Great House

by Nicole Krauss

  S, too, had been moved by what had happened, and that night after we arrived home he began to talk about having a child again. The conversation led, as it always did, to the old obstacles, the name and shape of which I can no longer remember exactly, beyond that they were well known to both of us, and, as we had identified them, required solutions before we could proceed with bringing our child, the one we imagined separately and together, into the world. But under the spell of that mother and little girl, that night S argued harder. There might never come a right time, he said, but despite the grief the child’s expression had torn open in me, or maybe because of it, because I was afraid, I argued just as hard against it. How easy it would be to make a mess of it, I said, to crush the child as we had each been crushed by our parents. If we were going to do it we had to be ready, I insisted, and we weren’t ready, far from it, and as if to prove the point—it was already dawn now, sleep was out of the question—I walked away, closed the door to my study, and sat down at the desk.

  How many arguments and difficult conversations and even moments of great passion over the years ended the same way? I have to work, I’d say, untangling myself from the bedsheets, separating from his limbs, leaving the table, and as I walked away I could feel his sad eyes following me, as I closed the door behind me and returned to the desk, folding myself in, pulling my knees to my chest and crouching over my work, spilling myself out in those drawers, nineteen drawers, some big and some small, how easy it was to pour myself into them as I never could or tried to do with S, how simple to put myself into storage; sometimes I forgot whole parts of myself that I put away for the book I was going to write one day, the one that was going to be filled with everything. The hours would pass, the whole day, until suddenly it was dark out and there would be a tentative knock on the door, the little scuff of his slippers, his hands on my shoulders, which, I couldn’t help it, became tense under his touch, his cheek next to my ear, Nada, he whispered, that’s what he used to call me, Nada, Come out, come out, wherever you are, until at last one day he got up and left, taking all of his books, his sad smiles, the smell of his sleep, his film canisters filled with foreign change, and our imaginary child with him. And I let them go, Your Honor, as I had been letting them go for years, and I told myself I’d been chosen for something else, and comforted myself with all the work yet to be done, and lost myself in a labyrinth of my own creation without noticing that the walls were closing in, the air growing thin.

  AT SEA in the night, losing myself in the city by day, almost a week passed lost inside a question that could no more be answered than that child’s wordless question posed inside her terrified scream, though for me there was no comfort, no beneficent, loving force to gather me up and alleviate the need to ask. Those days after I arrived in Jerusalem run together in my mind into one long night and one long day, and I remember only that one afternoon I found myself sitting in the restaurant of the guesthouse, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, which looked out onto the same view as the veranda behind my room: the walls, Mount Zion, the Valley of Hinnom where the followers of Molech sacrificed their children by fire. In fact I’d eaten there every day, sometimes twice, since it was easier than trying to eat outside (the hungrier I became, the more impossible it seemed to enter a restaurant)—often enough that the heavyset waiter who worked there had taken an interest in me. While he scraped the crumbs from empty tables he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and soon he gave up trying to hide his curiosity and leaned on the bar watching me. When he came to clear my dishes he did so slowly, and asked whether everything had been to my liking, a question that seemed not to be so much about the food, which I often left untouched, but other, more intangible things. On that afternoon, after the dining room had emptied out, he approached me carrying a box displaying a variety of tea bags. Take, he said. I hadn’t asked for tea, but I sensed there was no choice. I selected one, hardly looking at which. I’d lost my taste for everything and the sooner I chose one the sooner I thought he would leave me alone again. But he didn’t leave me alone. He brought over a teapot of hot water, unwrapped the tea bag himself, and dropped it in. He lowered himself into the chair across from me. American? he asked. I nodded, pressing my lips together, hoping he would sense my desire to be left alone. They told me a writer, yes? I nodded again, though this time an involuntary squeak slipped out from between my lips. He poured the tea into my cup. Drink, he said, it’s good for you. I offered him a tight little smile, more like a grimace. Over there, where you were looking, he said, pointing with a crooked finger toward the view. That valley under the walls used to be no-man’s-land. I know, I said, crumpling my napkin in impatience. He blinked and continued. When I arrived here in 1950 I used to go to the border and look out. On the other side, five hundred meters away, I could see buses and cars, Jordanian soldiers. I was in the city, on the main street of Jerusalem, and I was looking at another city, at a Jerusalem I thought I would never be able to touch. I was curious, I wanted to know, what was it like there? But there was also something good about believing I would never reach that other side. Then there was the war of ’67. Everything changed. At first I didn’t regret it, it was exciting to finally walk those streets. But later I felt differently. I missed the days when I looked out and didn’t know. He paused and glanced at my untouched cup. Drink, he urged again. A writer, eh? My daughter loves to read. A shy smile flickered across his thick lips. She’s seventeen now. She studies English. I can buy one of your books here? You’ll write something to her, maybe, she could read it. She’s smart. Smarter than me, he said, with an irrepressible smile that revealed a wide gap between his front teeth and receding gums. His lids were heavy, like a frog’s. When she was a little girl I used to tell her, Yallah, go outside, play with your friends, the books will wait for you but one day your childhood will be over forever. But she didn’t listen, all day she sat with her nose in a book. It’s not normal, my wife says, who will want to marry her, boys don’t like girls like that, and she swats Dina over the head and tells her if she keeps going like that she’s going to need glasses, and what then? I never told her that maybe if I was young again I would like a girl like that, a girl who is smarter than me, who knows things about the world, who gets a look in her eyes when she thinks about all of those stories in her head. Maybe you could write in one of your books for her, To Dina, Good luck with everything. Or maybe, Keep reading, whatever you think, you’re the writer, you’ll find the right words.

