The Inbetween People (17 page)

I’m sorry, you say. It’s just we will need to be strong, we will need all our resolve to get through this, it will not be easy. A baby makes us weaker. That’s all. For things will change.

She almost nods, barely, but you see it, you reach for her hand and squeeze it. I’m sorry, you say, it’s just you have no idea what war is, what this might mean for us. It will be hard. You must be prepared for that. Everything will change now, you say, people will change.

It is warm that morning, hot and heavy, but you are aware only of the loneliness in the air, the cold that seems to penetrate everything, leaving a frozen weight somewhere in the region of your heart.

C
HAPTER
23

I
observe the open doorway for a time after she finishes her story. That’s how it was, she says; she is tired, she places her chin between her two hands. You have your own memories, she says, but that’s how it was for us. Her eyes are filled with certainty; she has found strength from her story.

David’s wife is crying. This is the last time, she says, this is the last time this family goes through this. She clasps a tissue in her hands and dabs it against her eyes.

Ruti, he says, Ruti, please listen. It’s important, Ruti. She is fidgeting with the toddler who sits on her knee, reaching also to the other child, stroking his hair repeatedly, grabbing his hand, wiping the cobwebs from it, roughly, so that he screws his eyes up and tears run down his cheeks. She bites down hard on her lower lip. She shakes her head, no, she says, I don’t want to listen, I am sick of listening. My father is angry that you are refusing to serve. The neighbours are asking me where you are carrying out your service this time, I’m tired of lying and pretending. Please do your army service, her voice is rising, louder, louder. He reaches his hands under the gauze, attempts to grab at her hands, but she pulls them away. He thrusts his hand instead towards one of the children, who continues to prod the cobwebs in the corner. He catches his chubby hand in his clasp, squeezes it hard with a kind of hopeless love that there are no words for.

A man got shot, he says. I was there.

Stop it, David, she says, stop it in front of the children.

There was a woman with him, he says, she was pregnant. My guess is six months. I remember you at six months. She places her hands against her ears, like a young child, and turns away from him, the boy on her knee remains staring gravely at his father. David roots in his pocket for his photos and leaflets. Don’t David, she says, and there is a weariness in her voice, I’ve seen them before. I don’t want to listen to any of it anymore.

He doesn’t speak. She regards him, a terrible sadness in her eyes. I am leaving now, she says. I have my answer. Her voice is low. I will pack your bags and leave them at your mother’s house. Please go there after you’re released from here. Please don’t come to the house. Her eyes fill with tears. Our house, she says, please don’t come to our house. She is pushing the young boy off her knee, dusting down her skirt, fixing her hair.

Ruti, he says. Ruti. He stands up and leans against the gauze. His blue eyes have clouded over, he rubs his hand against them. Let me tell you about the territories, he says. We went into their houses, took over their homes. Searches, he says, always searches. She raises her hand in front of her face. And other times, he says, other times we would take over their homes, for days, sometimes weeks. We could do whatever we pleased there, he says, other than deliberately destroy their property, of course. As little physical damage as possible, as little harm to a person as possible, those were the rules, he says. But there were no more rules. Only those. He laughs, there are more rules here, he says.

She says, of course. It was just a vantage point, stop being so dramatic.

Try to imagine, he says. Try to imagine if they entered our home, not a police force, no warrant, but a unit of soldiers, imagine they burst into our home, shoved you and the children into the bedroom, frightened the boys, pointed their guns at us, emptied the drawers, searched through our belongings, your treasured things, even those things that you hide from me. He points his finger at her through the gauze. Try to imagine, he says, try to imagine you were doing that and trying to remain human.

She is reaching for her coat that hangs behind the chair.

I’m trying to be a decent human being, he says. Tell me that you could do those things and still feel like a human. Just tell me that, Ruti. Tell me that you could watch a man die, watch his pregnant wife clutching her stomach on a freezing street, tell me that you could abandon her under orders, leave her husband to die on the side of a street.

Ruti is buttoning her coat, reaching for the boys. Your jackets, she says to them, put on your jackets.

Just tell me that, Ruti, he says. Tell me that you could feel human and do those things. Just tell me that. Don’t do this. You must listen.

