“Were you waiting for us here?”
“No, I was on the same bus you were. I got on a few stops back.”
“What’s with these buses? You don’t have a car, you don’t even have a telephone — what kind of university professor are you?”
“I’m only a lecturer.”
“It’s lunacy to travel in these buses, with these crowds. You need a car.”
“On my salary? Don’t you have any idea what life’s like here?”
“Then what has all your genius gotten us?”
The pushing continues the bus moves. All of a sudden we’re alone on the sidewalk at the large intersection.
“Fame.” Asi smiles his wonderfully wise ironic smile.
“Whose?”
“Yours too, father.”
They embrace and kiss again his father rumples his hair. And I how can I not be happy too clinging to Asi hugging him putting my arm through his seizing the chance to hold his thin wriggly body he shrinks back a bit then relents. A marvelous moment the neighborhood in such a gentle light. Asi at his worldliest cleverest best. Father and son release one another each takes a step back the father slightly the taller of the two. They grin at each other without words yet perhaps a slight antagonism already brewing a certain distance. I feel a hot flash. Where is my pad my muse is signaling again. The poetess throbs with inspiration.
“What happened to your finger? Did you cut it?”
Is Asi just trying to break the ice or is this a serious checkup?
“Oh, that.” He lifts up the finger with its gray bandage and laughs. “The day before yesterday I cut myself bathing Ya’el’s baby.”
“You bathed her? How come?”
“Ya’el went out shopping and I was still sleeping off the trip. Gaddi was taking care of Rakefet and couldn’t handle her. She made in bed and cried, so he woke me and we bathed her together…”
“Did the two of you know each other?”
“Of course, what do you think? But I hadn’t seen him for three years and he’s grown. He looks a lot like Kedmi, tubby but bright. He has an eye for things and knows how to express himself. He’s just a bit on the sad side, a bit… somber. Kedmi doesn’t make life easy for anyone, although he does love the boy, that’s evident. And you, Asa, how good it was of you to send your wife to fetch me! It was an excellent idea. We had a chance to get acquainted… we sat for a while in a café…”
“So that’s where you were. I’ve been wondering what took you so long.”
“What are all these new buildings? Is everything here one big development?”
We cross the street and pass the open supermarket.
“You two go on and I’ll run in here.”
“Maybe we should come with you.’’ Asi is anxious not to lose control.
“No, you go ahead. Can’t you see your father is tired? I’ll manage by myself.”
They walk ahead. No longer touching grown distant conversing Asi must be explaining the neighborhood to him his father halts from time to time to look around. Did she really want to kill him? Truly? God give me strength. Yea the hand of the Lord was upon me and He brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord…
The supermarket is crowded. It’s a busy time of day people go berserk before each holiday at last I find a wagon and begin cruising the long shelves. Pardon me pardon me wagons bump together pass each other front back right and left. I stick my frail hands into piles of fruit and vegetables in line by the scales I remember my pad wearily uninspiredly automatically I write in it a few words. On her head a man’s hat. Happiness gone m(b?)ad. An orange peel. Son sniffs father.
“You’re next.” A large woman peers tiredly over my shoulder.
I push my wagon down an aisle of wine bottles the sunbeams light the glowing liquid. I run my hand over them and take an expensively wrapped one down off a shelf Old Judean Dessert Nectar says the label in antique rabbinic script. Six hundred eighty pounds. Suitably impressed I put it in my wagon. Everyone around me is snatching items off the shelves you’d think the whole country was about to close down on Passover. I get into the spirit of it grabbing cheeses bread eggs canned foods a jar of olives frozen meats heading with the stream for the check-out counter. Here and there someone joins me on my way with his wagon trailing slowly after me among the aisles staring at me then drifting away.
“Dina!”
An old classmate by the name of Yehiel holding a sweet blue-eyed baby with a tiny skullcap on his head beside him a woman with a wagon full of food. He comes up to me all excited aglow already a bit gone to seed with a tummy a perspiring paterfamilias but the baby is soft and sweet. He tells me about himself with bumpkinish delight he’s almost finished law school maybe they’ll move to a new settlement on the West Bank he can work as its legal adviser. His wife a pale shrew a tight coif on her head examines me hostilely. “This is Dina,” he says. “From my class… Once I told you about her…”
“You have a little boy already?” I can’t get over it. Something suddenly draws me to the little tot. “Can I hold him for a minute?” I ask. Happily proudly he hands him to me while his wife’s eyes widen with alarm. He too fell hard for me once. The glory of Israel is slain upon high places how the mighty have fallen a long long line of them the baby is light and warm all at once I’m overcome by desire I stroke his silken hair he clings to me watching me quietly reaching up for his skullcap with his small hand and giving it to me I smile at him I kiss him and hand him back replacing the skullcap I kiss him once more. He doesn’t mind me at all I say softly to them. And all this while Yehiel chatters excitedly on about old classmates of ours whom I’ve forgotten he even writes his name and phone number on a piece of paper he informs me that once he met my husband. He teaches in the university, doesn’t he?
A whole hour has passed by the time the supermarket’s disgorged me. And with a lethal bill. Father and mother were right. At least I’ve been given an Arab boy to push the shopping wagon home for me. A fresh warm wind is blowing outside a coppery twilight buses pull up from downtown releasing their human beehives. The gay shrieks of children. I walk in from: the wagon rumbling after me. Arab boys come back the other way with empty wagons they call out to my boy and clap him on the back. He smiles uncomfortably he steals a look at me is my beauty clear to them too? By a lamppost in the busy street I make up my mind to stop a strong hand massages my heart. Here it comes. I take out my already worn pad and leaf through it to a fresh page.
The plot begins in a supermarket. Age thirty-plus. An intellectual unsuccessful type. Once briefly married before. She steals the child from a wagon by the door of the store. The time is dusk, people pass in the street, coppery twilight. The boy is eight, nine months old. In the end she’ll have to return him!!!! She wears glasses, her hair is clipped short Deep down she doesn’t know what she’s doing. A description of the warm bursting forth of spring. Nature means a great deal to her. Only her mother is still alive. A heavy smoker.