—It’s nothing specific, but I have no illusions...
—I’ve already told you. There was no chance to tell him. I’m sure he won’t like it, though—I mean having a baby and all...
—Because I think he has other plans. He wants to study abroad, and the last thing he needs is a baby. Besides, who knows if we’re really in love or if it isn’t just one of those things...
—No, for goodness’ sake, Mother, not now ... there’s time ... I’ll get to that ... if you’ll only wait ... because now I left the cafe and went back to the street and into the building just to see if I would again get that solemn feeling of not being alone and of following someone’s instructions, but nothing happened. No one was waiting for me there—no author or director or photographer. It was as if I had run out of sponsors and was back on my own again—and that, Mother, was when I began to feel a little desperate, to say nothing of exhausted from my first time in the snow, which can be very fatiguing if you’re not used to it, and so I said to myself, I’ve had it, it’s time to say good-bye to this Mr. Mani once and for all. I climbed the stairs to his apartment, but I didn’t knock or ring. I just sat there quietly by the door to warm up a little before leaving. I must have been feeling kind of angry for letting everyone abandon me there in the dark...
—Everyone ... everyone...
—Everyone ... all of you ... everyone who wants to ditch me...
—Never mind. Forget it. Later...
—Wait ... wait...
—Forget it ... I didn’t mean it. Anyway, Mother, just then the stairway light went on, and I saw this middle-aged woman coming up the stairs, this plump, nice-looking woman who turned out to be the next-door neighbor. And when she saw me sitting like an outcast by the door, she asked me, perfectly matter-of-factly, as if she knew who I was and that I belonged there, “Well, what’s the matter: did you lose your key again?”
—Yes. She must have confused me with someone else, or else seen me coming out of there that morning. And so I quietly said “Yes” in this passive kind of voice, which was enough to make her go get the extra key she had in case Efi forgot his—which put me, Mother, in this awkward situation, with the key to the apartment in my hand...
—No. Yes. I thought I’d stall for time and slip away the minute she went back inside, but she just planted herself in her doorway and waited for me to open the door. She gave me no choice, Mother. I even turned the key quietly and gave the door a little push and said thank you with a smile in the hope that she would be satisfied and go away, but she just went on standing there as if it were all too fascinating for words, so what could I do but go inside and shut the door behind me...
—No. I didn’t mean to go any farther.
—Of course, Mother. How could you even think it? I thought I’d stand quietly by the door for a minute and step back out again without being noticed—assuming, that is, that there was anyone in there to notice me. But the apartment was so exactly like the night before, just as dark and overheated and quiet, that I began to wonder: what is going on here? Is it happening all over again or am I traveling backward in time? I was getting to be too contrary for my own good, because this time I was sure that he had really gone and done it—and I had to give him credit, Mother, for being civilized enough to turn off the lights and do it in the dark...
—Good God, no, Mother, why would I want to frighten you? What for? I’m just telling you my thoughts. I hadn’t seen anything yet, and though I knew the apartment by now, my eyes were still getting used to the dark and I was just beginning to make out familiar objects, like the telephone in the living room next to the figurine of the horse, or the row of little Greek urns. I could see as far as the closed door of the grandmother’s room, and I remember thinking, Mother, all right, Hagar, this is the time if you feel like it to let out one of those screams, you know, those blood-curdling screams that people go to the movies to hear, except that this isn’t a movie, it’s not even a book, and no one will hear it or share it with you, you’ll be screaming purely for your own pleasure, purely for your own terror, so what’s the point? As long as you’re here anyway, and there are witnesses who have seen you, which means that you’re sure to be investigated, you may as well know what to answer, so why don’t you go see what’s happened ... And so I began inching my way down the hallway, still in the dark, Mother, because I didn’t want to see the full horror, just its shadow, although plenty of people are more frightened of shadows than of what casts them, and as soon as I opened the door I saw that the room, which I had left neat and orderly in the morning, was...
—No, listen! Listen. You have to...
