thorns and rocks and smoke-blackened camp cauldrons till I see the faces of children from Dafi’s class and I see Sarah as well and Yemimah and Vardah in long broad khaki skirts and the janitor and Yochi and the secretaries; the entire staff of the school has moved here complete with typewriters and filing systems. And there’s Shwartzy dressed in a khaki British uniform looking young and sunburned and impressive with a stick in his hand.

  “Well, what’s the matter? The bell is ringing.” Yes, it really is the bell, as if from the sky, like the ringing of cowbells. And I have no books and no notes and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be teaching or which classroom I’m supposed to be in. I say to him, “This is a real revolution …” and as always he echoes my words:

  “A revolution … precisely, a revolution …” He laughs. “People don’t understand that … come and see …”

  And suddenly he has time to spare despite the bell, leading me to a little cave, a crevice really, and there under a pile of stones is a bundle of page proofs for a book. The
re the true revolution is written. But the text itself I recognize as the text of his old handbook for the matriculation exams in Bible studies. Simplified explanations of passages set for the exams.

  And meanwhile there is silence all around. The great camp is still, students sitting in tight circles and the teachers knitting in the centre and someone reading from a book. I feel tense and excited. The word “revolution” will not leave me alone. I want to find my class. I want desperately to teach. Such a pain in my chest from wanting to be with my pupils. I know that they are beside the little acorn tree. I go in search of them but now I can’t remember what an acorn tree looks like, I’m staring at the ground searching for acorns. Going down a hill slope to a big wadi. It seems the enemy lines are not far away. Not children patrolling here but grown men, soldiers. Grey-haired men with helmets and firearms. Advance positions among the rocks. The sky clouding over towards evening.

  I ask about the little acorn and they show me a little acorn on the ground, light brown. “We are your class.” They laugh. I don’t mind talking to adults. On the contrary. And the faces are familiar, fathers of children in the seventh and eighth grades who come to parents’ meetings. And they are sitting on the ground but not looking at me, their backs are turned and their eyes are on the wadi. They are so uneasy. And I want to say something of general significance about the importance of studying history. Someone stands up and points to the wadi. A suspicious movement there. It’s an old man wearing a hat and he’s walking down the wadi with such determination, receding in the distance towards the enemy lines. My heart stands still. He looks like my father. Is he here too? Does he belong here or not? Walking erect and excitedly down the rock-strewn ravine. What sort of a revolution is this, I wonder, what are they talking about? It’s a war, it’s only a war.

  VEDUCHA

  A stone laid on a white sheet. A big stone. They turn the stone wash the stone feed the stone and the stone urinates slowly. Turn the stone clean the stone water the stone and again the stone urinates. The sun disappears. Darkness. Quiet. A stone weeping why am I only a stone weeping stone. She has no peace begins to stir rolls without sound hovers over a dirty grey floor a great desert there is nothing a giant swamp a dead burned land. Wanders till she stumbles on tight ropes cables in a dark tent touching a spade. A stone halting a stone sinking. A root stirs in the stone, embracing crumbling entwining within. A stone not a stone dying and sprouting a stone sprouting a stone a plant among plants among stillness burrowing in the dust rising from darkness a strong branch and more branches. Strong growth a plant clad in leaves among leaves. A great sun outside. Day. A great old plant on a bed. They turn the plant clean the plant give tea to the plant and the plant still lives.

  ADAM

  Actually it was us who sent him to the army, he received no orders, nor could he have. Two hours after the alarm was sounded he was already with us. Apparently we didn’t hear his knock and instead of waiting he opened the door with a key that Asya had given him. So he’s already got a key to the house, I thought, but I said nothing, just watched him as he came into the room, confused, agitated, talking in a loud voice. As if the war that was breaking out was directed personally against him. He asked for explanations, and when it became clear that we had nothing to tell him he seized the radio and began frantically searching for news, for information, going from station to station, French, English, even pausing for a while over a Greek or a Turkish broadcast in his attempt to put some facts together.

  He was growing pale, his hands shaking, he couldn’t relax.

  For a moment I thought, he’s going to faint, like that time in the garage.

  But there was also the freedom with which he behaved in the house. The way he touched things, going to the kitchen and helping himself to food, raiding the fridge. He knew exactly where to find the big atlas when he wanted to look at a map. And there was the way he behaved towards Asya, interrupting her in mid-sentence, touching her.

  In recent months pictures of that evening have come into my mind again and again. The last pictures of him before his disappearance.

  The twilight hour, him standing in the middle of the big room, his white shirt straggling out of his black trousers, his thin delicate back a little exposed. The big atlas open in his hands and him standing there explaining something to us, and she, her face flushed with embarrassment and fear, nervously watching, following his movements as if afraid that he’ll break something. This is a real lover, I thought, she’s really fallen for him.

