“Perhaps.”
“No. That’s not where it was. You can’t get me to give in to you here.”
“I would never want you to give in to me. I want you to find your own association.”
“It was a dreamlike scene… can’t I create a new place in a dream?”
“You can. But it’s generally a composite of old places.”
“Well, then this was such a composite.”
“Do you remember any other details?”
“No.”
“There was no one in the thicket?”
“No. There was a movement that had just taken place. That had to do with…”
“The water hose?”
“Yes.”
“And does the hose itself suggest anything to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s the first thought you have about it?”
“I don’t know… it was a hose that lay on the ground, almost merging with it. It was brown, but quite bright where it protruded from the bushes in the evening light. Water flowed from it and suddenly stopped… as though someone had turned off the faucet, or bent it to choke off the flow…”
“To choke it off?”
“No, don’t make too much of my words… someone passing by simply had stepped on it and stopped the water…”
“And did the teacher say anything? Did he react?”
“No. I wasn’t paying attention to him then. I just had this feeling that it was connected with what he expected to be brought from that damn hunting of his…”
“And what did you feel when you saw the water stop?”
“I thought that someone was about to appear in the bushes… and then I woke up. I must have heard father and Refa’el talking… and Refa’el’s voice pleading on the telephone…”
“Let’s go back to that place again. The landscape… the mountains… the lake… the bushes… what do they suggest to you?”
“On the contrary, you tell me. Maybe they’re symbols too. I rather like that. Don’t you have a dictionary… some sort of thesaurus with equivalencies like the one you gave for the stairs… in which you could look up bushes, a water hose, a sunset…”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. Try again, quickly. What’s your first thought?”
“Quickly, my first thought is nothing. Slowly too…”
“You’re digging in here… taking cover behind your defenses…”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. But I feel that the real meaning of the dream is concealed here.”
“But I really can’t think of a thing. I’m a total blank. It was just some kind of fantasy…”
“That’s the easy way out. You have the key. I can only make suggestions. You thought you were bringing me some pointless, ‘dehydrated’ dream, that you were throwing me a dry bone… but you see now how dreams have their own language and methods of organization. If you can get deeper into it, perhaps we can still find its message.”
“It’s hard for me to think under pressure.”
“Then let’s leave it for the time being.”
“I feel so blank… you’ve drained me… that whole dream took place in such darkness…”
“I thought you said it was in bright light.”
“Only outside, by the bushes. I was standing by the window in the dark.”
“All right. Let’s leave it for now. We can come back to it some other time. Are you planning to accompany your father on Sunday?”
“Me? Why should I? Is it my filial duty? They’ll be better off by themselves there. I’ll see him that evening at my sister’s seder.”
“And your mother?”
“She’ll have to stay in the hospital. What can we do? It’s only in fiction that the newly divorced couple spends its first night under the same roof… reality is better organized…”
“Was she there for the seder last year too?”
“No. She’s always been at my sister’s. Except for the first year, when I was there with her. After that we got permission to take her out.”
“Permission from whom?”
“From the hospital.”
“Was she in such bad shape? I thought…”
“No. It was a legal matter.”
“Legal? How so?”
“Those were the terms of the agreement that got her off from standing trial.”
“Standing trial? I don’t understand.”
“But I’ve told you all about it.”
“Apparently you haven’t.”
“Father was wounded. There was no way we could hide it.”
“I still don’t understand. He called the police?”
“I did.”
“You did?”
“Didn’t I tell you? It’s strange that of all things you should have forgotten that…”
“Perhaps I didn’t realize that you had actually called them.”
“I had to. He was in a puddle of blood in the kitchen… there was no way of hiding that he had been attacked… I thought he was going to die…”
“I see.”
“They could have pinned it on me.”
“On you?”
“They could have said anything. And anyone could have believed it. I was the only one with them. Asi had arranged his life then so that he hardly came home, he was taking exams all the time and doing two years of school in one… Ya’el and Kedmi had moved to Haifa… and here everything had happened so quickly… she was like moving in two parallel tracks, both pretending to be crazy and getting crazier all the time… deliberately working herself up to a frenzy and then really being in one. Father was genuinely scared. He was afraid to be left alone with her and begged me to stay with them. He even paid me so that I wouldn’t have to go to work. He was terrified, but he kept provoking her too, making fun of her, mimicking her speech. She had started talking with this new musical lilt, almost singing the ends of her sentences, and he would imitate her, singing along with her… he couldn’t control himself. She would stand there explaining some long matter to him while beginning to sing a little, and he would start singing sarcastically too until he would be frightened by his own self and shut himself up in his room…. Sex became a bitter mockery for them too. Oh, I could still feel it was there, and maybe amid all their madness they actually slept together now and then….It went on like that until she began her shoplifting. But I really have told you all about that”
“Yes.”
“And about having to keep her from getting her hands on money.”
“Yes.”
“And about those screwball meals of hers… about the big food mill that she bought to grind up everything we ate… I’ve told you all that…”
“Yes, you have.”
“Looking back on it now, I think she must have been trying to transmit some important message to us by means of that nutty food. She was trying to tell us something through all those weird combinations of hers: cookies stuffed with cucumbers and green peppers, sweet giant meatballs, frozen fish heads, green cocktail spreads, bread ground to smithereens… sometimes it would turn out delicious… but mostly it was too abominable for words. Once we even found some stew made of dog food on our plates. Father threw up. He became afraid to touch any food. He used to sneak into the kitchen at night to look for bread and cheese…. The refrigerator and the closets were overflowing with her food. It smelled bad, the whole house began to stink. And it attracted animals too. All kinds of strange birds kept landing on the windowsills. Ravens turned up in the middle of the night. There were mice. The dog kept barking his head off to drive them away…. And then father began seeing doctors to inquire about hospitalization. Ya’el came with Gaddi, and, since mother was especially fond of him, I suggested that Ya’el leave him with her for a while. At first she was afraid to, but in the end she agreed. In the beginning mother was thrilled. She slept with the baby instead of with father and there were a few days of calm. Father took to spending most of his time away from home and locked himself in his study when he returned at night. And then one night all the keys to all the doors disappeared. Gaddi was still with us. Early the next morning we heard father let out this horrible scream and the dog started howling… but I really have told you all that… I’m simply wasting my money by repeating myself…”