—No, you have to. You can’t just keep saying I imagined it all and leave me with this story that’s overwhelming me so I can’t breathe, Mother, because the room looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane, as if some madman had run amuck there, attacking the bed and ripping the sheets and throwing around old clothes and old papers and pictures. And this time too, Mother, like in one of those recurring nightmares, the little scaffold was set up again: the blinds were shut tight, the blinds box was open with the belt hanging from the rod and knotted in a noose at one end, and even the stool was back in place. It was a repeat performance. Maybe, I thought, he put it on every night to rehearse his own death until it became so obvious and convincing that he could stop fighting it ... and then, Mother, for the first time I felt so sorry for him that I really wanted to help, so that instead of walking away from that scene, which—you’re perfectly right—was much too private and intimate for me to have any business being there, I wanted to work my way deeper into it, to keep moving in that contrary direction that was pulling me like a magnet, and so I walked down the hallway to the back of the apartment, to this little bathroom off the kitchen, because I thought that if everything was happening again, he was probably in there washing himself as part of his suicide exercises...
—I’m glad I finally got a laugh out of you.
—Yes, Mother, it was definitely funny, my walking around that dark apartment like some kind of sleepwalker so as to find him and talk him out of this suicidal frenzy he was in. I would have broken down the bathroom door too, but it already was open, as was a door behind it that led to this little rear terrace that I hadn’t noticed before—and there, on the terrace, which was cluttered with all kinds of brooms and buckets and what-not, was my suicidal Mr. Mani in his big, heavy overcoat looking more like a ball or a closet than a man, peacefully smoking a cigarette in the fresh air beneath this sky that had suddenly cleared and even had stars in it, so absorbed in himself that he didn’t even notice me come in. I was still wondering how to let him know I was there when suddenly he turned around—and all at once, Mother, he went into the most terrible shock. The cigarette fell from his mouth and he let out this strange, painful cry as if he too were in some movie or book and the director had asked him to give it his all. Right away, though, he realized who I was and pulled himself together. He even laughed and tried making a joke of it and said, “Good God Almighty, don’t tell me it’s you again! You’re really something! I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. Just tell me this, though: how in hell did you get into this apartment? Did you steal the key this morning when you left?”
—Yes, but not in anger, Mother. He was perfectly good-natured, as though he were secretly happy that I had come to save him again. I began to mumble something about the neighbor who all but made me enter his apartment, and right away he said, “Yes, that Mrs. Shapiro, she’s always worrying...” There was this vague resentment in his voice, as if Mrs. Shapiro took so many liberties he wasn’t even sure what they were, and then calmly—he was still standing on the terrace—he began talking about the snow, as though trying to convince the two of us that that was what had brought me back to Jerusalem, that I wanted to see it while it still was there, because the weather was clearing, and cold as it was, it wasn’t cold enough to keep the snow from melting. Well, Mother, when I saw him all squirming and embarrassed like that I fel
t so weak myself that instead of confronting him with the horrible truth of what I had seen and understood, I began to murmur something about the snow too, to which I added that I really had come back for Efi’s sake, because I wanted to go to the unveiling in his place...
—Yes, that’s just what I said. I didn’t want him to guess that I had been following him around to keep him from killing himself. At first he looked very surprised, as if he had forgotten all about the unveiling ... and in fact, if he had really meant to die that night he couldn’t have been planning on going to it, since the dead don’t attend ceremonies for the dead. Gradually, though, the idea seemed to please him. Maybe he really wanted to believe that that was the reason I had crashed his apartment again. Anyway, he bowed his head with this sort of doleful acknowledgment and only said with a strange smile that it was a shame I wasn’t a man, because he needed ten men for the cemetery, without them he couldn’t say the mourner’s prayer...
—It would seem so.
