Dina looks down at the table, surprised and a little embarrassed that he actually remembers who she is. They have never really exchanged much more than pleasantries before today. She always drops off shoes for repair between errands to the post office on Allenby and the newsagent on Rechov Yaffo. The shoemaker is a man of few words, usually scribbling on a docket and handing it to her. Dina wonders what it would be like to work alone every day, so skilled at a particular craft. She has grown tired of knowing so little about so much, specialising in being general. Besides, most of the time patients just need to unburden themselves. Often, Dina finds herself sitting there, trying to imagine herself inside their skin. She has become the empathic listener for them all, a role she practised so unwillingly as a child, absorbing her mother’s stories.
Dina would have been around eight years old when she first started wondering what it would be like to live her life as someone else. She prayed to God, whom she pictured as a huge genie in the sky, and asked him for three wishes. She would be okay with just one wish. But if she did have three, then she would use one for a Barbie princess doll, the second one to make her mother happy and the third to be someone else for a day. Maybe this third wish was the beginnings of Dina’s desire to be a doctor, a kind of voyeuristic curiosity to enter other people’s lives and view them from within.
Dina remembers travelling on a plane for the first time, seated next to her mother, looking out through the window onto clouds below, thinking this must be what it was like being God, able to see what everyone in the world is doing. And if she were God for the day, she thought, she would strap herself into the pilot’s seat and loop-the-loop around the world, seeing the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and the leaning tower of Pisa. Instead, she flew with her mother to Sydney on that flight to see Uncle Freddy, who, like all her mother’s friends, was not really an uncle, but a man her mother knew from Bergen-Belsen.
The shoemaker starts fiddling with Dina’s shoe again. She watches his hands move gently and skilfully. True craftsmen are a dying breed. When he goes who will mend her shoes? She breathes in the smell of leather and boot polish, feeling a little light-headed. Moving over to a dusty, narrow window, she peers out between metal bars to the laneway outside. Flies dance around like corybantic madmen, straitjacketed in rays of late morning sun. A lone bee bashes against the inside of the glass, buzzing frantically in an attempt to escape. A wooden donkey on wheels stands on the ledge. Its head nods faintly, balanced on the end of a metal spring. Beside it, a glass bowl cradles three goldfish that have congregated in its centre. Dina watches the slight movements of their orange, translucent tails.
‘The Fish Council,’ the shoemaker says, watching Dina, his words themselves sounding watery and blurred as they emerge from his mouth.
‘What do you think they are discussing?’
‘The possibilities of eating fire,’ he mutters cryptically, downing the last of his tea. ‘Or maybe the deception of cats.’
Dreifoos lifts a hind leg and scratches his belly ardently.
‘I think they know their bodies are dying little by little,’ the shoemaker says. He looks at the fishbowl, the hint of a smile in his eyes.
He places the shoe back down onto the workbench and scoops up another wooden nail, firmly lodging it between his teeth. Dina moves away from the window and sits down again, trying to stifle a yawn. She didn’t get much sleep last night. Lying awake, she wrote invisible nightwords into the dark air above the bed. She saw them floating perfectly above her, crowding the room. The words formed lines and started weaving together in a strange dance. They wrapped around each other like flying bars of music, linking up to compose a whole symphony of whispers. Some faded into the still of the night while others were sucked inside Eitan’s mouth as he snored. Her husband lay next to her, restless in his dreams. Dina’s words reached down his throat, scrambling towards his heart, stopping him from breathing for a moment, until he started to choke and cough. Then he woke briefly and rolled over, his back towards her. They usually mean well, her words, but more often than not they are wayward things, with voices of their own. High-spirited, they fly like lunatic birds, awake in the dark, flapping loudly in the silence.
Night after night Eitan curls into himself, encased in a cocoon of dreams. Last night, still awake at midnight, Dina got up and staggered to the bathroom for the fifth time. He didn’t stir. She must have drifted off to sleep soon after she came back to bed. In the morning Eitan pushed open the window at first light and as Dina opened her eyes, she saw her floating words rushing out of the room. They were flying into the dawn, racing up to the tops of trees to gossip with the birds.