  And in the middle of all this, the war breaking out with such force. The certainty of a new reality overtaking us, there would be no going back. The evening came down quickly and we put no lights on in the house so we could leave the windows open. Every plane flying overhead sent him rushing out to the balcony. Was it one of ours or one of theirs, he had to know. He even gave me a piece of paper and asked me to draw a MiG and a Mirage and a Phantom, and he would take the miserable sketch outside with him, his eyes fixed on the sky.

  “What do you mean one of theirs?” growled Dafi, who was sitting all the time in a corner, scowling, not taking her eyes off him.

  “But their air force hasn’t been destroyed,” he explained with a grim smile. “This time it will be a different story.”

  A defeatist? Not exactly. But there was something strange about him. He was interested only in peculiar practical questions. What was the range of their missiles, could they blow up the ports from sea, would there be food rationing, how soon would he be able to leave the country? He had been abroad for more than ten years, he had no idea what goes on here in wartime. He had old-fashioned, European ideas.

  I was patient towards him. I answered his questions, tried to reassure him. Watching Asya, who sat on the edge of the sofa under the lamp, which had an old straw hat for a shade, a stack of exercise books on her lap, a red pencil in her hand, trying to calm herself, I know, but not succeeding, a grey woman with white streaks in her hair, wearing an old dressing gown and flat slippers, her face drawn and the tension filling it with light and power. In love despite herself, against her will, confused by her love, ashamed perhaps. Saying hardly a word, just getting up from time to time and fetching something to eat or drink, coffee for me, fruit juice for Dafi, a sandwich for Gabriel, and all the time the endless stream of garbled information – reports from correspondents, television interviews, foreign stations, news pouring out from all directions but obstinately repeating itself. The phone rings. It’s the garage foreman, telling me he’s been called up. I myself phone several of the mechanics at home, it turns out they’ve all been called up, some of them as long ago as yesterday afternoon.

  I return from the study and find him sitting in the kitchen. The blinds are closed, he’s drinking soup, she sits beside him, watching him.

  Establishing himself among us –

  He smiles at me apologetically, fear makes him hungry, he admits. He’s always been that way, and he scoops up the rest of the soup into his mouth.

  It seems that he’s decided to spend the night here, if we don’t object. He’s prepared to sleep on the floor, or on the sofa, wherever we put him. It’s just that in his grandmother’s house there’s no radio, and the house is directly opposite the port, the classic target for a first attack. In the First World War they always attacked the ports first….

  He turns to Asya, as if asking for confirmation. But she doesn’t respond, she looks anxiously at me.

  There was something laughable about him, but something pathetic as well, like a lost child. He will spend the whole war in this house, I thought, without anger but with a kind of excitement, a feeling that anything was possible now. I kept my distance.

  Nearly midnight. A phone call from Erlich, the old cashier at the garage. He’s in high spirits, informs me that he’s been called up. He starts to explain to me where the accounts are kept, what our bank balance is, how much is owed to us, what to do about the wages, you’d think he was going away to fight on the other side of the w
orld. A fussy, tiresome old yeke, though not without humour. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” I try to reassure him but he isn’t reassured. In financial matters he doesn’t trust me. Finally he announces that he’ll come into the garage himself tomorrow morning, he’s being posted not far away, near the refineries.

  “They’re drafting the entire population … really …” I announced. They were sitting in the dark. “And what about you?” I turned to him, not meaning to imply anything.

  But he started to mumble, he doesn’t know, obviously he has no unit to go to, it’s true that at the airport they gave him a certificate to take to an army depot within two weeks, but he had no intention of staying for two weeks, he hadn’t known then that his grandmother wasn’t dead but had only lost consciousness. He hopes there’ll be no problems about leaving the country …

  “There will be,” snapped Dafi. She had been strangely silent since he came into the house. “Why shouldn’t there be? They’ll think you’re a deserter …”

  And he burst out laughing, in the dark, I couldn’t see his face, he laughed and laughed, but when he realized that we weren’t laughing he stopped, got up from his chair, lit a cigarette and started pacing about.

  “Wait a few more days,” said Asya, “maybe it’ll all be over.” I say nothing. Something in the tone of her voice fascinates me. The midnight news. Nothing new. Reports we’ve already heard. At ten to one the music starts, marching songs. “Let’s go to bed,” I say, but it’s a crazy night, how can anyone sleep? Dafi goes and shuts herself in her room. Asya draws the curtains in the study, switches on the light, makes up a bed for Gabriel. I take the transistor, undress, get into bed with the radio. The window is open. The door to the balcony is open. Radios whisper from all the dark houses. Asya is taking her time, I get up and go out into the passage. I see him standing half naked beside the door to the study and she’s talking to him in a whisper, excitedly. She sees me and breaks off at once. A few minutes later she comes into the bedroom, undresses quickly, lies down beside me.