—Yes, it’s very odd ... you would think it was this intimate thing that you said whenever you felt like it, but that isn’t the case at all. He even tried explaining it to me ... but suddenly—he was talking about it and I was looking out at that field by the old leper hospital, which was covered with these white splotches of snow—suddenly he said something, Mother, I don’t remember what, that affected me so that I got this big lump in my throat and burst into tears, don’t ask me why, right there on that little terrace between the brooms and the laundry rack...
—Yes, real tears. They came from deep down and kept coming. I couldn’t stop them even though I knew they were making me look ridiculous. He didn’t say a word, though. He just stood there listening to me cry and calmly smoking another cigarette, as if I were getting what I deserved for hounding him and intruding on him...
—No, Mother. He was not right.
—No, he was not, and neither are you. Because what you think of as presumption, or even total irresponsibility, was simply my duty, Mother, a duty that was being spun out of me like the thin web of a spider...
—The spider inside me right now.
—The one made by the formula.
—That’s what we learned in school about the development of the embryo...
—I’m telling you we did ... I remember ... there was even a chart with all these pictures...
—You must have forgotten. Or else you never studied it.
—Don’t worry.
—There is nothing the matter with me.
—I’m imagining that too? You’re certainly making life easy for yourself tonight!
—Why hunt for what doesn’t exist?
—There’s nothing beneath the surface but what you put there.
—Maybe beneath the avocado trees in your orchard, but not beneath the surface of my story...
—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings ... Good God, Mother...
—I’m sorry ... I’m sorry...
—I know perfectly well what I said.
—I don’t care. That’s not what I meant.
—What?
—What did you say?
—No, what an idea! You’re too much...
—Of course not. How could you even think it?
—So that’s what’s been bothering you...
—Then why didn’t you say so?
—You can calm down then ... not in my wildest dreams...
—Incredible!
—Although I must say in parenthesis—and only in parenthesis—that Mr. Mani’s charms are considerably greater than his son’s...
—I can’t easily explain it. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them...
—No. Just in passing. As we were walking back up the hallway past the grandmother’s room, I said, “I see that the blinds belt is broken again, it looks like a hangman’s rope.” He let out a big laugh and reddened and said, “So it does, and the room’s a mess too, because I’ve been looking there for something I can’t find. You’ll sleep in the living room. The couch folds out into a bed ... that’s where Efi always sleeps when he visits.” And without another word we passed that self-destructing room and went to the living room, where he pulled out the bed and brought me that old, embroidered nightgown again and all those half-torn sheets—I couldn’t tell if I or someone else had last slept on them—and quietly and not at all angrily went about setting me up for another night’s stay...
—No. We hardly spoke. We didn’t even bother to wrestle, because we had arrived at what seemed like a temporary alliance, or maybe it was more of a truce. He pulled out the telephone plug and left me in the room with the warning that we had to rise very early, and I told him not to worry. “I’m a kibbutznik from the Negev,” I said, “and we’re the world champions at early rising.” Well, he just smiled at that and shut the door and left me all by myself in what was beginning to seem by then like home. I turned out the lights and opened the window to let in some air, and I could see that it was getting clearer and calmer outside. I moved the pillow to the other end of the bed and tried reading something, but I was too tired, and so I switched on the television without the volume until the news was over, and then I turned it up a bit to watch the movie, I don’t know if you saw it, it starts out nicely and then gets worse and worse...
—You did? I thought it started out nicely.
—No. I didn’t want to bother him with another request, and I didn’t know if there was hot water or if I would have to wait for it to heat. I knew I’d be on my way back to Tel Aviv early in the morning, straight from the cemetery, and I thought I’d take a big bath and wash my hair when I got there, because I was getting tired of living like a nomad...
—Soon ... in a minute ... I’ll wash up soon...
—If the water’s so hot, why don’t you turn off the boiler?
