A Late Divorce (39 page)

“She didn't ask to talk to you.”

“Goddamn you! What are you two up to? Where was she talking from? Did she leave a number?”

“Hello, Moses.
Would you hand him to me already? I can't get over how much he looks like your father. Come on, let me have him. Since when does he belong only to you? You know, he stutters a little ...”

“Kedmi, answer me. Where was she talking from?”

“I don't know.”

“How can you not know? Suddenly you're the picture of innocence. What's gotten into you tonight? How can you go on lying passively in bed at a time like this? What did she say to you? Where has she disappeared to?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly eleven.”

“You don't say. It really is late. And you want to get me up and into a chair at this hour? What did we buy a bed for?
Hello, Moses!
Be a sport, let me have him. I want to play with him too.”

“Kedmi!”

“Come on now, calm down. She'll be back tomorrow, I promise you. Instead of running around the house like a nervous wreck you should take a look at yourself in the mirror. You're still wearing the apron that you put on this morning ... you really are a sight. Let me have the child. Why don't you change his bed, and change yourself too while you're at it...''

 

He's hiding something. That smile of his. What's come over him? There's something between them. There has to be. He'd never be so calm otherwise. What is he up to? Can it be ... is she really capable of running off and leaving us the...
but what face superimposes itself?
I can hear the ring of a telephone in the distance ... how strongly the memory of it flickers on ... of course! How did I ever forget it? Was it that morning? A call from the prison. That man—that prisoner—that murderer of his—had escaped. I have it! They called that morning. It was raining. It was Saturday. That man—that prisoner—that murderer of his—had escaped. They called from the prison. Of course they did. And it was raining. Now I remember. Saturday. I have it!

 

All of a sudden the curtain goes up, is lifted, tom asunder. And Saturday shines through. Yes, that Saturday, breaking through just as it was, down to its last color and smell. That morning it rained ... seize the day, Ya'el! And in the afternoon the sun came out ... Saturday, the day before the seder, the veil has been rent ... it can stand on its own feet now, every hour of it ... and what pandemonium there was. I was cooking in the kitchen for the seder. Rakefet had woken up and was crying. A sour fear churned inside me. Father would soon be leaving, making his getaway: if anything happened to her from now on, I could never turn to him for help. Kedmi had surrounded himself with a pile of weekend papers and still was not talking to me. Tomorrow, at the seder, he was sure to find a way of taking his revenge on father. And just then they called from the prison. I happened to answer. “Something's happened to your murderer,” I said, because that's how we called him, that's how he referred to him with us. “I've been to see my murderer.” “My murderer said...” “My murderer thinks ...” Kedmi grabbed the phone from me savagely and stood listening to the news. I could tell at once from the look on his face what an awful blow it was.

 

The children's room is dark. The pungent smell is everywhere. I have to let in some air. To open a window and let the pleasant winter breeze in. Everything is soaked in his pee. You'd think some geyser had erupted inside him. The sheets. The mattress. Rakefet sighs in her sleep, a little flower. Gaddi sucks his thumb, his eyes aflutter. I go over and gently remove the finger from his mouth. He opens his eyes.

“Where is he?”

“With your dad.”

“Will he sleep with you?”

“No. I'm just changing his bed.”

“Did he only pee, or did he...?”

“He only peed ... don't worry about it ... go back to sleep now ...”

 

