“Don’t you get that I’m not interested in what it’s connected to? That I really, really don’t give a damn?” I growled at my well-meaning boyfriend. “That woman nearly ruined my life, that’s what she did. So do you expect me to understand what went on in her head? There’s nothing to understand and I don’t want to go anywhere near her head. Or maybe you expect me to feel sorry for her too? Is that what you think? That I should pity her? Empathize?”
Oded didn’t protest or argue. My love accepted it, like he accepted everything, without questioning or nagging. He simply let it go, he set my mind at rest, and cradled me until I learned to sleep for nine hours at a stretch to the lullaby of his no-no-no-I-shall-fear-no-evil, for he was with me.
•
My pigtail-sucking Alice is a perfect idiot and a chronic faker. She isn’t capable of producing a single straightforward sentence, and her description of my childhood is, of course, completely false. That’s what she’s like, that’s how I created her, and I take full responsibility for her falsifications and for the small pleasures they afforded me.
But what about my own account? Is it truer? More reliable? Was my childhood really as grim as I describe it? Were there no moments of grace in it? No dewy lawns of happiness?
You could say that I came out okay: I’m sane most of the time, functioning, and I raised two good sons well enough. By any accepted criterion I’m okay, and accordingly any reasonable person would assume that my parents did a few things right, and that there were presumably also a few corners of light in Pension Gotthilf. Because anything else is impossible. Impossible that there were no corners of light. Logic says there were. Perhaps later events cast their shadow backward, and perhaps this shadow makes me see my entire childhood as black.
Words of wisdom such as these were offered by Rachel, my mother-in-law, when we told her, only a little and in general, about my past — and what can I say? Maybe there was something good, too. Let’s say there was. I’m prepared to admit that there was. But how does this good that may have existed help me, how does it help me if I don’t remember any of it? What I do remember and know for certain is that from a very young age I began to calculate and calculate how long I would have to go on staying with my family until I could be free of them.
My mother, it seems, was not the only one who wanted to get away, and perhaps the need to get away is in my genes.
•
“Tomorrow your mother will feel better and the three of you will go to buy coats fit for princesses,” promised Shaya, and the coats were indeed bought at the WIZO shop, even though it was the beginning of summer.
My father hoarded books, and my mother, Erica, collected theatrical clothes. Her sartorial inclinations always met my father’s fantasies, and her closets were stuffed with exotic garments. The fair-haired elder daughter loved being dressed, and even as a young girl she adored having her hair combed. Her eyelids stopped twitching then, and her green eyes slowly closed, leaving slits like a cat’s.
Alice described my sister as “slow,” which was also the word used by our parents, as if they wanted and didn’t want to say “retarded.” But my sister wasn’t retarded. Elisheva’s movements were perhaps a little strange, the way she held a pencil awkward, and simple arithmetic exercises made her cry. And nevertheless, I am sure that today nobody would have kept her back a class in school or pushed her into the vocational track. Because, for example, in spite of her oddities, she loved to read, and not only books for girls but also, and above all historical romances: I remember her poring over old volumes of Ivanhoe and Quo Vadis. She read very slowly, it took her months to finish a book. When asked to read aloud she would pronounce the words with the exaggerated emphasis of a kindergarten teacher, and stress the wrong words in the sentence, but she understood what she read very well, and found interest in it; Elisheva learned English easily simply by listening to the guests, and she also knew how to recognize birds by their calls, which I myself never succeeded in doing; she remembered the names of people who had only stayed with us a single night; and after her breakdown, through her cracks, my sister shed a stream of statements that were terrible in their accuracy. “I’m your Jew,” she said to me.
“What do you mean?”
“That I’m your Jew. So because you’re a good person, you look after me and keep me from dying again. But what you would really like in your heart is for there to be no Jews. You won’t let anyone hurt me, but in your heart of hearts you’re revolted by me, for not being born like you.”
A cold summer afternoon. My sister stands in the yard, wearing a red coat trimmed with fake black fur. Her eyes are covered with a dark scarf and she holds out blind hands to catch a rubber ball. Jamie the acrobat, a minor performer in the street shows of the Jerusalem Festival, speaks to her in English, with a Scottish accent she can barely understand — the acrobat is neither deaf nor dumb. The handicap is a whimsical fiction of Alice’s — and Elisheva turns her body in the direction of his voice. My sister isn’t laughing, neither laughter like the chiming of bells nor any other kind of laughter. Her fleshy shoulders are thrust forward, her hands stretched out stiffly, suspended in the air. A cold wind makes the clouds in the sky race, revealing and concealing the sun. Rays of light penetrate the swaying branches, touching and vanishing, and my sister’s face is shadowed and illuminated in rapid alternation. Jamie and I and the branches, the shadows, and the sunlight don’t stop moving for a second, and Elisheva stands rooted to the spot, waiting obediently for a sign.
“The firstborn daughter,” Alice called her, and so indeed she was, my big sister, for a certain period of time, when we were still small. A difference of less than three years between us, and nevertheless she appointed herself the “little mother.” Our parents were more concerned with the clothes we wore than with our personal hygiene, while she, to the best of her ability, insisted on bathing me and was often the one who put me to bed. “Little mommy” our parents liked to call her, and so did some of the guests, who saw how she held my hand on the stairs or gave me a square of chocolate after I finished my salad.
It didn’t take me more than a few years to steal my sister’s birthright; to put her in the shade with the skills I acquired, to skip a class, to sweep up all the highest marks, to rob her of any ability she might have developed and any true praise she might have won.
First I stole her birthright, and then I deserted her.
The quick daughter made haste to save herself and left the slow one behind.
I, the quick daughter, saved myself.
I deserted and abandoned my sister to her fate.
— 5 -
When Satan arrived in my parents’ house, I was already in boarding school, and a feverish round of schoolwork and social activities gave me an excuse for cutting down my visits to a minimum. I was in Jerusalem, but the Jerusalem I was in was very far from the one in which I grew up.
Life in boarding school made my head spin with the range of possibilities it offered: interesting lessons, a history teacher who was particularly interesting, youth movements, a theatrical society, a writing club, stealing out and hitching rides, beer, kisses tasting of beer, political arguments, volunteer activities in the deprived neighborhood of Katamon, nocturnal excursions to the Old City and the churches of Ein Kerem, hesitant experiments full of self-importance with marijuana — I said yes to everything, I wanted everything, and every leap and every opportunity seemed to be the very one I had been waiting for.