by Meir Shalev
“That’ll make her really happy,” he promised me. “You’ll see. She’ll be pleased, she’ll laugh. A woman likes her man to feel what she wants without having to say so. So don’t tell her that I taught you this little trick. Let her believe you understand everything about her on your own.”
After pondering briefly, he changed his mind. “You know, if Tiraleh asks you, then tell her the truth. Yes, Tiraleh, it was your father who told me the secret. He wanted me to please you, he wanted us to be together, and he decided to help out a little. And then she’ll laugh: So that’s it? Every nice thing you do for me I’ll wonder if it was my father who put you up to it? And you’ll say No, Tiraleh. Not every nice thing. This was just the fig. And then she’ll ask, Are you sure? He didn’t tell you about other things I like? And you’ll say, No, Tiraleh, most things that girls like, their fathers don’t know about. Come on, let’s not talk anymore about him, because now it’s just you and me, and what do we care about that old pest anyway? That’s what you’ll tell her. Now, Tiraleh, we’re like Adam and Eve: we’re all alone, just you and me. And this is the Garden of Eden we made for ourselves, and nobody’s going to drive us out of here.”
3
AFTER MESHULAM LEFT, I lay on the floor of my house. It was good: in spite of my unabating love for my contractor who is a woman, I found it very pleasant to be alone. The construction was nearly completed, the beams of the roof had been fixed or replaced, the roof tiles laid, the ceiling stood between them and me, Steinfeld’s floor tiles underneath my body The windows and doors had been installed, the countertops and sinks and faucets were in place, the walls were plastered and whitewashed. The only things missing were furniture, bathroom and kitchen cupboards, closets. And there were a few spots that needed repainting, and the light fixtures needed to be connected.
I lay on the floor of the empty house looking upward and felt a strange feeling, as though I were lifting off inside it. I do not usually sleep in the afternoon, but this time I fell asleep and at last I dreamt another dream about my mother. Since that last one, in which she had said “Yair … ? Yair … ?” over the telephone, I had not dreamt of her again. This time I even got to see her.
In my dream I went outside the house, into the yard. Dozens of workers were laboring there, and many guests — some of whom I recognized but most of whom were completely unfamiliar to me—were milling about and chatting. The scent of festive activity filled the air. Several tractors were at work, digging and pulling and swinging about, and one of them, an especially large one with my tractor operator driving it, was carrying an enormous cube of rock that was hanging from the tractor’s shovel by the wide straps used by movers. The rock was so heavy that it caused the tractor to tilt dangerously I wondered: Where’s Tirzah? And Meshulam? And where are the two workers? Did they return to China?
I drew near and saw that in the front yard of my home, which leads onto the street, there was a group of people, and you were among them, lovely and alive and happy, wearing one of your favorite dresses from my childhood, the kind you don’t see anymore today: a light-colored, wide, flowered cotton sundress with a cinched waist and short sleeves and a rounded collar that seems more generous than it really is and suits even small-breasted women.
Clearly I understood that you were dead—it was as plain to me in the dream as if I were awake; I even felt the astonishment one should feel when dreaming such a thing. But the knowledge and the surprise did not keep me from filling with joy I said to you, “How wonderful that you came.” You hugged and kissed me and said nothing, while I—why, damn it, couldn’t I think of anything else to talk about?—repeated, “How won-derful that you came, Mother” and “How beautiful you look,” and then the dream dissolved and it was as though it had never happened, the kind of dream that is forgotten as it is dreamt, even before the dreamer gets to tell the person he is dreaming about what it was he wanted to say and before he has heard the answer.
I did not feel myself awaken, but suddenly I was awake, and the pleasantness inside me in the dream continued beyond it. The twilight and the cool air told me it was evening, that my afternoon nap had gone on too long. I called out, “Tirzah … Tirzah …” a few times in order to tell her about the dream, perhaps even to boast about it, but Tirzah was not there. Nor were the workers. But I was not alone; I could feel that clearly
I turned on a light and saw a pigeon. She was sitting on the floor, motionless. My body froze, my hair stood on end. It was a completely plain-looking pigeon: bluish-gray with scarlet legs. Apigeon like a thousand others. Round eyes. Two dark stripes like those of a prayer shawl adorning the wings and the tail.
I let out a scream. The pigeon was startled, too, and she flew about flapping her wings. She slammed against the new ceiling and plunged. She took flight again, hit the ceiling again; then she grew confused and began flying about the room, until finally she landed in a far corner. I was standing at the center of the large, empty space. We looked at each other. Silence fell.
“Where did you come from?” I asked at last.
Pigeons have no way of indicating directions or places. “To you,” she answered.
“I do not want you,” I said. “Go back to your home.”
“I have been flying all day long,” the pigeon said. “Please give me rest for the sole of my foot, refuge for a single night.”
“Not in this house. Not in my home. Not you.”
“I will cower in a dark corner. I shall not disturb you. You will neither see nor hear me. Who better than you could know that pigeons can gather themselves in, vanish—in the wicker basket, in the wooden crate, even in a pocket.”