The shoemaker takes the wooden nail from between pink lips that swell out under his moustache and hammers it firmly into Dina’s shoe.
‘It’s not just the heel,’ he says gravely, like a doctor about to break some bad news to a patient. ‘The sole is going, too.’
So easy to throw things out nowadays; shoes, electric jugs, marriages. Memories are harder to dispose of; they wait, lurking in the wings, ready to come on stage at the strangest of times. Dina thinks back to four years ago, when she was a new mother staring wearily out of the open window, ignoring the cries and tears of her cranky two-year-old who refused to take his midday nap.
‘Mummy!’ Shlomi whined, holding out his tiny arms for comfort. But Dina was buried deep inside her own fantasies, despite having planned to spend quality time with her son on her day off work. She plonked him in front of a video. She had already broken away from their new two-bedroom apartment, which felt more like a suburban coffin with a view. Sweet-talked by the Devil, her resentment for the very love they created was stirred up. She painted herself in the bathroom mirror with pink lipstick bought on sale at Hamashbir department store. Should she leave before the Bugs Bunny video ends? Disappear while Shlomi is glued to the screen, busy shoving chocolate wafers and sliced apples into his always-hungry mouth? Maybe she could slip out unnoticed before Eitan came home. Let him find the mess she left behind. Unfolded washing piled high on the dining room table, Buzz Lightyear snuggled arse-up in the cup of a bra, Eeyore peeking out from behind the piano. Their son glued to his heroes on TV.
Hair loose and long, wearing dark glasses so no one would recognise her, she might sidle down the backstreets, making her way to the smoke-filled bars downtown. There, pretending to sip bourbon, she would let herself feel remorse for having delivered a baby into this mess. She is done with breeding, has said to hell with a world which devours offspring as quickly as they are made.
Dina remembers how often she longed to run away back then. Tired of always being busy with other people’s children and their snotty noses, she decided to take a day off each week to be with Shlomi while he was little, but all she ever did was plug him into the VCR machine. She wanted so much to spend time with him but was ashamed to admit to anyone that she regretted it straightaway and wished she was back at the clinic instead. She would sit alone in the kitchen, sipping Earl Grey tea, and stare out the window. Perhaps a divorce would have been the best idea, or an affair. Maybe she should have conjured up a mysterious illness, a relentless one that would have her lie in bed all day.
On one of these days off, Dina took a slinky black dress out from the back of the cupboard. She pulled it over her head, struggled with the zip, tucked her stomach into control-top pantihose and ventured out into the mid-afternoon lull. The old men were tucked into their beds for a two-hour schlaffenstunde, dogs locked away on first-floor balconies, shops closed for siesta until four. Where would she hide until dark, when the sleazy bars downtown opened their doors to dark-moustachioed men and girls in stilettos? By day, the strip running from the central railway station to the port was a colourful neighbourhood, filled with pita bakeries, falafel stands, gawdy bric-a-brac shops and discount clothing stores blaring out Middle Eastern pop songs. At dusk, small birds rushed to hide in shabby trees, breathing quietly until morning. At night, the area was transformed into the bowels of de
ceit, overflowing with glasses of arak and bags of hashish. If Dina is honest with herself, she was already thinking of leaving Eitan years ago – the fantasies of bars, affairs and slinky dresses were merely a disguise for the idea she was really flirting with.
Instead, she went back inside and sipped her tea. Cold tea – a universal symbol of motherhood – a defining motif really; something Dina had unwittingly grown used to drinking. Shlomi watched her constantly with his big eyes, like a scholar examining an endangered species, searching for truths, staring at her when she dressed or showered, asking questions about the white string dangling between her legs, wanting to tear off the toilet paper for her when she peed.
The language of her pre-motherhood life seems so foreign now. Before Shlomi came along Eitan and Dina used to ignore constraints, lie naked in meadows, climb a mountain just to watch a sunrise. What an evil tongue; she should wash her mouth out with soap. How can she compare her former frivolous pleasures with the joy of this new language she has learnt? Hers is now a richer, ancient script, written as she shoves bananas into the blender and pulls endless loads of laundry out of the washing machine.
