He rose and tried grabbing the uncontrollable dog by its head, as though struggling to make out his once-beloved pet in this mangy old beast.
“Down, Horatio!” I tried calming him. “Down…”
Just then we glanced up and saw mother watching us in silence a few steps away. Her hair was loose, her face was rouged, and she wore a long brown dress. In one hand she held the other half of the tom chain. The wild look of her shocked me, the glare in her eyes, the splotches of makeup on her tanned cheeks. It was twenty minutes to four. Had she had a relapse? Silently she watched father struggling with the dog.
“He’s here? He’s alive?” He laughed, still in a daze. “Didn’t you write me that he’d died long ago?” he asked mother.
“Who did?”
“I had already mourned for him… I was sure he was long dead…” He gripped the hairy head that nuzzled in his lap.
“He was sure that you were dead too.”
They kept their distance, she solidly planted where she stood, a wrinkled old nurse in a blue uniform behind her. Her answer, though clear, did not bode well, I thought.
Ya’el kissed her and led Gaddi to her. She bent and hugged him feelingly.
“Gaddi… darling Gaddi… do you know who I am? Do you remember? And where is your little sister”—she fumbled in her pocket, took out a slip of paper and read from it—“Rakefet?”
Still whining, the dog broke away from father and ran wagging to join the embraces. Gaddi clung to Ya’el, too frightened of Horatio to move, his face stained red from mother’s kisses.
“Don’t let him frighten you… he’s ours… when you were a baby and your mother left you with us, the two of you even played together…”
Gaddi looked unbelievingly at the huge animal, amazed at himself.
Then it was my turn to embrace her, bussing the air about her rouged cheeks, my head tilted skyward, eyes shut.
“Asa… at last a visit from you… in honor of your father…”
She hugged me powerfully.
“Where is your wife?”
“She couldn’t come. But she’ll be here on the holiday.”
“On Passover?”
“Yes.”
Now father finally stepped up to her, the dog tagging after him, his arms spread wide with Russian pathos.
“Mother… at last…”
Did he know what he was doing? Had he planned it this way or had the shock of events unnerved him? I cringed while he hugged her, pressing her to him, gathering in the strong erect woman, planting kisses on her face. “You look so well… there’s been a great change…” he murmured as though come for a reconciliation rather than a divorce. He even whispered something in her ear and laughed with tears in his eyes. Could he really be that shallow or did he have some ulterior motive? Mother froze in his arms, staring into space with dilated eyes, a hint of amusement on her lips.
Horatio gave a loud bark. At last he had gotten it out. Then father stepped back and mother introduced him to the wrinkled old nurse, who stood there without ceasing to smile. “I want you to meet Miriam… she’s my good angel… Miriam, this is my husband… the man from America…”
“Yes, I know. We’ve all been waiting for you.” The lines in her face reddened sharply as father turned to her and quickly embraced her too with the same somnambulistic zeal.
And indeed, to our horror, they were waiting for us. Much of the hospital already knew of our arrival. A crowd streamed toward mother’s cottage, men and women in bathrobes and pajamas swarmed around her, a young doctor stepped up to greet us. As we passed the row of beds inside someone even broke out into applause. Father went first, nodding to everyone, shaking the hands that were extended to him, that conducted him to mother’s bed, which was piled high with big white pillows. There he stood, declaring how moved he was until I thought I would go mad myself. The patients reached out to touch Gaddi and pat his head — one could see how he attracted them, they had probably not seen a child in ages. Then the doctor explained about the ward and its routine while father listened devoutly and the nurses pushed back the curious patients — one of whom, a little old fellow, kept elbowing forward again and interrupting the conversation with eager hand gestures. At last we all trooped outside, the crowd of patients still behind us, and were led to a small building that served as the hospital library. Some tables with chairs stood inside, on the largest of which, in the middle of the cracked concrete floor, was a white cloth set with an electric kettle and several white cups and saucers stamped Property of the Bureau of Public Health. Beside them was a big, yellowish, lopsided cake, very high on one side and totally caved in on the other, so that it formed a steep inclined plane at the base of which glittered a knife. A few of the patients tried following us in, but the nurses kept them clear of the doors. And again that skinny, rotten-toothed old fellow made the most fuss; he seemed very agitated and kept trying to catch father’s attention while pulling behind him a moronic-looking giant who carried a rake on one shoulder.
In the end they were all persuaded to leave. The door closed on us. We took off our coats and Horatio ran happily wagging his tail around the room. My eyes scanned the books that lined the walls but it was impossible to read their titles because they were all covered with the same brown wrapping paper. What a dump. We stood around the cake, eyeing it nervously as though it concealed some harsh message. “Mother baked it for you all by herself,” said the old nurse, as though apprising us of a major psychiatric feat. A silent, younger nurse poured tea into the cups while Horatio thrashed restlessly about among our legs. I tried grabbing him by the collar and dragging him outside, but he growled aggressively and shook free, trying to bite me.
“Let go of him!” mother cried.
The old nurse handed her the knife. She made a movement to wield it, then suddenly shrank back, stealing a quick glance at father and releasing it.
“No, you cut it,” she said.
Quickly the cake was sliced into thick heavy pieces and we sat down to eat. Horatio climbed on a chair too, climbed down again, still rattling his broken chain, and jumped once more on father, as if the years that had elapsed since their parting were now running amuck in him and giving him no peace. Father smiled, lifting a full, shaky cup to his mouth. Mother rose, went over to Horatio, gave him a quick hard slap with the chain, and pushed him beneath father’s chair. She threw him a slice of cake there, which he sniffed at suspiciously and licked a little without eating.
No one spoke, not even to utter the simplest, most ordinary words. The cake had struck us dumb. I tensed like a bowstring each time I heard a noise outside the door. The giant’s face appeared at the window, staring in at us. We drank the lukewarm tea and ate the half-raw cake, which was a mishmash of colors and tastes. The two nurses ate too, the younger one chewing away at her end of the table as though compelled by a strong inner code, yet not quite certain what she was ingesting. Like in some relentless ceremony that we were all called upon to perform. The cake turned to a sickening goo in my mouth. Mother fed Gaddi, who sat beside her, but did not eat herself.
“You don’t have to feed him, mother,” said Ya’el softly. But she didn’t hear. She went on tearing off pieces of cake with her fingers and cramming them into Gaddi’s mouth while the rays of the setting sun slanted sharply off her painted cheeks.
“What a wind there was today,” sighed father all of a sudden. “All the way from Jerusalem.”
He resumed chewing his cake. Mother regarded him thoughtfully before turning back to look at Gaddi’s mouth, which hung slightly open.
Where are you, Asa? In a little cottage, a library for the insane, an abstract thought deflected from its path, shanghaied from its desk, on which an old lamp casts its light on papers and books, a sole beacon shining in the dark. The irretrievably lost hours. If only they would die already! If only the two of them would die. Why can’t they understand? Their nightly quarrels, like two old children, all their cursing and shouting each time I came home from friends or the Scouts. Ya’el was married already. Tsvi was in the army. I would slip off to bed but they would follow me there, sit down on the blanket, pull it off me, anything to have a referee.