But the minute we got to Rabbi Menachem’s house, my good mood was ruined. On the trip up there, I somehow managed to forget that visits to Moshe’s brother are no big pleasure, which is why we only go two or three times a year, but as soon as we walked in and said, Shabbat Shalom, and Menachem said, may your Shabbat be blessed, and lifted Liron into the air and forced his face close to the mezuzah and said, little man, didn’t you ever hear about kissing the mezuzah? I remembered why those Saturdays get on my nerves so much that I always leave with my hair full of electricity. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to spoil Moshe’s time with his oldest brother, who actually raised him because Avram and Gina used to work from morning to night. The two brothers hugged and kissed each other on the cheek, and Bilha, Menachem’s wife, came over and helped me off with my jacket. No matter how hard I try to dress modestly, I always feel naked next to her. Bilha didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to: the way she looked at my new earrings said it all. I checked that all the buttons on my blouse were buttoned. After the seder night last Passover, Moshe really let me have it about the bottom button — not the top one, mind you — of my white blouse that had been open and everyone could see — God help us — my belly button. I didn’t need that again. Meanwhile, my Liron had joined the ‘sidelocks unit’, Menachem’s four sons — I can never remember their names in the right order — and followed them out into the garden. Lilach was handed over to Hefzibah, the pretty, oldest daughter who always kept her eyes glued to her patent leather shoes. Hefzibah took her to the small room where Menachem and Bilha’s new baby girl, Bat-El, the latest in the production line, was waiting.
We were invited into the living room for coffee before the meal.
Your Liron is quite a man already, Menachem said, and handed his brother a yarmulke and a hairpin.
Moshe nodded proudly and put on the skullcap.
And the little one, Menachem went on, looks just like you, Sima. She has such a beautiful face.
That Menachem, he knows what to say to everyone, I thought, but I still couldn’t stop my mouth from spreading into a smile.
Tell me Moshe, Menachem said in a more serious tone, what’s the condition of the mezuzot in your house?
The smile was wiped off my face. My big toe climbed over the toe next to it in my shoe.
The mezuzot are in order, I think, Moshe answered and, sounding afraid, he added: someone came to check not too long ago. Why do you ask?
Some people say that all the troubles we’ve been having recently are because the mezuzot are being neglected, Menachem said.
I don’t understand, I broke in, are you saying that Rabin is dead because of neglected mezuzot? I couldn’t control myself. The way I felt came out in the tone of my voice, just begging for a fight. Moshe gave me the kind of look he usually saves for drivers who cut him off on the road. Bilha stirred the coffee, which was already completely stirred. Menachem didn’t say anything, thinking about how to answer me.
Everything is in God’s hands, he finally said. He looked up at the ceiling, leaving me the choice of whether to take his bland remark as an invitation to go to war or as a proposal for a ceasefire.
Maybe you should go and see how Lilach is doing? Moshe suggested. I had a lot of good answers for ‘everything is in God’s hands’, for instance, ‘all is known in advance, but each may choose his way’, but I didn’t want to make things worse than they already were, so I did what Moshe said and went to the baby’s room with my coffee cup in my hand. Lilach and Bat-El were lying there, their cots side by side, and Hefzibah was standing over them singing a lullaby I knew from somewhere. I stood next to her, looked at the babies’ faces and sipped my coffee slowly. All of a sudden, I saw that they looked alike. I mean, Lilach is a little bit prettier, really, but there was something the same about the cheeks and the colour of the eyes, and that was the first time I noticed it. Just like twins, Hefzibah said, as if she’d heard what I was thinking, and I said yes, the Zakians have strong genes, and I asked her, what’s that song you were singing? You have to teach it to me, I’ll sing it to Lilach next time she wakes up at three in the morning, and Hefzibah said, everyone knows that song, don’t you? She sang the words again, ‘The angel who hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads,’ and then I realised where I knew that melody from. Hefzibah kept on singing in a soft voice — ‘And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Issac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth’ — and the memory slowly became clearer.
Ashkelon. Night time. My father comes into the room Mirit and I share and sits down on her bed. I remember thinking: why not on my bed? He already has long sidelocks and a prickly black beard. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt and black trousers. With one hand, he strokes my head, and with the other, Mirit’s cheek, and in his nice warm voice, he sings us that same song. But he trills it a little more. He sings it to us a few times, till we fall asleep. The next morning, he disappeared with all his belongings except for a new pair of Adidas trainers my mother kept in the drawer for a few months in case he came back. He didn’t come back, except in Mirit’s dreams. Every morning she’d tell me, whispering as if it was a secret, so Mum wouldn’t hear, that in her dream Dad carried her around on his shoulders, and in her dream he read her a story and told her he missed her. In her dream.
About a year later, my mother found out through the neighbours that Dad was going out with a rabbi’s daughter in Jerusalem and at night she took the beautiful new Adidas trainers out of the drawer and put them outside next to the big rubbish bin, along with a few of their wedding pictures, and in the morning the trainers were gone, but the pictures stayed there, mixed in with all the bags of rubbish for at least another week, because the city workers were on strike.
That’s enough of that song, I blurted out to Hefzibah and swallowed a sourness that rose into my throat. She stopped singing in the middle of a word and looked shocked. I must have sounded more upset than I meant to. The two babies started to cry in a perfect duet — when one stopped to take a breath, the other started crying. I took Lilach out of the cot and held her close to my breast, not only to calm her down, but to calm myself down too, until Moshe came to call us to the table. He couldn’t look me in the eye. What had he been talking about with Menachem? I asked myself. Your daughter’s crying, I said and held Lilach up to his face the way you hold up evidence in a court, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to prove. He sighed, ignored my sharp tone and asked us again, almost begged us, to come to the table, Bilha laboured long and hard to prepare the meal, it wasn’t nice.
I thought, what’s this ‘laboured long and hard’? That didn’t sound like him. It sounded like Menachem. It’s always like that. A minute after they see each other, Menachem’s words start coming out of his mouth.
Moshe took Lilach from me and she pressed up against the soft stomach she loved so much and stopped crying. That made me feel better — seeing them together always calmed me down — and I followed them. We sat down around a table loaded with food, and at the head was the Shabbat challah covered with a white cloth and two fancy candlesticks that had been handed down from generation to generation in Bilha’s family, just like the stories about them. Menachem gave a sermon on the portion of the week, full of broad hints about the times we were living in, when the religious population was being unjustly attacked and we had to strengthen our faith, restore it to its former glory and respond to all the slanderers with prayers for the Almighty. When he said ‘strengthen our faith’, he kept his eyes on Moshe and again I had the feeling that they had come to some kind of agreement while I was with Lilach. I didn’t say anything. Later, I thought that maybe my not talking gave Moshe the wrong idea, that I agreed with his brother and also with their secret pact. But all of that came later, after the silence. When it was actually happening, I said to myself, what kind of secret pact are you thinking of, Sima? They probably talked about their father’s operation; calm down. I gave Liron some salad from the bowl because whenever he takes food by himself, it falls on to the table, and I smiled at pretty Hefzibah, who was sitting across from me, to make up for my being short with her before. I had some of Bilha’s chicken and potatoes in orange sauce and asked her for the recipe. And I said amen.