The Inbetween People (21 page)

D
o you know what a house is without him, she says.

She stares straight ahead at the clock on the wall. A tremble goes through her, starting in her shoulders and moving through her entire body, I watch it go through her. There are so many things, she says, there is the tree he planted last year on the balcony, where I like to sit in the morning and drink coffee. A miniature orange tree, she says. And there is the canary, she says, he used to release it from his cage and let it fly all around the house, until it would eventually tire and land on his shoulder. He liked when it landed on his shoulder, she says, he liked to sit with the canary on his shoulder. There are so many things, she says, there are so many things, there is nowhere to begin.

Her face is calm and still. Now you know, she says, that’s how it was. That’s how he died. Next week, she says, come, come next week. Please, come next week, Avi, please.

I hold the ticket in my hands, flicking it against the wood in front of me. Now you know, she says, now you know everything. Her eyes are dark, almost black. She raises her hand to her face and places one of her nails between her teeth.

Nobody ever quite understood what you were to each other, she says, but I did. From the beginning. You must help me, Avi. She looks right at me. Karim and I would live in the same house, she says, the home I shared with Saleem.

David is staring at her, a strange look in his eyes. It was cold that day, he says, she nods, he exhales the smoke, very cold, he says, colder almost than any day I remember, she nods again, she is rubbing her foot around the wet floor, creating designs out of the dirty splashes of water. The road was carved out of the mountain, David says, it was a steep hill, and there were crowds of people on it, and the wind that day was like a knife. She nods. Yes, she says, that’s how it was.

We were called in, David says, the ferocity of the demonstration was completely unexpected. We were on our way to the territories. She doesn’t move. He got in the way, David says, ran right into the riot. He shakes his head, he was foolish, he says, he didn’t think, he got in the way, forgot to think like a soldier. She pushes her chair back, it screeches on the wet floor. I read later, he says, in the newspaper it said that he was a former soldier. It was a stupid mistake on his part, he says, unusual for someone who served. He stands up, sucks on his cigarette, eyes her through the gauze, not that I mean any disrespect to him, he just made a mistake, he says. Yes, she nods, and her eyes are closed and she is crying.

Zaki paces around in front of the open doorway, eventually he approaches. I gave you some extra time, he says, I gave you some extra time because she came late. He nods in her direction; her eyes are fixed on the ground, her finger remains between her lips. She stands to meet his gaze, I am ready, she says, I can leave now.

She turns to us, the rain on the roof is so loud that I cannot hear her words, but I see her mouth moving.

Next week, she says. I hold the ticket in my hands. There is the sound of a clap of thunder and the room darkens, her skin glows in the dim light, it is the colour of champagne.

The pregnant woman, David says, the baby, what became of them. She halts, turns again. Zaki reaches his arm towards her, a gesture that says she must leave now.

The woman went into premature labour, she says, she leans against the chair as if it is difficult for her to stand. The baby died, she says, the baby died before the emergency services arrived. David is rocking against the gauze, the cigarette is almost against his cheek. And the woman, he says. The woman, she says, the woman survived.

David begins to smoke again, though the cigarette is just a brown filter, he stares at her, it was cold that day, he says, it was so cold.

Zaki coughs, she turns to him, I will go, she says, I will leave now. I’m sorry they died, David says, I’m so sorry they died. She turns towards the doorway, Zaki walks behind her. At the doorway she raises her hand above her head, a gesture that suggests she believes it will shelter her from the torrential rain.

M
Y
FATHER
died on March 29th, 2001, one month after Saleem was shot. He died at dawn. He was making his morning meal: a roll he had taken from the dining room the day before, cheese, sliced cucumber and tomatoes. He was efficient as always; he didn’t believe in a lingering breakfast; it was a purely functional meal. The morning was the most productive part of his day. He rose early, both in summer and winter, ate a brief breakfast, listened to the morning news, before beginning his work in the gardens. He would have watched the weather forecast the evening before and dressed suitably. It was always an immense relief to him, the predictability of the weather here.

When the heart attack struck, he had enough time to dial the emergency services, though he was dead on the kitchen floor by the time they arrived.