The day of remembrance. The dam has burst. Saturday? Yes, that was it! How strongly, how full of light, it gushes forth now. The tears sting my eyes. How did I ever forget it? And yet I did. In its hurry to get to the accident my memory simply erased it, hectic interlude that it was: the phone calls from the prison, the mess in the kitchen, Kedmi's search for his poor murderer, Kedmi's mother, Rakefet's constant crying, father's arrival that afternoon—an onion shedding its skins one by one, the day shows through on different planes, in different places, unrolling like a sheet of bright tinsel ... With what should I begin? With Kedmi. In a state of shock, swearing a blue streak, as though his prisoner had escaped for the sole purpose of ruining his career. “Why am I wasting my time being a lawyer? If I were a jailer I could free all the defendants I want.” He dressed quickly and rushed to the prison, leaving me—do I hear that faint musical score now?—in the kitchen with a mountain of vegetables and a bloody hunk of raw meat in a bowl, while Gaddi began to complain again of chest pains and Rakefet went on crying. The telephone didn't stop ringing: Kedmi's mother, Tsvi, Asi, the police. The hospital called to ask about the dog and then mother got on the phone to ask too. And soon father was due in the midst of all this madness, and already I could see how the seder night I had had such high hopes for was falling apart before my eyes.... Kedmi returned in a vile mood, still cursing like a trooper. “Please tell me what the big tragedy is,” I begged him. “You know they'll find him in the end. You yourself said that he just ran away to be with his parents for the seder. When it's through he'll turn himself in.” But Kedmi's great fear was that the police would catch him and worm out of him the confession that he had refused to give them so far ... that Kedmi had desperately been trying to keep from them ... because the murderer really was one ... Kedmi didn't believe in him himself...

 

Saturday. Of course. That was it. I have it now with all its colors and smells, down to that light, last morning rain, after which the clouds broke up and a warm wind began to blow. I stood on the terrace hanging up wash, clean sheets and tablecloths, while Kedmi heartrendingly stalked the house like a caged lion, phoning the police every few minutes to advise them, to berate them, to warn them of something new. In the end he decided to drive down to where the prisoner's parents lived and to catch him himself, so that he could return him to jail and go on defending him. What a weird, wild, wacky day it was! I'm still reeling from the force with which the memory of it has hit me ... to think of me sitting there and idiotically repeating to her, “Saturday, Saturday, are you sure there was a Saturday?” until she was certain that I was trying to hide something crucial from her! Time passed. I waited for father. And then suddenly that afternoon Kedmi called from the office, whispering in a conspiratorial voice. “Come quick, I need your help. My mother's on her way over to baby-sit. I found him but he got away. Come quick, I need you! We'll pick up your father at the taxi stand downtown. I've already spoken to Tsvi.”

 

Saturday afternoon in an empty, drowsy downtown already under the influence of the approaching holiday.... Kedmi's mother had come to stay with the children, in a fit over the vanished murderer, terribly piqued by him. How could he have done such a thing after all Kedmi had sacrificed for him? The sheer ingratitude of it!...I raced to that dreary office of his that he kept in those days when he was trying to make a go of private practice. The corridors were deserted. A musty smell hung over the stairs. He was waiting for me in the doorway in a white heat, his mind working furiously. He had spotted his murderer in his old neighborhood—where, it turned out, the police hadn't even bothered to search. They had, Kedmi said, spent all day looking in the forests of the Carmel, apparently convinced that the escaped man had gone to pick flowers. But Kedmi had seen him in the street, from an ambush he had set for him not far from his home. Only the murderer took off as soon as he saw Kedmi—the nincompoop must have thought that it was a trap set by the police and all Kedmi's shouting that he was there by himself couldn't keep him from running away. Kedmi was sure he would come back, though. The man simply missed his parents. My job, since he didn't know me, was to wait for him by his house and tell him when he appeared, “Mr. Kedmi wants to talk to you. He has an idea that might help you.”

A crazy Saturday, how did I ever forget it? Spring had broken out, the sky lifted quickly. A Saturday of different places, of different people coming and going, of doors opening and shutting, of telephones ringing, of everything happening at once—presiding over all of which was Kedmi, unshaven, disheveled, red in the face, looking like an escaped criminal himself, explaining to me how after the seder he would turn his murderer over to the police at an official press conference. Let them see what a real lawyer was. How his clients obeyed him unquestioningly. How they had perfect faith in him.