  It became clear that he had come to the end of the long string of words wound up inside of him and now he was waiting for me to speak. But it had been days since I’d spoken to anyone and it was as if a weight were tied to my tongue. I nodded and mumbled something incomprehensible even to me. The waiter looked down at the tablecloth and wiped the sweat from his upper lip with a hairy forearm. With regret I realized that he was embarrassed, but I was helpless to extricate either of us from the awkward silence that was settling around us like cement. You don’t like the tea? he asked at last. It’s fine, I said, forcing down another sip. It’s not a good one, he said. When you took it I was going to tell you. No one likes that one. At the end of the day all of the little compartments have only one or two packets left, but the compartment with that one is always full. I don’t know why we still carry it. Next time choose the yellow one, he said. Everyone likes the yellow. Then he stood with a cough, cleared my cup, and retreated to the kitchen.

  And that might have been the end of the story, Your Honor, and I wouldn’t be here talking into the semi-darkness, and you wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed, if that evening, unable to forget the fallen look on the waiter’s face, holding it up as proof of my chronic indifference to all but my work, I hadn’t returned to the restaurant clutching a copy of one of my books, bought an hour earlier and signed to Dina. It must have been close to seven-thirty, late enough that the sun had already set but the city was still aglow like embers, and when I arrived in the restaurant I didn’t see the waiter and feared his shift had
ended for the day, until one of the other waiters gestured toward the terrace outside. Below the row of outdoor tables was a road, an extension of the guesthouse driveway that could only be accessed after passing through the security barricade. There, standing at the curb next to an idling motorcycle, was the heavyset waiter animated by a discussion, or perhaps an argument, with the driver.