“Now!” I shouted. “Leave at once!”
“The sun has already set,” she pleaded.
But I clung to my fury I felt myself gripping it firmly “I have closed off all the holes in the roof. I have sealed all the cracks. There is no place for a pigeon here.”
“You closed off, dammed up, sealed, yet I am here. A pigeon.”
I stood up. The pigeon flew off again around the room, while I leaned down and took hold of one of the planks dropped there by one of the dwarf roofers, and I leapt forward with a sprightliness that surprised even me. I swung at her as if she were a baseball, still airborne. She slammed to the ground, fluttered, fell silent. Her right wing was broken and dangled at an odd angle. Her thin broken bone could be seen whitely through the shredded flesh. She was breathing through her gaping beak. Her eyes were clouding with fear and agony
“I am the flesh and the soul,” she announced, like some ceremonious tape recorder.
“Shut up,” I said.
“I am the breeze of the body and the burden of love. I am wind and strength.”
I took hold of her, went outside, and in a single movement I decapitated her and hurled her head with all my strength into the darkness. I ripped the down from her belly and her breast and tore the plume from her neck and back. The body, now plucked and exposed, was naked and tiny Her wing feathers seemed to belong to some other creature. Were it not for the pain it had obviously endured, I would say it even looked ridiculous.
I took the Leatherman hanging from my belt—the next time Liora or Benjamin make fun of me I’ll be able to tell them that I finally put my useless equipment to use—opened it and sliced off the tips of the wings and the tail. With a quick slit from the breast to the stomach I bisected the belly and pulled back the sides. All the internal organs—the craw, the stomachs, the intestines, the air pouches, the large heart, the developed lungs —I gathered in my hand, then ripped them out and pitched them.
I went down to the back of the property, turned on the lights strung between the branches of the carob trees, gathered a few thistles and boards, and lit a fire. Within half an hour I had a nice pile of whispering coals. I roasted my pigeon on them and ate her. A strong and pleasant taste of blood filled my mouth. Was it her blood I was tasting or had bone splinters cut the insides of my mouth?
I undressed, lit one of my luv
ey’s memorial candles, and got under the shower she built for me. I rinsed my hands of the blood and my body of all the rest, and when I turned off the water and stood naked, letting the drops fall from my body, I suddenly heard the soft crowing, dripping as well. I lifted my gaze to the darkness and saw nothing. Cranes do not always pass over this area, and the crowing, like the flapping of wings, could be heard not only from the highest heavens but from my deepest depths as well.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1
THE MAN from the electric company installed a new meter. The man from the regional council installed a water meter set to zero. The man from the gas company installed tanks and pipes. The man from the Bezeq telephone company put in telephone lines. The house—a golem whose flesh is bricks and mortar, gravel and sand—felt a flow in its veins and came to life. It stretched its tendons, its windows opened and closed, absorbing light and darkness, views and images. Its beams gave support, its walls partitioned, its front door stands ajar or shut. Tirzah had finished her work.
The house emptied of people. The new phone rang suddenly. I picked it up, slightly surprised, and heard her laughter: “It’s me, luvey Your contractor who is a woman. I’m in the garden, next to the carob trees. I just wanted to inaugurate your new phone line.”
Night fell. We ate, showered, entered the house. Tirzah said, “It’s already our home, with a floor under our feet and walls around our bodies and a roof over our heads.” She noted that my camping mattress was “good for a single fakir, not for a couple of hedonists. It’s time we bought ourselves a proper bed.”
The next morning I woke up very late. The sun was already high in the sky and the air was filled with the aroma of cut vegetables. Tirzah was squeezing a lemon into her hand, letting the juice drip between her fingers into the salad and tossing out the seeds.
“Finally up? I’m making us the kitchen’s first salad.” She rubbed her hands together. “I learned to do this from my mother. It’s good for the skin and gives the body a nice lemony scent.”
While she was tasting and improving the salad, I sliced the bread and the salted cheese she had brought, and I put out plates and knives and forks. “Now that all the other guys are on the table, waiting,” Tirzah said, “it’s time to prepare the eggs.”
We sat on the wooden deck she had built me, eating the first breakfast we had prepared in the new kitchen. Tirzah said, “That’s it, Iraleh. All we need now is to buy furniture and get rid of all the tools and the leftovers and the mess, but the work is done, and I have a gift for you.” She handed me a small, wrapped box. I opened it. Inside were two keys and a brass plaque that read Y. MENDELSOHN, PRIVATE.
It was autumn. In my luvey’s eyes the yellow was waxing and the green was waning. “These are for you,” she said. “If you want to give me one key, this is the time to do a FOR and AGAINST and come to a decision.”
I handed her one key, and she was happy I was happy too, and from the sky came that soft, wandering croaking, which at first enters through the skin, then grabs hold of the tissues, and only then can be heard and comprehended.
“What do you see there?” Tirzah asked as I tented my hand over my upraised eyes.
“Those are cranes. They’re flying south to their other room. Look.”
“Why are there only three? They usually fly in large flocks, don’t they?”
