The Inbetween People (22 page)

March 16th, 2001

D
ear Sareet,

I am writing to you from the darkness of a Galilee night ravaged by the winds, from the blackness that descends immediately before the first colours of the coming day appear in the sky; and from the depths of a deep exhaustion. I have not been sleeping well. There is a new housing development being constructed on kibbutz land (to be sold to private purchasers). The work being carried out at present, which appears to be a case of preparing individual sites, is deafening and lasts from daybreak through to nightfall, rendering an afternoon siesta impossible. In addition to this, the daytime noise seems to have seeped into the place, become an integral part of our lives, for the din continues in my head long after they leave each evening and before they commence work in the morning. Though perhaps it is not the noise at all that bothers me, rather the craze of uncontrolled capitalism that continues to spiral out of control on this kibbutz, not only among the kibbutz youth I might add, indeed some of the founding members have succumbed and have their names down to purchase a property. To me it is merely another element of a pattern I have watched develop for some years now, signalling the end of the ideology that brought me here. I am undecided as to whether or not it is a sign of failure, for life is change and is ever-moving, yet the prospect that perhaps the ideals we nursed in our pioneering days did indeed fail does continue to cause me some disquiet.

It is springtime again; hot, the Arabian winds are blowing from the desert, I have closed the shutters against their hateful mumbling, but their reach is long, relentless, they find a way to crawl inside, discarding layers of dust in their wake. Rain is forecast for tomorrow, but meanwhile it is hot and dry, the wind storms against the window, crashing at the shutters, and the cluster of pine trees outside creaks wearily under the constant assault, their needles are hurled about by the wind. Dust is everywhere, in my eyes, my throat, my lips are parched, it is futile, I cannot sleep.

I write under the assumption that you are calmer now than when I last heard from you, and have managed to place everything in perspective, accepted that I am not single-handedly to blame for everything to do with Avi, or with you and Avi, or with you, me and Avi, or even with your family in the Netherlands. Never mind if you have not, there will come a time when you will and I am not writing to discuss the past. We have scrutinised it separately over the years, ripped it apart, only to put it back together, each from our own perspective. One day we will make peace with it. I like to think that perhaps I have.

The reason I am in correspondence with you yet again is due to an event that occurred a couple of months ago, something perhaps insignificant but it has been playing on my mind nonetheless. I will get straight to the point: some time ago I brought Avi to a supermarket to carry out his weekly shopping. This was not a planned trip. Avi was still on crutches at the time (his body has since healed considerably and he has made incredible progress, it is remarkable to me how the flesh heals). As you know, he has returned to live here on a temporary basis, he has a small home on the other side of the kibbutz, where the younger people tend to live.

I had not intended travelling with him that day, he was meant to travel with somebody else, but in the end that person couldn’t go. And as it happens I ran into him while I was out inspecting a new rose garden I am developing near the dining room that is proving to be quite problematic (greenfly were a major problem last year), and he mentioned he had intended going shopping but couldn’t drive yet because of his leg. So I offered him a lift, and he accepted.

Avi expressed a wish to travel to a supermarket in one of those new shopping centres that have gained popularity here in recent years. I’m not sure that you spent enough time on your last visit here to notice them, or absorb such details of your surroundings, but I often think that you would not recognise this country should you spend any amount of time here at all. We were in the supermarket when a young man, an Arab, approached Avi and placed his hand on his shoulder. The young chap was smiling at Avi. We were walking towards the dairy section at the time. Avi seemed surprised when the Arab chap placed his hand on his shoulder, but he scarcely turned to the man before he was walking again, slowly, though it seemed he was familiar to him—he nodded at him. But the young man stopped dead for a moment as though surprised by Avi’s reaction.

He recovered and began to walk along beside Avi. They chatted for a time and it was obvious that they knew each other. I hovered around them for where I come from it is normal to introduce people to each other, but Avi did not make an effort to introduce the young man to me, and I quickly realised that he did not intend to. They stood together chatting and for some reason I felt he was something to Avi, that he knew him, understood him, that they understood each other a great deal. I can’t explain how I instinctively felt that, something about how they stood together, heads close, and how they parted as if there was more to be said than either of them could find the words for. Perhaps I am wrong, yet the incident continues to linger in my mind.

Of course there is nothing significant about that event—they could have known each other for many reasons, they could even have worked together here on this very kibbutz. There are plenty of Arabs employed in the factory here, and Avi worked there prior to his army service, and is indeed employed there at the moment.

But there is something else: I am sitting at the kitchen table and there is a photo of that young man in the newspaper in front of me. It is two weeks old, this newspaper, and it has been open on this page for the past two weeks, and I am sure it is him. I’ve looked at it many times, and often I walk away and remember that winter day in the supermarket, him touching Avi’s shoulder, and I return to inspect the picture, and each time I become more certain it is him.

