Waiting Room, The

by Kaminsky, Leah

  So, here she is, in the middle of it all; the very thing she fears now upon her. In a minute it might be too late – they will all be dead. She lunges at the door, trying to release the bolt, tugging at it as hard as she can. It is made of solid lead and won’t budge. She tears over and grabs the shoemaker’s arm. Dreifoos snarls at her and starts barking.

  ‘Give me the key!’ Dina yells.

  ‘No.’ The shoemaker pushes her back gently, not a trace of fear on his face. He returns to his workbench.

  The dog’s barking grows more threatening. A disembodied voice coming from outside the door rises up into the room and clamps itself around Dina like a vice, pressing her ears right into her head. ‘Attention! Attention! This is the police. Please remain calm. We are cordoning off Natanson Street. Please refrain from entering this area.’

  The shoemaker speaks into the blackness of the leather on the workbench. ‘Don’t worry. You’re fine here with me.’

  ‘We’re finished if we don’t leave right now!’ Dina feels like she is shouting underwater, bubbles coming from her mouth instead of words.

  ‘I can’t let you go. I won’t make the same mistake again,’ he says, continuing steadily with his work. ‘We’re safe in here.’

  Crammed in between his heel shaves, awls, hammers, blocks and jacks, the shoemaker suddenly looks ashen-faced. The wall behind the workbench starts creaking, as if the crack in the plaster beside a rack of boots is opening up and emptiness is slowly seeping out from it into the cave. On the other side of the door Dina hears someone yelling through a megaphone again: ‘In a few minutes we will be performing a controlled explosion. Those who have not yet left the area, please remain inside your shops or apartments until further notice.’

  Dina edges over towards the window. The shoemaker looks at her.

  ‘You see! I am right. Even the police say it is safer not to run.’ His eyes blaze with defiance. ‘I am not going anywhere. This shop is all I have left, and repairing is what I do.’

  Wiping his hands on his apron, he moves over to a shelf lined with shoeboxes. Dreifoos retreats to the back of the cave, but with a swift change of heart comes back to nuzzle up to Dina. Things have quietened down outside, except for the distant whirring of a machine, which is growing louder as it approaches. It seems to stop right in front of the cave. The Fish Council are watching it through the window, from inside their bowl.

  Someone calls out, the words sounding as if they are being shouted from the opposite end of a tunnel: ‘The watermelon! Guide it towards the watermelon.’

  A strange-looking robot stops directly in front of the window. It looks like a big, yellow bug on wheels, staring at Dina with metallic eyes. She has watched enough news reports to know the police sappers have sent in a bomb-dismantling device. She bites at a torn nail on her pinkie. The machine slowly makes its way across to the fruit stall. She watches its claw clamp onto a melon that has a large gash in its side.

  A loud cracking noise suddenly pierces the air. The robot has fired its rifle right into the fruit. The dog yelps. Dina hugs her belly. Her unborn child kicks against her diaphragm as she steps backward. Bits of watermelon are splattered across the window of the cave. The robot fires another shot.

  Dina crouches down next to Dreifoos, her skin flushed, hands clammy. A helicopter hovers overhead, breaking the strange silence after the blast. The old man shuffles across to the entrance and, without saying a word, takes the key from his apron pocket, fiddling with the lock. The bell tinkles as he pulls open the door. Half a minute passes and through the entrance Dina can see a man in a green bomb disposal suit waddling over to the fruit stall. He takes a look around and turns to give the thumbs up signal, presumably to those waiting at the end of the laneway. Dreifoos runs out into the alleyway, straight across to the fruit stall, and starts eating the bloodbath of crushed watermelon flesh that litters the ground. The vendor is moaning about the damage, blaming the police for destroying his business, all for nothing.

  The shoemaker, unfazed, turns to Dina. ‘Would you like to know how I survived the war?’ Not waiting for an answer, he shuffles back to his place behind the workbench.