She walks over to the open window, her back to the room, the cubicles, the voices, her face toward the darkness and the rain. I’ve heard it all before, she says. There is nothing else to say. It’s a war and you are not fighting. She reaches up to her hair and smoothes it back from her face. You’re behaving like a coward, she says. He flinches, her words strike him like a smack on the face. She turns from the darkness, looks at him. He pulls back and the colour drains from his face, she turns again to the darkness, placing her hands against the glass pane.

M
Y
MOTHER
came to the kibbutz when she was twelve, by then she was an orphan. There had been an accident, they were driving to Jerusalem, it was her mother’s birthday. Three people died in the accident, her mother, her father and her little brother. My mother remembered nothing about the accident, nor did she ever speak about life before it, but she remembered the morning they buried her parents and her little brother as one of the defining moments of her childhood. She told me about it in one of her letters, she wrote about the sun in the sky, the heat in the graveyard, the smell of grief and dying summer lilies; she wrote of her brother’s teddy that they buried with him, and how she longed for the bear in the nights that followed, longed to hold him against her and smell her brother. She remembered everything about that day, she said, the smell of the jasmine that climbed an oak tree not far from the graves and the wreaths of bruised white lilies that lay on the graves after they were filled in, and how, since then, she has loved the smell of lilies and jasmine, how she has surrounded herself with lilies and jasmine, always. She remembered the buzzing of the bees, she said, and the butterflies, there was a blizzard of butterflies before her when they buried her parents and her little brother.

She settled into kibbutz life with ease, she was young after all, there were many children there the same age as her, they welcomed her, this orphan, and the structure of kibbutz life suited that of somebody living with a recent bereavement. She was surrounded by the other children all day, and at night slept in the children’s house, along with her fellow teens.

She didn’t feel their loss, not then, there were too many new objects around her, too much novelty. There was a swimming pool that she could swim in every day, there was a tennis court, there were long summer evenings. Her days were full, so full, that her nights were spent in a deep dreamless sleep. The loss came later, much later, she said, it hit her with the force of a hammer one night, in the depths of the night, it was dark and there was no moon. She awoke and she realised that the children who slept around her, they had somebody, were part of something, whereas she was alone, there was only her, and outside there was only the night. It grew inside her, this loss, like a small piercing that became a great gaping hole, so that by the time I was born, she said, it had almost exploded around her.

I’m only telling you this, she wrote, so that someday you will understand.

S
AHAR
IS
watching David, her dark eyes fixed on him, transfixed by his conversation with his wife. Her mouth moves, but I can’t hear the words, so that I have to move closer to her. Who is he, she whispers, who is that man. His name’s David, I say. He’s the occupant of the cell opposite mine.

What is he talking about, she says, who did he shoot?

He didn’t shoot anyone, I say, he was just there when it happened.

She is pressing her nails against her cheeks, leaving white marks against her skin.

It didn’t change you, I say. Not in the same way that it changed us.

She is the same girl as that girl on the beach, the first time, and all the days there that followed. There is the same quiet sensuality in the way she moves, her eyes are harder, the lines around them deeper, but her movements are just the same.

We’ve all changed, she says. We had to. She looks at David, at his wife and the children. First I must tell you more, she says. For soon I must leave. And you need to make your decision. You need to decide to help me.

The rain is falling gently and steadily, shimmering through the weak artificial light of this room, filling the grey light with its soft sound, while the evening invades the room step by step. She takes a deep breath and begins to talk.

C
HAPTER
24

I
t is a cold day, cold even for January. Friday, the supermarket is packed, so that you feel regret rising within you for coming here. You weave your way through the crowds, determined only to buy what Sahar has requested and exit. People push their trolleys towards you, against you, you move through them, twisting in and out between the trolleys, a handful of random items in your hands.

He is in front of you—Avi—he has changed, some fundamental part of him, you observe that immediately. He has been wounded, a bandage covers his left cheek, some of his hair has been shaved off, and beneath it there is a pink scar, still raw, snakelike, beginning on his cheek, then running along the side of his head. He stands in front of you, leaning against his crutches, his right leg covered in a plaster, black scorch marks cover his face, and meet in great clusters on his left hand and cheek, and all across his forehead. But it’s his eyes that have changed. There is a man beside him, perhaps his father, fair-skinned, a man who holds himself erect at all times; his eyes move rapidly between you and Avi, settling on you for moments at a time before flicking back to Avi.