  The waiter’s back was to me and I couldn’t see the driver’s face behind the dark visor of his helmet, only his thin frame clad in a leather jacket. But he saw me because all at once the loud discussion broke off and the driver deftly unsnapped the chinstrap, pulled off his helmet, shook out his black hair, and thrust his chin in my direction to alert the waiter to my presence. The sight of his young face, of his big nose and full lips and his long hair that I knew would smell like a dirty river, sent a shock through me no greater than if the boy I’d known for one night so long ago had at last emerged, perfectly preserved, from hiding for a quarter-century in the underground tunnels of Bar Kochba. I felt a shot of pain, and it took my breath away. The waiter swiveled to look. When he saw me he turned back to the driver and uttered a few rapid words in warning, then approached me. Hello, miss, you’d like to order something? Please take a seat here, I’ll bring you the menu. No, I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the young man straddling the motorcycle, whose lips now curled into a faint, mischievous smile. I just came to bring you this, I said, holding out the book. The waiter fell back a step, brought his hand to his mouth in an exaggerated show of surprise, came forward as if to take the book from me, but then pulled his hand away and stepped back again, rubbing the bristles of his jaw. You’re kidding me, he said, you really brought it? I don’t believe it. Here, I said, pressing the book on him, For Dina. Now the young man’s nostrils flared, as if he had caught the smell of something. You know Dina? The waiter turned and shot him a few more tense words. Ignore him, he’s going now. Come sit down, how can I thank you, have some tea. But the young man made no movement to go. What is it? he asked. What is it he asks, listen to him, such a barbarian, it’s a book, probably he never read one, and now he spat some more words in a different voice to the driver, who was balancing the motorcycle with one leg on the pedal and one on the street. You wrote it? the young man asked, unruffled. The evening air was fragrant, as if somewhere a nocturnal flower had opened itself. I did, I said, finding my voice at the last possible moment. Forgive me, miss, the waiter interjected, he’s hassling you, come inside, it’s quieter there, but now the driver flicked down the kickstand with his heel and in three quick strides was upon us. Close up, he was no less the image of Daniel Varsky, so much so that I was almost surprised that he didn’t seem to recognize me, despite how many years had passed. Let me see, he said. Get out of here, the waiter growled, holding the book away from him, but the young man was quick and towered over the short, stubby waiter, and with a single swipe he plucked it away. Carefully opening the cover, he glanced from me to the waiter then back down at the book. To Dina, he read aloud, Wishing you luck. Yours, Nadia. Very nice, he said. I’ll give it to her.

  Now the waiter let loose a barrage of angry words, the veins pulsing in his neck as if they might burst, and the young man fell back a step, a wince of sadness flickered for a moment across his face, just the tiniest quiver, but I saw it. With delicate fingers, taking his time, he flipped through the pages. Then at last, ignoring the waiter’s outstretched palm, he handed it back to me. It seems I’m not welcome here, he said. Maybe sometime you can tell me what it’s about—his lips flicked into a smile—Nadia. It would be my pleasure, I whispered, and a door in the room of my life opened. Without a glance at the waiter, he pulled the helmet down over his head, mounted the motorcycle, revved the engine, and peeled away into the darkness.

  A moment later I was seated at a table, and the waiter was hurrying around me laying a place with silverware. Accept my apologies, he said, that boy is a curse. A cousin on my wife’s side, a troublemaker, nothing good will come of him. But his parents died, he doesn’t have anyone, he comes to us. He lurks around and we can’t turn him away. What’s his name? I asked. The waiter looked at my glass, held it up to the light, noticed a smudge, and switched it with a glass from another table. What a gift, he went on, if only you could be there to see my Dina’s face when I give it to her. I’d like to know his name, I repeated. His name? Adam, the sooner I hear the last of it the better. Why did he come here? I asked. To drive me crazy, that’s why. Forget him, how about an omelet, you like an omelet, or maybe some pasta primavera? Look at the menu, anything, it’s on the house. My name is Rafi. I’ll bring you tea, take the yellow this time, you’ll see, everyone loves the yellow.

  But I did not forget him, Your Honor. I did not forget the tall, thin young man in the leather jacket whose name was Adam, but who I knew was also my friend, the disappeared poet Daniel Varsky. Twenty-five years ago he was in that New York City apartment that looked as if a storm had swept through it, arguing about poetry and rocking back on his heels as if at any moment he might leap up like a pilot ejected from his seat, and then, in an instant he was gone, slipped through a hole, fallen into an abyss, and resurfaced here, in Jerusalem. Why? The answer seemed perfectly clear to me: to retrieve his desk. The desk he had left behind as collateral, which he had entrusted to me, of all people, to guard, which had lain for all these years on my conscience, at which I had enacted my conscience, and whose departure into other hands he had not wished for any more than I had wished to cease working at it. At least, that is how, in my addled mind, I allowed myself to imagine it, even as on another level I knew that such a story was no more than a hallucination.