But how can she even compare one to the other? For nine months she caught herself imagining the colour of the baby’s hair, the sound of its breath, the beating of the heart. She got to paint on a blank canvas, as if by sheer willpower she could tell the sky to be green and the ocean red. She gazed forward into the life of her unborn child with both hope and idiocy.
Dina had always thought if she ever did decide to leave, she would just disappear, walk off into the misty mountains. But it was so much easier to secretly wish Eitan would vanish instead. Guilt-free end to Problem A. Something quick and sympathy-provoking, enough to mobilise the neighbours with their pots of couscous and chicken soup, offering support. ‘The poor thing. He’s left her a single mother, the cad. Just up and vanished. No sign of him since. It’s heartbreaking and unforgivable.’ Dina would wait a respectable amount of time. Clear out Eitan’s junk and throw it all on the footpath for the Alte zakhen men to collect in their van. The birds would reappear, the white cyclamens finally pushing their way through between rocks in the garden. She would sigh a lot, look appropriately pale and forlorn as she quickly packed things into boxes, and booked one-way tickets for Shlomi and herself back to Melbourne. Easy.
So, why has she stayed all these years?
‘Stupid question, Dina,’ her mother admonishes her. ‘Really, why does any mother stay? For the children. You stay for the good of your children. It would be wrong to leave. Did I leave? Do you think things were perfect between your father and me? A good mother stays despite everything. A child needs a solid home, with both parents there. A safe, predictable life.’
The shoemaker leaves the shoe resting on the bench and collects the empty glasses. He carries them across to the sink. Her mother drones on, and when Dina tries to shut her up, her words come out from the sink. As soon as the shoemaker puts in the plug to rinse the glasses, she hears her voice coming out of the teapot. ‘You are blind, Dina. You have a good husband. He is a wonderful father to your child. Maybe he is a bit arrogant, a bit too sure of himself, but he has a kind heart. And what’s more important is he loves you. And this is why you stay.’
Dina sits slumped on the stool.
Maybe her mother is right. It wasn’t easy for Dina to grow up without her father around. Some days she felt trapped in an airless bell jar, breathing in her mother’s second-hand smoke in a house that had ceased to be home the day her father died. Even though her situation was so different, why would she inflict that loneliness on her son?
‘They say the dead know the affairs of the living.’ The shoemaker interrupts Dina’s silent discussion with her mother. He reaches up to turn off the radio just as her mother sidles over to stand right beside him.
‘My little girl is always with me, you know,’ he says, picking up a tea towel to dry his hands. ‘It’s been many, many years, but I can still feel her tiny hand slipping away from mine just before she died.’
He lifts Dina’s shoe and props it up beside his tools on the bench, his eyes serene yet bleak. Ice fills Dina’s veins. She knows he is about to tell her a story she doesn’t want to hear – she grew up waiting to be free from these kind of tales – but just as the shoemaker’s silences invited her to fill the quiet with chatter before, now his words command her to listen.
‘When the Gestapo arrived in our village early one morning and started rounding up all the Jews, I grabbed my daughter and ran as fast as I could through our orchard, which backed onto the cemetery. We crouched behind a tombstone and I held my baby close to me, telling her she mustn’t make a sound. I heard some soldiers approaching and one of them shouted: ‘Halt! Juden sind dort versteckt.’ They had found our hiding place. My daughter panicked and struggled in my arms. It only took an instant for her to slip away from me, her hand sliding out from my grip. She ran back towards our house, calling for her mother. One of them fired twice, taking his time between shots. And then they were gone.’
Dina digs inside her bag trying to find her phone, searching for a lifeline out from the shoemaker’s past. The threads of his story are wrapping around her chest. She takes several slow breaths, trying to connect again to the here-and-now. The screen of her phone is blank – she must have turned it off when she bolted from the clinic earlier. The shoemaker retreats back into silence. Rubbing his hands together, he turns his attention to the shoe again. Dina switches her phone back on. The guilt of making herself unavailable is starting to creep up on her. A barrage of voicemail messages from Yael lights up the screen immediately and before Dina even has a chance to dial the clinic number, Yael is calling again.