  Dina watches him, her hands sweaty. He looks like a broken man, held together with glue and string, weary of hope. Picking up Dina’s shoe he starts straight back to work. The bomb scare doesn’t seem to have shaken him in the slightest. Dina is trembling though. The day has gnawed away at her nerve endings, clawing at her throat. Suddenly, she feels the blood drain from her cheeks.

  ‘My God!’ she says, almost inaudibly. ‘I need to leave. It’s going to happen somewhere else.’

  ‘Dina, calm down, will you?’ Her mother is standing by the entrance. ‘Why are you so convinced you are yoked to disaster today?’

  ‘I know it in my bones.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It was a false alarm, for God’s sake.’

  Dina searches inside her purse and pulls out ten shekels, tossing it onto the bench. Surely her mother, if anyone, should understand that Dina has to act before fate grabs her once and for all.

  ‘Give me my shoes, please.’

  ‘I’m almost finished,’ the shoemaker says, pressing the heel into the shoe with his thumb.

  ‘I’m done waiting. Just hand them over!’

  Leaning across the workbench, she snatches one shoe out from his hands, scoops up the other and drags them both towards her. Before the shoemaker even has time to react, she bolts out into the alleyway.

  Dina walks barefoot, hurrying along the cobblestones, picking her way through broken glass and dog shit, her mother’s old shoes tucked under one arm. With her other hand she carries the bag of apples and onions from Itzik’s stall, the knotted pretzel poking out. Heading down Natanson Street, she makes her way determinedly towards the car, knowing now exactly where she needs to be.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘Why didn’t you want to stay and hear the rest of that nice man’s story?’ Her mother is sitting in the back seat of the car again as Dina tries to make her way through Central Carmel. ‘It was so rude of you to run out like that. Maybe if you had spent more time listening when I was alive, you might have better understood my death.’

  ‘For God’s sake, mother! Not now. I’ve just been through a bomb scare. What do you want from me? If you are trying to tell me I wasn’t a good enough daughter, your timing is impeccable.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Be honest. You couldn’t shove me in the ground fast enough.’

  ‘Tell me something. Are you ever going to leave me alone?’ Dina looks in the rear-view mirror to catch a glimpse of her mother, but her own eyes glare back reproachfully.

  Her mother seems unfazed. ‘And another thing, Dina, you can’t be a saviour all the time.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You kid yourself you have some sort of control over life.’ She lights up a cigarette. ‘There’s freedom in futility. And you know something else? You should call Eitan. Even creaky love is better than no love.’

  Dina winds down the window, letting in a rush of hysterical birdsong from a nearby tree. The air outside is motionless, a dusty, dry heat rising as the late morning sun scrabbles to reach its unforgiving zenith. Where are the clouds and the rain they predicted?

  Some days she sees her mother more than others. Often, it is precisely when Dina would like to spend a pleasant, relaxed morning chatting with her over cups of tea that her mother vanishes. Then she will turn up unannounced, sitting at the back of a meeting, or hovering in the hallway as Dina searches for her car keys, feeding off her daughter’s agitation; always there when she’s least wanted.

  Dina doesn’t answer, and for a change her mother echoes her silence. Turning the radio on breaks the tension. Petula Clark belts out ‘Downtown’, telling them both what to do and where to go when life is making them lonely. The music winds itself into a wall of cadences between them, with a background riff of distant sirens wafting up from the direction of the shuk, despite the false
alarm. Dina’s heart hammers away in silent panic as she weaves between vehicles and lunchtime crowds, a disorderly babble of tumult. People dash across the road, winding their way behind green buses and in front of white taxis, in mini acts of rebellion. Faces cross Dina’s line of vision, then disappear, fleeing into anonymity.

  She heads through the traffic towards the street that leads down to Shlomi’s school. Tiny, iridescent, insect-like sparks dance across her eyes, announcing with an insistent buzz that a migraine is truly on its way. Wiping perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand, she manoeuvres her car down Kabirim Street, swerving to avoid cars parked halfway up the sidewalk, their rears jutting out onto the road. She stops behind the school instead of near the entrance. As Dina lifts her handbag, apples spill out onto the floor. She looks across to the back seat, where her mother is shaking her head.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ her mother asks, not waiting for her daughter to answer. ‘You shouldn’t be so afraid, Dina.’

