I wanted to he myself again but could not. The boy was in the way. Scrutinizing me. My trampled time, my papers left by my books. In far, clear Jerusalem. Clear thought. Hard light. Dina in its streets, free with our money, free with strange men. And you, stranded high and dry here.
We descended the wall. Ya’el was; still in the taxi, eyes shut, arms folded on her chest. The driver looked at us.
“Father isn’t back yet? What’s going on in there!”
I climbed the steps of the rabbinate building. A large, long hallway with narrow doors. From somewhere came a sound of muffled sobs. Father’s? In a fit I opened one of the doors. A dark young woman sat at a bare desk in a room that made the sobs resound like a weird echo chamber. She rose to speak to me as though I were an office clerk, but I beat a hasty retreat, letting go of the door, which slammed behind me. At the end of the corridor, through another door, I saw father’s head beneath a black skullcap. Two young, dark-bearded rabbis sat on either side of him, evidently explaining something to him while he nodded his agreement. I collapsed onto a bench in the hallway, my head in my hands. An endless day. Two black-suited men climbed the stairs with a folded stretcher, threw it on the floor at my feet, and continued up another flight. At last father emerged, seen out by the rabbis, to whom he hadn’t stopped nodding. He bowed his head and shook their hands with submissive gratitude. “Everything will be all right, Professor Kaminka,” they assured him. I rose quickly and started down the stairs with him hurrying after me while removing the skullcap and sticking it into his pocket.
“Really, they’re being most considerate. They’ll bring the rabbinical court to the hospital. They’ll arrange it with the management, even though it’s Passover eve.”
The exit below was blocked by the yawning doors of a hearse.
With an angry movement I slammed them shut. It was already half past three. We were late. The taxi drove to the hospital and left us at the front gate. Suddenly I had second thoughts: shouldn’t Gaddi wait for us outside? But father insisted.
“Why shouldn’t he come? She’ll be happy to see him. He’s a big boy already and can understand.”
Did he want him there to be a buffer? We started down the paved path among the lawns and cottages, the sea glinting beyond them, the strong dry wind at our backs. My last visit here was late last autumn. I had lectured to some history teachers at a local regional high school and stopped off to see her on my way back. It was dusk when I arrived. She was thrilled by my unexpected appearance. She was as lucid as could be, hardly talked about herself, wanted only to hear about me, even asked about the lecture I had given. I felt that she knew what was going on in my mind, in my life. I had already been told of her unforeseen improvement, which hadn’t surprised me at all, because I had never really believed in her illness. When it began to get dark she suggested that I stay the night and even went to see if there was a room, but I was in a hurry to get back to Jerusalem. In the end she walked me in the darkness to the gate. Horatio ran wide circles around us, coming back to us each time to sniff our footprints, lick my shoes, tug at their laces with his teeth. And she walked by my side, heavy but erect, stopping now and then to look at me, wanting something from me that I never could give. We didn’t argue or quarrel even once. She was unusually tender, thoughtful, uncomplaining, unaccusing. We were standing by the gate when she first told me that she had been getting mail from father. She took out a rustling packet of envelopes from her handbag and showed them to me without letting me hold them. What does he want? I asked anxiously. A divorce, she said. A weak light shone from the gatekeeper’s hut. The dog passed under the barrier and stood in the middle of the road with his ears back and his tail wagging softly, drawn bow-like by the sounds of the night, the white fields of cotton, a distant bark. Now and then he glanced our way as though following our conversation from afar.
I began talking in favor of it, enthusiastically even. It’s high time. It should have been done long ago, you’ve just enmeshed each other more and more. She heard me out in silence, her profile turned to me, until she interrupted coldly:
“But he didn’t want to.”
“When didn’t he?”
“Years ago. Before you were born. I begged him. He didn’t want to. There are things you don’t know. He wouldn’t let me go.”
“But when?”
“There are things you don’t know. You wouldn’t believe how he clung to me.”
“But you yourself say that now…’’
“We shall see. Now be on your way.” She was discounting me, dismissing me. “You’ll never get to Jerusalem tonight like this.”
And I left her, walking down the empty road in the dark. Horatio set out at a lope next to me, turned suddenly around to look for mother, and rejoined me once more. Finally he stood halfway between us in the middle of the road, emitting a long angry howl until he was gone in the night.
And now the four of us were going to see her, a family delegation to this hospital that was once a World War II British army base. Gaddi gripped father’s hand, Ya’el went ahead, and I brought up the rear with my briefcase. Again the urge to he myself and again the need to forgo it. He. What is a he? And what was the collective consciousness of the four of us, did it add up to a single whole? Gaddi’s terror combined with his curiosity to see the forbidden he had barely even heard talked of, Ya’el’s sadness, father’s apprehension, the pain in store for him, his hopes and his fears — and I, feeling only anger at their pointless mulishness and the desire to tell them both off, to expose them, to pillory them, to have done with it, mourning my wasted day. I quickened my pace. Suddenly the paths around us were full of people. Patients and visitors spilled out of the cottages, nurses bearing trays crossed the old lawns still frost-burned from the hard winter, all slightly doubled over in the wind. A shrunken little yellow sun peered through the haze. Will I someday remember this moment, will it have any meaning? Can it be maintained as something tangibly, necessarily alive or must it shrivel too with the dead husk of time?
And then all at once there was a howling shriek as though a tramcar were flying through the branches, something galumphed through the air, someone screamed, the people in front of us scrambled out of the way, someone fell, someone shouted with laughter — and out from the bushes he charged, throwing himself upon us, his torn chain dragging behind him, whining, howling, first jumping on Ya’el and then quitting her, next sinking down at my feet to bite my shoes, then running into Gaddi, bowling him over on the grass, licking him and romping on again, at last spying father and sprawling all over him, pawing his face, clasping him, slobbering on him with choked whimpers, spattering him with mud, rattling the chain still wound around him. Father lost his footing and fell to his knees, white-faced and startled, but only when he screamed did I realize that he didn’t know it was Horatio. He had completely forgotten his own dog, who had now streaked so suddenly back into his life and begun to writhe in a demonic dance, circling tightly around him on the pavement where he sat with his arms shielding his face, sprawling on him again like a thing possessed, yipping in a throttled falsetto as though trying to force out a bark that was stuck in the throat.
I rushed over to them. “It’s Horatio, father! It’s just Horatio. Don’t be afraid.”
Ya’el ran to pick up Gaddi, who was too bewildered to cry, and the locomotive that had gone flying on the lawn.
“This is ’Ratio?” Father was stunned, disheveled, covered with mud. “’Ratio? He’s here?”
Father had always called him ’Ratio.