“How can you talk like that!”
“She’ll be back, Ya’el. And if she isn’t, we’ll give the child to Asi and Dina. I’ve already told you that we’ll never get back from the Christians the Holy Ghost that they stole from us two thousand years ago.”
“Will you tell me what’s gotten into you? What kind of way is that to talk?”
“A logical way, Ya’el. A cold, quiet, logical way. I leave the fine emotions to you.”
“You don’t understand… you don’t see it… you’ve hardly talked to her, but she and I spent a whole morning together. She’s an odd, peculiar woman. She came here with some ulterior motive. It’s beyond me how you can lie there so calmly. You’re beginning to seem peculiar to me too…”
“Thank you.”
“No, really. How can you be so nonchalant? It isn’t like you. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see, to turn up suddenly like that without warning… with the suitcases and the child… and you should have seen how she dressed him…”
“Give me three guesses. All in red?”
“Stop that! Just leave me alone. I won’t say another word.”
“If you expect me to jump out of bed and start running frantically around the room with you… I mean if it will help calm you down, I’ll be only too happy to do it. Because there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you, my dearest wife. But I do think that it was presumptuous of me to plan on writing Falling Asleep in Ten Easy Lessons. ”
“That’s enough, Kedmi! Cut it out. If you could possibly avoid that tone of yours tonight… because I’ve had enough…”
“But what are you getting so worked up about? Do tell me. If somebody brought me a sweet little English-speaking thing like that one fine day I’d be too thrilled for words. The trouble with you is that you take things too much for granted. If you were an only child like me, you’d appreciate what you were given today…”
“Leave me alone.”
“Maybe you’d like to have a cry now? I think your problem may be that you haven’t cried enough today. Let yourself go… if you don’t, you’ll fall apart again the way you did three years ago. Only this time I won’t let you. It took me a long time to put you back together, and to this day I’m not sure that a few parts aren’t missing.”
“Kedmi, please. Not now. I’m nervous as hell.”
“She’ll come back. She really will, Ya’el. You needn’t be so tense.”
“Are you sure?”
“The only thing I’m sure of is our great and terrible love. If you weren’t so preoccupied, in fact, I’d make you a proposal that more than one lady would be happy to get from me at this hour of the night. But I won’t put you to any more trouble. I really did like, though, what you said about my keeping control and about your secretly enjoying my jokes. I wish you’d put it in writing, as we say, so that your admirers would stop accusing me of tormenting you all the time…”
“But you are tormenting me. What’s happened to put you in such a wonderful mood? I’m all pins and needles, and you’re flat on your back without a care. What happened, Kedmi, did you close some big deal at the office today?”
“I may be about to, but that isn’t it. I like the deal we’ve already closed even better. Why, we’ve enlarged our family today with practically no effort. I’ve gained a new brother-in-law in diapers and a dynamic, young American mother-in-law. There’s a sense in the air of going places. I feel that we’ve become younger today. You know I think the world of your family…”
“All right, I’m leaving. You’re out of control for real now.”
“You know I’m not. You said yourself that…”
“I think the child is crying.”
“He isn’t. But if you’d like him to, I can arrange it.”
“Where did you really take her? Now you’re going to tell me the truth!”
“I told you. To the bus station. I didn’t ask her, but she must have gone up north to see the hospital. All I did was change some dollars for her. I had no time, I was in a hurry to get to work. I agree with you that she’s a rather odd woman. Like a sleepwalker — all there in a dreamlike sort of way. It’s hard to believe that your father went all the way to America just to find the same type that he was running away from here…”
“Leave my father out of this. Do you hear me? Don’t start on him now. That’s enough. Just tell me what, happened on Saturday.”
“On Saturday?”
“Then… when my father was here three years ago…”
“Oh, no. Now you’re really going off the deep end. Don’t tell me you’re still looking for that day…”
“Yes. It matters to me that I’ve forgotten it.”
“God save us all, she’s beginning again. What exactly is it that matters?”
“It just does, a great deal. And I feel that you remember what happened and won’t tell me.”
“I remember? That’s a good one! Do you think I have nothing else to do than remember what happened three years ago? I hate to imagine where all this will end. I had thought there was a division of labor in this house whereby you were responsible for the past and I took care of the present, so that when the present became the past there would be something for you to remember. You’ve gone far enough, my dearest: it’s time to get over this obsession of yours…. And she won’t vanish into thin air. Nobody does in this country. Before you can finish jumping off a cliff five helicopters are on their way to save you…. Come on, calm down. I still feel like making you a proposal that more than one lady would be happy to get from me at this hour of the night…. Hey, where are you going?”
But what did happen on that Saturday? If only I had a clue: a patch of light, a shape of cloud, the way someone looked, a sentence, a few words, a tone of voice, the motion of a child, an item on the radio, one of Kedmi’s jokes, the mood I was in, my own face, a single thought. Where are you, day? Where did you get lost? Who made off with you? Somehow I muffed it. And yet there must be a starting point somewhere. Why, that Sunday morning is so hauntingly, so unforgettably, so forever clear in my mind: breakfast in the kitchen… a fierce blue sky outside… father drinking coffee in a dark suit, his reading glasses perched on his nose, leafing quickly through some papers in front of him, throwing me a worried glance. But when did he return to Haifa? On Friday afternoon he called from Tel Aviv. Kedmi picked up the receiver, said something rude into it, and threw it down again, signaling me to come. It was raining outside. Father’s warm, deep voice sounded far away. “Father,” I asked, “is it raining in Tel Aviv too?” And he answered, “The sky is blue here. Tel Aviv has never been lovelier.” He told me that he was letting her have the apartment, that he had signed it away at the lawyer’s a few hours ago. And then he started in on Tsvi. “Watch out for him. He’ll take everything. From you too. For those old pederasts of his”—he repeated the phrase several times—“for those old pederasts who hang around him all the time…” But between those two memories a whole day is gone, wrapped in white shrouds deep inside me, a missing montage of quick frames, a blank leaven of time between two fixed points. That Saturday. Something has to strike a spark, if only his coming to Haifa. When did he arrive? When could he have arrived? What happened when he did? To think that I’ve forgotten. If only I could make myself hear the ring of her phone call that morning. Because she really did call, and I must have heard it, even if I didn’t know that I did. If only I could hear the phone ring, or remember myself having heard it, I’d have something to latch on to…. But no answer. Nothing. A gray void, hollow flecks of foam, unreal hours, a page tom from a calendar. Nothing. And yet that can’t be. There must be a way to remember. Right now, deep in this armchair. Turn out the light then, Ya’el. I must find that Saturday. If I let it get away from me now, I’ll never retrieve it again.