  Why is there no comfort in a dead mother’s advice? Strange events have been following one another this morning. Now, Dina has decided to arrive ahead of time, ready to prevent the next drama from happening She has come to take Shlomi home; doesn’t want him to become the day’s news. She has reached the point where timelessness meets time. This is her moment to act.

  ‘Sometimes a mother just has to trust her instincts,’ Dina says.

  She somehow feels Shlomi’s school is the place where her worst fears are about to come true. She knows the bomb is in there somewhere. Grabbing her shoes, she climbs out of the car, slamming the door and locking it before her mother can follow. She walks down the sidewalk and stops in front of the sullen guard at the entrance who sizes her up with narrow eyes. He feels up her bag and then looks down at her bare feet.

  ‘My shoe broke.’ She holds them out to show him.

  He nods at her to pass.

  She heads down two flights of concrete stairs, through the hall decorated with children’s drawings – flowers, Mexican sombreros and pairs of creatures boarding Noah’s ark. She is playing out her private apocalypse for the umpteenth time: this practice drill of saving her son, following him like a shadow, inventing catastrophe.

  She peers into a classroom on one side and sees children reaching for a shared tin of crayons in the centre of a square table, swapping white for black, orange for red. It is just then she notices the worker outside: a man with a black moustache, deep lines rutted in his forehead. He is wearing a bulky black jacket, despite the hot day, and he’s leaning on a fence that separates the classrooms from the playground. He catches her staring at him and turns away, as if her eyes have burnt a hole in the armour of his too-tight torso.

  Dina rushes to the principal’s office and stands outside the closed door, miserably trapped inside her cursed imagination. She fiddles with her wedding ring.

  ‘You should get back to work,’ her mother says, standing beside her.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get out of the car?’

  ‘You can’t simply lock me away, darling. You forget how much freedom death gives you.’

  ‘Mother, your timing is very bad. I have to speak to the principal now.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I saw this guy in the playground.’

  ‘The one you were staring at a minute ago?’ She stands between her daughter and the door of the principal’s office.

  ‘Are you spying on me?’

  ‘He’s just a worker.’

  ‘There’s a fucking bomb strapped inside his jacket.’

  ‘No need to swear.’

  Dina could strangle her.

  ‘Besides, what makes you think he’s a terrorist?’ her mother prods, leaning against the door.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s obvious.’ Dina’s voice is trembling. ‘It’s written all over his face.’

  ‘Dina, you’re wrong. Believe me. I know the difference between a man who is filled with hatred, and one who is simply nervous.’

  ‘So how do you explain the fact he’s wearing a jacket in this heat?’

  ‘He’s not the one. Let it go.’

  ‘Stop sticking your nose into my business!’

  ‘Fine, then. Barge into the principal’s office. Go on. Make an absolute fool of yourself.’ She turns her back on Dina. ‘And of Shlomi.’

  Dina doesn’t reply. Maybe her mother is right. She should leave before Shlomi finds out she’s even been here. Hesitating for a moment, Dina surrenders her fear and starts to walk away, retracing her steps along the hallway, heaving herself back up the first flight of stairs. She pauses on the landing to catch her breath, her throat tightening. She’s losing it. A sudden explosion of sunlight leaves her dizzy as she heads up the remaining stairs and out onto the street. Lowering her head as she makes her way back past the guard, she feels humiliated by what probably comes close to the pinnacle performance of her career as an overprotective Jewish mother.

  Dina rummages in her bag for the car keys.

  ‘They’re in your hand,’ her mother says.

  If Shlomi ever found out why she came to school, he’d die of embarrassment. Dina feels the weight of her body as she waddles hurriedly back towards the car, tiptoeing over hot concrete. A dirty white mutt, pendulous teats wobbling from side to side, runs in front of Dina, bashing its ribs against her leg as it bounds across the road. The dog is followed by an eager entourage of neighbourhood strays.