  That night in my room I contrived various reasons to give the waiter, Rafi, for needing to see Adam again: I wished to take a tour, by motorcycle, of the Dead Sea valley, and required a driver and guide, yes it absolutely had to be by motorcycle, and I could offer a generous fee for the service. Or: I needed someone to deliver an urgent package to my cousin Ruthie who lived in Herzliya, whom I had not seen in fifteen years and never liked, a package I could not trust to just anyone, and could he please send Adam, just a small favor to return the favor of the book for Dina, though of course I would be happy to offer a generous etcetera, etcetera for the service. I was not even above offering to “help” Rafi by bestowing on his wife’s errant cousin, the family black sheep, some guidance from a benevolent outsider, the writer from America, offering to take him under my wing for a little while, to lend him some wisdom, set him on the right path. All night and all the next day I schemed about how to wrangle another encounter with Adam, but in the end it was unnecessary: the following evening, walking home along Keren Hayesod lost in thought, waiting for the light to change, a motorcycle pulled up alongside the curb. It was the roar of the engine first that pierced my daydreaming, but I didn’t put it together with the young man who had flitted in and out of my thoughts all day until, still crouched on the motorcycle, he flipped up the darkened visor and gave me a long look, his eyes flashing with a joke that was either his alone or ours to share, I couldn’t yet say, while the traffic grew restless, honked, and made its way around him. He said something I couldn’t make out over the noise of the engine. I felt my breath quicken and stepped closer, I saw his lips move: Do you want a ride? The guesthouse was only ten minutes away by foot, but I didn’t hesitate, at least, not in my mind, though once I accepted the offer it was not immediately clear to me how exactly to mount the motorcycle. I stood helplessly by, staring at the remaining portion of the seat not taken up by Adam, unable to figure out how to vault myself up onto it. He offered his hand, and I gave him my left, but he let it drop and firmly took hold of my right, and in an elegant and practiced motion lifted me and guided me effortlessly onto the seat. He removed his helmet, revealing the same inscrutable smile I’d seen the night before, and delicately slipped it down over my head, gently sweeping aside my hair in order to fasten the strap. Then he took my hand and guided it firmly to his waist, and the tingle that had beg
un in the depths of my groin spread upward and ignited, jolting my body to life. He laughed, opening wide his mouth, it was nothing for him to laugh like that, and the motorcycle lurched under us and shot out into the street. He drove in the direction of the guesthouse, but as we approached the turnoff he shouted something back to me, What? I yelled from inside the muffled depths of the helmet, and he shouted something else, of which I heard only enough to know that it was a question, and when I didn’t answer in time he passed the guesthouse entrance and kept going. For a moment I wondered blackly whether I’d been naïve to put myself in the hands of this troublemaker who haunted the edge of Rafi’s family, but then he turned back and smiled at me, and it was Daniel Varsky turning back, and I was twenty-four again, the whole night lay ahead of us, and all that had changed was the city.

  I clung to his waist, the wind caught his hair, we drove through the streets past the city’s otherworldly residents I’d come to know well, the haredim in their dusty black coats and hats, the mothers leading their gaggle of children whose clothes trailed hundreds of loose threads as if the children themselves had been ripped unfinished from the loom, the pack of yeshiva boys who slammed past at a stoplight squinting as if newly let out of a cave, the old man stooped over his walker with the Filipino girl clutching the baggy elbow of his sweater, pulling a loose piece of yarn that she wrapped around her hand, unraveling him until his last words would be pulled out of him like a knot, him and her and the Arab sweeping the gutter, all of them unaware that we who sailed past them were only an apparition, ghosts more out of time than they. I would have liked to keep driving on, into the wilderness of the desert, but soon we turned off the main road and pulled into a parking lot with a wide view that looked north over the city. Adam cut the engine and reluctantly I let go of his waist and struggled to remove the helmet. Looking down at my crumpled pants and dusty sandals, my little reverie evaporated and I felt embarrassed. But Adam seemed not to notice, and motioned for me to follow him toward the promenade where little clots of tourists and walkers had gathered to watch the sunset play out its extravagant drama across Judea.