“The large flock will come a few hours from now These are the scouts. They’re looking for a good place to rest and eat. When they find it they’ll call the others to land.”
The three cranes flew lower, passed over the village. My heart pounded. My brain calculated: Where. When. Then. Now My stomach contracted to the point of pain. My mouth said, “I have to go, Tirzah.”
“Where?” she asked, surprised.
“Tel Aviv”
“Your home is here,” Tirzah said. “It’s finished. Put the nameplate on the door and try the keys.”
“I want to bring Liora here. I want her to see it.”
“What for?”
“I want her to know that I’ve found and bought and built a place of my own.”
“She knows all that. She also knows that I’m here. She even sent her brother and yours, those two snakes, to check it out for her.”
“I just want her to see it built and finished.”
“You don’t need victories like those. Don’t bring her here. Please, Yair.”
My stomach cinched even tighter, but I rose from my place. Tirzah grimaced suddenly, stood up, and ran outside, and when I ran after her I found her bent over and vomiting our breakfast onto the earth of the garden. I placed a hand on her shoulder and she brushed it off and moved away from me.
I began to walk toward Behemoth. Tirzah overtook me in three quick strides and stood in front of me. “Wait a minute. Do a FOR and AGAINST like your mother would have.”
“I just want her to see this house. It’s not such a big deal.”
Tirzah stepped out of my way I went to Tel Aviv
2
LIORA’S STREET honored me with a parking space. Liora’s door opened obediently toward me like the automatic doors at an airport. Liora’s alarm system welcomed me in preordained silence. Liora herself was waiting for me, sprawled on her bed, her eyes scanning one of her computer printouts. I took off my shoes and lay down next to her.
“My house is finished,” I told her.
“Congratulations. I’m sure Tirzah did a wonderful job.”
“There’s still no furniture,” I said, “but it’s got water and electricity and doors and windows and floors for the feet and a ceiling for the head.”
“So are you here to say good-bye to this house?”
“I’m here to invite you there. The time has come for you to see it.”
“When?”
“Now”
“No good. I have a meeting this evening with clients. Let’s call the office and have Sigal find a better time for us.”
“It has to be today and we’ve got to get going now We’ll get there late in the afternoon and we’ll stay over until tomorrow so you can see the view”
“So it’s also an invitation to sleep over? Is there a bed?”
Her smile slanted her eyes and stole into her voice, but there was no sign of it on her lips.
“There’s nothing there yet. We’ll take your mattress. Come on, get up. Pack a few things while I load the mattress onto Behemoth.”
“But I have meetings tomorrow morning, too.”
“Postpone them.” And with the sharpness of someone grown strong and thin, someone who has built and has been built, I added, “I’ve seen you solve bigger problems than this.”
She got out of bed, opened her closet, and took out a travel bag while I, moving quickly expansively stripped the sheets off the bed. I lifted the mattress and pulled it from the bed and dragged it outside the room. We proceeded down the hallway, me pushing and guiding, it feeling led and angry and all of Liora’s rooms—the morning rooms and evening rooms, the rooms for solitude, the rooms for arguing and treatments and sleeping and making up—watched as we passed, and they threw open doors.
We stepped outside the apartment and slid down the steps one at a time, past each and every startled camera, to the garden and the gate and the street. I pulled and lifted the mattress onto Behemoth’s roof rack. I bound it with straps and tightened them, while Liora—who had come down after me, looking gorgeous, perfectly suited to her lightweight, light-colored dress and the travel bag in her hand—regarded me with amusement. Could this be Yair? Where had this sudden vigor come from? This energy?
We drove out of Tel Aviv, swimming in the still-warm summer air now fighting for its life with encroaching winter. We spoke little. My hand, which passed between the seats, touched her own briefly Her hand, feeling the touch of mine, grasped mine for a moment and held tight. It seemed to me we were passing down an enormous corridor, from one room of the world to the other. A red, setting sun was on one wall and the moon was on the opposit
e wall, while we were in the middle, the mix that would not work.
The sun disappeared. The moon climbed in the sky The large, yellow ball became a flat, bluish-white disk. Behemoth turned at the junction, rounded the bends, decided not to approach through the fields this time. The entrance to the village came fast. Right turn at the secretariat building, the giant pine, the birds already settled in for the night. The cypress trees that would have gladdened your heart. Two tended gardens and one that was dry and balding.
Behemoth stopped. I got out, rushed around to the other side of the car, and opened the door ceremoniously A long, white leg stretched from within, and then another. Liora stood beside me. She looked. The moon shone. Not strong enough to show her the entire view framing the house but enough for her to sense the great expanse beyond.
“It’s a pity your mother isn’t here. This house would suit her perfectly”
“Yes, it’s a real pity”
“How many rooms do you have here?”
“One very large one and one very small, and there’s a storage room below”
“Too few”
I pulled the mattress from Behemoth’s roof rack, dragged it along the cracked sidewalk, and we passed through the front door into the large room and out to the wooden deck that my luvey built for me.
“Here?” Liora asked. “Outside? Why not in the house?”