‘Dina?’
‘Hi, Yael.’
‘Where on earth have you been?’ Yael is yelling so loud from the other end of the phone that the shoemaker glances up from his work. ‘I’ve been worried sick. Why didn’t you answer?’
‘I’m sorry, Yael. Everything’s fine. I’m heading back soon.’
‘Look, I managed to get rid of most of this afternoon’s patients to lighten your load a little, but Evgeni just won’t budge and believe it or not Mrs Susskind refuses to leave until you apologise to her. I’m going nuts here. Oh, and Sousanne just called to say one of the girls has some swelling in her arm after the injection. She sounded worried, so I’ll tell her to pop back in half an hour for you to check it. Also, you wrote the wrong name on Tahirih’s prescription. I offered to get the pharmacy to collect a new one, but she said she’s happy to wait for you to change it. I think if you just come tidy up these loose ends, we can finish up early today.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Dina, you don’t sound good. Tell me where you are.’
‘I’m just at the shoemaker’s. He’s trying to glue my broken heel back on.’
‘Which shoemaker?’
‘Down in the shuk.’
‘The shuk?’ Yael splutters. ‘Are you crazy?’
Their phone call is interrupted by some shouting in the alleyway just outside the entrance to the shoemaker’s cave.
‘Dina? Allo? What’s going on?’
‘I can’t hear you properly, Yael. Reception’s bad. Let’s speak when I get back to the car. I’m almost done here.’
She turns her phone off again.
Excited by the tumult outside, Dreifoos hops over to the entrance and starts barking at the people running past. Dina looks through the window to see what’s happening. A crowd has gathered in the alleyway and people are trying to make their way towards the main street. She feels like she is watching a scene from some B-grade action movie. A man overturns a trestle table as he brushes past the sweet stall across the laneway, sending brightly wrapped candies and chocolates flying through the air. He knocks over a little girl in a red dress, who starts to howl. Through the crowd Dina spots a smiling Chinese doll sitting on a toy seller’s stand, blowing bubbles into the crowd. A yellowing poster advertising las
t year’s Festival of Festivals, with a cross, a star and a crescent dancing together, is ripped off the wall.
Inside his cave, the shoemaker keeps working, oblivious to all the commotion going on right outside his door. He inserts a wooden last into Dina’s shoe and stretches it. Sirens wail in the distance, police shout through megaphones, calling for everyone to evacuate the shuk. Dina glances back at the shoemaker, who looks serene despite the chaos in front of his workshop. If he is scared, he shows no sign of it. He places the shoe last onto a shelf and strokes his beard with his hand. Dreifoos begins to whine, then dashes behind his master. The shoemaker wipes his hands on his apron and picks up Dina’s shoe again.
A voice calls through a megaphone further down the alleyway: ‘Chefetz chashood, chefetz chashood,’ to warn that a suspicious package has been found.
‘We’d better leave,’ Dina says, her heart pounding. ‘It sounds like the police are evacuating everyone in the area.’
The shoemaker doesn’t take any notice. She moves towards him, but Dreifoos steps out from behind and warns her off with a growl.
‘It’s too risky to stay,’ she says, feeling her lips tingle. ‘There must be a bomb somewhere nearby.’
The shoemaker picks up some black shoe-leather and spreads it out on his workbench.
‘Don’t you understand?’ she says, raising her voice. ‘We have to go.’
He gets up from his stool, but continues unfolding the material. Then, before Dina can make sense of what is happening, he moves slowly towards the entrance, the dog following closely behind. She watches in disbelief as he closes and bolts the metal door from within, the latch snapping into place as he turns a skeleton key in the lock. He places the key into the front pocket of his apron and turns to face Dina. Her feet are frozen to the ground, her heart hammering away inside its cage, while her baby kicks violently at her ribs.
‘We’ll be safer inside,’ he says calmly.
Waiting Room, The Page 14