Gabi, the kibbutz director, came to my house on the kibbutz later that morning to break the news. I had moved home to recover after the bomb. I was on evening shift at the factory that week, and was reading the morning paper when he arrived. He had a natural air of authority and grace, and his voice was grave and heavy in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. It was over in a matter of moments he said, they would all help me through my grief, I would have the full support of the community. It didn’t make sense he said, a man still relatively young, who exercised regularly and spent so much time outdoors.

His involvement was a relief; he made the funeral arrangements in a quick and efficient manner that would have pleased my father, who despised all forms of time-wasting. The funeral itself was simple and unadorned, filled with kibbutz tradition. Gabi gave a speech, making reference to my father’s service in the 1973 war, and how he had reared me alone after my mother left. This wasn’t easy he said, but he always put his responsibilities as a father first. Everybody nodded in agreement.

After the funeral it came to me that I should clear the house of his belongings. He wouldn’t want them left there taking up space that he no longer needed, for he was not a sentimental man. The air was still inside his home, the windows closed. A neat row of sliced tomatoes and cucumber lay on the chopping board in the kitchen, and the only sign of any discrepancy was the knife on the floor where he dropped it when the heart attack struck. His navy jacket was folded on the back of the chair and vivid images of him came to me: him standing straight in the gardens studying the plants, his eyes resting on each one, before deciding on his course of action for the day; his voice, naming them to me aloud, marigolds, sweet peas, sunflowers, explaining their preferences, what type of soil they liked, how much water they needed. His blue overalls, neatly ironed, creased down the middle, the smell of earth from his fingers. Him, sitting on the patio in the evenings, reading one of his books, raising his eyes to regard me from time to time, nodding with approval if he saw me studying from a book, frowning if he caught me staring into space. His peaked cap, his laugh, so abrupt, unexpected, so completely out of character. How he never left.

My father came to this country at the beginning of October 1973: he arrived at the kibbutz in the early afternoon, abandoned his rucksack on the steps outside the dining room and went to volunteer to fight in the Yom Kippur war. He was sent to the Egyptian front. His disappearance sparked a flurry of activity on the kibbutz, and there was much debate as to where he could have gone. Later, when asked to account for his actions, he never could, only that he was seized by a completely uncharacteristic moment of ecstasy and that the urge to go was immediate.

The war was hard for him, coming as he did from a northern climate, a man who once believed that the desert was filled just with sand, who only saw in the heady days of that October that the desert was not that at all, but actually stone, stone everywhere, rasping and cold and endless, the ground below him hard and the glaring sky above him endless and dead as the desert below. In the heat of the day, when his nostrils and throat were filled with sand and dust, he used to imagine that he was standing by the lake on a December evening. He breathed in the freezing air, and the sun no longer blinded him. And sometimes at night as loneliness crept all around him, surrounding him like a blanket, and the fear of the next day loomed before him, he imagined that he was home, for those lakes were home he confided in me once, and no amount of living anywhere else changed that; home is home, he said. Nothing he ever did in all of his life after could compare to the days of that October.

Afterwards he came back and continued with his life, rarely referring to it again. Sometimes when I was a boy he spoke about it in the evenings though he was not a talkative man. There were times when he would suddenly straighten himself, and a proud vacant look would enter his eyes. I grew to recognise these moments and I knew that October 1973 had made everything worthwhile for him. He told me once, on an evening in spring, when we sat outside in the twilight and the evening was heavy with the smell of the wallflowers that he so lovingly tended, reminding him for all of his life of his mother and their little garden in England, he told me there is always something you will remember as worthwhile.

The war seemed to remain recent in his mind with the passing of years, the suffering of the soldiers, their energy, courage, and endless ability to endure, the joy when it ended. And what’s important to note, Avi, he said, is that a person can come to love any place at all, as long as there is anything worthwhile there. Take Sinai, he said, the sand and the stone, the heat of the days that almost cooked us alive, how we cursed it, yet I remember it fondly now. And he would laugh incredulously. And often I think of him in that place, surrounded by comrades who spoke a language he had not yet mastered, I think of him and of the army bases in the Sinai desert where he served, great conglomerations of concrete and iron thrown together on the desert rock, and of how he made his life there full, and how those neutral, passionless places became dear to him, sacred in his memory.

C
HAPTER
30

July 24th, 2001

A
vi Goldberg,

This is to notify you that you will present yourself at Camp 81 at 8:00
A.M
. on November 4th, 2001. Your service will continue from November 4th through November 29th, 2001.

C
HAPTER
31