“But it’s you who are wrong. She really did phone.”
“She phoned when father was here?”
“Yes. In the middle of the night. Now I remember. She told you it was in the morning? Funny lady. She was looking for him in the middle of the night.”
“That Saturday?”
“Do you think I can remember now if it was that Saturday or not? Believe me, I have better things to do with myself. I tried to forget that nightmare as quickly as I could, not to arrange it in chronological order.”
“But you never said a word to me about any phone call.”
“Why should I have? She was looking for him, not for you. I told her that he was in Tel Aviv and gave her the number there. What was I supposed to have told you? You, all of you, were completely freaked out at the time. I had to be careful to keep my distance from you. And you were happy to leave me on the sidelines anyway. You were afraid that my sanity would ruin your lunatic pleasures…”
Your sanity? Insufferable insufferable insufferable is how you were then. You tortured us. From the moment that father tore up your agreement and went to see another lawyer in Tel Aviv. You were so insulted… so hurt to the quick… you raged around the house like a tornado. Insufferable. Insufferable. You tormented everyone, Gaddi too. Yes, you even took it out on Gaddi. You behaved like a barbarian, slamming doors around the house, suddenly disappearing for no good reason. The nightmare was you! It began that Wednesday in the hospital the moment you walked into the library and found your agreement in pieces on the floor. The way you collected them one by one with that caustic smile of yours… oh, I could see right away how hurt you were. No, don’t deny it. You had a right to be, and it was all so long ago anyway. I should have grabbed it from father when he started tearing it, but everything was happening so fast… Asi was screaming and hitting himself in order to goad father on… and then suddenly, there you were in the doorway… and that document you had worked on for so many days… all those times you had run to mother with it, all the telephone calls, all the drafts… there it was, in shreds at our feet, with father announcing that he would see some other lawyer whom he knew. I knew we should never have involved you in the whole business. But you insisted on it. You wanted to be involved. You wanted to prove to him, to us all, that you were capable of handling it, and I’m to blame for not having stopped you. It’s just that you went into one of your manias that leave us all paralyzed, and me most of all. Not that I’m blaming you. Your intentions were good. You wanted to help, to save father money. And perhaps you thought that he would pay you something for it in the end. No, don’t be annoyed at me. Listen. It wasn’t your fault that you needed work then. You had just opened that little office of yours, with that moronic secretary who kept messing up. And father didn’t help any, either. He certainly shouldn’t have fired you in the middle like that and gone to someone else. But the violence of your reaction, the blow to your pride… the minute we got back to the car, with that radio blasting away, I could feel your spiteful silence. The way you revved up the engine… and do you remember what you did to that dog? No, don’t innocently ask me what dog. Our dog. Horatio! The way you cleverly lured him behind you on the main road to make him lose his way and get run over. You played him along, slowing down and speeding up again… What do you mean, you don’t remember? Mother’s friends in the hospital spent five days looking for him in the fields. That little old man searched for him everywhere. At least let’s be honest. I’m not blaming you now. We all made mistakes then, and together they kept adding up. It was a mistake to bring Gaddi along too. Yes, I know, father wanted him to come. But I brought him for mother’s sake, and in the end he had to bear the brunt of it. Only you didn’t spare him any, either. You were merciless with him. You were brutal. You wanted to punish the whole world for your tom agreement and for father’s loss of faith in you. And you yourself lost control, like a child having a tantrum. But completely, which is something that seldom happens to you, because control is the one thing that you always manage to keep. In every situation, in all your gags, in the cynical jokes you play on people, in all your loose talk and your brainstorms that you can’t keep to yourself, I always know I can be sure that you won’t go too far. Calm down, I tell myself, it’s just a game, he’ll know when to stop and apologize with a smile. Bear with him, I think, you may as well enjoy his shenanigans. And you do know that I secretly enjoy them, don’t you, because I know that I can always wait for you to collapse into bed in the evening and curl up exhausted there… that I needn’t mind your tongue-lashings or be hurt by them, because I know another you too: heavy, quiet, sleepy and warm…. But then you were savage with desperation, you’d been cut to the very quick. No, don’t put a brave face on it now: you simply weren’t talking to us then, that’s why you never told me about that phone call. And you had stopped talking because that was the worst punishment you could give us and the worst punishment you could give yourself. What could be more terrible for you than silence? It exasperates you and makes you mean. Not that I myself would have minded, my thoughts were elsewhere at the time. But you stopped talking to Gaddi then too. Now you may not remember. Then you didn’t say a word to him for days, though, as though he were to blame for it too… Gaddi, who’s so used to your being involved in all he does, and who so admires you… no, I don’t mean admires… but depends on you and is attached to you. I’m not saying that explains what happened. But it was hard on him. Although of course it wasn’t only that: it was his being left to cope by himself in all that confusion, all that anger and grief that helped bring on the attack. I told her all about it this morning, because I wanted her to understand what we went through that week, how we would have lost the boy too if not for you. Yes, if not for you: I told her in so many words. Only Kedmi, I said. He was the one, I won’t forget it as long as I live. If he hadn’t kept those marvelously quick wits of his about him and insisted on rushing the boy to the hospital in time… if he hadn’t read the symptoms correctly as soon as he hit the floor… I told her so this morning… if it hadn’t been for Kedmi… because I too hadn’t been paying Gaddi enough attention, I was too terrified by what happened to father even to think. And who would have dreamed that a seven-and-a-half-year-old could go and have a heart attack like that? In the middle of all the horror it was Kedmi who saved the boy for us. Who gave him to me again, a second time… so that since then I’m willing to be his slave… since then I’ve forgiven you everything. I didn’t tell her that, but I’m telling you now. Are you listening?