The sound of shouts and of someone thumping on the table reached us from behind the door. Father hurried to it just as it opened again.
“Professor Kaminka, come in for a minute. By yourself, please.” It was Rabbi Mashash, who gave me a dirty look as he pulled father inside.
My headache felt like an omen, like the first sign of an approaching illness. The words I had managed to get out at last clung like foam to my lips. Inside the cottage the voices grew dim. The young rabbi was examining father now, fighting to save our marriage.
“Professor? Of what?…America? Where?”
Yehuda’s deep voice answered softly, in that enchanting way of his, while Rabbi Mashash kept intervening and trying to calm the young Russian down. Smoke rose from the hospital kitchen, drifting up into the brightening glare of the sky, and someone stirred in the clump of trees where Yehezkel and his band were watching us. Someone else was there too, a stranger I couldn’t place, someone made of branches and leaves. Was it her again? I couldn’t believe it. A sudden silence came over the library. Even the whispers had stopped. If only Avigayil were with me. I walked around the cottage, through the high weeds, until I came to the open window and saw father without his jacket, his tie loose, baring his chest while Rabbi Mashash pointed something out to the young Russian and Rabbi Korach rose curiously to look too. I shut my eyes and bit my lips, sinking down on a stoop by the path. After a while the door opened and father was sent back outside. He threw me a tense, angry look, keeping away from me, glancing despairingly at his watch, oblivious of the crisp morning, of the sun and the flowering earth.
“Who asked you about a baby? But you, you had to go tell them…”
A faint smile of contempt flecked his face.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that…”
“Never mind,” he interrupted.
“…they didn’t know.”
He turned toward me angrily. “Didn’t know what? I don’t know what baby you’re talking about. Because there isn’t any… His voice grew shrill, as though he were crying inside. “Can’t you see whom you’re dealing with? Why complicate things even more when I’ve given you everything as it is? Damn it all… it’s all so humiliating…”
His despair was making him cruel. He was afraid that it would all fall through.
“Maybe I should try explaining to them…” I tried to rise but could not. I felt as though a stone weighed me down.
“Don’t. You’ll only make it worse. That Russian rabbi is a nut. He turns every word against you.”
I said nothing. I sat with my white smock covering the stoop, cradling my knees, listening to the birds and to the sounds of the awakening hospital, to the tenor voice of the Russian striving fiercely in its pathetic Hebrew to rise above the wheedling tones of Rabbi Mashash: a strange, antisocial man, fighting to save our marriage for reasons known only to himself. Father fell silent, a handsome but weak, degenerate intellectual, straining to hear while his hands went through the pockets of his jacket and his pants, taking out and putting back his passport, his plane tickets, his documents, his wads of money, distractedly rummaging through the mountains of paper he had with him. For a moment our eyes met. Inside the library the voice of the vainly battling Russian was losing ground, while that of the Yemenite, who had entered the fray now too, rose in a keen yodel. Yehuda took out a cigarette and lit it nervously, blind to the world, to the trees, to the hospital, to the sky, fumbling aimlessly, buttoning his shirt which he had noticed was still open, drifting ever further away from me. And I thought, this will be my last picture of him.
“You know, I’m probably the only one who’s never seen that scar you show to everyone.”
He heard me unwillingly. “What?” he asked, turning hotly toward me.
“You’re leaving soon and I’ll never see you again. And that scar you have from then… from me… I’ve never seen it…”
He was annoyed. “It doesn’t matter. Why should you want to see it? Let me be, Naomi.”
“I’m the only one who hasn’t seen it. Tsvi said you show everyone. So why shouldn’t I see it too?”
“Please, not now.” His voice was entreating. “Some other time. Just let me be.”
“But when? We’ll never meet again.”
“Of course we will. Why shouldn’t we? I’ll be back… there are the children… after all, they belong to us both…”
But I was tired, impatient. “Show it to me!”
He sensed the threat in my voice, my terrible lust to see it, and debated only briefly before almost gladly yielding. Quickly he unbuttoned his shirt again and showed me in the glaring light the chest I knew so well and had forgotten, with its curly gray hairs and its large, pale mole. Across it ran a hooked line like a reddish beak. A near miss, a swooning memory. Not where I’d meant it to be, he had dodged at the last second…. He stood there looking at me quietly, already rebuttoning his shirt. All at once he focused on me sharply, his face lit by that ironic, knowing smile of his.
“But you really did want to kill me!”
He wasn’t asking. He was simply musing out loud, struck by the thought.
“Yes,” I said quickly, a sweet, dry taste in my mouth.
“But why?”
“Because you disappointed me.”
He ran a hand through his hair, content with my answer as though it had confirmed some deep inner truth of his own. With a start I saw her soar through the smoke above the kitchen roof, a small satchel strapped to her back. But just then the door opened and Rabbi Mashash stepped out in his starched white shirt sleeves and invited us back in with open arms. The room was full of smoke. Steam still rose from the electric kettle and a chair lay on its side. Everyone was on edge. As soon as we entered, the ceremony began. Rabbi Mashash read the bill of divorce out loud while the Yemenite scribe at the table copied the words with his quill at breakneck speed. Then Rabbi Mashash led me to a corner and led father to another one near the Russian, who stood crestfallenly by the window. The text was read back to us, after which it was passed around to be signed and handed to father. And then the Yemenite hastened to cup my two hands, the parchment flew through the air and swooped down into them like a small dove, some prayer was growled loudly, and I was divorced.
The Russian opened the door, letting a burst of bright light flood the room, and fled outside, the tails of his army coat flapping behind him, while the Yemenite scribe retied his implements in bundles, Rabbi Mashash went about collecting papers, old Rabbi Avraham groped his way to the exit, and Yehuda approached me with an anguished look. All at once I felt that he could not bear to part from me.
“Mr. Kaminka,” they called to him. “There’s still a seder to get to today.”
He wavered uncertainly. “Perhaps I’ll stay on for a while.”
“You can’t,” said the Yemenite, plucking him by the sleeve. “It’s forbidden for you two to be together now.”
What a softy he suddenly seemed, a desperate old man trying to shake my hand.
“Did I tell you that I’ve given Asi power of attorney in case any problem comes up?”
He pulled loose from the Yemenite’s grasp, wanting to say more.
“Well, so you had your way in the end…”
I didn’t answer him. But to myself I thought, why, I’ll never see him again, he’ll really vanish for good now. I was sure that was so. And already they were dragging him swiftly outside, where they sank again into the weeds and wet earth that I had watered in the morning, running into Dr. Ne’eman and Avigayil, who were rushing to get to my divorce. Dr. Ne’eman shook the rabbis’ hands and roared at one of his own jokes, while Avigayil hurried breathlessly into the library to join me.