—Soon ... in a minute ... there’s plenty of time. And so, Mother, I slept over there another night, and at 5 A.M. I looked up to see him standing over my bed all in black. He had this black suit and this black tie and this black beard—only his eyes were red from not sleeping. I had no idea why he was in such a hurry to get to the cemetery—you might have thought he didn’t want to keep his dead mother waiting. Breakfast was already on the table, a loaf of bread and some olives and these different goat and sheep cheeses, but he was looking awfully worried, and suddenly he said to me, but really serious, as if he were sounding some kind of a warning, “If anyone asks who you are, tell them the truth, I mean that you’re Efi’s girlfriend, and that you were supposed to come with him, and that at the last minute he couldn’t get away from the army...”
—Yes. It was such a weird thing to say, “Tell the truth”—as if otherwise I might tell some lie that would get him into trouble...
—How should I know? Maybe that I was his new mistress and that he wanted to do it with me in the graveyard...
—No, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he was talking about I was too taken aback to do anything but nod. I was sleepy too, and I was having this new kind of cramps, which went from my stomach down into my knees...
—No. Yes. Cramps like when you have your period, only worse. We left the house at about six. It was very cold out, but dry and clear, with just a little snow left on some of the cars and fences. And then I realized what the rush was about, because two big taxis were already waiting in the street to drive behind us and pick up all the others...
—No. I asked him about them afterward. They weren’t relatives at all.
—Yes. He belongs to an old Jerusalem family that moved to Crete and back again, but he doesn’t have much family in Jerusalem. Mostly he stopped for a lot of old women, all these widows who were friends of the grandmother and didn’t want to miss the ceremony, weather permitting, which it was. They looked like something out of a Greek movie, all these quiet little early birds all bundled up and dressed in black, waiting like lonely crows on the corners for Mr. Mani to pick them up and usher them tenderly, respectfully, into one of his taxis. A few o
f them were accompanied by old men wrapped in scarves, who made Mr. Mani so happy that he hugged them for joining his prayer group. Everyone kept saying how lucky it was that the snow had stopped, and after an hour of cruising the streets, which were just beginning to wake up, Mr. Mani had filled his taxis with old women and put the rabbi and the tombstone carver in his own car, plus the young lawyer who had argued the case before him in court. He was very worried, though, because he was still short three men. No matter how much the rabbi and the stone carver promised him he would find them in the cemetery, he couldn’t relax. “You’re forgetting,” he kept saying, “that it’s such an old cemetery that it’s hardly seen a funeral for forty years...”
—It seemed strange to me too. You would have thought he’d have had some friends he could bring instead of depending on taxi drivers and stone carvers. I wasn’t sure if he was really such a loner, or if he just didn’t want his friends to have to get up so early and travel all the way to the east end of Jerusalem, beyond the walls of the Old City...
—No, it wasn’t on the Mount of Olives, it was beneath it. To get there, Mother, you don’t go by way of Mount Scopus. You have to travel through the Arab part of the city and start out on the road to Jericho, which dips down to a bridge over a wadi in this lovely valley with olive trees, after which you turn into a big, beautiful church that has this bright relief over its entrance...
—He told me its name, but I’ve forgotten ... It’s a church with another church above it, farther up the hillside, full of turrets and little golden domes that look like flowers or onions. You have to drive down this narrow, awfully steep lane with stone walls on either side that’s hardly any wider than the paths between houses on the kibbutz, only—I swear, Mother—it’s, like, tilted in midair, I’ve never seen such a street. You could feel the cars go tense with fear but also pick up speed, honking warnings to each other until suddenly we’d squeezed through and were in this old, old cemetery...
—No, I just told you, it’s not on the Mount of Olives, it’s below it. It’s much farther down, a huge expanse of old graves on this bare, pinkish hill. There’s a fantastic view from there. You can see the whole Old City with its big mosques in their huge squares, and the church spires, and David’s City, and the white towers of Jewish Jerusalem in the background. It was such a clear, clear day, Mother, and we had the sun at our backs. It’s this terribly old cemetery, without paths, without flowers, without a single tree, perfectly bare and full of broken tombstones. It’s a really captivating place...
Mr. Mani Page 6
