“I was afraid we wouldn’t make it,” she said.
“It’s already over with,” I answered, tossing her the parchment.
“What’s over with?” she asked. And then all of a sudden she understood and threw her arms around me. “It really is over with? What a crazy day this has been…”
“Come, it’s begun already.”
He tries getting me up lured by my new freedom in the moonlight-silvering dark. Musa too stomps into the ward bumping into all the beds. Yehezkel pulls one of his fainting fits. He falls to the floor he won’t open his eyes he says he won’t move. And Musa begins to groan again that they’re eating already.
I rise from my bed still wearing the white smock over my cotton dress. “All right,” I say, “I’ll walk you as far as the dining room.” They walk on either side as though carrying me while I glide down the path with my book. There is a fresh chill in the air. We pass by the library. A light is on as though someone were waiting inside. I can feel my heart catch but I must go in. The door I had locked is open again the cups are all gone but the floor is still caked with the hard crust of mud the weak light shining on the rude brown curds. How awfully sad. The last vestige of a marriage that here came to an end. He had wanted to ask me something and they took him away. An overflowing ashtray lies on the table a large ink-stained piece of paper sticking out of it. It’s from the first agreement that Kedmi brought me that father tore to shreds why right here is where Asi stood hitting himself. Behind me Yehezkel and Musa are waiting like statues once more they start to whine that it’s beginning that the singing has started already. Yehezkel turns out the light silhouetting the windows burnished in a glitter of glass-frosted smoke beyond them I see the lights of nearby villages a dog barks far away. Can it be? Already she stands by the hospital gate wrinkled and tanned with her olive green rucksack high hiking boots on her feet neither hunger nor thirst searching for me on her way to me. I want to go hide beneath a blanket but they drag me back to the path that leads to the lit-up dining room joining us on it is a large group of doctors and nurses Dr. Ne’eman too with his great bellylaugh and demoniacally the visored cap of the young Russian rabbi that Subotnik he’s back again there’s no mistaking his voice he’s still in his heavy Red Army coat. They hurry past us and disappear through the large door of the dining room that’s as far as I want to go. “Leave me here,” I murmur but Yehezkel won’t hear of it if I don’t come to the seder he’ll faint again he’ll drop dead right here on the floor. Musa is drawn to the smell of the food but he’s bound to Yehezkel too he doesn’t dare enter without him. And so I’m swept inside with them into the singing the noise the confusion the tables arranged in a large square and covered with stiffly laundered sheets turned blue from too much starch the stacks of matzos flaking plumily at their browned edges and crackling quietly to themselves the large labelless bottles filled not with wine but with some yellowish glowing freshly-squeezed-looking liquid the patients the nurses the office personnel sitting in groups and making a noise like the sea. At one table dressed in their holiday best are the three children who played today on the lawn their hair slicked and combed. Beside them sits their mother a young rather pretty woman looking bewilderedly around her while her American doctor husband a newcomer to the staff converses gaily this may be their first seder in Israel. And now everyone stands up as though in my honor in my cotton everyday dress beneath my white smock holding my book in one hand the divorcee the divorcer. But it’s only the rabbi signaling them to rise he’s risen too his glance resting tensely on me his bright blue eyes know who I am. He balances his cup between two fingers as he did this morning all at once his strong mellow tenor voice rings out in the blessing over the wine.
“Blessed art thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe…”
But now a nurse hurries up to big portly Dr. Ne’eman who stops the rabbi and whispers into his ear. A side panel opens and into the dining room come the patients from the closed ward nearly a dozen of them I’ve never seen before escorted by a young doctor and two nurses. Tense and bowed they move in a diagonal line led by a short very squinty-eyed redhead of maybe forty a fireball on his feet dragging the others heavily after him how awfully depressed they seem looking over their shoulders halting in a daze and lurching forward again their skullcaps in their hands the dining hall electric with their invisible split selves all packed into one room as though not twelve but a hundred of them had marched in rattling their chains. The staff helps seat them at a table and fills their glasses. Again the signal is given and the Russian raptly shuts his eyes he too is moved by the occasion perhaps it’s his first seder here too. Once more his strong tenor voice rings out.
“Blessed art thou 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath chosen us among the nations, and exalted us above all tongues, and sanctified us with His commandments…”
Someone screams. The redhead has slipped away from his restrainers and jumped on a table squinting at us all with a beaming festive cross-eyed ecstasy. In no time he’s pulled down and dragged outside a sparking shrieking fireball his harsh muffled sobs like the grunts of some wild beast can still be heard. Rabbi Subotnik has turned pale. He starts the blessing all over the kiddush cup poised between his fingers while everyone rises again. Except me. I stay seated and open my book how I hate the words of the blessing I won’t wait for it to be done before I drink the sweetish juice in my cup has some wine mixed in with it after all. Now everyone sits and the little boy gets up. He faces his family and recites the Four Questions in a heavy American accent as though the words were stones in his mouth but with blind confidence not knowing what they mean pulled through in one almost show-offy breath by the anxious love of his brother and sister without a single mistake while the dining room gasps in amazement and breaks into applause when he’s done. He makes a loathsome rehearsed bow and the Russian tenor rings out again hushing the babble of voices. “For slaves were we to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God redeemed us from there with a strong hand and outstretched arm…” But at once the murmurs and laughter resume I see her face now by the window how thirsty she suddenly is. Overcome with longing I rise Yehezkel rising with me. I try making him sit again but the thirst is too much for me I take the bottle and put it to my lips I guzzle from it greedily while the rabbi goes on ranting we were slaves…
He stood on the watered earth, amidst the rotting leaves, by a strip of growing grass, bathed in the sharp, splintery light of the violent spring’s flaming sun, the cuffs of his pants stained with mud, too occupied with himself to notice the world all around him, shifting papers from pocket to pocket, his tie loose, the soft curly gray hairs showing through the slit of his shirt by the large pale mole that once I kissed and the small reddish seam that resembled a hooked beak. Did you really want to kill me? With such naive curiosity, yet that wise smile of his lighting his face. As though it had been simply a mistake or a dream. He couldn’t believe that that morning… only it wasn’t morning yet, it was a muggy, lingering summer dawn with the sea showing through far away like steamy gunmetal. The kitchen light was still on when I found him at the table in his undershirt and pajama bottoms, a tall, skinny, unshaven bird wearing a small apron. He had eaten an early breakfast on the sly and his plate now lay on a yellowed newspaper beside the lock that he had removed from his door, the key to which hung from a string around his neck. He pouted wearily, a cold, withheld man, shut up in the circle of his own self-involved thoughts, his little pots simmering on the stove, full of things he had cooked for himself, while the dog lay under the table, wagging his tail and sniffing at my food that he had thrown him.