  Everything hurts: Dina’s head, her back, her swollen toe. This baby is becoming such a burden. Why didn’t she terminate the pregnancy when she could? Surely the baby is doomed to die slowly in the world anyway. After all, how many times did she overhear her mother reciting the survivor’s hymn to her father (‘Why Bring Children into Such a World?’) when they thought Dina was out of earshot, tucked safely in her bed? No child deserves to be born with the handicap of having to endure its parent’s pain, carry the madness of a history that belongs to someone else, become infected with the white-hot touch of other people’s wounds.

  ‘When are you due exactly?’ her mother asks.

  ‘Four weeks.’

  ‘You know what?’ her mother says suddenly, stopping in the middle of the footpath. The air has become unbearably hot. ‘Go back.’

  ‘Go back where?’

  ‘Inside.’

  ‘What the hell? Why would I do that after I just left? You’re the one who told me I’m nuts.’

  ‘Listen, it’s very complicated being me. I cross bridges before they’re built.’

  If you could kill the dead, Dina would be guilty of matricide this very instant. Trying to ignore her mother’s cryptic wisdom, she unlocks the door, rolls down the window, pulls her seatbelt across her belly and starts the car.

  ‘I thought about it and you’re right, Dina. You need to be sure Shlomi is safe.’ Her mother stands on the kerb, looking in at her. ‘As sure as a mother can be, that is. Listen to your gut feeling. It’s the only thing that saved me during the war.’

  ‘Please stop this nonsense. I’m going back to the clinic.’

  The engine idles. Damned if she drives away, damned if she goes back down those stairs, follows her instincts to check out that man again. The jacket bothers her. They always say it’s usually someone that looks pretty innocuous who’s most likely to be the culprit, don’t they? A teenager, a pregnant woman. A simple workman. Maybe it’s not so ridiculous after all to go take a second look.

  She turns the car off, climbs out and heads towards the entrance again, her mother following close behind. This time the security guard smiles at Dina as she passes.

  ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I forgot something,’ she mumbles as he waves her past.

  She walks down the first flight of stairs, her mother still on her tail. They both stop when they reach the landing. Dina looks out onto the concrete quadrangle where the workers are gathered around in a circle.

  ‘Which one is it again?’ her mother whispers.
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  ‘That man over there. I told you, he’s wearing a jacket.’

  The worker is leaning over an open drain. Suddenly he straightens up and stretches his back, walks over to the edge of the playground and pulls a prayer rug out of a duffel bag. He unfurls it and lays it on the ground, dropping to his knees. The other workmen seem to take no notice, going about their business, fiddling with the drain. Dina sees the guy raise his arms, and bend forward, resting his forehead on the rug. She notices some loose threads at the edge of his jacket. Or are they wires sticking out?

  Her throat feels dry. Breathing heavily, she rushes down the second flight of stairs, through the hallway again and straight to the principal’s office. Without bothering to knock, she flings open the door and barges in, puffing and trembling.

  ‘There’s a man in the playground,’ she blurts out, grabbing onto the arm of a chair to steady herself. Everything feels oddly familiar. She has rehearsed this scene many times before, knowing that one day what has been lurking in her dreams for so long would actually happen. And that day has finally arrived. It is hard to believe after this morning’s false alarm. What are the odds?

  The principal, a woman in her late fifties with pencil-thin, painted eyebrows and a thick white streak in her hair, looks up from the folder lying open on her desk and puts down the phone she has been holding to one ear. She pushes her chair backwards as she stands up, hurrying over to the other side of her desk. She places her arm around Dina’s waist.

  ‘Are you all right, Dr Ronen?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Sit down. You look pale. Would you like me to get you a glass of water?’

  ‘No!’ Dina shouts, pulling away from her. ‘Just call the police, please. There’s a terrorist on the grounds.’ Her head is throbbing.

  ‘Please calm down, Dr Ronen,’ the principal says, putting on her best school teacher’s voice. ‘That’s impossible. We have the tightest security here. No one can get in without passing the guard at the entrance.’

  Dina’s mother snorts.

  ‘I’m telling you there’s a man with a bomb strapped to him, right here in the playground,’ Dina says.