I’ve omitted to tell you the reason as to why there was a large photograph of him in one of our national newspapers. The thing is he was shot dead a little over two weeks ago, died immediately as it happens. His death occurred at some kind of a protest against us, the army or the founding of this state, or some such nonsense. They say that he was not engaged in an act of violence, that he intervened in an incident involving a young teenager (this is being thoroughly investigated) who himself was engaged in an act of violence against the IDF, and it seems that he was accidentally shot. All I can think is that he must have been involved in the violence in some way, given that he was shot and given that the army is extremely reluctant to shoot in any instance; but they say he had no criminal record and indeed served in our armed forces, which is not mandatory for his people by any means.

I have not spoken about this to Avi, nor have I seen much of him since this incident, though when I did he seemed somewhat withdrawn. I am not sure as to why I have written to you about this, only that the entire incident revealed to me that Avi, my son, is a mystery to me, a constant unsolved riddle, as much of an enigma as if I had abandoned him here and disappeared too. I don’t know what he does in his free time, who his friends are, besides his peers here that he grew up with—what indeed makes him happy. I don’t know what this man was to him, or how he knew him, or what his loss means, if anything at all. And this bothers me, Sareet, more than it should. Indeed it is highly possible that you know more of Avi from the monthly letters you receive from him, that by your leaving you came to know him in a way I never did in staying.

And something else. These thoughts brought back another, with an intensity for which I was not prepared—the time we first met on the steps of the dining room upon my return to the kibbutz after the war. You stood in front of me and there was something in you that I recognised immediately, and I knew then that the decision to come to this country had been the right one; but there was something more I saw in you then too, an inner hunger, a hunger that I was not entirely convinced I could satiate, even then, even after the war. I recognised it in you, and it both frightened and enchanted me at once, and the image of you that day has never left.

In one hour now, perhaps a little more, the racket that is the new building site they are creating here will resume again. But, for now, how deep the silence of the night—absolute, empty, so I find with a certain degree of surprise that I have lived again over the past few hours the days of those early summers I spent with you. And there is a constant image in my mind—a summer evening, you standing on the patio of our home facing a giant easel, the mountains of Galilee behind you shimmering in the evening light. You are painting a picture, a colourful affair full of light and flowers and beauty, you are smiling and there are splashes of paint in your hair. Avi sits near your feet, waving a stick at a stray cat that is enjoying the last rays of sunlight, his mouth is a round O and he is gurgling to himself—how enchanting everything about him was then.

I am walking through the door, home after a long day in the gardens, smelling of soil and geraniums and dust. You turn from your picture and smile, before turning away again, and in that moment I am all that there is for you, I see it in your eyes. There is a bottle of wine on the table and two glasses beside it and I sit there for a time and watch you paint, create an entire world of your own, a world full of colour and beauty. How mysterious that world you created was to me! That is the image.

It is late. Or early. The sprinklers have been automatically activated, and the cheerful sound of water comes to me through the wind. I set the start time on the new computer system we have here on the kibbutz; the irrigation system begins on time, with astounding reliability as always. Of course I did not remember to delay it, that is the danger with an automatic system, the human mind is not as reliable as the system it controls! I forgot that it will rain today, though perhaps the forecast was wrong, perhaps it is just as well that the irrigation system has been activated. I will sign off now.

Daniel

C
HAPTER
32

I
t is the end of the day, the light is beginning to fade, each prisoner prepares for the approaching night in his own way: some whisper to each other from their cells, others lie in the darkness listening to the raw voices around them, some write letters home, one prisoner gives a running commentary on what he thinks may be happening in a soccer match that is being played in Jerusalem this evening, his voice echoes through the darkness, obliterating the whispers of the other prisoners. Shut up, Moti, another prisoner says, shut up, okay, but Moti continues his tirade, and in the end we submit and listen wordlessly to his imaginary football game. The rain continues to fall, I peer through the bars at the gathering darkness. David is quiet, avoiding the door of his cell, I hear him shuffling about, turning the pages of a book, he doesn’t speak.

I lie on my bed and sleep comes briefly, it descends upon me without warning, a goal has been scored in Moti’s game, invoking much discussion among the inmates. When I awake the darkness is absolute, and the prison lies in utter silence, only the sounds of the night creatures break the solitude, the faint moonlight is weak on the leaves of the trees outside my window, and the wind moves about plucking them from the trees, flinging them around in the darkness. I sit at my desk, turn the page towards the glow from the candle; it is essential that I finish this before I leave here. I breathe in the odours of this late autumn night, and I begin to write.

T
HERE
WERE
weekends after he died when I returned to the beach, throughout the spring, and into the summer that followed, though it was hot then, and the spirit of him that seemed to exist there in the spring, a certain timelessness, evaporated into the heat of June and the scorching July that followed, so that sometimes when I went there I would decide not to return. But other times on a Friday evening it would call to me again, and I would drive there, through the dust and the stifling white brightness, past beaches packed with weekend visitors, boisterous camp areas. I would drive through the loud music, the glare and noise of summer, until I arrived, and it opened up to me like a kind of oasis. It remained deserted throughout that summer, the secret of its existence hidden from the holidaymakers.