 

Saturday afternoon. Such soft, sweet, sabbathy light, and I utterly exhausted, my head in a whirl. Nothing was ready yet for the seder, and father was getting divorced the next morning and flying back to America two days later, leaving mother to me. I could see myself running through the fields around the hospital in search of her dog, trapped in Kedmi's childish games, having to take Gaddi to the doctor—and meanwhile the hours were going by and nothing had been done. And soon it would be time for the long, deep goodbye to father....By a felafel stand near the station where some teenagers were hanging out we watched him get out of the taxi. Once again I was greeting him—all week long I'd kept dispatching him and welcoming him back. It's all so clear: how did I forget it? The first thing that struck me was the haircut he had gotten in Tel Aviv, which made him look older and grayer. His clothes were rumpled and he walked with a stoop, pulled down by his valise. How it all shoots through me now: his coming that Saturday, his standing there on the sidewalk while I kissed him and hugged him hard, his marveling at the puddles left at the base of the trees by the morning's rain. “With us in Tel Aviv,” he said, “it's spring, even summer. The weather has been so hot and dry that people are flocking to the beaches.”
With us,
he said, as though he had never left, as though it were I who soon would depart again for who knew how long, as though he had not signed away his home the day before and was about to fly far away. How nice it was of Kedmi, he said, surprised, to relieve him of his bag right away. “There's some dirty laundry in it, Ya'eli. It would be good of you to help me wash it. I haven't any underwear left.'' Kedmi put a hand on his shoulder, steering him to the car, while we told him all about our murderer. He listened carefully, with a bemused smile, and proposed at once that he come with me, it being unthinkable to send me by myself after an escaped killer, even if Kedmi swore he was a gentle one.

Kedmi drove us to a working-class quarter outside of town, on the road to Tivon, near the big quarry cut by the cement works into the mountainside. He pointed out the house to us, handed me a photograph of the escapee that he had found in his office, and vanished into some side street. And so we found ourselves, father and I, walking at the drop of dusk down a narrow working-class street to meet Kedmi's murderer and talk him into going back to jail. Near the house was a bus stop with a bench on which we sat while keeping a lookout on the entranceway. How could I have forgotten? We might as well have been on another planet, just the two of us sitting there alone. Father spoke and I listened. He was troubled and needed to talk, full of impressions from his days in Tel Aviv and aghast how little time was left him, jumping from one thing to another while the twilight thickened and an occasional passerby stopped to stare at us.... “I've signed away my home,” he kept saying. “I never want to hear about it again. You'll collect my things there and keep them for me. But don't let Tsvi have the apartment all for himself. He's a degenerate. And he's getting worse. He'll sell it in order to play the market. And you'd better warn mother about him, because she'll never listen to me...” His eyes filled with tears. He was on the subject of mother now. “So she's finally driven me away. At last she's managed to uproot me. I'm being punished by her for not being crazy too, for not having gone over the brink with her. She thinks that because we once thought the same way I owe her eternal fealty...” All at once he made me get up and stroll in the street with him, holding my hand while he told me again of that morning she had tried killing him and of how Tsvi could not have cared less. I walked by his side, listening in anguish, returning an occasional stare, glancing now and then at the photograph I held so as not to miss our man when he appeared. He was getting emotional, talking with great intensity. We turned and headed back the other way. Children raced by us toward a bonfire of leavened bread that had been lit at the end of the street. Suddenly he gripped me hard. “And you—what do you think? You're the only one who's never expressed an opinion. You just agree with everyone ... with me, with mother, with us all. How can you be so passive?” And I answered, “You're right. I really have no opinion. I never have had one.'' “But I don't understand how that's possible,” he protested. “Opinions are too much for me,” I said. “I can only feel you. I've never been able to think you. It's as though you both were my babies.” Those were my words. It was an odd thing to say and he stood there perplexed while the sun set in the distant bay. But did he really say what comes next or did I imagine it? Yes, he must have said it: “It's you who will kill me in the end.” “Me?” I whispered, thunderstruck. “Yes, you. You more than anyone with your silence.” Did he say it or did I imagine it? Yes, and then he said, “You've taken my home from me and now you won't let me go.” How could
I
have forgotten? Why? I kept silent then too. Silent as usual. I didn't answer, and then he smiled and hugged me. In its insatiable rush to the accident my memory ran over it all ... and in the end night came with still no sign of the murderer. We went to look for Kedmi and found him back on the main road, asleep at the wheel.