“Where to?” he asked.
“I mean in general.”
“No, that won’t help,” he answered hopelessly, with a maturity that seemed beyond his years. “It’s because of my glands. They have to be taken out.”
“That’s nonsense. Nothing has to be taken out. You’re a fine, healthy boy. You just have to do more with yourself. Come on, get up. Maybe you’d like to take a walk with me now.”
“Where to?”
“Just out in the morning air. We’ll be the only ones out at this hour.”
“All right,” he said, still making no move to rise.
I went to get dressed, watching the thinning, gauzy shadow that had breezed in through the blinds turn to a flap of sky blue. Parting. Only eighteen more hours. The knot was cut. The border sealed and receding the wounds that would quickly heal. No more of her and her other. No more lunacy. I washed and shaved with slow movements. And out there the darkness was moving behind before the slowly revolving light. I peeked in on Gaddi, who was still in bed with his eyes shut. Asleep. I went to the small kitchen and shut the door behind me. The washed dishes were stacked in the drying rack, the leftovers were all neatly covered. I put up water to boil. Opening a closet, I found a hidden cache of bread that Kedmi had put away for the holiday. Alongside it lay the long bread knife. What had I promised that disappointed her so?
I was drinking my coffee when the door opened and in walked Gaddi in his school uniform, rubbing his eyes.
“So you’re up! That’s great. Would you like something to eat?…No? Are you sure?”
He debated with himself.
“No. Then how about a glass of milk at least?”
He consented. I poured it for him. He drained it quickly, reaching out without thinking for some matzo, breaking off a piece and sticking it silently into his mouth.
“Eat,” I said. “You don’t want to be hungry.”
He ate the rest of the matzo. I put the dirty dishes in the sink and we left, passing by Ya’el’s bedroom, through whose slightly open door I saw Kedmi’s great bulk sprawled on its back, one hand on Ya’el’s face.
“We’d better leave a note,” I said. I found a piece of paper and wrote: We’ve gone for a morning walk. We’ll be back soon. Grandpa. “You sign too,” I said to Gaddi. He wrote his name gladly.
It was already full morning outside, but still very chilly. Spring was having a hard time deciding. What time could it be?
Gaddi seemed pleased to find the street so still. “Everyone is sleeping off the seder,” he said. “What time is it?”
“I left my watch in my valise. I’ll spend the day without it.”
“How come?”
“Because I don’t want to see time running to the finish line of my visit.”
He smiled.
“You don’t have a watch of your own? I’ll leave you some money and tomorrow you can buy one with it.”
He wanted to show me his school. We walked down the hill and entered a large, rectangular yard that was caked with a layer of well-trodden mud. On the wall of the school building hung a large clock that said eight.
“It always says that,” said Gaddi, who was full of life now. He was searching for something around him, bending to dig in the hard mud. Suddenly he kneeled and scooped up a big colored marble that he put into his pocket.
“I found it!” he murmured under his breath.
He went on looking, enjoying the unfamiliar quiet in this familiar place, feeling at home. At one end of the yard was a small stone platform on which he jumped and walked about importantly.
“Where’s your classroom?” I asked.
He pointed up at it and after unsuccessfully trying several locks found a door at the back of the building that swung open. We stepped inside, walking down long corridors whose walls were decked with portraits of national heroes, dried flowers, slogans and verses from the Bible, maps of a post-1967 Israel. A homeland still struggling to be a homeland. A squashed-banana, public-school smell. I hadn’t set foot in such a place since the children grew up. I began to tell Gaddi that I too was a teacher, but a teacher who taught teachers to teach. He nodded, satisfied with the information, and led me up some stairs to his second-floor classroom, whose door was disappointingly locked. Through its glass pane we saw desks and chairs stacked against the wall. He led me back down to the yard, trying all the doors on the way. The sun was shining brightly. The blinds on the houses across the street were still drawn. He jumped happily on the stone platform, ruddy and fat, excitedly talking to himself, playing at being the principal or some teacher. From afar I watched the sunrays glance off his face that resembled an overfed boxer’s.
“Who’s your principal?” I asked when he rejoined me.
“It’s a woman,” he murmured shyly.
“Your heart doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“No.”
Less than a thought. We left the schoolyard and he proposed showing me his old kindergarten. We walked back up the street until we came to a small stone building tucked into the side of a ravine. Stone stairs descended to it. He hurried down them, cutting across the play area with its seesaw and sandbox and trying the door. It was open. I followed him.
“Someone’s in there,” he whispered.
We entered, hearing voices, and found that the kindergarten had been converted into a makeshift synagogue.
“Excuse us,” I said to the small group of men who were standing inside and stretching a rope across the room to mark off the women’s section.
“Please come in,” said one of them. “There’ll be enough of us to start the service soon.”
“Oh, no,” I stammered. “We had no idea… my grandson just wanted to show me his old kindergarten… we didn’t come prepared for prayer…”
But they wouldn’t relinquish us, they had everything we needed, from a cardboard box they produced, all brand-new, prayer shawls and prayer books and skullcaps. “Come on in, sit down, if you don’t mind waiting. This is the first time that we’re holding services here. The municipality let us have the building for the holiday… there’s a need for it in the neighborhood… we’ll be starting soon…”
I glanced at Gaddi, who was watching with interest as his old nursery school turned into a house of worship.
“Would you like to stay a bit and see a service? Have you ever been to a synagogue before?”
“No.”
“Your father never took you?”
“No.”
“Then let’s stay a while. It will give us a chance to rest. What time is it?”
We sat on the tiny chairs. The four or five young men around us went on setting up the room, arranging the chairs in rows, making an ark for the Torah out of the doll closet, placing a Torah scroll in it that they removed from a carton, improvising a podium for the cantor, joking amusedly about the kindergarten they had invaded while a young, dynamic rabbi with an English accent directed them. Someone banged cymbals. For years I hadn’t bothered to attend a synagogue service in Israel. And here was one being held by these young people — and very unreligious-looking young people they were, with their skullcaps that kept slipping off their heads — who seemed so normal and with it.
“Do you live around here?”
“No, but I’m visiting my daughter, who does.”
Still glistening from the last rains the green ravine could be seen through the window in the brightening light. Silvery-green olive trees dotted its slopes, which here and there were darkened by the mouth of a limestone cave. Large, gaily colored toy blocks lay around us, and here too slogans, accompanied by photographs of dogs, papered the walls. Already Gaddi was excitedly checking the names of the children by the coat hangers and helping the rabbi to find things, while I, on my little kindergarten-tumed-synagogue chair, bore inadvertent witness to the contemporary religious revival…